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This comes out of some discussions elsewhere about the unplayablity of US forces in a human vs human game due to the 0.1 response time of the US artillery drastically unbalancing things. Paul Vebber noted that turning off Characteristics in the Realism Options would cause US to have a minimum of 0.4 instead of 0.1 time on target for non preregistered target hexes. Redleg expressed the possiblity of removing forward observers as another way to balance artillery issues.

I've tested a combination of these two; try the following for, I believe, a more balanced and realistic human vs human match up with US forces involved:

In Preferences, Realism Preferences, turn Characteristics off.

Only allow the US side to purchase Forward Observers.

In any negotiated limits of offboard artillery, bear in mind the US Army's doctrinal availability and almost Russian like amount of artillery.

Hope this helps,
Brian

I just finnished my first PBEM game as a Russian against US player, in the Combat Command league. I was takin back by the accuracy of the US players artillery and freguency of of destroying AFV's.
Historically speaking not being an expert by any means the US advantage was in logistics, I thought. What I mean is their guns had all kinds of ammo. When a gun is laid on target it is the skill of the gunner being able to lay on target quickly rather than what nationality he is, and of course the ability of the observer to be able to communicate to the battery and know exactly where he is and the enemy, he wants to fire on.
That's my two cents.

Originally posted by Jack:
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When a gun is laid on target it is the skill of the gunner being able to lay on target quickly rather than what nationality he is, and of course the ability of the observer to be able to communicate to the battery and know exactly where he is and the enemy, he wants to fire on.

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With indirect fire systems the most significant delay is the time required to calculate the firing data--the time it takes the gunner to actually lay the gun is insignificant (seconds compared to minutes.)

The US WWII system was quicker and more flexible than those used by any of the other combatants. It is this advantage that the rules reflect.

A good article comparing WWII artillery practices by James Sulzen can be found at:

Artillery Practices by the Major Combatants of WWII

I've read Sulzen's article and found it very informative. I also found that it continues an American propensity to overestimate the effectiveness of their artillery. While American artillery fire control was undoubtably the best in the world from about mid-1943 onwards, at the beginning it suffered from considerable growing pains. On the other hand British artillery and their fire control system can be considered the best until that time. And whereas American accuracy improved over the British system, it still could not respond as quickly as British Artillery could. Indeed, the Australians and New Zealanders in Vietnam, using the British system, could respond to a call for fire support within 90 seconds whereas American Batteries took five minutes.

A good site for a description of the British system can be found at http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/

In gaming terms, the problem is the .1 delay which just ruins things. I fear we are stuck with the .1 delay. If one is to play pbem it looks like more negotiating about artillery will be required.

I am currently doing several battles in the Combat Command league as soviets versus the U.S., and do not think it is such an imbalance.

Never remain in a spotted position, keep 203mm ready for counterbattery fire, blast suspected onboard arty positions with Katyushas and wreak havoc in the rear with partisans. Kill FOs whenever,whereever they are spotted.

This is all standard repertoire and works fine for me...

Originally posted by Scharfschütze:
I am currently doing several battles in the Combat Command league as soviets versus the U.S., and do not think it is such an imbalance.

Never remain in a spotted position, keep 203mm ready for counterbattery fire, blast suspected onboard arty positions with Katyushas and wreak havoc in the rear with partisans. Kill FOs whenever,whereever they are spotted.

This is all standard repertoire and works fine for me...

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I have to agree with Redleg on this. While your tactics are quite sound, it really sounds as if you have been fortunate enough not to encounter an opponent deliberately 'gaming' the US side. A US force of nothing but artillery, stacked ammo dumps, recon, a few FOs and some cheap MGs/ATs can really ruin the sp:waw experience. A few cheap scout units popping smoke all over the US rear area (and/or a friendly smoke barrage from cheap offboard 75s) can completely obscure spotting of onboard artillery firing positions in pbem.

When a recon unit spots an enemy unit, the onboard artillery response at 0.1 turns coupled with the 0.4 turn offboard to any hex response effectively becomes direct fire, leaving the opponent no time to react or move his units out of spotting range and the impact zone. Unfortunately this abuse is about to become more powerful as the mortars will be fixed in v7.1 - this means even more fast response fire will be available for a person (I won't call them a player) exploiting this weakness in the system.

