HE effectivness in direct fire - suggestions please !

[Arralen]

It was mentioned a few times that direct HE fire from guns up to 90 mm is pretty uneffective now, rendering CS-tanks, Inf-Guns and similar mostly useless.

My first few tests seem to verify this.

What are your feelings about this?

I don't know if this could be fixed with modifying the OOBs alone - maybe there must be a code change as well? (Hello Paul? Wouldn't this be soemthing for v3.0?)

Arralen

[Nikademus]

My feelings tend to weight on the side that HE needs to be increased.

Problem with an issue like this is that there are differing opinions on just how effective artillery fire should be vs soft targets.

Recent mods like SP:WWII have continued a trend of increasing inf toughness where its now to the point that could could spend 40 turns spraying MG and artillery fire and only get a handful of casualties.

SP:WAW has certainly improved the situation returning a decent level of 'lethality' to MG and small arms fire.

when used in indirect mode, artillery certainly makes an effect, causing heavy suppression of inf units. Direct fire though is almost a waste of time.

rather than wax-poetic (in the scientific mode) i see it this way, you know somethings's askew when the primary weapon (the artillery piece) scores next to nothing most of the time, but the unit's secondary weapon (usually a bolt action rifle) scores equal to greater casualties on a frequent basis.

I'm also of the opinion that at the very least, inf units caught out in the open and/or moving should be way more vulnerable to HE fire than currntly showing. Certainly MG fire can be devastatingly effective in such a situation. Some have suggested that the 'askew' portion needs to be addressed by reducing MG and small arms effectiveness but dont believe that to be the problem. Though i'd like to see a less tendancy for squads to stand still while they are decimated i like the current level of lethality shown by automatic small arms fire.

[Jon Grasham]

Yeah, I agree, the Support weapons seem pretty weak. I have only used the PzKpfw IV series with the 75mm/L24 guns, and the Soviet's 76mm on the early tanks (BTseries, T28, etc). They don't do a whole lot, other than make noise most of the time. If the infantry are out in the open, a couple kills can usually be had. For myself, I think Ill just raise the kill rating a point or 2 for the support weapons, since that's all that can be done in the present. Also, I think accuracy plays a part, as the bolt action rifles are pretty accurate, while the infantry guns are far from it. Against crewed weapons though, I have seen some good results from these weapons. (usually against my own guns...

[This message has been edited by Jon Grasham (edited 07-13-2000).]

[Arralen]

Originally posted by Jon Grasham:
For myself, I think Ill just raise the kill rating a few points for the support weapons, since that's all that can be done in the present.

We are working on the OOBs, that's why I'm asking, and than there's the v3.0 coming (hopefully) - so there are plenty possiblities for changes.

IF enough people agree on this ... ?!

Arralen

[Belaja smert]

Originally posted by Arralen:
We are working on the OOBs, that's why I'm asking, and than there's the v3.0 coming (hopefully) - so there are plenty possiblities for changes.

IF enough people agree on this ... ?!

Arralen

I too think that the HE kill rate should be increased, it is so frustrating to bombard an infantry unit for several turns with a 75mm CS-cannon and score no kills. MG's are much more effective now.

Belaja smert

[Reg]

Isn't the role of a CS-tank to disrupt or force infantry out of prepared defences from a reasonable distance?

Obviously, this is a role where small arms (MG or rifle) would be particually ineffective. So a direct comparison of casualties inflicted by direct fire howitzers or small arms against a unit in the open is irrelevant. What is more important is how the game models each of these weapons in their designated role.

Can anyone comment how effective CS-tanks are at disrupting infantry defences compared to historical instances?

Just a thought,
Reg

[Nikademus]

Reg;

valid points, however i cant help but question things when one sees the secondary weapon (the bolt action rifle) scoring equal to better kill rates even at extreme range than the primary weapon itself.

One might also question the validity of the unit even *firing* the secondary weapon at all since in real life i would assume the crew would only unsling such a weapon in defence. Otherwise i would expect the crew to be too busy working the gun to do so.

same thing for MG crews, and i've been toying with the idea of reducing all the secondary weapons of AT/Howitzer guns and MG units to zero ammo to sim this.

[Dean Robb]

Guderian's OOBs on Tankhead's website, http://sites.netscape.net/rcclout, did some very nice work with support weapons. The IGs and MGs I've used so far have been sufficiently lethal. Recommend snagging them - if nothing else they provide good data points for working on your own OOBs.

[Arralen]

Originally posted by Dean Robb:
- if nothing else they provide good data points for working on your own OOBs.

