Jump to content

Still disliking Artillery


Recommended Posts

Artillery is one place where the human has the advantage over the AI. The AI is never going to order a linear target the length of a ridgeline on just a hunch. Heck, its never going to order a linear target at all! This might be a case of "be careful what you wish for". Or one of these days they're going to patch the game to only allow a linear sheaf fire mission along whatever axis the off-map artillery happens to be place at, which will cause you to tear your hair out in frustration. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a partial solution, yes. But preplanned arty could manage things like rolling barrages, with constant rates of advance, timed fires on specific targets (beyond 15 minutes) and other stuff you can't set up in the current preplanned fire options

True.

JonS goes into more detail. To me, the "obvious" solution for your Operation

I knew that would come back at me :)

is to actually preplan the fire missions, and assign enough TRPs to allow the plan to be carried out, but require that the players of the scenarios generated adhere to the fire plan, apart from the point/area missions you've already limited them to.

Good idea, i will implement that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Artillery is one place where the human has the advantage over the AI. The AI is never going to order a linear target the length of a ridgeline on just a hunch. Heck, its never going to order a linear target at all! This might be a case of "be careful what you wish for". Or one of these days they're going to patch the game to only allow a linear sheaf fire mission along whatever axis the off-map artillery happens to be place at, which will cause you to tear your hair out in frustration. :)

Good to hear. We may be frustrated but the AI will love it ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think due to the limitations of the men being able to spread out that the arty is hard to model, but it is DEFINITLY better than when the original demo came out. It was way too powerful in regard to the limited spreading out. Single rounds were taking out entire squads, and sometime entire platoons really killing the fun. It is definitely better now, but probably will never be perfect. One thought that would change the possibilities of spreading men out would be the exploration of 1:1 action squares like Sudden Strike" used. That game used 1:1 action squares, and had a command called “Scatter”. Each time the player hit that command the men would spread out further. 1:1 action squares also offers the possibilities of formations.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

TrailApe,

And here's the proof of your assertion regarding the French monarch and his "Final Argument of Kings."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ultima_Ratio_Regum_Cannon.jpg

In light of the pictorial evidence, though, I can't say that it's embossed, rather cast into the cannon when molded. As I suspected, it was indeed Louis XIV of France who did this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrases_(U)

Regards,

John Kettler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Aeons ago, it seems, there was a really nice "Rules of Engagement" set of recommendations put together for CMBO (do even half of you know what that is, and have you played it?).

Those were, based on a gentleman's agreement, to set limits to what could be purchased in a QB. Easy enough to limit arty, max bore on a tank cannon, etc, and made for some very playable QB's given that each side honored those limits. This could mitigate Arty as the "Queen Bit%h of the battlefield" in CMFI.

That could be a reasonable solution. Of course, the AI could give a hoot with respect to any "gentleman's agreement": in that case, be as gamey as the AI (i.e., Charles) would be. 99% arty, 1 FO, and three snipers (just to take VL's) compose your force? Rock on!

Perhaps someone more ambitious than I could look those up from the CMBO forums, and post a similar for CMFI. I, sadly, can't even run CMFI with any playability on my current Mac, else I would so similar (still waiting to buy a new iMac, perhaps until after 10/24/2012 if MacRumors website holds true).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Aeons ago, it seems, there was a really nice "Rules of Engagement" set of recommendations put together for CMBO (do even half of you know what that is, and have you played it?).

Those were, based on a gentleman's agreement, to set limits to what could be purchased in a QB. Easy enough to limit arty, max bore on a tank cannon, etc, and made for some very playable QB's given that each side honored those limits. This could mitigate Arty as the "Queen Bit%h of the battlefield" in CMFI.

That could be a reasonable solution. Of course, the AI could give a hoot with respect to any "gentleman's agreement": in that case, be as gamey as the AI (i.e., Charles) would be. 99% arty, 1 FO, and three snipers (just to take VL's) compose your force? Rock on!

Perhaps someone more ambitious than I could look those up from the CMBO forums, and post a similar for CMFI. I, sadly, can't even run CMFI with any playability on my current Mac, else I would so similar (still waiting to buy a new iMac, perhaps until after 10/24/2012 if MacRumors website holds true).