As to an earlier post comparing British and US artillery systems and their relative response times, I believe the key issue there was one of maps. If the US had properly prepared maps distributed to the correct personnel, artillery response was very fast. US artillery was strong due to three factors: speed of response, accuracy of response, amount of response. The first two factors are due to the map/tape system, the third to the artillery doctrine and logistics. Other nations at the time were often competitive in one or two factors, but really over the course of the war, only the US had all three factors in its favor the majority of the time.

The SP series just is not up to the demands we are making on it in re artillery realism, we're going to have to rely upon work arounds and pre game negotiations until CL comes out.

Hope this helps,
Brian

Originally posted by Redleg:
In gaming terms, the problem is the .1 delay which just ruins things. I fear we are stuck with the .1 delay. If one is to play pbem it looks like more negotiating about artillery will be required.

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Gotta agree, gettin tired of gettin hammered by 20-60mm's ,evrytime one of my units is spotted.
same goes for other calibers as well. .01 delay evrytime is frustrating but....war is hell I guess.

The USA fast response arty does'nt bother me at all. From what i've learned it's historically accurate and this i appreciate. I do agree that it can be devistating unless you can develope a manuever scheme to negate or counter it... but it can be done.

I think the delay should at least be changed to 0.2 turns. That way, rounds will still start falling immediately after hitting end turn, but not quite so many as before. Though 0.1 turn is maybe more correct as a number, the game *is* limited by turn-based interface.

Not allowing a player to move before getting squished under the falling shells hurts the realism more than a slight change in the delay, no matter whether the delay in game turns would be closer to 0.1 turn "in real life". It's a problem of modelling.

At least that's my opinion.

Since each turn is 2-3 minutes long, either the US was able to call & adjust an artillery mission in less than 2-3 minutes and then the game is historically correct or it wasn't able to do it and then the game is not historically correct.

Whatever the case, one can't blame players for using one nation's advantages as much as they can even though I have a long-time frustration about meeting very historically odd OOBs... and sometimes fielding them my-self.

Pre-battle negociations about OOB limits is not IMHO the best solution as one can try to out-fox an opponent in negociations just as well as in OOB selection so the negociations tend to complicate the problem instead of solving it.

The best solutions I have found are
a) to agree on using PC-picked forces and no reinforcemnts, with the downside of getting very predictable OOBs.
b) to play scenarios in PBEM mode provided neither me nor my opponent has played it before (and knows the ennemy's forces and set-up).

I don't mind fighting unbalanced battles as long as there is enough randomness in OOB selection to ensure that any side is not systematically favored
AND to make it hard to guess at battle start if my OOB is well tailored to fight what my opponent has (so that it becomes possible to waste one's advantage)

What I do resent much more is the "best equipment syndrom", the scores of recon, MG teams, snipers, long-range guns in daylight battles, FT tanks in night-battles, etc, etc. This makes the game less of a wargame and too much of a gaming-trick and buying contest to my taste.

I very much hope CL will make PBEM much more enjoyable !

Originally posted by Jack:
I just finnished my first PBEM game as a Russian against US player, in the Combat Command league. I was takin back by the accuracy of the US players artillery and freguency of of destroying AFV's.
Historically speaking not being an expert by any means the US advantage was in logistics, I thought. What I mean is their guns had all kinds of ammo. When a gun is laid on target it is the skill of the gunner being able to lay on target quickly rather than what nationality he is, and of course the ability of the observer to be able to communicate to the battery and know exactly where he is and the enemy, he wants to fire on.
That's my two cents.

