YankeeDog Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Don't need to already know the answer. CM needs nowhere near that level of fire to create a casualty. IIRC a one minute pounding (so maybe 10 rounds) with a light mortar will cripple a Regular squad in the open. Arty in CM in the open is deadly. Careful. Apples to oranges. Quote above is talking about 25-pdr fire targeted into a 300yd x 300yd box, vs. roughly a Company of enemy infantry, dug in and dispersed around the target area (more or less evenly, I assume). That's nothing like a light mortar point-targeted on direct lay against an enemy squad in the open. You could still run a comparison in CM -- it's a pretty easy set of circumstances to replicate. And I suspect you'll find the casualties in CM are substantially higher than the 9 casualties cited in that quote. But to have a meaningful discussion it's important to be specific and keep the comparisons as similar as possible. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sburke Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 If you drop a bunch of arty are not following up very closely with infantry assault you will find that the survivors have time to sort themselves up and shoot back. With box standard arty it took a lot to hammer troops under cover into submission. However if they are forced to take cover, are taking hits and when it clears and they lift their heads up they are staring at a gun barrel it definitely changed the equation. Arty is not designed to spook the enemy, make them give ground and slowly bleed (this is a secondary virtue-out-of-bad outcome). It is designed to provide suppression and therefore freedom for manouevre, which arguably is the point for any massing of fires at all levels of warfare. That was pretty much the assessment Broadsword and I had of our Hamel Vallee fight. The American artillery got too far ahead of the infantry assault allowing the German defenders to sort themselves out and prepare. I tried the same fight but altered the timing of the initial barrage and was able to make a much more rapid advance against my own defense. The artillery didn't kill my units, but made them unable to counter the assault with suppressive fire and the GIs just rolled right over my forward defense. What I found though was I really needed to keep that barrage going to get past just the initial lines of defense. It takes a surprising amount of artillery to push through a defense in depth in hedgerow country. To the extent I know diddly squat about the real thing, it seemd a very good replication of how I understand the fighting to have gone. Achieving a breakout is damned difficult. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Broadsword56 Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 IIRC, what sburke discovered in that after-battle test on the Hamel Vallee scenario was that a preplanned, rolling barrage of 4 x 105mm guns needed at least 4 minutes at each "step" to do the job before lifting to the next hedgerow/phase line. I found that my original plan of medium intensity/medium duration gave only about 3 minutes of FFE, so one might need to go to medium intensity/long duration, or some other combo to get it right. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Capt Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Careful. Apples to oranges. Quote above is talking about 25-pdr fire targeted into a 300yd x 300yd box, vs. roughly a Company of enemy infantry, dug in and dispersed around the target area (more or less evenly, I assume). That's nothing like a light mortar point-targeted on direct lay against an enemy squad in the open. You could still run a comparison in CM -- it's a pretty easy set of circumstances to replicate. And I suspect you'll find the casualties in CM are substantially higher than the 9 casualties cited in that quote. But to have a meaningful discussion it's important to be specific and keep the comparisons as similar as possible. True, but my point is that we already know arty is lethal in CM. 1000 25-lbr rounds in a 300 x 300 area is a round for every 90 square meters or roughly 10 x 10 box, the same box you would put a squad in. At one round per squad I think we are safe in assuming in-game this would cause at least 9 cas over the entire Coy, if not more. My underlying point is we already ran test on arty...a lot of tests and were fairly comfortable with the results. We ran them for squads in the open, under trees, in trenches, in buildings and behind hedgerows. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeyD Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 I believe in Normandy the Germans suffered approx two hundred forty thousand casualties (killed and wounded) while the allies suffered two hundred and nine thousand casualties. Thats in just a few months' fighting, not years. That rounds out to roughty 3casualties a minute 24/7 for three straight months. It seems a bit silly under those circumsatances to be arguing about whether an artillery strike should produce more or less than nine casualties in a company. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 I believe in Normandy the Germans suffered approx two hundred forty thousand casualties (killed and wounded) while the allies suffered two hundred and nine thousand casualties. Thats in just a few months' fighting, not years. That rounds out to roughty 3casualties a minute 24/7 for three straight months. It seems a bit silly under those circumsatances to be arguing about whether an artillery strike should produce more or less than nine casualties in a company. How so? Proper modeling of artillery's effects is essential to a tactical wargame like CMBN. Literally millions of artillery and mortar shells were fired during the Normandy campaign. Not to mention all the bullets, mines, hand grenades, etc. that also caused casualties. So the # of casualties caused on a per-shell fired basis couldn't have been all that high. On a theater-level, purely actuarial basis, 9 casualties per 1000 25-pdr shells fired is probably at least within the right factor of magnitude. How relevant this is to a low-level tactical sim like CM is an interesting question. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 Hold on. You're saying that arty in CMBN is unrealistic? I feel my world disintegrating... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 Hold on. You're saying that arty in CMBN is unrealistic? I feel my world disintegrating... Hold on. Are you making a snide comment that doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion? I feel my world disintegrating... Not sure if you were referring to my post or not, but it was not my goal to imply any kind of a broad conclusion like this. For a whole range of reasons, players of CM usually don't use artillery in the same way it was used IRL in Normandy. So you have to be careful drawing direct comparisons between historical evidence of what artillery actually did in Normandy, and what players see in CMBN games. This said, assuming that we as players are interested in playing a wargame that bears some verisimilitude to the "real thing", at some level we're going to have to compare the game to historical data. As such, I think it's a worthwhile venture to intelligently analyze and make such comparisons. But one must be very careful not to oversimplify; WWII was not a computer wargame. The Capt. has already stated that BFC and the Beta testers have done extensive tests and comparisons in this area. For a start, I'm inclined to give their work and conclusions considerable weight. But this doesn't mean further inquiry and debate isn't worthwhile. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 Hold on. Are you making a snide comment that doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion? Oh, I don't think it was so much snide as sarcastic. I for one found it mildly amusing. And as for comments not making a substantial contribution to the topic—this one for instance—well, aren't they a hallowed tradition around here? Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 Does anyone have details for the 60mm? WO 291/157 Performance of 2-in mortar. Results from trials performed in 1942. Use of the no. 2 sight is recommended to improve accuracy. The 2-in smoke bomb was criticised for leaving smoke trails that were thought to give away the firing position; in fact the problem was with smoky propellant. It is mentioned that the chance of hitting a target under 2-in mortar illumination at night is approximately one-third of the chance in daylight. The following table gives the hit probabilities and number of rounds needed to secure a 50% chance of incapacitating the target, a standing man, at the ranges given: Range (yds) 200 LA 400 LA 525 400 HA 200 HA Hit probability 10% 3.8% 6.8% 4.9% 6.0% No. bombs 7 18 10 14 12 I assume LA and HA to be low and high angle. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Apocalypse 31 Posted June 22, 2012 Author Share Posted June 22, 2012 ...and it's still going. I've created a beast. I just wanted to vent about how I think the artillery effects in this game are unrealistic, and here we are...26 pages later. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted June 22, 2012 Share Posted June 22, 2012 I am afraid us advanced folks are only on page 7. : ) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slysniper Posted June 22, 2012 Share Posted June 22, 2012 ...and it's still going. I've created a beast. I just wanted to vent about how I think the artillery effects in this game are unrealistic, and here we are...26 pages later. DONT FEEL LIKE IT WAS ABOUT THE TOPIC. I think it was more to do with no other threads worth an discussion. Now with the new games being announced, that should allow this to die, with interest elsewhere for awhile 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.