The artillery rules were rarely used. Rules like Fionn's popular armor rules were used to make good for deficiencies in the arbitrarily picked prices for units in quickbattle selection, something the users couldn't mod.

Off-map artillery on the other hand seemed to have been priced about right compared to it's combat capabilities in the game. CMx1 that is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

herr_oberst,

As a Mac guy myself, who's only recently gotten a rig (iMac Arlington, OS X 10.6.8, 3.06 GHz Inter Core Duo, w/ Radeon 256 MB video card, 4 GB of RAM and 1 TB HD) that'll even run CMx2, I'm curious as to what you have? My prior rig was a dual boot (OS 9 and OS X) 800 MHz Snowball iMac w/ 32 MB of VRAM, 1 GB RAM and 80 GB HD. The good news is that I can play CMBN! The bad news is that now I can't play any CMx1 games. There may be a way to do that, though. Wrote a thread on emulation in which I discuss this possibility.

Regards,

John Kettler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Aeons ago, it seems, there was a really nice "Rules of Engagement" set of recommendations put together for CMBO (do even half of you know what that is, and have you played it?).

If you mean Fionn Kellys - they are reproduced here:

http://combatmission.wikia.com/wiki/House_Rules

Perhaps someone more ambitious than I could look those up from the CMBO forums, and post a similar for CMFI. I, sadly, can't even run CMFI with any playability on my current Mac, else I would so similar (still waiting to buy a new iMac, perhaps until after 10/24/2012 if MacRumors website holds true).

I have an old Air and am playing both BN and FI on it. Actually FI runs smoother than BN so IME you should be able to play FI on your Mac.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On an operational scale, artillery fire is brutally effective. But not because individual shells cause multiple casualties as a rule, nor due to great responsiveness or precision of fire. Instead it takes industrial quantities of ammunition delivered over extended periods of time, to bleed its targets white.

I want to illustrate this with some facts about a later fight that is famous for having been largely decided by artillery, and by an unexpected artillery edge for the winning side. It still featured large scale and intense infantry fighting, which caused a significant portion of the casualties on both sides (more to the attackers than the defenders). The fight I am thinking of is the seige of Dien Bien Phu in the French Indochina war.

The attrition phase of that fighting lasted about 7 weeks, from mid March to early May 1954. In that period the French defenders (with their local allies) suffered 7200 casualties - some to infantry fighting certainly, but to get a high estimate of artillery effectiveness we can ascribe all of them to the beseigers' artillery. (The true portion may run as low as 5000 of them, but it was the leading cause of infantry losses for those defenders, as in the world wars).

What artillery was available over that period and how much did it fire? Answer, about 200 tubes, about 50 each of 120mm mortars, 105mm howitzers, 82mm mortars, and 75mm pack howitzers. Before the battle began the Viet Minh had at least 44,000 rounds for those weapons on hand, and more arrived over its course. The best estimates available (necessarily rough) put the 105mm expenditure alone at 30,000 rounds, and all other calibers at somewhat more than 100,000. Call it 130,000 rounds total, of field artillery calibers.

This means it took on average about 20-25 rounds fired to cause each defender casualty. (It would be 18 if all were caused by artillery fire). The average rate of fire was only 12 rounds per tube per day. Supply of shells was the overall regulator, and to adapt to its limitations fire was concentrated into the time windows immediately before infantry attacks, during them, and when movement could be seen by the defenders - with a portion of the shells delivered at all other times, to be sure.

This was a well located target, half a mile on a side at the start of the fight and shrinking during its course - unable to move, and under continuous observation from higher ground from every point on the compass. The defenders were dug in, but lacked full overhead cover for most of the fighting positions (more on that if anyone is interested). The rate of loss achieved against that dug-in target - 20-25 shells per man down - was still sufficient to bleed a defending force of over division strength into combat ineffectiveness in the space of 2 months.

I repeat that this counts as a highly successful use of artillery on the operational scale. It does not require and does not typically achieve significantly higher ratios of losses inflicted to shells fire, than this.

