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Mortar direct fire without the rifles?


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Just to confirm, firing an HMG on TARGET LIGHT does decrease the ROF and save ammo.

Just ran a quick test using a game turn I had handy and the results do not support this. 6-man German infantry team w/ 1xMG42, 1xPM40, 4xk98. Area Fire @ 100m target point for one minute.

on TARGET:

7.92mm used: 276

9mm used: 64

on TARGET LIGHT:

7.92mm used: 271

9mm used: 64

Clearly not a significant difference. You'd have to run multiple iterations and try different unit types to be sure, but nothing have seen in the game suggests that infantry *small arms* ROF is different between TARGET and TARGET LIGHT. So I am comfortable with the assumption there is not a difference in small arms ROF, until someone can show convincingly otherwise.

And Zooks? That is their main weapon but there's not much point in using their rifles just as with mortars.
I would argue it's probably useful to have 'zook/shreck teams fire their small arms only on TARGET LIGHT, and use the 'zook on TARGET (which I'm pretty sure is the way it is in the game right now). Pretty rare you'd want to have a 'zook team use small arms only, but I don't know what other useful differentiation you could make between the orders, and situations might rarely come up where you want AT teams to contribute fire, but don't want them to waste AT rounds.

Snipers?
Dunno. I almost never give Snipers direct TARGET orders of any kind. I use COVER ARC orders with them, but that's about it. I seem to get much better results from my snipers when I leave them to select targets on their own.

EDIT to add: Since you asked about HMGs specifically, I re-ran the test under the same conditions with an HMG42 team (1xHMG42, 4xk98). Results: TARGET -- 288 rnds. TARGET LIGHT: 287 rnds. Again, clearly not a significant difference in small arms ROF.

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I also wonder about the statement that tanks given Target Light fire their machine guns at a lower RoF. If that is true it shouldn't be, IMO. Most tanks carry huge amounts of machine gun ammunition.

Harder to test, because most AFVs have so much MG ammo that the ammo count just lists as ">1k" or whatever. But based on visual observation, I don't think so... just eyeballing it, the Bow MG on a Sherman doesn't appear to fire at a slower ROF on TARGET LIGHT than it does on TARGET. Can't compare the Coax because the gunner is busy firing the main gun on full TARGET, so obviously there is (and should be) difference there.

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Thanks for doing those tests YankeeDog. Useful info. I was surprised that Steve is so sure that TARGET LIGHT for HMG's would result in a lower ROF if your tests are correct.

I agree that it's usually best to leave snipers alone and on arcs. But, in the context of figuring out how the game system allocates ROF I was curious what happens with TARGET and TARGET LIGHT with snipers (and AT teams for that matter) since there is usually another sniper team member with a smg. Ideally you want the units to act with "common sense" depending on the situation. But, that of course is the AI challenge.

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Harder to test, because most AFVs have so much MG ammo that the ammo count just lists as ">1k" or whatever. But based on visual observation, I don't think so... just eyeballing it, the Bow MG on a Sherman doesn't appear to fire at a slower ROF on TARGET LIGHT than it does on TARGET. Can't compare the Coax because the gunner is busy firing the main gun on full TARGET, so obviously there is (and should be) difference there.

I would agree with that. I recently had two or three tanks firing on Target Light and while I wasn't actually timing their bursts, I didn't get the impression that they were slacking off at all.

Michael

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Regarding TARGET and TARGET LIGHT for machinguns: 100m is rather close, all things considered. Have you tried a bit further out? (I was surprised to see that was no difference in ammunition consumption between the two order types.)

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Regarding TARGET and TARGET LIGHT for machinguns: 100m is rather close, all things considered. Have you tried a bit further out? (I was surprised to see that was no difference in ammunition consumption between the two order types.)

My first instinct was not to bother, but I ran a quick test and discovered something interesting:

6-man German HMG42 Team; Regular. 1xHMG42, 5xk98, 1xMP40. 1-minute area fire at 400m target point, TARGET then TARGET LIGHT. 5 iterations each. Rounds fired (all 7.92mm; no 9mm used at this range. Both HMG and riflemen in the team fire on either order):

TARGET: 106, 96, 97, 100, 109. Mean: 101.6

TARGET LIGHT: 81, 83, 80, 81, 92. Mean: 83.4

You'd have to do more iterations to be sure, but it appears that at 400m, which is a very typical combat range for HMGs, there is a modest difference in ROF between TARGET and TARGET LIGHT -- a little less than 20%.

I'm not sure what to think of this... 20% is not a huge reduction in ROF, and I'm not sure how useful it is to the player to have such a modest distinction between the commands. If it were a ~50% reduction in ROF, then TARGET LIGHT would be clearly different, and might be useful as a sort of "harassing fire" command. But as it is, and especially considering how ammo-deep HMGs usually are, I don't think I'm likely to ever use TARGET LIGHT command with them, except with U.S. MG teams who carry rifle grenades -- and here I would be using TARGET LIGHT to conserve the rifle grenades, rather than reduce the MG ROF.

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But as it is, and especially considering how ammo-deep HMGs usually are, I don't think I'm likely to ever use TARGET LIGHT command with them, except with U.S. MG teams who carry rifle grenades -- and here I would be using TARGET LIGHT to conserve the rifle grenades, rather than reduce the MG ROF.

Agreed. The only reason I ever used Target Light was to preserve the rifle grenades, but that was under the assumption that was the only effect. I don't think the reduced RoF is worth saving the grenades, which when fired usually miss their target by a mile anyways.

