Destroying an artilery piece with one blow ?!

Gavris Narcis · Post by **Gavris Narcis** » Sun Sep 10, 2000 6:35 pm

Hello !

Please tell me why an artilery unit is destroyed only after the last member
of the crew is killed ? A good shot from a tank , for example, can't destroy
a piece of artilery ? I don't think so !! The problem with the crew killing
is only true for bulets shots, which can kill a soldier/soldiers, but can't
harm the artilery piece. With caliber guns such tank shots, bazookas,
another artilery piece, bombs, grenades etc, it is extremely posible to
direct destroy an artilery piece. It is so, or why not ?
I await your response.
Thank you very much.

Narcis.

jerrek · Post by **jerrek** » Sun Sep 10, 2000 7:25 pm

you can either destroy a gun with 1 shot or by killing the crew. sometimes crewmembers get taken out by schrapnel concussian etc but unless the hit was direct on the gun it survives and the rest of the crew carries on (with low morale). Sometimes the guns are destroyed by one shot - i have had emplaced guns taken out by 50's.

Arralen · Post by **Arralen** » Sun Sep 10, 2000 9:42 pm

Originally posted by jerrek:
you can either destroy a gun with 1 shot or by killing the crew. sometimes crewmembers get taken out by schrapnel concussian etc but unless the hit was direct on the gun it survives and the rest of the crew carries on (with low morale). Sometimes the guns are destroyed by one shot - i have had emplaced guns taken out by 50's.

This is a limitation of the game engine - guns don't have (as far as I know) seperate "hit-points" ... they are (as Gavris observed correctly) dstroyed when the last crewmember is a casualty (not necessarily killed, you know).

Nevertheless you can get one-shot kills - you just have to take the whole crew with one shot .. and this is possible with

a) the "primary infantry weapon" .. i.e. rifles fired by a unit, where a roll is made for every memeber in that squad if he fires his weapon or not - so if your inf squad shoots at a gun it's maybe 4..8 shots "in reality", which may cause up to 8 casualties, more than eneough to take out most guns.

b) MG fire ... MG are always considered "single weapons", no matter if they are secondary weapons of a inf squad or the main weapon of a MG squad. However, they are rated with a HE-kill (factor) greater than 1, so they might achive more than 1 casualty , depending on to-hit chance, saving throw etc.

c) HE shells which have even higher "HE-kill" rating than the MGs, so the chance is even better at least as the chances are identical.

A note on the "to.hit"-chances .. against soft targets (which guns are !! They don't have a gun shields, e.g., because they game really screws up if it finds armor on a soft target):

"To hit" means (roughly) "chance to do maximum damage" to the target, npt "to hit at all", where the max.dam. depends largely on the He-kill value of the hitting shell.

Hope this helps

Arralen

Tombstone · Post by **Tombstone** » Sun Sep 10, 2000 11:18 pm

I've seen what feels like gun destroying hits in SP series games. Usually its with some kind of cannon, (not necessarily high caliber) and I get a "Gun destroyed" message.

Tomo

Paul Vebber · Post by **Paul Vebber** » Mon Sep 11, 2000 12:14 am

You can get a "direct hit" that destroys the gun.

Gavris Narcis · Post by **Gavris Narcis** » Mon Sep 11, 2000 1:32 am

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
You can get a "direct hit" that destroys the gun.

How ? In which version of the game ? Because never I encountered this message !

Arralen · Post by **Arralen** » Mon Sep 11, 2000 3:10 am

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
You can get a "direct hit" that destroys the gun.

???

Are you shure?

I mean - every time I've seen a "one-shot-kill" on a gun, the entire crew where casualties imidiatly - I saw never a crew running away from a gun that read "destroyed" when pointing at it with the mouse ?!

So I can't really see any difference between killing 3..6 crewman with a hit with high HE-kill-value and a "direct hit" that takes out the gun and kills the crew ... would be nice if there's a (greater?

) chance that a least some of the crew get away.

And IIRC I got the "gun destroyed" message sometimes when a MG fired at a gun .. but it shouldn't be able to destroy it, but only to take out the crew ?
But maybe this is only from faulty memory .. will pay more attention the next time it happens

Arralen

Wild Bill · Post by **Wild Bill** » Mon Sep 11, 2000 4:04 am

I've never seen a direct message saying "gun is destroyed" but in Desperate Measures and other scenarios, I've killed a gun and it is dead, it is no longer a target. It does happen...Wild Bill

------------------
In Arduis Fidelis
Wild Bill Wilder
Coordinator, Scenario Design
Matrix Games

reaper2100 · Post by **reaper2100** » Tue Sep 12, 2000 4:37 am

I have seen the 'Gun destroyed' from both sides, giving and receiving.

I don't doubt that it would be easy to destroy some crewed weapons with direct fire.

I once saw a 4.2in M30 mortar (4-duce) blow itself up. This happened around 1982 at Fort Bragg. The gun crew was observing 'most' of the safety measures on the range, but at the end of the day they decided to get a few kicks. The 4.2in mortar has these things called 'cheese charges' (any of your mortar guys feel free to correct me) that are torn off the shell. This determines the trajectory of the shell. At the end of the day, there were many of these 'cheese charges' lying around the gun pit. There were also several crates of ammo close buy.
Anyway, the crew fired a round using the maximum charge. If you have ever seen a 4.2in mortar fire a max charge it is quite impressive, a really large muzzle blast. In this case, the 4.2 in mortar recoiled (it has a recoil mechanism) and the muzzle flash hit the camouflage netting over the gun pit. The netting caught fire and dropped into the pit, igniting the scattered charges. This cause a flash detonation that set off the charges on the other HE shells (Luckily the HE shells did not detonate). This resulted in a large flash detonation that severely injured the gun crew. Since the crew was following most of the safety regulations, they were spared from an HE detonation.

In battlefield conditions, there would not be the same case for safety. Gun crews in the heat of battle would not be worrying about ‘safety regulations’, especially those that would restrict them from doing their mission or expose them to other dangers.