Notice, 200 tubes firing thousands of shells at a target of that size did not simply wipe out the defenders in CM paced, tactical time scales. Instead it took shell expenditures in the 5 figures over nearly 2 months, to kill or wound about half the total garrison (counting arriving reinforcements).

I will pause for comment at this point...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I, sadly, can't even run CMFI with any playability on my current Mac, else I would so similar (still waiting to buy a new iMac, perhaps until after 10/24/2012 if MacRumors website holds true).

I don't know what you have, but it's possible you may be giving up too soon. I have an iMac with about the same configuration as Kettler's except that mine has an ATI Radeon HD 4670 card. The graphics are adequate for play with texture quality set at Balanced and 3D modeling set at Faster, but aesthetically disappointing. I would love to have a more powerful card and IMO the biggest drawback of the iMac is the inability to upgrade the graphics card. I have no idea if the newer models will offer any improvement in graphics.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Michael Emrys,

I just checked my About This Mac under Graphics/Displays. Turns out I have the exact same video card you do. Do you have less VRAM, or maybe a slower CPU? Not only can I run CMBN on default settings, but I do so with lots of stuff open on my Desktop (Safari with multiple tabs open + Skype). Why am I getting such good results when you are not?

Regards,

John Kettler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John,

Thanks for the response. My CPU is probably the same as yours:

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz

And as for VRAM:

VRAM (Total): 256 MB

To respond to the rest of your post, I can run BN pretty well with Mail and Safari (with eight tabs open), but FI seems to need more RAM and like you I only have 4 GB. FI doesn't seem to be happy with less than 2 GB free, and sometimes to get that much I not only have to quit all other apps, but often to restart the computer. Just quitting apps still leaves a bunch of memory in the Inactive category (it's like a ghost left by each app). The long and short of it seems to be that CMx2v2 needs more memory than v1.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Killkess,

Target Linear IS the de facto default for artillery. Parallel sheaf, regular sheaf and open sheaf are the forms it takes.

That reminds me I've been questioning the CM linear target command. Completely arbitrary lengths and angles would require some pretty impressive realtime calculations by the batteries unless they had some really extensive tables with it all precalculated. And the accuracy in the game seems crazy to me, I rarely see any rounds land significantly off the specified line.

Does that make sense? I don't know the details of WW2 field artillery operations so dunno, but it seems much better than I would have expected.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In principle it was possible, and in practice it was done. But, it required a lot of prep-time to organise. Also, even now, in 2012, Linear Missions tend to be a standard length - 200m for a 105mm battery - rather than trimmed to the nearest metre in order to exactly match the tactical situation.

In my fantasy version of CM, I tell myself I'd like customised missions limited to missions ordered during the set up phase. Once the GO button had been pushed, any other missions would be strictly limited to area missions, of quite large size (70m across for 105mm). Then I remind myself that as flexible as CM artillery is, in a lot of ways, in other ways it is missing a lot of the tools that gunners take for granted ... like the ability to create a complex fireplan.

BTW, Parallel sheaf, regular sheaf and open sheaf are NOT linear missions. They are, instead, the simplest missions to fire, because you only need to work out the bearing and elevation for one gun, then apply simply that to the others (or apply a small standard offset for open/closed), rather than taking the time to caculate individual bearings and elevations. That method would, occasionally, produce something that approximated a linear mission at the target end, but that'd be down to fluke and coincidence. Especially since guns were rarely laid out in a line (more usually they'd be in a box or lazy W)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know what you have, but it's possible you may be giving up too soon. I have an iMac with about the same configuration as Kettler's except that mine has an ATI Radeon HD 4670 card. The graphics are adequate for play with texture quality set at Balanced and 3D modeling set at Faster, but aesthetically disappointing. I would love to have a more powerful card and IMO the biggest drawback of the iMac is the inability to upgrade the graphics card. I have no idea if the newer models will offer any improvement in graphics.