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Actually there are several more advantages with the USA. Practice makes perfect. It's not possible to practice actual combat(MILES is a lot different from real bullets), it is possible to practice things like driving tanks, flying airplanes and shooting artillery. The US troops had a lot more practice before going into combat then their opponents. Also the USA had LOTS of Radios, (WE gave 5 million tubes to the Soviets). The USA had redesigned their arty in the 30's. The 105 and 155 were the best arty of any army except for maybe the Soviet 122. The German guns were mostly WW1 designs. And the USA had LOTS of Rounds. In early '45, a German battery would be lucky to have 50% of a fire unit, 200 Km's or less from their factories. USA units would have 2 or 3 fire units 5,000+ Km's form their factories. I can rationalise the .1 by the US being able to Fire For Effect immediatly, sometimes without spotting rounds. The Germans would fire a spotting round, walk it onto target and then shoot the battery. The Brits were just as good as the US. Here is a URL for the Brits.
http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/
If there is a move on to change the .01 than why not Change some of the German advantages also? Or you could learn the tactics that negate the American advantage. Such as blocking LOS, killing and suppressing scouts, etc. I don't think you are losing because of the arty. If you think that you are I suggest you mirror the game. Use a custom map and switch countries for the second game. That way you will learn how to use combined arms to off-set the USA's historical advantage in Arty.
T.(here is a 'freebie'. I should make you learn it the hard way, like I did. Take 1 plt. from a gerry inf co. Move it to a good blocking position. You have picked out this position BEFORE you bought your units. During set-up you place a pre-positioned arty request on the position and another on the side that the US is approaching from. A blocking position is one that allows you to get the first shot and then withdraw, the futher forward the better(1 hex inside a forest line or town, for all but 1 squad). When the US forces walk in, put up a little fight then bug out and call down arty on your just vacated positions, which should be full of US troops. Thsi is an actual tactic used quite a bit by the germans in June and July of '44. This can be a back breaker if it works really well. At worst, you lose a platoon. Be sure the rest of the company is backing up your platoon. And It doesn't hurt to have armor ready to throw into the hole you just made).
PS. almost forgot. The second pre-positioned request is so you can shift arty and catch the US troops retreating, and put a little suppression on what ever the US player has backing up his attack. Don't stop and kill with your armor. Drive right through and keep going.

Again I say, I'm all for accurate response times ..but remember if you want to change the US response time .. which is .1 to the more proper 1.0 (2 minutes ) you need to change the other nations from thier 1.0 to about 5.0 or even 6.0 ( about 12 minutes ) for non US/Brit Players .. the US Arty is already handicapped by the under rating of the Arty ammo ..a US 105mm shell for example being roughly twice the weight and explosive content of a German one .. the Russians used triple based explosive filler while everybody else had double base ..so they should get tweaked upwards as well .. as it stands .. basically a 105mm is about the same across nationalities ,... Then you have the whole VT Fuze issue ..Proximity fuses used by the Americans and shortly after by the Brits starting late '44 caused an increase in lethality variously estimated at 2 to 5 times a conventionally fuzed round .. another handicap suffered by US Arty already in the game is the complete lack of any modeling of WP ammo , WP was used for smoke and produced casulities ....real bad casulities ... as it stands US arty units that should have smoke like 60mm mortars don't and US Arty that does , doesn't produce casulities ... as to the comment that using cheap 75mm to lay decoy smoke in the rear to mask arty positions, is gaming the system .. I would say that using the smoke signiture from rear map arty that can not be possibly seen by the enemy ..to target said arty is what is gaming the system , and if dummy smoke by arty or scouts that likewise is not possible to see by LOS , somehow confuses the other player who is using something they shouldn't be able to see to target units ..well, ain't that funny , how that works ..

Certainly the Americans had several advantages over other nations with respect to fire control and this would result in improved accuracy and more rapid response, however the game has built in several things which make it impossible to historically simulate the actual state of affairs.
First - the ability of any HQ unit to call in fire support. While this may be true for calling in support from Mortar units (which were directly attached at Battalion and/or Company level), only FO's should be allowed to call in support from Artillery batteries (since they were usually the only ones with the proper radio to connect them into the Artillery net)
Second since we are talking about radios; while it may seem an advantage for the Americans to have all the radios that they had anyone with a secure land line actually had the advantage with reliable contact since wireless in those days was far from reliable and the radios at the Artillery units would often be thrown out of tune by the act of Firing the battery. The actual speed of response of American (and British) batteries was not due to the widespread use of wireless but more to the flexible nature of the Fire Control system that they used.
Third; one aspect that is continually overlooked is logistics - this is one area where the Americans usually had a huge advantage, and one thing that they can claim without dispute to being the best at. The ability to keep their Batteries supplied with shells meant that they were seldom out of service due to lack of ammo.
Finally, I think that only Americans think that they had the best guns of the war. There are several other guns built by other nations that can be considered superior to American guns - ie. the German 17cm K18, the Soviet 152mm GP obr.37, and the British 25pounder just to name a few.