I would rather Target Light not effect the RoF on units that almost never need to preserve ammo. In fact, off-hand the only unit type I can think of that I would like the reduced RoF on is mortars.

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There's another aspect of TARGET vs TARGET LIGHT: with light your guys are much more responsive to new threats. When you give a pure target order IME they will keep firing at the designated target even if shot at. With light they are more likely to switch over.

So I use mostly TL for suppression if I don't want to get caught by surprise.

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There's another aspect of TARGET vs TARGET LIGHT: with light your guys are much more responsive to new threats. When you give a pure target order IME they will keep firing at the designated target even if shot at. With light they are more likely to switch over.

So I use mostly TL for suppression if I don't want to get caught by surprise.

That's a great tip, I am often reluctant to use area fire because I think it will "lock up" the targeting of the squad for a full minute, which might be a problem if an enemy MG suddenly opens up. Will try out the TL command more.

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That's a great tip, I am often reluctant to use area fire because I think it will "lock up" the targeting of the squad for a full minute, which might be a problem if an enemy MG suddenly opens up. Will try out the TL command more.

Like womble, I have no idea if it works that way or not. I haven't used TL enough to see it break target to deal with a new threat. Meanwhile, don't forget about Target Briefly. That only commits the unit to fire for 15 seconds. Sometimes I wish there were a Target Not-So-Briefly that would last for half a minute as guns with a slow ROF might not get off more than one shot, but for MGs and smaller guns it works fine. Great for doing recon by fire.

Michael

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There's another aspect of TARGET vs TARGET LIGHT: with light your guys are much more responsive to new threats.
Like womble, I have no idea if it works that way or not

Hmmm... yeah; this is news to me, though it certainly would be useful if true.

I ran some casual tests and wasn't able to turn up any behavior to suggest that MGs are more likely to switch to a spotted target on TARGET LIGHT than on TARGET, but it's a difficult thing to test for... as a quick-and-dirty, I just set up an MG with a target order and then had an enemy unit pop up and start running 4 action squares away from the target order, to see if the MG would switch to target the spotted unit, and they didn't under either order. But this doesn't mean there wouldn't be a difference in other situations; you'd have to run a lot of different situations nail down the specifics of the difference (if any).

More work than I'm willing to go to, but I'll definitely keep my eye out now when playing to see if I observe anything unusual.

This is also yet another case example of why MGs should be deployed and used in pairs whenever possible -- having one MG area fire while the other keeps a lookout for targets of opportunity is an excellent tactic which I use frequently.

And yes; I also find the new Target Briefly command quite useful. Much less micromanagement now to get a brief burst of fire than the way it used to be, where you had to use multiple waypoints and pauses to get similar behavior (and the old way didn't really work at all for guns, mortars, and MGs, which you usually don't want to be moving around constantly).

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We have a command that targets for 30 seconds already. Pause 30 with a fire order then quick to the same action spot and a face command off the new waypoint. Simple.

Doesn't work at all really for units with a long pack-up and deploy time like on-map guns since the move order will trigger this. Also less than ideal for any infantry unit since it makes them get up and do a little game of musical chairs before they settle back down again, which is a great way to get shot.

But ultimately, there's a limit to how many commands the game have without ending up with UI overload. I can live with just TARGET, TARGET LIGHT, and TARGET BRIEFLY.

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Ideally the Target Briefly would work like the Pause - every time you hit the key, you get another 5 or 10 seconds.

But I seem to recall back when TB was introduced Steve said something about how they couldn't get more utility out of it without a lot more work, so I guess we'll just have to be happy with what we've got.

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We have a command that targets for 30 seconds already. Pause 30 with a fire order then quick to the same action spot and a face command off the new waypoint. Simple.

Yeah, but as YD says, what do you do with a unit you don't want to move or for which that kind of move is impractical, say due to pack up and unpack times?

Michael

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Hmm, what I said about TL: I always assumed it would work like that and it was also my impression(!). Never tested it and it would be hard to test.

So find out your self :) (or some kind soul from BFC could enlighten us if there's something like that in the code or not?)

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  • 3 years later...

I am sure this issue was fixed in a patch, but it's back now. Mortars again fire their rifles when doing a direct targeting order.

Is Battlefront even aware that they reintroduced a lot of already fixed bugs? If not, let's do a combined bug report.

So far I've found:

  • Mortars using rifles in direct area fire
  • British small mortar loses special mortar targeting ability after firing all HE ammo (also loses it for remaining smoke ammo)

I'm pretty sure I saw some others on the forum but can't remember now.

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  • 1 year later...
5 minutes ago, Michael Emrys said:

Er...what else would you expect them to do with a Target Light order? Maybe I'm missing something here...

:huh:

Michael

You asked the same question five years ago :)

 

On 8/6/2013 at 1:57 AM, Michael Emrys said:

 

Uh, will mortar units fire their main armament using Target Light? I thought Target Light meant that the main armament was not to be used.

 

Michael

 

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20 minutes ago, Michael Emrys said:

But the point is, what do you want them to do with a Target Light order? Nothing at all?

:wacko:

Michael

 

On 8/6/2013 at 6:52 AM, Battlefront.com said:

Target Light is designed to effectively engage the enemy in a way that doesn't blow through your ammo. For Infantry and Weapons it is "slow down your RoF", for Vehicles it is "slow down your RoF and avoid using your big gun if you have one".

[...]

A mortar team, by contrast, is really only effective when it's firing the mortar. The crew's personal weapons are, in a sense, much like the tank crews' when it comes to causing harm on the enemy. So the mortar is used for Target Light because without it there'd be little point engaging the enemy at all.

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