75mm Light Infantry Gun

[TimoS.]

Hello.

Playing Borgio Casino. Albeit the allready mentioned long Deployment Times and almost nonmovable Guns i would like BFC to look into that Guns

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.5_cm_leichtes_Infanteriegesch%C3%BCtz_18

I managed to get a Shot on a Group of INfantry lying in the Open with no Cover. The Gun sprays very much (wich is okay i guess) but lacks HE Power imho.

The Shell was hitting in the same Action Spot where two Soldiers where lying Prone. The Shell missed by around 1-2m and didnt wound or disabled any of them. Compared to Tank Rounds this would have been a minimum 1 WIA/KIA of them in general.

Does the 75mm Infantry Gun really have that weak HE/Shrapnell Killradius? Was it the often stated "1 out of 100" Situations where this Results can appear?

Please BFC. Please take a look at it. Would appriciate.

[A co]

That kind of result happens occasionally with various types of weapons. I've seen it happen with a 3 inch mortar round, for example. I think it's supposed to be that way.

The 7.5 cm LIG is kind of an interesting weapon- it seems to have a small flash and sound signature when it fires. I had one in an orchard which got off about six shots against nearby enemy tanks before being spotted. None of its HEAT rounds penetrated the Sherman's front armor, though, so it is probably throwing a pretty unimpressive shell.

[Fizou]

Remember that micor terrain is not featured so its instead abstracted. We also have an abstraction for pixelmen staying to close together which has nerfed HE power.

[TimoS.]

Today the PBEM Battle was going on. There where 5 Infantry Men kneeing behind a small Stonewall. The HE Shell hit right on Top of that Wall exploding 0,5m infront of them.

Guess what happend. No Visual Kill but i heard one Infantry Men saying "im Wounded".

So HE nerf seems to be okay overall. But that unpracticable ATGs/Infguns compared with that performance making the 75mm Leichtes Infanteriegeschütz worthless.

Problems imho isnt the turning Rate wich is okay. But the long setup/desetup Times are a Pain in the ***

[Fizou]

Today the PBEM Battle was going on. There where 5 Infantry Men kneeing behind a small Stonewall. The HE Shell hit right on Top of that Wall exploding 0,5m infront of them.

Guess what happend. No Visual Kill but i heard one Infantry Men saying "im Wounded".

So HE nerf seems to be okay overall. But that unpracticable ATGs/Infguns compared with that performance making the 75mm Leichtes Infanteriegeschütz worthless.

I would hardly call it worthless, I had a pbem not long ago where they where causing a lot of problems. I was on the recieving end. Id say in most cases, the situation you described above will result in casualties. In some cases, more uncommon, it wont. One will have to chalk it up as micro terrain/ abstracted spread out forces intervening.

Problems imho isnt the turning Rate wich is okay. But the long setup/desetup Times are a Pain in the ***

This is being looked at and might make it into CMRT (not sure), if not than probably in the next set of patches released for the respective games.

[womble]

And then there are the times when a single errant 60mm round will kill your entire fire team, or a ricocheting 57mm AP round's burster charge will inflict 3 casualties and a wound on a team. Swings. Roundabouts. Fortunes of War. At least you got a casualty, even if it wasn't one of the ones you could see, and they might now have yellow silhouettes, for all you know.

[TimoS.]

And then there are the times when a single errant 60mm round will kill your entire fire team, or a ricocheting 57mm AP round's burster charge will inflict 3 casualties and a wound on a team. Swings. Roundabouts. Fortunes of War. At least you got a casualty, even if it wasn't one of the ones you could see, and they might now have yellow silhouettes, for all you know.

The good old ultimate Argument.

[SeinfeldRules]

You have to take into account the size of the round as well...

That thing is pretty small, especially considering 1/3 of the round he's holding is propellant, not even part of the explosive shell.

[womble]

The good old ultimate Argument.