Originally posted by Brian Price:


I have to agree with Redleg on this. While your tactics are quite sound, it really sounds as if you have been fortunate enough not to encounter an opponent deliberately 'gaming' the US side. A US force of nothing but artillery, stacked ammo dumps, recon, a few FOs and some cheap MGs/ATs can really ruin the sp:waw experience.
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I have to take exception to this remark. If you had included the statement "for me" then I could not disagree. Different people get different things from ANY gaming experience. Just because they don't correspond to your ideas on what is historical doesn't mean that they are 'gaming' the system. If the Germans had sat on top of hills with Tigers, picking off shermans at 2 klicks, the Americans would have been in Berlin by September. Their Jabos would have had a field day. So following your logic, sitting on a hill with a Tiger is 'gaming the system'.
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A few cheap scout units popping smoke all over the US rear area (and/or a friendly smoke barrage from cheap offboard 75s) can completely obscure spotting of onboard artillery firing positions in pbem.
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Yes, this is called a Ruse of War, and for some of us, it's the only reason to play this game.
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When a recon unit spots an enemy unit, the onboard artillery response at 0.1 turns coupled with the 0.4 turn offboard to any hex response effectively becomes direct fire, leaving the opponent no time to react or move his units out of spotting range and the impact zone.
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Not as bad as turretless AFV's that can spin on a dime and fire every 12 seconds. AFAIK the first AFV to be able to spin (foward one track, while reversing the other) was the M-47. German AFV's (like other AFV's of that time period turned by transfering the power from one track to the other and the engaging the bracks on the lower powered side. I think a good ratio was 70-30. It was easy to pull the track off the rollers while doing this. So the german SP guns should get only one shot, or change of facing, during op fire. This is a much worse 'hole' in the system, IMHO. So when that Stg-IIIf kills 3 T-34's by spinning 270 degrees twice in a turn, the system has been 'Gamed'.
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Unfortunately this abuse is about to become more powerful as the mortars will be fixed in v7.1 - this means even more fast response fire will be available for a person (I won't call them a player) exploiting this weakness in the system.
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I wouldn't call you a player, either.
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As to an earlier post comparing British and US artillery systems and their relative response times, I believe the key issue there was one of maps. If the US had properly prepared maps distributed to the correct personnel, artillery response was very fast. US artillery was strong due to three factors: speed of response, accuracy of response, amount of response. The first two factors are due to the map/tape system, the third to the artillery doctrine and logistics. Other nations at the time were often competitive in one or two factors, but really over the course of the war, only the US had all three factors in its favor the majority of the time.

The SP series just is not up to the demands we are making on it in re artillery realism,
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NO system ever will. If it does the first barrage will leave your house a smoking ruin and your body parts spread around the yard. Do you live in a nice house?
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we're going to have to rely upon work arounds and pre game negotiations until CL comes out.
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Or, you could learn tactics. I suggest you start with Col. Boyd. OODA loops are what combat is about, the armor thickness vs penetration tables is just a minor part of combat. Men make War, not machines. The whole point is tricking and fooling your opponent. At least it is for me and a WHOLE bunch of other players. Why else are you playing by E-Mail? It looks like you brought your catchers mitt to a football game.

