Bombardment efficency

[frank1970]

Reading all the AARs one gets the impression, that navalbombardment is quite overrated.
One can shell the enemy with Artillery regiments all day and night and will get losses like 200 casualities, 2 Guns destroyed, 8 guns lost. Thereby one will loose bunches of supplies.
So when I order a bombardment TF, it will cause massive damage (has anyone seen destroyed planes or runways by a LCU bombardmend?).

All this damages are caused by ships which will go some 15 kn fast and some sm offcoast.
I think it is quite annoying.

[2ndACR]

To increase the bombardment effect for LCU's, just have 2-3 units in a hex and have one deliberate attack and the other 2 bombard.

Take China for example against Ron, we are battling for Sian at the moment. He has 20 units there as the Chinese and I have 8 divisions, 5 brigades, 3 engineer regiments and 6 artillery units. When all units are set to bombard, I only kill 50-100 men. Take 1 division and deliberate attack with it and all others bombard and I take 500 losses to his 1900+ every attack. And I drop a fort level 80% of the time if I also include a engineer regiment.

With all those units there, I can rotate attacks every turn and pound him to dust very slowly. Soon I will all out attack and take that sucker away from him.

[frank1970]

2ndACR, it is good to see a workaround, but I think it is highly historical uncorrect, that 5 BBs can kill one fifth of a garrison of 4000 and an bombardment attack of 300 guns kills 200 out of 150000.

As a matter of fact BBs and Artillery throw grenades at the enemy. Although the BBs have less guns they hit much much more. Whereis the sense of this. Why can´t I lock the airfield of a base by LCU artillery? I can do it with ships. Is a 15cm gun of a Cl so much deadlier than a 15cm gun of an artillery unit?
Why are ships killers and LCU arty loosers? Why is this so? I don´t understand it. [:(]

[2ndACR]

This is one of those things that not even I fully understand. So, I can not really explain it to you. All I can do is give you a workaround that works.

I wish we could shut down a airfield with artillery bombardment like we can with ships.

Even small 8 plane airstrikes do as much damage to LCU's as a 2000 plus artillery gun bombardment.[:@]

[frank1970]

Ok, it is one of the mysteriums of the engine. [X(]

[Hard Sarge]

As a matter of fact BBs and Artillery throw grenades at the enemy. Although the BBs have less guns they hit much much more. Whereis the sense of this. Why can´t I lock the airfield of a base by LCU artillery? I can do it with ships. Is a 15cm gun of a Cl so much deadlier than a 15cm gun of an artillery unit?

well, it is not the CL's that are doing the damage during a bombardment, you do not have any guns in your land unit that come close to matching the guns on a BB

HARD_Sarge

[frank1970]

So 9 16 inch guns firing about 20 shots (?) (I don´t know the weapon loadout of a Battleship, but I think it is about 2000 shells for the main guns?) have such an devasting effect? Without target indication, without radar, without anything you order your BBs to shell some spot on the map and they will totally destroy it? This might make sense in small islands, but a hex usually should represent 60 miles square.
No, the killing efficeny is much too high.
Just do the maths:
Do 20 B17 cause the same damage as 1 BB? Why not? B17 drop 200 bombs of about the same weight a BB shell. The planes would hit the port OR the airfield OR the troops, not all of them.

Edit: BB Bismarck had 1000 shells for her main guns
http://www.kbismarck.com/armament.html
so there are only 10 shots per gun per "ammopoint used". this means a BB fires 90 16inch shells, weighing about 800kg. This means this 90 shells make the difference of some hundred casualties?

[2ndACR]

Considering that the BB is tossing 9 Volkswagons down range with each solvo, yes they will tear up alot of things.

You are talking about a shell that leaves a 100 foot wide hole in the ground and kills or wounds everything in about a 100 yard area with each shell. The BB will be tossing about 900 of these in a bombardment of 6 hours or so. IIRC, reload time is about 4 minutes for sustained fire.

But I am a ground pounder by training, so naval reload times are murky for me.

edited: each BB shell weighs in at about 1600 to 2200 pounds.

[frank1970]

That would be true IF the BB empties its magazine, but this won´t happen. The BB has 9 "ammo points" for its batteries. One is used up for shelling? Three are used? this means that only 300 rounds will be fired. They will cause a lot of damage, no question about that, but have all the shells a autonavigation so they find their targets? BBs are firing more or less blind into the area behind the coast. Into 3600 squaremiles.


Has someone real numbers about the losses caused by BB shelling?

[Feinder]

You should be advised that Frag has stated that the "only attack with an ENG unit" is a bug. What's actually happening is, everyboyd bombards once before the attack, then everyone bombards again when the ENG goes in. You're getting 2x bombardments for the price of one (and the ENG unit suffers peculiarly -low- casualties).

While I personally belive that ART unit should be upgunned, just be advised that your "work around" is technically considered an exploit, and is on the list to be fixed.

If they were to upgun ART units, it would have dramatic effects in China (where things can already be tenuous), so I'm not sure they'd put extra umph in ART units any time soon, but who knows.