Of course, that argument can be watered down if you could be bothered to run the turn 50 times or set up some tests to see how often it actually happens, rather than trying to infer general performance from a specific example or two where you can't know the precise results. You might even find such activity informative in other ways.

[Fizou]

Also, keeping in mind the size of the shell, the nerfed HE for given reasons as well as abstraction for micro terrain, it might be your expectations that are flawed TimoS.

[Erwin]

I understand HE effects have been nerfed, but perhaps an even more important issue is that HE doesn't seem to pin/suppress as well as it should. I regularly pile on 105mm plus 75mm HE tank rounds for one or two minutes (on a gun) and find that not only are there survivors, but the crew recovers within seconds and return fire effectively. Suppression should last longer.

[womble]

Suppression should last longer.

I don't think I've ever seen one of my units come back from "Pinned" in under 30s from the cessation of the Pinning stimulus. Not that I often bother with (or am handed by the Designer) really high motivations and Leaderships, so perhaps when the AI's handed Crack Fanatics with +2 leaders to balance out our human player advantages, they get back on the firing step that much faster.

[Erwin]

I think 30 secs is way too quick to recover from several minutes of 105mm bombardment plus half a dozen tanks firing all out at your foxhole. Maybe if you are elite, I don't know...,

[womble]

Comments on here seemed to support the 30s as not being unreasonable (as a rough measure) for the time an offensive force might expect to have unmolested after pasting an enemy for a while who's managed to remain non-casualty. There might be a problem in that there's a "top" to the suppression meter. As you say, flinging half a ton of HE at someone could perhaps be expected to push them "deeper" than 30s into suppression. A couple of things though:

• the 30s is the time it takes for the unit to "unpin"; it will still have a bunch of suppression on it at that stage, and elements will still be cowering.
  
• once they've recovered from suppression, they will probably have to respot your units.
  
• the clock starts counting down when the last shell goes in, not at the minute break, so sometimes it's going to look like they pop up "early".
  
• area fire can be inaccurate at times, and it can be difficult to judge the fall of large shot. If you're finding your fire ineffective, it might be worth carefully watching where the shells actually hit from close to the point of intended impact, to see if they actually are going where you expected them to.
  
• artillery is even more inaccurate. "Several minutes" might put only a couple of rounds near enough to produce significant suppression. Depends on the weight and spread of the bombardment. If a 105 hits a foxhole, it turns it into a crater. I have never seen a unit remain in place after one of their 4 foxholes has been direct-hit by 105mm arty, though I have a sneaky suspicion that it's possible for a single man to survive a 105 exploding in his foxhole (it might have been another of his team, but it sure looked like he picked himself up out of the crater...).
  

[Fizou]

In addition to what womble said.. I have never seen half a dozen tanks firing at a foxholde for several minutes and have anything survive/stay in place. This sounds like an outlier.

[Erwin]

In the instance I am thinking of, there was an AA gun and only one WIA (yellow) man surviving to man it. But, he popped up in the WEGO turn immediately after I lifted the barrage. He then accurately fired and badly damaged two tanks.

Maybe this doesn't happen 100% of the time, but I would estimate between 30% and 50% which is still too much imo.

The question is what is an "outlier"? I think an "outlier" should be around the 1%-5% mark. maybe the same % as the probability of going "beserk"? (Have no idea what % that is however.)

[womble]

Maybe this doesn't happen 100% of the time, but I would estimate between 30% and 50% which is still too much imo.

That's probably more of a comment on the accuracy of human observation, recollection and estimation than it is an accurate count of the times it happens. That's just the way our brains work. It takes controls and methodology to actually determine if something "off" is happening, at least partly because we notice those times when our expectations are not fulfilled, and ignore the times when they are.

The question is what is an "outlier"? I think an "outlier" should be around the 1%-5% mark. maybe the same % as the probability of going "beserk"? (Have no idea what % that is however.)

