Uber Artillery

[sztartur2]

Gents,

I played through the WinterStorm German campaign. I liked a lot of things in it I do see some problems though. I have experienced the might of the Russian UBER artillery:

The Russian wonder weapon: 82mm mortar. I had countless losses by tanks top deck hit by 82mm mortar. Getting a tanks killed by a 82mm mortar is not realistic in my humble opinion. It is OK to happen once or twice very rarely (that means it fell right on the engine and the engine caught fire )but here it happened all the time.

150mm artillery. Once it hits you you are dead. that is OK. The problem is that it hits you very often. It is too cheap as well compared to it's effectiveness.

Katyusha. I believe the Katusha was a suppressive weapon. If a bunched up infantry gets caught in the open and gets annihilated it's OK. BUT it was not an AT weapon! Tanks caught under Katyusha attack should get stun damages maybe a few track hits and very very rarely (the emphasis on very) should they be destroyed.

What are the experiences playing PBEM? I believe I buy up all artillery and let it loose.

In winter Storm the fact that there are small 1km maps only it made matters even worse. Small place to maneuver things get bunched up and then even 82mm mortars can do very ugly things the 120mm and 150mm artillery is a disaster and a Katyusha attack = game over.

Too bad because I liked the mood fighting the Russkies in winter to relieve Stalingrad. Too bad UBER artillery took the fun of the otherwise very good campaign.

[Mobius]

I believe the penetration/damage is fine. If not the data tables can be easily edited.

What may be over modelled is the hit odds and hit location as well as accuracy. I haven't found a way to test the accuracy of area fire except the area center seems to be on target too often and hits too often. We can't see what is going on as a user. That has to be looked at by the programmer and so far no effort seems to have been made.
If this can't be fixed maybe another turns delay should be added to area fire arrival time.

For the Katyusha it should be deadly but on a small map it should scatter so much that the Russians should be in almost as much peril as the Germans.

[sztartur2]

ORIGINAL: Mobius
I believe the penetration/damage is fine. If not the data tables can be easily edited.

Started investigating. XML editing is no problem for me. PCO power [:D]

ORIGINAL: Mobius
What may be over modelled is the hit odds and hit location as well as accuracy. I haven't found a way to test the accuracy of area fire except the area center seems to be on target too often and hits too often.

Absolutely agreed. The proble is not with the hitting of the area but too often landing right on tanks for a deadly kill. Rooting out infantry from cover it is good.

ORIGINAL: Mobius
We can't see what is going on as a user.

That's very bad and not in the philosophy of PCO. Probability tables should be XML as well.

ORIGINAL: Mobius
That has to be looked at by the programmer and so far no effort seems to have been made.

Too bad it should be made 1st priority together with the infantry exit issue mentioned earlier.

ORIGINAL: Mobius
If this can't be fixed maybe another turns delay should be added to area fire arrival time.

A good and realistic workaround is to have less shells. For 150mm 12 rounds. For 120mm 15 rounds for 100 20 shells for 80mm-ish 30 shells but penetration reduced.

ORIGINAL: Mobius
For the Katyusha it should be deadly but on a small map it should scatter so much that the Russians should be in almost as much peril as the Germans.

Should be suppressive for tank only , deadly for infantry and soft targets, agreed with the rest.

[steelwarrior]

yeah I hate the artillery - it should mostly only kill infantry if it excatly hits otherwise just surpress and the same with air support and only surpress Tanks - like this the singleplayer campaign is no fun either...in the first scenario of the 1st German tank divison (127 battles) 50% of my tanks get killed by artillery and air support and so I loose - cause I need the concentrated fire power!

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: steelwarrior

yeah I hate the artillery - it should mostly only kill infantry if it excatly hits otherwise just surpress and the same with air support and only surpress Tanks - like this the singleplayer campaign is no fun either...in the first scenario of the 1st German tank divison (127 battles) 50% of my tanks get killed by artillery and air support and so I loose - cause I need the concentrated fire power!

No.
If it hits it should be as deadly to tanks as it is.
I've posted US tabled effective HE penetration data on another thread and someone, maybe Yousername posted a link to a modern defense evaluation of artillery effects that show the US Army, under appreciates dumb artillery attacks. (Though some of the PCO tank death could be considered a mission kill rather than a blown up tank.)

I also worked out the theoretical probability of a hit for a tank in the danger zone. But we don't know how much off this probability the game is. And like I said the center of the artillery attack zone should be off by quite a bit (random but up to 300m) )the first phase of the attack. It should correct to the red dot by about 50-100m per turn. A Katysuha only gets one phase of attack so it’s scatter should always be at maximum and not corrected.

I think this was more important but others wanted knock down trees.