-F-

[frank1970]

I do not think, that artillery needs to be upgunned. Naval bombardmend needs to be toned down.
BBs surely were great in destroying known strongholds or delivering firesupport while assaults, but like any bombardment attack on unknown targets should be not so deadly.
Why not a message: "bombardment didn´t hit target" depending on the recon of the square attacked, comparable eg to the plane night attack.?

[Rainerle]

Hi,
BB fire was directed by spotting planes, even at night. One source that I have access states that during the first bombardment attack on Henderson airfield 46 planes were destroyed, so BB damage seems o.k. What should be addes is damage to installations during Arty bombardment.

[2ndACR]

Sorry, I do not attack with just an engineer unit. I usually use 1 engineer and 1-2 divisions per attack. That allows me to, if I have enough units there, to round robin the attacks every turn.

But artillery attacks sure do need to be upgunned. They are the most devestating type of attack in real life.

Frank,

The BB's on a bombardment mission will use 6 of nine shots, so if they are carrying 1000 rounds of ammo, that translates into 6-700 rounds per BB. They can and were quite accurate once they got the range to a target.

[mlees]

They can and were quite accurate once they got the range to a target

Yes, they sure can. Remember that they are designed to attack a moving target that is 700 by 100 feet long, with both the target and shooter moving at twenty miles an hour, at a distance of ten miles. Hit ratio under these conditions is like 5%, (1 in 20) if I recall correctly. It will only improve against a bigger, non moving target.

Just a squeek from the peanut gallery. I likes my BB's...

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

To increase the bombardment effect for LCU's, just have 2-3 units in a hex and have one deliberate attack and the other 2 bombard.

Take China for example against Ron, we are battling for Sian at the moment. He has 20 units there as the Chinese and I have 8 divisions, 5 brigades, 3 engineer regiments and 6 artillery units. When all units are set to bombard, I only kill 50-100 men. Take 1 division and deliberate attack with it and all others bombard and I take 500 losses to his 1900+ every attack. And I drop a fort level 80% of the time if I also include a engineer regiment.

With all those units there, I can rotate attacks every turn and pound him to dust very slowly. Soon I will all out attack and take that sucker away from him.

Unfortunately, this enters into the exploit category I think. Why would this be the case with a division attacking or not? The land combat just can't handle large numbers and players frigging around with one engineer unit attacking, suffering minimal losses and getting a fort reduction etc is ridiculous. The defender seems to be getting the shaft here, where is the defender bonus? Game is trying to have tactical elements when even the strategic nature of game by necessity due to the scale fails miserably.

Other annoying elements of bombardments are the non simultaneous nature of LCU bombardment and the inexplicable ability of deliberate and shock attacks coming before bombardments because of leadership/experience/initiative.

Non simultaneous bombardments result in the side firing second performing ineffectually (many times zero casualties result vs enemy despite haveing thousands of arty pieces in the field). This should be simultaneous, or at least stagger the fire from unit to unit. (1 Jap unit fires, 1 Allied unit fires)

Bombardment should always come before attacks, regardless of initiative. Not only does the side without initiative get screwed by sufferring enemy bombardment first, but if attacked deliberately or shocked, they suffer again from the effects of these attacks before getting to bombard and worse, may even lose ability to fire due to retreat. Initiative is being given way too large an impact here.

Overall, bombardments are pretty much whacked. Naval bombardment is whacked due to incredible over effectiveness vs bases (basically, I'd reduce potential for damaging bases by a large degree because in most cases, much of the bases assets are spread out and too far inland within the 60 mile hex to be targetable, let alone in range. CD fire is whacked because it allows all guns in LCUs to respond and when firing on ships, the accuracy is insanely high and don't suffer enough from counter battery fire from ships (and inability of placing best bombard ship, the BB, into transport TFs is flawed). Air bombardment is way too effective in relation to LCU bombardment. When a squadron of Wirraways can do more damage in one sortie than 500 guns bombarding during the course of a day, something is wrong. Land combat bombard is whacked as stated in above paras.

[Ron Saueracker]

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR



I wish we could shut down a airfield with artillery bombardment like we can with ships.

This is a good point! Why not? At least heavy artillery should be in range. This is the 60 mile hex raising it's ugly head again. Ships can bombard targets anwhere in a 60 mile coastal hex but LCUs can't. Arbitrary design decision. I'm all for reducing effectiveness of naval bombardments vs airfields. If an atoll, they can be hit. Anything else, only naval base, naval base units, supply and fuel can be hit.

[mlees]

Is this a problem with the land combat calculator, or the device database (damage values for artillery too low)?

[Mr.Frag]

Is this a problem with the land combat calculator, or the device database (damage values for artillery too low)?

The problem is with neither. It's the way damage is absorbed by units.

There is temp damage. There is disabled. There is destroyed.

I think for Arty to get it's due, it has to bypass the first two and deal direct destruction.

As to the implications and impacts, that one is over my head...

[mlees]

The problem is with neither. It's the way damage is absorbed by units.

Dagnabbit. Sorry. I guess if the fix were easy, you guys would have fixed it already.[:)]

[tanksone]

Also remember that as an example the blast range of the Iowa was something like a square quater mile for a nine gun salvo