Don't get me wrong - I'm talking about the official OOBs which should be included with v3.0

That's why I'm asking here - if all agree that something must be done, than most probably it will ...


And thanks for the replies - I'll see what I can do !
Arralen

[Dauphin]

I don´t know if I´m a real minority, but i´m pretty happy with the actual state of HE effectivness.

This maybe is based more on personal preferences (in war movies I hated scenes where a whole platoon was blown away by a single shell) than on historical knowledge, but the game feels a lot better (realistic) in my eyes.

IMHO shooting with big guns on spread infantry isn´t supposed to do more than one kill (if any). (On the other hand i´ve seen a T34 taking out seven men of a 88 crew with a single shot).

In the same way, i think that tank MGs are more suited to deal with infantery than even shot barreled CS-guns. A MG maybe can maw down a whole line of infantry, where a 75mm shell would just get one kill (but also suppresses the others more).

But why then the big guns?
First the supression. Second they are a safe way dealing with remote targets. Safer then bringing infantry or mgs in range.

(again: that´s just my personal view, don´t *know* if it´s historic correct).

[rexmonday]

Yeah, it seems strange to me when crewmens' rifles do more damage than the big gun, but I have a reservation about just upping HE kills for the large calibre weapons. Yes, artillery killed more people than any other form of weaponry, but I have a problem with simulating this within the time frame of standard scenarios.
If a standard turn lasts 'a few minutes' - generally viewed as about three (but some go for two or five), then a standard scenario (16 - 20 turns) clocks in at about an hour. Does this realistically (within the limitations of the game) model world war 2 conflict. It seems to me that most attacks are described in scenario notes, for example, as lasting four, five, etc. hours, whereas the game compresses them into about an hour of game time.
I just worry that increasing HE kills will wipe out/incapacitate/render useless infantry squads at too fast a rate. At present taking five or six turns to 'kill' a squad using small arms seems reasonable to me. If HE kill for large calibre weapons is increased, aren't these same squads only going to last about two or three turns?
***
This is all just uninformed opinion, of course, but I just worry about trying to improve one aspect at of the game by increasing lethality.

[Major_Johnson]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by rexmonday:
[If a standard turn lasts 'a few minutes' - generally viewed as about three (but some go for two or five), then a standard scenario (16 - 20 turns) clocks in at about an hour. Does this realistically (within the limitations of the game) model world war 2 conflict. It seems to me that most attacks are described in scenario notes, for example, as lasting four, five, etc. hours, whereas the game compresses them into about an hour of game time.


I don't now how you play to finish a 15-20 turn scenario in an hour. And we have the luxury or being able to sit back and contemplate our moves, rather than the split second decisions that those honorable soldiers had to hang their lives on. For me 15-20 turns = 5+ hours!

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MJ
We serve others best when at the same time we serve ourselves.

[This message has been edited by Major_Johnson (edited 07-14-2000).]

[Tombstone]

Remember, a turn does not represent a fixed amount of time.

Tomo

[RobertMc]

Seems to me the HE effectiveness question can be difficult, because: How much do we want to model reality, and how much do we want a "game"?
In reality, it took an awful lot of ammunition to kill anybody on the battlefield. Soldiers hunkered down and found cover, thus though they didn't move forward they weren't mowed down by machine-gun fire or HE shells. And fifty yards is a good-sized area of ground for men to spread out and make themselves small targets on, no matter if the game pronounces it "Clear terrain" or not.
I actually like the HE fire as it currently is, which I think weighs in on the side of "realism". However, it makes for a slower "game", and maybe not as much fun as getting a lot of kills every turn. But then, I like to feel that there is some historical veracity in the endgame casualty levels. But is this fun for everyone? No.
I guess you could say that casualty levels also indicate individual men breaking and running, so increased HE kills would model that. But who knows? It's just up to the individual whether he wants the reality of low-performing weapons or a faster game.

