Indirect artillery fire....

[dgk196]

So, what aspects or features of indirect artillery support are currently not represented by the game? What 'details' should they include?

Dennis [;)]

[Warren]

Calling in artillery was not as easy as is represented in the game. I don't think all units should be able to spot for artillery-e.g., truck units.

[Arkady]

Spotting with truck is prohibited with most PBEM games (house rule)...they shows you only question mark icons but as a house rule, empty truck must move away from enemy line and can not be used to spot units, scout and draw opportunity fire

[timshin42]

Dennis,

The most important (and lethal) single artillery tactic which is missing from this game (and all other games that I know of) is the "TOT", Time On Target, where up to ALL the fires from DIVARTY, or even CORPSARTY, firing units can be massed on a target or group of targets SIMULTANEOUSLY! Obviously this is a very resource intensive, expensive tactic, but it was occasionally used against very critical targets.

[MrRoadrunner]

ORIGINAL: dgk196

Does indirect artillery fire work the way you expect it too?

Again, yes or no, defend your position!

Dennis

How about artillery affecting the hex through the friendly turn too!
I can see mortars being able to shut off the tap and turn it on every three minutes but, 155mm batteries?

And, indirect artillery should be more effective versus armor. The occasional "disable" is not enough to prevent a player from driving forward into the face of indirect fire. There are many historical accounts which point out that concentrated indirect artillery fire stopped an armored thrust in it's tracks? [:)]

[Huib]

ORIGINAL: MrRoadrunner




And, indirect artillery should be more effective versus armor. The occasional "disable" is not enough to prevent a player from driving forward into the face of indirect fire. There are many historical accounts which point out that concentrated indirect artillery fire stopped an armored thrust in it's tracks?[/color] [:)]

That is incorporated in 1.03. I think the probability is now 5% instead of 1% to disable an armored vehicle. We also experimented with 10% during testing but that lead to unrealistic loss numbers that would make virtually any armored attack impossible any time.

Huib

[serg3d1]

ORIGINAL: Huib

ORIGINAL: MrRoadrunner




And, indirect artillery should be more effective versus armor. The occasional "disable" is not enough to prevent a player from driving forward into the face of indirect fire. There are many historical accounts which point out that concentrated indirect artillery fire stopped an armored thrust in it's tracks?[/color] [:)]

That is incorporated in 1.03. I think the probability is now 5% instead of 1% to disable an armored vehicle. We also experimented with 10% during testing but that lead to unrealistic loss numbers that would make virtually any armored attack impossible any time.

Huib

Hmm, I hope it's only for heavy artillery 100mm+ ? I wouldn't like to see tank attack stopped by mortars.

[countblue]

I also agree on that, the current way of handling arti vs. tanks seems good to me.

Arti fire should only rarely take out tanks if at all it should rather disable or disrupt them.

May be in "direct fire" a bit better than in indirect fire role. Of course then running the full risk of drawing opprtunity fire.

Countblue

[MrRoadrunner]

ORIGINAL: serg3d1

ORIGINAL: Huib

ORIGINAL: MrRoadrunner




And, indirect artillery should be more effective versus armor. The occasional "disable" is not enough to prevent a player from driving forward into the face of indirect fire. There are many historical accounts which point out that concentrated indirect artillery fire stopped an armored thrust in it's tracks?[/color] [:)]

That is incorporated in 1.03. I think the probability is now 5% instead of 1% to disable an armored vehicle. We also experimented with 10% during testing but that lead to unrealistic loss numbers that would make virtually any armored attack impossible any time.

Huib

Hmm, I hope it's only for heavy artillery 100mm+ ? I wouldn't like to see tank attack stopped by mortars.

One thing that actually happened was the Tiger was disabled and hors de combat by Soviet 120 mm mortars firing indirectly. Check out where the radiators were located on the Tiger I. A tank "kill" or disable is relatively the same thing?

Artillery already has direct fire/penetration factored in when it shoots directly. There are tons of accounts of indirect artillery fire stopping armor attacks and/or taking out tanks. Who in their right mind would stop an advance by armor due to CS artillery fire?

And, how will you then show the two Tigers that needed to tow the disabled Tiger to safety? [;)]

[Huib]

In CS mortars can also disable tanks. That was already the case and I think is one of the reasons why we did not use the intended probablility of 10% but reduced it. Jason knows better how this was decided than me though.

