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Maybe make area fire more inaccurate without contact marker


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Just had this idea: How about making area fire more inaccurate?

 

The idea is that if you spot something with infantry,  you then want your tank to target it, but the tank hasn't spotted the enemy yet. So, you do an area target, but the tank then should target not only that 8x8m square, but all the other squares around it as well.

 

This would represent the tank not knowing exactly where the enemy contact is, and it's very difficult in the heat of battle to indicate the exact location.

 

But: if your tank receives an enemy contact marker through the chain of command, it should be able to target that marker, making its area fire work like targeting a single square. This would further strengthen the value of C2.

 

Area firing at a building should continue to work as it works now, as it would be more easy to direct fire at a specific building than just "fire at that spot on the hedgerow!"

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The idea has merit.

 

I have been thinking about this and have even considered trying a house rule that vehicles can only use machine guns to area fire on targets they do not have a contact marker for. In reality this is how most recon by fire is done anyways since real armies don't have the logistics to routinely use large caliber shells on speculative fires. That is why tanks carry thousands of rounds of machine gun ammo.

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I rarely HE blindly for that precise reason Vanir, just a waste of precious ammo. I personally agree with the idea, but I disagree this is something that should be implemented into the game beyond an agreement between players. The use of 'blind' HE fire for suppression or denial of key points (e.g: A church tower) can and was done in WWII; recon by fire be damned. Why would you deny players the same ability to use this same tactic? If a player wants to be foolish or expedient with his ammunition, that's their prerogative.

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I rarely HE blindly for that precise reason Vanir, just a waste of precious ammo.

The think the point is that area fire in CM is usually not blind because you have other units spotting for it and the player with his god's eye view knows there is an enemy unit there even if the shooting unit does not.

 

I personally agree with the idea, but I disagree this is something that should be implemented into the game beyond an agreement between players. The use of 'blind' HE fire for suppression or denial of key points (e.g: A church tower) can and was done in WWII; recon by fire be damned. Why would you deny players the same ability to use this same tactic? If a player wants to be foolish or expedient with his ammunition, that's their prerogative.

I would certainly not want my house rule idea implemented in the game. It's not really feasible. If I ever did play with such a rule there would need to be a common sense exception clause for obvious prominent geographic features. Targeting the top floor or roof of a 14 story building is perfectly reasonable, but if you are targeting the 6th floor that's different.

 

Bulletpoint's idea has merit because it doesn't prohibit anything, just makes it less precise. Admittedly, the realism of that is circumstantial. An action spot is 8m x 8m, a size that was chosen for computer performance reasons and has nothing to do with real world combat. If you ordered a tank to target a particular patch of ground there is no reason to think the fire would be limited to any 8x8 area. On the other hand, if the order was to target a specific feature that could change. For example, a line of bocage could be expected to produce a lot of variation along the x-axis but not so much along the y (in fact the lack of an option to area fire a target line instead of a spot is a separate but related issue).

 

But I suspect you have little to worry about. Ideas for capping area fire abuse have been kicked around for as long as CM has existed and nothing has come of it to date.

Edited by Vanir Ausf B
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You could have a 'gentleman's agreement' with your opponent that all area fire missions are 'emergency fire' missions, which just starts firing without an initial spotting round. God knows where that stuff will land. :D

 

I believe first turn you can target blind, give a large area fire circle and a 'harass' command. Then you'll get rounds dropping on an area with the slow drip-drip-drip of water torture.

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Restricting such fire in a blanket way would be making an erroneous assumption the other way: that there was no way for armour to have their fire directed accurately at enemy units they were unaware of. Tracers, flares, coloured smoke could be used as cues by TCs that there was something there to be shot at with accuracy comparable to the accuracy of the mark. It's also worth bearing in mind that area fire is also already distributed (if I remember BFC's comments correctly) over adjacent ASs to some extent.

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CM has a wonderful C2-model. I think it goes against the capabilities of the C2.model, if the player can order high explosives on spots, where the unit has no clue that there was an enemy unit. Small arms fire is something different, but I think HE is very gamey and unrealistic. What makes it worse, is the availability of the wonderful C2-net which can easily be circumvented by gamey HE-sniping.

 

If a player wants to area fire an ATG with a certain tank? Then he has to make sure the C2-info somehow can reach this tank until a "sound-contact" appears. No contact marker - no clue! Then area fire with a big dispersion over many action-spots should be the result. The better the contact, the less smearing over action spots.

 

I think the idea is great!!! It would emphasize the importance of C2 dramatically - which I think would be realistic. Maybe make it optional for the highest skill level?