Hope this helps,
Brian

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Hope this helps,
Tomanbeg

oops hit the button to early .. I meant to rant about the whole concept of Balancing v the normal outcries for Historical ..Just as a Tiger tank should have all of it's historical atributes .. so should US Arty ... the fact that a Tiger is better than a M5 Stuart should not require balancing .. and the fact that US Arty was better than anybody elses , should not require balancing .. It should have all of it's historic attributes.. but alas it doesn't .. aside from what dumbing down that has already been mentioned about .. some other simple facts need to be looked at .. The US Had More Arty Bn's in the ETO than they had Tank Bn's .. the vast majority of US Arty was in fact 155mm not 105mm .. every Division had 8 to 10 Spotter aircraft geared and equiped, and trained to call Arty ( and Airstrikes) .. Only the US had the training,the portable radios, and the docrine to allow Platoon and even Squad leaders to call Arty .. Even the Brits had to use vehicle mounted Radios for their FO's ( unless they had lend lease US Gear) ..so it would be pretty much the case that only the US could use dismounted and hidden FO's using radio .. everybody else would have to lay land line pretty much or vehicle mounted radios ... Everybody besides the US should in fact be restricted to Company CO's and up, calling Arty or Dedicated by battery FO's calling only their Battery .. this whole, anybody can call any arty battery, stuff is completely ahistorical, except, again, for US Forces...
SPWAW dumbs down arty to the lowest common denominator and only really varies response times .. US Historical advantages in Ammo and Fuze effectivness and quanity ..the ability to call from various levels of command and cross call and cross attach any arty in range, and the advantages of reliable hand held or back pack mounted battery powered radios , has either been shared with nations that never in their wildest fantasies had the cabability .. or left out of the game and denied to the US altogether..
If their are no plans afoot to balance Panther Tanks and BT-5's, then there should be no attempt to Balance US v Axis Arty .. because the Historical advantages of US Arty is about as great in fact as the advantage of a Panther tank over a BT-5 ... Heck the whole concept of pricing not reflecting production should be enough of a handicap against the Allies as it is ... but once again .. if the advantage hysterically belongs to the germans then we go with Hysteria .. and if it doesn't we dumb the game down to balance it .. if you really want to balance things get the dang experience and morale numbers right ..instead of PC'ing everybody into a narrow range so nobodies feelings get hurt.

Atta' Girl. The Last thing this game needs is another arty fix (there has been 4 or 5 since SP1, I think). And certainly not one skewing the game even more toward the Nazi's. I wish there was a way to go back to the figures used in SP3. Dunnigan and Dupey(SP?) were the sources for those numbers. Or I think they were. Back in 96 and 97 SSI did some on line chats, hosted by Grigsby and Brors, and I seem to remember them saying they were the sources for the moral and experience numbers. I lost the diskettes with most of the chats( I think there were 6). The only one I have left is the one that starts with the fish and goes over the cover and casualty routines. I started a '43 battle as US today, and my experience rating was 70. In the SSI games it would have been 50. A big difference, Germany is a 65 By SSI standards, so I think the US picks up more then the germans do.
T.

Greetings, my first military MOS was 0844 Field Arty Fire Controlman. Response time considerations, prior to a planned assault all arty units prepare a plot of the area. All previous firemissons in that grid are plotted and the data available to be used in 'shifts from a known position'(guns just add or subtract a few mils and they are ready to fire for effect) the verbage from FO would be "from target number xxx right 100 up 100 (or what ever) shell HE/WP (what he deems best)and what type fuze he wants -the number of rounds he thinks will be required per tube-fire for effect" This fire request will have rounds out the tube before he finishes talking. Second type of fire mission is where the FO uses the position of the guns (arty btrys are surveyed into position) Since he knows where the btry is he merely says range and direction, this requires almost zero reponse time.
The slowest call for fire is the one you see in the movies. The FO sees a target, plots it on his map and then reads the co-ordinates out to the fire control. They then plot the co-ordinates and detirmine direction and range from the guns and compute the fireing data. As a 17 year old Marine I could plot and compute data for a fire mission in less then a minute. The gun captain and myself were in direct communication and as I solved the mission I called out the data and he then had it applied with rounds down range seconds after I finished (fire control info that goes to a gun as quadrent(direction) elevation and charge. SPWaW of course is one of everyone in this forums favorite games. But alas it has it's limits. There are no airbursts (fuze VT) no TOT (time on targets where more then one btry all fire their guns in a set order that results in all the first rounds of each gun hitting the target all at the same time (used for infantry in open or any massed target. Us doctrine also requires arty to registor fire (before an advance or after getting into prepared positions) the FO looks out in the enemy direction and calls for the center gun of each of his supporting arty btry to fire a round where he directs (a hill top or building, or areas enemy can hide) each of these RP's have the data recorded and can be used for shifts when needed. US infantry doctrine is such that the infantry company has tubes dedicated to it and standard practice is to advance till fired on and then take cover and call for air or arty while the manoveur element gains position. Patton was very active in maintaining the morale and support of his air and arty units. It is often a required plot point in movies to deprive US infantry of fire support. Fortunatly in the actual event this was seldom the case.