[Scipio Africanus]

Read any account of a battle in WWI and you will realize that artillery effect against exposed infantry is potent in the extreme. Survivors of the Somme tell of being surrounded by their entire company during an advance and then losing everyone but 3 or 5 men in a matter of 30 seconds to machinegun and artillery fire. Often these men were required to move 200 yards, yet only made it 40. Take a platoon and charge an M7 in open ground in SPWAW. In fact give the M7 an FO and then charge at it across 800 yards holding a close line formation- the M7 and its 105 will lose every time. Infantry should not be able to move like this in front of big guns; The Turks proved this 4 centuries ago, Napoleon proved this, WWI proved this. Most men die from artillery fire when they are moving. 105 guns and 4.2 inch mortars should be devastating against soldiers moving in open ground under view of an FO. "Artillery is the god of war," and this holds most true for the scale at which SPWAW presents itself. I personally use 250% on artillery vs soft targets to properly simulate what happens when 2,000 Italians charge across open ground against 4 US M7s, three 4.2 inch mortars, and a 155mm battery- the poor soldiers make it 200-300 yards in the first 5 minutes of accurate delivery, suffer 40% casualties, turn around and flee. They use WWI tactics, they suffer WWI casualties. Without proper Artillery effect, the tactics used in the game are incorrect, with infantry having accentuated mobility even while under fire.

Cheers,

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Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus

[Scipio Africanus]

And speaking of the Somme...

This battle and others often seem to give people the impression that artillery was not all that effective. This is because of the amount of ordnance expended in pre battle bombardment (which numbers are incredible).

It is important to remember that when the pre battle bombardment took place, most German soldiers found themselves in 30 foot deep mined dugouts. Therefore the initial bombardment had little effect (except on their nerves). But, when the real fighting started, (which is what we're interested in for SPWAW) that is precisely the moment when artillery started actually killing people in numbers. Yes, the British were moving forward in "open" ground, but there were already numerous shell holes, hillocks, and berms to take cover in. Artillery effect was still considerable and casualties massive.

A 75 HE shell exploding within 50 yards of a non prone individual is extremely dangerous, larger shells more so. WWI medical accounts of death by artillery fire are surprising: Often, cause of death was not even immediately discernable (corpses having no external indication of cause). Death could be caused by such unusual circumstance as spinal cord rupture and lung or brain hemmorage from explosive overpressures (no shrapnel in these cases, and sometimes this effect could occur at surprising distances: 25+ yards for big shells).

[Tombstone]

It would be cool if the game engine just cranked up the casualties for units moving and out in the open. Then, assume that they are all on the ground scared... and do less damage.

Tomo

[rexmonday]

Hokay - my last post wasn't the clearest.

I said something about a 16-20 turn scenario lasting an hour. Major_Johnson read that as meaning I play through it in an hour. Actually, what I meant was those 16-20 turns represent _within_the_game_ about an hour.

I am also aware that a certain flexibility exists in the length of game turns. They have always been described in the manuals and such as "a few minutes". If you wanted to be pedantic you could do some calculations based on the speed of vehicles to work out exactly how few or how many they are.

All of this is by the board though - the point I was wanting to make was just that I was worried about trying to solve the HE kills 'problem' by increasing their kills.

If one does increase HE kills, then troops are going to get incapacitated even faster than they do already. Already most infantry units, even those in cover, only last two or three turns before being rendered defunct. As far as the game goes this represents a fire-fight of about five-fifteen minutes.

In my very uninformed opinion this seems like it produces quicker resolutions to combat than the game is intended to simulate/wargame. If HE kills are upped then, is the life expectancy of troops going to be decreased excessively?

(as a side note I personally tell myself a turn lasts fifteen minutes of _in_game_ time, although this figure bears no relation to any of the distances or speeds encountered in the game).

[Paul Vebber]

That on the occasions where large amounts of artillery fell on men in the open, it wrecked horrid carnage, is quite true. But one has to look at the capability from a C3 standpoint to put that ordnance on target. ITs a hard problem and in WW2 and Korea there are many instances where artillery seemed to feast or famine.

While a single M7 firing over iron sights has a hard time to take on a plt is one of the reasons it had that .50cal in the "pulpit".

IN a test series (WO 291/113) the British put 81 targets representing standing men in a 100x 150 yard target area and fired several series of rounds the 105 series was 100 rounds 95 of which were "effective" 65 of the targets considered "incapacitated" by the shrapnel That is about 2 casualties for every 3 rounds.

Other docs put the effectiveness reduction for the target "going to ground" at between 300 and 700% or 2 casualties fo every 6 to 14 rounds.

Another WO doc 291/496

"Against men in slit trenches, 25-pdr groundburst must hit the trench or parapet to be effective. If firing 1000 25-pdr shells into a 300 ´ 300 yard box with 100 men in it in slit trenches, the expected number of casualties would be nine."

NINE yes not 900 or 90...NINE.

Morale effect (lasting after the bombardment ceases) "...can only be achieved against enemy in open positions, unless the duration is about 8 hours or more, in which case lightly protected positions may be affected especially if retaliation is impossible."