Edited by CarlWAW
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A tank comes around a bend. Ahead up on a slope is a hedgerow, ideal position for a shrek. There is no existing information at all the position is occupied. There is no c2 information required, it is a decision by the TC that this is a very likely ambush location

So where does this fit into a more dispersed area fire result? Why should the tank suffer a penalty for making a judgement call on a very specific spot?

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Or you want your Stuarts to shell the corners of a field from behind the Bocage because that's where Jerry puts his MGs. Or you want your 81mm mortar in direct lay to Target Light a set of foxholes that currently appear empty, even if it's just to zero on them in case other nearby fortifications as yet undiscovered are occupied.

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 It's also worth bearing in mind that area fire is also already distributed (if I remember BFC's comments correctly) over adjacent ASs to some extent.

 

I think this only goes for small arms fire. Tank rounds aim for the exact spot, but have a spread in front of and behind that square, as the tank brackets its shells.

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This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There isn't any reason that a weapon directed at a piece of terrain should be less accurate simply because you cannot see the "target" that is presumably occupying said terrain (but cannot been see by the shooter.)

 

To build upon the church tower example posted by Rinaldi, if I told a MG to fire a object like a church tower than is concealing a target that is either suspected or spotted by a unit other than the shooter, there is no reason what so ever that the shooter should be "less accurate" in his attempts to hit the spot he is directed to shoot. The Machine gun in question should not be made artificially inaccurate just because it cant see the target. The fact that it might not hit anyone in the tower because it cannot see them, but is in fact saturating the tower in hopes of hitting them, is already modeled. Once directed to shoot at a specific area, a unit would not just randomly start shooting something 15 feet to the right of that area. In other words, If someone orders a tank to blast a bell tower, than tank should not be randomly missing right or left of the tower or shooting some place other than the tower outside of ballistic limits of the weapons or skill limits of the shooter.

 

When I was in Afghanistan in 2011, the FOB I was at came under attack from a 3 story building just outside the ECP. The shooters occupied the roof, and were using it to fire over the walls and into the base. A patrol came back during the attack and was directed to shoot the rooftop with its 50 cals. The troops firing could not see the enemy because of the height of the building. So they were guided to shoot the roof by people in higher up locations. The people manning the 50's did not start randomly hitting things other than the roof area. They ONLY shot the roof area. Not the second floor, not some other building. Not seeing the enemy did not suddenly reduce their mental capacity to fire at a directed point.

 

There is no such thing as "abuse" of area fire. There are no rules in war. It is completely possible, and was a historically common occurrence, to saturate areas with fire.

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...The troops firing could not see the enemy because of the height of the building. So they were guided to shoot the roof by people in higher up locations. 

 

There is no such thing as "abuse" of area fire. There are no rules in war. It is completely possible, and was a historically common occurrence, to saturate areas with fire.

 

If they were "guided" by other troops, doesn't that imply that they had a partial contact in CM terms?

 

Personally, I believe Area Fire is often abused by players.  The classic case, as discussed here, is when the player uses knowledge gained by one unit to instantly guide the actions of other units (with no contact markers, partial or otherwise from their perspective) and direct their fire on a location.  It's a clear circumvention of the C2 net.

 

But here's the thing, I see no viable solution.  (I always play Iron.)  Because, as many are saying, recon by fire is a real thing.  Sometimes the player wants to target a certain key location with units that have no enemy contact markers (sometimes in the opening stages when nobody has an enemy contact marker).  So when it comes to nerfing Area Fire as a blanket case, the cure may be worse than the disease.  

 

For my part, I always try to ask, "Would this guy REALLY take this shot?" with Area Fire.  Oddly, if there's no enemy contact markers in the vicinity (from anyone's perspective), the answer is always yes.  That's the Recon by Fire or an educated guess about what's critical at that moment.  If there IS an enemy contact marker (but not from the shooter's perspective), it's a grey area.  Sometimes the abuse is obvious, i.e., a tank pointed in a different direction juggling various partial contacts in its sector swivels and starts pounding a random building halfway across the map.  But in many other cases, it's defensible so it's a tough one.

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If they were "guided" by other troops, doesn't that imply that they had a partial contact in CM terms?

 

Personally, I believe Area Fire is often abused by players.  The classic case, as discussed here, is when the player uses knowledge gained by one unit to instantly guide the actions of other units (with no contact markers, partial or otherwise from their perspective) and direct their fire on a location.  It's a clear circumvention of the C2 net.

 

Exactly. It isn't about eliminating area fire. Area fire is the most common type of fire in real combat. It's about the near instant responsiveness of it in the game. It takes time for information to percolate through the C2 chain. The player can render this irrelevant. If an enemy unit reveals itself by opening fire I can in most cases hit that unit in less than 30 seconds of the start of the next turn using vehicles firing from waypoints.