[sztartur2]

Mobius are you OK that 81 mm and 82mm mortars should take out a medium tank?

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: sztartur

Mobius are you OK that 81 mm and 82mm mortars should take out a medium tank?

Maybe not a Churchill but a Mark IV's 10mm top armor, yeah.

[sztartur2]

Then here is a difference of opinion. Mobius if you could point on some references it would be appreciated. I'll talk today with a physicist friend of mine and ask him about this. There are penetrations of HE shells at point blank of the tank /assault Guns to be compared, but I believe the kinetic energy is higher when they shoot than when a mortar shell is falling. I'm not hundred percent sure though. also the HE shell is not as hard as an AP shell. Also it is ridiculous if a shell falls near a tank and then it gets penetrated. By what? Shrapnel? If it is a big shell and falls top deck with a reasonable probability and destroys a tank that is OK.

[steelwarrior]

If artillery was so powerful againts tanks - why it did not show in WWII resulst - they played rather a small role even when goals where not mobile like the battles of Stalingrad, where Russian troops still had high losses (they rather suppressed also) - I doubt that this high artillery kills are realistuic or historical in any way and they kill the fun of playing I loose 30-50% of my troops as a German player in scenario one of 127 for the first tank divison...really bad! So wether the artillery has to come in even more delayed or the kill effect has to go down...otherwise i will not continue playing the game

[sztartur2]

Artillery did cause the majority of the wounds in WWII as far as I remember reading about it. I did not complain about infantry losses during artillery attack. The debate here is about artillery vs tanks. 

[Mobius]

Refering to this thread:
tm.asp?m=2866117

This is the document I was thinking about:
http://sill-www.army.mil/famag/2002/NOV ... S_8_11.pdf

.

[sztartur2]

Well, one cannot argue with these documents.

The question is what about the 81, 82mm mortars. They for sure have lesser load lesser weight and start their trajectory with lesser kinetic energy.

I agree that the main problem is that the probability of top hit is too high.

Are you willing to accept lower penetration values and have stun instead of kills until Matrix fixes this issue? I have already the xml files modified.

[Mobius]

ORIGINAL: sztartur
The question is what about the 81, 82mm mortars. They for sure have lesser load lesser weight and start their trajectory with lesser kinetic energy.

This has already been done. See the Shell Killpower table. The penetration is slightly less than a comperable shell. While there is less steel mass the mortar bombs impact on average at a steeper angle than an artillery shell.

Code: Select all

 - <weapon type="81mm mortar"> 
 - <killpowers> 
 <killpower caliber="81" value="4" pen="1.5" D="4" S="9" /> 
 </killpowers> 
 </weapon> 
 - <weapon type="82mm mortar"> 
 - <killpowers> 
 <killpower caliber="82" value="4" pen="1.5" D="4" S="9" /> 
 HE Shells up to
 <killpower caliber="99" value="3" pen="1.6" D="4" S="9" /> 
 

ORIGINAL: sztartur
Are you willing to accept lower penetration values and have stun instead of kills until Matrix fixes this issue? I have already the xml files modified.

Because final HE penetration values are adjusted by the variable penetration table it is possible to dial back the lethality that way. Maybe reduce it by 33.3%? Thus the penetration of the mortars could be 1.0 instead of 1.5. The penetrations would still happen on 1.5 of armor but it would be 1/3 of the hits instead of 2/3rds of them. It would be a kludge but it might work fine.

BTW, the only xml file you have to modify is the Shell Killpower file.

[sztartur2]

I know and I have already done .

Why I ask is that we as a community should agree on these changes. so after playing a lot in solo we can do PBEM. I would not want to learn a way of working which is not supported by the rest of the players.

[sztartur2]

Here is an attachment with the modified guns. We should agree on this. I took down the penetrations considerably but artillery is still pretty strong except the mortars which do not penetrate medium tank top armor. They do penetrate light vehicles though.

Any feedback is welcome.

EDIT: FILE DELETED!!!

[Mobius]

OK, good. So you know how the tables work together. I didn't want the variable penetration tables HE adjustment values changed because this affect both direct and indirect HE.

Try out your changes on the Tutorial Mission or any that have Katyusha steel rain and see how it works.

[sztartur2]

I have done some pre-testing and wioll do a bit more. I ask you and others to do the same in order to have a commonly agreed fix.

As far as I understand Off map artillery has different gun files than the on-map. That is good.

[Mobius]

Don't put the indirect penetration in the individual gun xmls like you did. Just change the Shell Killpower table. That is the standard we are doing right now.

[Mobius]

Try something like this and see how the artillery is.

[sztartur2]

OK will have a look tomorrow. Gun files removed in order to avoid confusion.