On open positions a bombardment intensity of 0.1 lb/sq yd/hour in 25-pdr equivalents produces collapse in about 4 hours; 1.0 lb/sq yd/hour in about ¼ hour.

Neutralising effect, in NW Europe, on an enemy in open positions, was achieved with a bombardment intensity of 0.02–0.08 lb/sq yd/hr. in 25-pdr equivalents.

Lethal effect: A density of 0.1 lb/sq yd causes 2% casualties on targets in slit trenches, about 20% on targets in the open.
Material effect: A density of 0.1 lb/sq yd damages about 1½% of weapons or guns in pits, 20% of soft vehicles in the open.

If a hex is ~2000 sq yd that means 200lbs or 8 25 lber rounds should cause 2 casaulties on average to a squad caught in the open. Wwe are a little shy of that right now, but are tweaking it for version 3 to get closer.

Now one of the pitfalls of warfare analysis is to isolate a single weapon system in a vacuum. One also has to look at engagement level statistics.

Based on an analysis of 217 engagements, those at the battalion level that lasted 1 hour resulted in casualties per company between 9 and 32 with an average of 17. In 3 hour engagements it was between 10 and 57 with an average of 24.

Advance rates against heavy opposition for going 2500m was between 350 and 790 m per hour with an average of 525.

As it stands units that move great than 1 hex are 4 times more vulnerable than units tha move 1 hex and 5 times more vulnerable than units that remain stationary.

We feel that over the course of a standard scenario (I think of 30 turns as representing between an hour and a half and 3 hours) The units tend to suffer moderately greater casualties than the analysis indicates. THis is do to several reasons, the largest being teh players tending to "fight to the death".

We have to balance "game fun" with realism in all this. Absolute realism is just no fun! What typically happens is that the focus tends to be on "realism" of individual unit on unit encounters and not the engagement as a whole.

We have tried to balance the two! That requires "stretching realism" to achieve an overall effect and feel that achieves funa and exiting games that have a realistic "feel" to them.

Botom line is if you want high infantry casualties, lower the experience of the units (FReds editor does this in seconds), jack up arty vs infantry and lower inf toughness a bit.

Mike and I have done a lot of research in to casualty rates to the various weapons systems and if yo udisagree, given you teh tools you need to make it the way you like!!

[Nikademus]

Paul;

your arguments are sound in regards to the HE issue. Certainly i'm not campaigning for a return to the outragious results seen in SP-1 (and very much so in SP-II)

such a move, combined with the much more lethal small arms of the game would quickly make infantry as virtually useless as they are in SP-II.

however, what distresses me about the current artillery routines is that most (if not all) of our observations and/or test scenerios concern moving infantry, caught out in the open....the worst possible situation for a squad to be caught in...yet no great penalty is being suffered by these inf groups for commiting such a tactical 'sin' of warfare. (unless your a human wave advocate like the Soviet Union was)

most of your own examples are in situations where the infantry are in some kind of cover terrain, some specifically designed to reduce the threat of artillery. In those situations (trenches, buildings, trees, rough hexes etc) i would agree and expect to see few inf casualties.

But if i get a squad caught out in the open, or worse, if that squad is moving, then i would expect the enemy to make their foe pay dearly for their blunder.

But we just dont see that right now in SP:WAW. This would allow players to buy masses of inf and use them in ahistorical ways (unless the opponent dicards artillery and buys mass MG units) and charge defence positions with more than acceptable losses.

true one can adjust the preferences but i see two problems with this.

1) adj artillery will not affect the direct fire attributes of HE weapons (since its not technically a bombardment)

2) changing such a general prefernce will unbalance other factors. For example, right now the indirect bombardment routines work fine at normal level. even if increasing the artillery preference affected direct fire HE it would make indirect bombardment overly devastating.

same thing for lowering INF toughness, it would make small arms and MG fire totally devastating against INF and they would die faster than snowballs in hell.

I experienced this problem with SP-II. in that game INF die in droves, so i increased the INF toughness to 250%. while it made inf somewhat tougher to kill against small arms the negative result was that it made artillery bombardment and indiv small arms weapons (like MG armed halftracks) virtually useless and seriously unbalanced some of the scenerios there.

So i'm all for INF being able to 'take steps' to reduce the effect of artillery, thats what makes SP such a fantastic game, few systems or techniques in the game dont have some tactic or weapon that can counter them truely making it a battle of wits between men as well as machines.

but as it stands right now, Inf can pretty much just disregard the threat of artillery (direct fire artillery) and plough on ahead, thus creating ahistorical situations