 

But here's the thing, I see no viable solution.  (I always play Iron.)  Because, as many are saying, recon by fire is a real thing.  Sometimes the player wants to target a certain key location with units that have no enemy contact markers (sometimes in the opening stages when nobody has an enemy contact marker).  So when it comes to nerfing Area Fire as a blanket case, the cure may be worse than the disease.

When I think of the number of times I use one unit to spot area fire for another as opposed to using genuine recon by fire the former probably outnumbers the latter more than ten to one.

 

But it is true that there is no solution that would not cause problems under some circumstances. That and the fact that most players don't care/aren't bothered by it are why it's not going to change.

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If they were "guided" by other troops, doesn't that imply that they had a partial contact in CM terms?

 

Personally, I believe Area Fire is often abused by players.  The classic case, as discussed here, is when the player uses knowledge gained by one unit to instantly guide the actions of other units (with no contact markers, partial or otherwise from their perspective) and direct their fire on a location.  It's a clear circumvention of the C2 net.

 

But here's the thing, I see no viable solution.  (I always play Iron.)  Because, as many are saying, recon by fire is a real thing.  Sometimes the player wants to target a certain key location with units that have no enemy contact markers (sometimes in the opening stages when nobody has an enemy contact marker).  So when it comes to nerfing Area Fire as a blanket case, the cure may be worse than the disease.  

 

For my part, I always try to ask, "Would this guy REALLY take this shot?" with Area Fire.  Oddly, if there's no enemy contact markers in the vicinity (from anyone's perspective), the answer is always yes.  That's the Recon by Fire or an educated guess about what's critical at that moment.  If there IS an enemy contact marker (but not from the shooter's perspective), it's a grey area.  Sometimes the abuse is obvious, i.e., a tank pointed in a different direction juggling various partial contacts in its sector swivels and starts pounding a random building halfway across the map.  But in many other cases, it's defensible so it's a tough one.

This gets more at the heart of the issue, but your blaming wrong mechanic. 

 

The omniscient presence of the human player, and his ability to micro the battlefield is inherently not realistic. This is something that ALL RTS games have in common to some extent. You are managing a battle on a level that nobody does in actuality. A company commander rarely, if ever, tells a specific tank to face a certain direction. He also does not micro the movements of squad fire teams, or does a litany of other things that the player does in combat mission. The only true way to rectify this in a game would be to have it played like a first person shooter, with players issuing orders to other units and then those human units carrying them out, each unit only seeing what he can see from where he is at. 

 

In combat mission, we already have the most realistic approach you can probably get in a RTS, and it still be a RTS. WEGO. Wego limits specific orders to only occurring every minute, which in my opinion is a decent way to make C2 more realistic, as it makes it less possible for you to instantly micro units. If you want something else, then you wont get that from a strategy game, period. They are by nature exercises in theory, not C2 simulations. 

 

With that said, it is totally unfair to single out the "area fire" mechanic and claim it being abused. If you wanted to alter this in some physically unrealistic way to ostensibly reflect some C2 conundrum, you would still be left with a imperfect solution (as you said). But worse, you would have altered one specific mechanic unevenly when there are loads of other things you do in this game that benefit from the nature of the players abilities. If we tried to alter all mechanics like this, pretty soon there wouldn't be much for the player to do anymore, except watch the battle unfold. 

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Agreed - CM is so good sometimes at depicting the battlefield that we forget that it is a wargame and as such, the "player as god" issue cannot be eliminated without removing almost all the player's control which makes it not-fun ( or at least, not a wargame ).

 

When you're playing another human PBEM, you are both capable of the same somewhat unrealistic behaviour and that at least, keeps the field level. Against the AI the human has an advantage, but then you always will against AI ( at least until Skynet :huh: )

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I think some of you missed the point in my original post where I said buildings should be exempted from the rule

It doesnt matter if its a building or not. whether the enemy is hiding behind a bush or in a church steeple, a soldiers area fire is not going to saturate a area larger than the spot he is directed to shoot. Unless he suddenly came down with brain cancer. 

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It doesnt matter if its a building or not. whether the enemy is hiding behind a bush or in a church steeple, a soldiers area fire is not going to saturate a area larger than the spot he is directed to shoot. Unless he suddenly came down with brain cancer. 

 

The point was that out in the terrain, it's more difficult to direct fire to an exact location than it is when the enemy is in the top of a church tower. I understand you don't like my idea, that's ok :) Just throwing it out there to see what people think...

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