Michael

I just have to stop being a dinosaur with my Mac. Eyeballing the current iMac i7 w/1 gig VRAM and an 6970M video card. Just have to get the scratch together. My only disappointment with having moved away from Microsoft is the gaming. Everything else blows away Windows (developer by trade).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Vossie,

If your shoots actually hit the target consistently, then you're lucky. I've seen several shoots miss the target outright, even on refires after adjustment--while having all the boxes checked. I fully expect to see more round to round and gun to gun dispersion modeled eventually. Was reading the other day that mortars can vary as much as 4 m/sec firing the same ammo lot! All those variable add up. One of my shoots was over a hundred meters off and right, despite the spotting round's having nearly ht the target.

Regards,

John Kettler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

JonS,

If the sheaves are as portrayed in the manuals, then they are broadly linear, as opposed to the odd-to-me, but much used in CMBN, circular pattern. Certainly there'll be stagger in the impacts, especially if the American "Lazy W" deployment is used, but the examples from the FMs, and numerous shoots I've watched on TV and online vids, clearly show the impact pattern to be generally linear.

Regards,

John Kettler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In principle it was possible, and in practice it was done. But, it required a lot of prep-time to organise. Also, even now, in 2012, Linear Missions tend to be a standard length - 200m for a 105mm battery - rather than trimmed to the nearest metre in order to exactly match the tactical situation.

In my fantasy version of CM, I tell myself I'd like customised missions limited to missions ordered during the set up phase. Once the GO button had been pushed, any other missions would be strictly limited to area missions, of quite large size (70m across for 105mm).

Thanks Jason, so I was basically right, the 74.2 yard target at 17.92 degrees from the battery line is not realistic.

BTW my fantasy CM is where you can modify all of the weapon params as part of the scenario design. The Italians got a crappy load of ammo? Notch down the range and ROF (to simulate stoppages) of the MGs. Germans got a brand spanking new platoon of Pz.IV ausf Gs? Crank up the accuracy of the 75mm/L43 to account for new barrels.

Or create a very silly scenario where Brixia mortars hit like 230mm howitzers and have a single Italian rifle company assault a reinforced American battalion.

Vossie,

If your shoots actually hit the target consistently, then you're lucky.

I see two types of artillery strikes: dead nuts on target or wildly off, no middle ground. And if it's wildly inaccurate, the observer seems to think this is just fine and dandy, and will happily watch the battery expend all its ammo nuking earthworms into their component atoms in the plowed field 400 yards from the dug in Panzergrenadier company. If they make any attempt to correct once FFE is called, I've never seen it.

I cease fire the second I see an FFE round significantly off target, unless something worth blowing up is serendipitously placed where it's landing.

That's it, we're just going to have to trash the entire artillery system and redesign from scratch. BF folks, we'll need to discuss this at tomorrow's standup, and we're going to dedicate the next couple sprints to the project. I'll be the scrum master, who's going to write the story issue?

/agile dev ftw

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agile is like 3D movies. The first time is like "ooooooh!!!" The second time is "Oh, this again. Neat. I guess." The third time is "oh fvck this right in the eye."

:mad:

A 74.2 yard target at 17.92 degrees from the battery line is not entirely un-realistic. It's just not entirely plausible in the context of CM. But, like I said, there's a bunch of other stuff that's missing (notably: fireplanning) which means the generally relaxed and permissive artillery model produce results that are - overall - ok.

Also, from a game-play perspective, having an overly restrictive artillery model would be a total PITA. For one thing, real units usually have some kind of affinity with the terrain they're operating in, and they have a detailed sense of the enemy, their likely actions and reactions, and where they're likely to be operating. Most of that is absent in CM.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Or create a very silly scenario where Brixia mortars hit like 230mm howitzers and have a single Italian rifle company assault a reinforced American battalion.

That's funny, and I've actually played some games against the AI with a similar setup.

I'd recommend anyone that wants to learn how to use artillery to try this. Anyway, Create a large/huge attack/defend battle where you are the attacker vs the AI, and pick a platoon of elite infantry, an FO, and spend the rest on artillery. Maybe turn rarity off so you can pick whatever rare/odd artillery you want.

It's a lot of fun to find the enemy and use just enough arty to take them out, and clear an avenue of approach. That's how I learned to use artillery and mortars.