The question of what is an outlier also has to take into account the actual conditions of the instance in question, to see if it is a) as you assume and outside of expectations given a detailed examination of the circumstances and comparison with other circumstances that are closely comparable.

I find that most of the time when I curse the CM gods for throwing me a curve ball, if I go back and study what actually happened in a situation like you're describing, for example, that none of the 105s landed particularly close, and most of the tank rounds fell long or short. I'm assuming that the tanks were area firing, because if they weren't, IME, the flak would have survived no more than three shots (the first two of which were misses) before being destroyed.

[Erwin]

Well if WYSIWYG is true, the shells were landing quite accurately. Like I said, I rarely recall any incident of troops going "fanatic". When one experiences "outliers" in just about every scenario or mission one plays, then that is indicative of a problem.

[womble]

Well if WYSIWYG is true, the shells were landing quite accurately. Like I said, I rarely recall any incident of troops going "fanatic". When one experiences "outliers" in just about every scenario or mission one plays, then that is indicative of a problem.

That depends entirely on your expectation of what constitutes an "outlier", and how badly you're overestimating the effects of "near-miss" HE on dug-in troops. Your averred experience certainly doesn't match mine. A couple of 75mm-minutes of blind area fire is pretty reliable in getting rid of guns, IME. Might take 3. Preparatory 81mm mortar fire is mostly there to keep the gunners' heads down so the tank can get into place for the kill shot. Assuming the gun's not behind something sturdy like Bocage, which will soak up a lot of blast, to the point of making flat trajectory 75mm almost ineffective, if there's a gun shield.

[Fizou]

Also, WYSIWYG, is only partialy true as microterrain is abstracted as well as HE being nerfed. In most cases the game handles situations as I would expect.

One shouldent forget that some of these prepared positions was extremely tough to take out.

[Erwin]

I also found that 81mm didn't do a good job on the foxholes in the Nijmegan missions. However, the 105mm did an xnt (too good?) a job at killing JPZ IV's. I was able to use arty to kill most of them.

[womble]

I also found that 81mm didn't do a good job on the foxholes in the Nijmegan missions. However, the 105mm did an xnt (too good?) a job at killing JPZ IV's. I was able to use arty to kill most of them.

81mm killing things in foxholes is a bit hit-or-miss. You'll direct-hit (which is what you really need) eventually if you use enough of it. But the first thing you'll do is make the foxholes' occupants keep their heads down, then, at least so I'm finding in the early missions, they run away at the slightest provocation, which puts them upright in the open where the 81s wreak slaughter.

105 that hits most tanks directly should do severe harm. Rear deck hits especially. Again, you either have to get lucky or drop a lot of it to get those direct hits, but even near misses will immobilise the things, making getting direct hits with follow on missions significantly simpler. 105s killing tanks isn't that much of a surprise. JPzIV might be better protected than the turreted chassis, from the front, but not on the rear deck.

[Fizou]

Tank busting with artillery is of course easier against the AI as it wont move as much as a human, or react to spotting rounds etc.

[womble]

They'll react to spotting rounds that are "near enough" sometimes. Even if the mission isn't aimed at them. 'S a bugger when you've got TacAir called on them and they skedaddle out of sight of your spotter just because an 81mm called on a target hundreds of metres away lands short...

[Michael Emrys]

105 that hits most tanks directly should do severe harm. Rear deck hits especially. Again, you either have to get lucky or drop a lot of it to get those direct hits, but even near misses will immobilise the things, making getting direct hits with follow on missions significantly simpler. 105s killing tanks isn't that much of a surprise. JPzIV might be better protected than the turreted chassis, from the front, but not on the rear deck.

I was playing a game about a year ago and an 81 landed smack-kediddle right on top of a Sherman's turret. Even though it was buttoned it killed one of the occupants, lightly wounded another, and the rest panicked. They ran over a hundred meters to the rear before dropping from exhaustion. It was about five more minutes before I regained any kind of control over them, and they were essentially useless for the rest of the game.

Michael