[Arkady]

Yes, i remember one lucky shot by my opponent during online battle (Talonsoft version)
82mm mortar indirect fire

[1925frank]

How does disabled work?  Does it result in a loss of a SP?  Does it work the same as a disrupted unit?  Or is the unit simply unable to move but still able to fire (essentially like a fixed unit)?  Can the unit lose its disabled status?  I don't think I've ever encountered that, or if I did, I didn't make any note of it.

[Jason Petho]

ORIGINAL: 1925frank

How does disabled work?  Does it result in a loss of a SP?  Does it work the same as a disrupted unit?  Or is the unit simply unable to move but still able to fire (essentially like a fixed unit)?  Can the unit lose its disabled status?  I don't think I've ever encountered that, or if I did, I didn't make any note of it.

A strength point is removed from the unit for the duration of the scenario, the remainder of the platoon functions as normal.

So in the example above, assuming it was a 4SP PzIVH platoon, it would now be a 3SP PzIVH platoon.

Jason Petho

[dgk196]

Jason, et all.....

I'm really glad to see that 'artillery' is a priority on your list. As always, I'm grateful for the support you guys give to the game. I look forward to seeing what you have done in 1.03! Any chance of a thumbnail summary of 'artillery' related changes?

Dennis [&o]

[1925frank]

I just finished "The Clay Pigeons of St. Lo" by Glover S. Johns, Jr.  It about an American battalion commander, and thanks to Campaign Series, I was able to put a lot of what he said into some kind of framework.

Regarding artillery, Johns describes it (at least for the Americans) in a way that the game seems to reflect well.  That is, any forward unit acted as a forward observer because of radio or telephone communications.  The radios were apparently very primitive, because most of the reliance was on telephones.  Radios were in short supply and apparently had very limited ranges.  The real trick was to have intact telephone lines and to persuade each rung up the ladder of the importance of the particular requested fire mission.  A lot depended on the person at the front too, because not everyone had the skills to communicate where they wanted the fire or how to adjust fire.  I have no military background, so I have no idea how anything worked, but I found this book to be a good read.

[Mraah]

dgk196,

To answer your question ... Does it work the way I expect it to? ... some parts yes ... some parts no [:)].

Parts that need changing (optional feature as always) ...

OFF BOARD ARTILLERY - preplanned missions.
Instead of having all the artillery on-board we need to move some off board (DCG games too). During the setup phase you select "target" hexes and assign the batteries to these hexes and select a turn that you want the artillery to arrive on, and how many turns you want the barrage to last. These "off board" assets are like the Airstrike assets ... you only get a few preplanned missions to burn. Then when it arrives, assuming 2 salvo's/battery, it lands on the target hex or any adjancent hex (randomly determined). You can see that having 4 batteries preset to arrive on target can pretty much cover a good chunk of ground ... just don't be around when it lands. Also, you can "cancel" the fire mission at any time, however, the delay (in turns) would be applied to whatever the highest HQ is present on the battlefield ... such as ... Corps (0 delay), Division (1), Brigade (2), Regiment (3), Battalion (4) ... or whatever values you want to use to suit ones own taste.

ON BOARD ARTILLERY - add a delay based on chain-of-command from the spotting unit upwards.
Since the game knows whether a hex is in LOS then it must know which unit can see what hex ... right? When you use the artillery dialog (or even directly from the gun battery unit) and select a hex it will scan for friendly units that can see the hex ... and then use the chain-of-command to incure a delay. The delay can run from one turn (like we have now) up to several turns ... again, depending on the best chain-link it can determine. So, when we click a hex a dialog appears ... it will tell us an ETA ... this ETA can flex +/- 1 turn if we want to add some randomness to it. At this point we can cancell the mission and move along. If we agree with the delay and click "ok" then another dialog appears asking us to set a time on-target (in turns, say 1 or 2 turns). After the batteries start firing you cannot cancel them (hence 2 turns max on-target). Then ... yes there's more ... the battery that just fired immediately goes to a low-ammo state, no if's-and's-or but's about it ... then later it's subject to the normal ammo recovery rule.


Does it solve the uber-artillery vs armor? ... no, but it minimizes the point-and-click destruction we have now.

From the accounts I read in books (accurate accounts but not really technical stuff) it seems to me that artillery was mostly preplanned and all they had to do was turn it on or off. Any adjustments from the "battle-plan" resulted in delays that either slowed the advance or worse case arrived off target on friendly troops because human error will always be a factor.

Thanks for listening!

Rob