[ February 03, 2002: Message edited by: Mogami ]</p>

You can do ToTs in SP:WAW. Just increase the delay to 2 turns and wait for it to hit. Granted, it is a bit slower than RL, but just as good for ripping the guts out of an attack.

For my two cents worth…
· First and foremost SPWAW is a game…as a game players want a chance to win and a competitive challenge…when it comes down to it historical accuracy is less important than having fun;
· While in theory, US Artillery may have had a 0.1 response equivalent in the real WW2…how often did they fail to achieve that? I would suggest a significant percentage of the time…whether it be small from the observer cowering and going off the radio while shells crumped nearby (eg in SPWAW a 155 shell can cause casualties several hexes away); or from gun crew members deafened by their firing or distracted…or whether it be significant, from the gun crew playing cards in their dug-out and taking a couple of minutes to get to their guns, find the correct map info and range the guns…
· Then the question of supply…while a fixed position may be well supplied…what about a battery that has just moved into position…or even if the battery is supplied, are all those shells stored within arms reach of the gun awaiting counter-battery fire.

Remember, despite the greatest supply system in the world at the time, the US Army could still not keep Patton supplied with fuel and other necessities for him to continue his advance, let alone supply the military infrastructure required to support that advance…

The SPWAW game we play is at best a mixed battalion level…which really means it is a couple of reinforced companies…artillery assets are a divisional component…they would be assigned at regimental level to support significant actions by that regiment…assuming we are playing a battalion sized game, any one of the 3 battalions in that regiment could expect artillery support only some of the time…if the third regimental battalion was a reserve, then maybe 50% of the time…and that assumes those artillery assets weren't required to support actions by other regiments in the division.

If our battalion is involved in combat, whether defensive or offensive, rest assured the rest of regiment is, and maybe the rest of the division…artillery will be at a premium, not available on call and dedicated to a single battalion…it will be used where the artillery officer (muddled by the fog of war) considers the need greatest…and thus our call for support will be ignored and receive a 5 minutes delay while another fire order is processed.

If we are under attack in a quiet sector of the front, all independent artillery regiments are likely to be withdrawn…our divisional artillery will be all there is, suffering heavy counter fire, and subject to fire requests from major assaults at a score of places across the divisional front.

If we are attacking in a quiet sector, we are likely mounting a probe or recon in force…I seem to remember a german re-inforcement in force usually had little more than a battery of Wespe's in support…I expect at best a battery of 105's would be all we could expect in this situation.

If we are fighting in a busy sector, then there will be more artillery, particularly in attack, but the bulk of it will be assigned to major axes of attack…our battalion, even if on a major axis of attack, is unlikely to be able to exclusively on several batteries of artillery…in general it will be pre-assigned as a pre-attack bombardment…and by turn one of our SPWAW battle all but one battery will be re-assigned to other objectives…or we may only be left with intrinsic artillery…that is what we have on-board.

In short, battalions of dedicated artillery in support of our ONE battalion attack is absurd…has anyone noticed there is a war going on, not just this firefight? Even moreso that these dozens of tubes can be called down whenever and whereever any squad leader in the battalion requires…which is essentially what the game allows.

While in theory 0.1 delay was achievable "in manouvres", what percentage of the time did it occur in the field? And how often did it really have "unlimited ammo".

To achieve a touch of reality in the game, I think the US delay does need to be increased (preferably it would be randomised across a range)…and this is apart from the fact the game needs to be fun and provide a competitive challenge for both players, and 0.1 delay makes that very difficult.