I've done similar things with a platoon of elite/fanatic/+2 infantry with lots of extra ammo (acquired from trucks in setup) vs a company or 2 of poorly trained infantry.

This is pretty much the only time I play against the AI - when I have a fun unbalanced battle in mind. Otherwise, PBEM is the only way to fully appreciate the game IMO.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What possibly may be affecting your experience, too, is scenario size. Mine are no larger than two silhouettes at present.

Yeah, that could have something to do with it too. Although lately I've been messing around with smaller battles, the preponderance of mine have been medium/three silhouettes. It's not that I like having a whole lot of units on the map—quite the opposite in fact—but the larger purchase budget allows me to buy some of the more expensive items, and a greater variety of them. But I have noticed that when playing scenarios designed by others with lots of units on the map, a very marked slowdown in graphics speed is to be observed. This is true in v1 as well. The only way I see out of this is to go to a more powerful machine.

P.S. If your credit rating is good, Apple will sell you a Mac and let you pay it off in installments. I'm thinking of going that route if any of the soon-to-be-released models appeals to me.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On an operational scale, artillery fire is brutally effective. But not because individual shells cause multiple casualties as a rule, nor due to great responsiveness or precision of fire. Instead it takes industrial quantities of ammunition delivered over extended periods of time, to bleed its targets white.

I want to illustrate this with some facts about a later fight that is famous for having been largely decided by artillery, and by an unexpected artillery edge for the winning side. It still featured large scale and intense infantry fighting, which caused a significant portion of the casualties on both sides (more to the attackers than the defenders). The fight I am thinking of is the seige of Dien Bien Phu in the French Indochina war.

The attrition phase of that fighting lasted about 7 weeks, from mid March to early May 1954. In that period the French defenders (with their local allies) suffered 7200 casualties - some to infantry fighting certainly, but to get a high estimate of artillery effectiveness we can ascribe all of them to the beseigers' artillery. (The true portion may run as low as 5000 of them, but it was the leading cause of infantry losses for those defenders, as in the world wars).

What artillery was available over that period and how much did it fire? Answer, about 200 tubes, about 50 each of 120mm mortars, 105mm howitzers, 82mm mortars, and 75mm pack howitzers. Before the battle began the Viet Minh had at least 44,000 rounds for those weapons on hand, and more arrived over its course. The best estimates available (necessarily rough) put the 105mm expenditure alone at 30,000 rounds, and all other calibers at somewhat more than 100,000. Call it 130,000 rounds total, of field artillery calibers.

This means it took on average about 20-25 rounds fired to cause each defender casualty. (It would be 18 if all were caused by artillery fire). The average rate of fire was only 12 rounds per tube per day. Supply of shells was the overall regulator, and to adapt to its limitations fire was concentrated into the time windows immediately before infantry attacks, during them, and when movement could be seen by the defenders - with a portion of the shells delivered at all other times, to be sure.

This was a well located target, half a mile on a side at the start of the fight and shrinking during its course - unable to move, and under continuous observation from higher ground from every point on the compass. The defenders were dug in, but lacked full overhead cover for most of the fighting positions (more on that if anyone is interested). The rate of loss achieved against that dug-in target - 20-25 shells per man down - was still sufficient to bleed a defending force of over division strength into combat ineffectiveness in the space of 2 months.

I repeat that this counts as a highly successful use of artillery on the operational scale. It does not require and does not typically achieve significantly higher ratios of losses inflicted to shells fire, than this.

Notice, 200 tubes firing thousands of shells at a target of that size did not simply wipe out the defenders in CM paced, tactical time scales. Instead it took shell expenditures in the 5 figures over nearly 2 months, to kill or wound about half the total garrison (counting arriving reinforcements).

I will pause for comment at this point...

Jason, I think nobody's commented on this because nobody really disagrees with your case.

One thing though, I don't know where you get your 1/2 mile square target area. I'm no expert on DBP (look John, I'm Wikiing too! :D), but unless this is wrong....

Dien_Bien_Phu_zoom.svg

However, even though you're more challenging to poke with a stick than Kettler, I may have bigger fish to fry.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...