Mortars and line of sight

[Percival]

I'm just getting back to this game after a long break. It's always impressed me with its realism but there is one question that I have wanted to ask for ages but never got round to its so here goes.

Imagine this: you are in the bocage and facing a large hedge. You have had to take cover because there is heavy MG and rifle fire coming from that location so you know the enemy are there. You have two mortar batteries in contact but you can't call down fire because you have no line of sight. My query is why not? You can call down fire on your own position easily enough (like the beleagured US troops in the Battle of the Bulge) but why therefore can't you adjust fire so it falls beyond the hedge? I'm assuming here the officer calling fire has a map and knows where he is! What am I missing here?

[c3k]

You should be able to call down fire behind bocage, if you can see the bocage. That's true with either off-map artillery or on-map. The ability to call in fire past LOS is only a few meters, but it's there for just the example you cite.

Do you have a particular example where it isn't working? (A savegame would be best.)

Ken

[MOS:96B2P]

<Snip> You have two mortar batteries in contact but you can't call down fire because you have no line of sight. My query is why not? <Snip> 

In most cases you can.  There are a circumstances where acquiring LOS across a particular field is difficult.  This usually involves a field with tall crops (wheat being the usual culprit) and /or a field that has a higher elevation in the middle of the field.  Your spotting troops can't get LOS to an action square on the other side of the field.    

[Bulletpoint]

Basically if I understand you right, you want to call down the fire on a location in front of the enemy, and then tell the gunners to shift the fire, say, 100 metres north, into the area where you have no LOS?

[iluvmy88]

I wish they had an entire interface for call for fire cause theres so much an observer can do to adjust rounds that just cant be modeled with the interface they have but for now it works. an example would be you call for fire mission, FDC receives the mission, here you could either start from a known point (trp), grid coords or with a azmuth from your known position. spotting round hit, you could either fire for effect or adjust as needed through an interface 100m left 100m u ext. fire mission begins but the front lines aare moving, an interface to adjust fire from this known firing position example add 100m ext. 

In this bocage situation with a light mortar right behind you it shouldnt take 4 min for them to start firing. all they need to do is drop the plate and mortar adjust the sight and they are spotting. because of this i usually end up using light mortars in a direct fire role or slightly behind a hill (mortars have a slightly higher targeting line so they can fire and not be fired on if positioned in a good spot). Always feel like my mortars just dont have any motivation and they need to do pushups.

[Bulletpoint]

I think they are trying to make artillery weaker in any way they can, to prevent it from dominating the battlefield too much. For example, it often would be great to be able to pause an ongoing fire mission, then restart it later without starting over. Or the simple option "repeat last fire mission". But all those tricks would make it extremely unbalanced, especially against a human opponent. It would turn into an artillery shooting match.

My personal take on it is that I would prefer to have each shell more realistically powerful, some better options for fire zones (square zones for example), but at the same time that availability and accuracy of artillery be reduced.

Edited March 8, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[Percival]

Thanks for the replies. I suppose my question is what we have realistic? If you see each CM scenario as a portion of a larger battle what actions in Normandy in 1944 could spotters perform? I don't know the answer to that myself, but I assume they had detailed maps and could call in fire on virtually any point in range, including suspected enemy positions they couldn't see. I'm inclined to think the way it works now is too limited to be 100% realistic. Both artillery and air power seem weak and run out of ordnance quickly. If you based your knowledge of the Normandy campaign on the engagements in the game you would might think that all battles were bloody slogs against prepared axis positions involving heavy casualties, more like 1914-18 (at least that's what seems to happen to me!). I might try building a scenario with lots of airpower and artillery to see what effect that has. Having said that I appreciate that the designers had to take lots of factors into account e.g. playability and balance in multiplayer games.

 

[Bulletpoint]

 I assume they had detailed maps and could call in fire on virtually any point in range, including suspected enemy positions they couldn't see.

I don't think they had the means to just call up the artillery and say "fire at grid coordinate XX.XX.XX.XX" and it would come in on target. If they had, there would be no need for the spotter to observe and call for adjustments.

[c3k]

Another issue.... 

You have a spotter on the hill. He can see what he can see. Great. You, The OMNISCIENT Player (TOP), are also controlling a platoon in contact over in the woods.

In real life, the spotter couldn't see the platoon. You can. Calling down unspotted arty to assist the rifle platoon would be ahistorical. (The rifle platoon can call down arty, if in-comms, etc.) Disallowing map-based arty missions (rather than in-LOS), is done to prevent TOP from leveraging assets in an ahistorical manner.

In CMBS, the modern UAVs allow spotting/arty of locations beyond the spotter's LOS. No blind missions allowed. Unless there are TRPs. Then there is. That simulates the time to set up and register known coordinates. Spotters CAN call arty to non-LOS TRP locations. They can be very powerful.

[Percival]

Just to clarify, I was suggesting that in RL spotters could call in fire on map positions, not that it would necessarily land where it was intended to! Also I was not looking at this problem from the perspective of an omnipotent player but the spotter. So in my example my spotter has four mortars in contact, He knows that  the enemy are in a particular field behind a hedge  (because they are firing from there) in an area he cannot see, but he cannot call down fire on that location except for a narrow strip behind the hedge. You can't use a large enough area fire circle because you need LOS to fix it in place. Interesting piece here Artillery Practices by the Major Combatants of WWII

[Bulletpoint]

Another issue.... 

You have a spotter on the hill. He can see what he can see. Great. You, The OMNISCIENT Player (TOP), are also controlling a platoon in contact over in the woods.

In real life, the spotter couldn't see the platoon. You can.

To be fair, often the platoon spots something, and that contact marker then makes its way to the artillery spotter through the C2 network. Once the info arrives, the spotter would be able to pinpoint the enemy position on a map, even if he had no LOS to the location, himself.

[Pak40]

Just to clarify, I was suggesting that in RL spotters could call in fire on map positions, not that it would necessarily land where it was intended to! Also I was not looking at this problem from the perspective of an omnipotent player but the spotter. So in my example my spotter has four mortars in contact, He knows that  the enemy are in a particular field behind a hedge  (because they are firing from there) in an area he cannot see, but he cannot call down fire on that location except for a narrow strip behind the hedge. You can't use a large enough area fire circle because you need LOS to fix it in place. Interesting piece here Artillery Practices by the Major Combatants of WWII

If the enemy is firing from behind a hedge then you can easily use a LINE barrage immediately behind that hedge. It is very effective at eliminating the threat immediately behind the hedge.

If, perhaps you wan the barrage to go deeper behind the hedge, then you can use the CIRCLE barrage. Place the centroid of the barrage behind the hedge as far as it will allow, then place the second point anywhere in front of the hedge where you have LOS. You can get the circle quite large if you want. Obviously only a little more than half of your rounds will land behind the hedge but some of them should go deep.

The piece that you reference is indeed interesting but it doesn't really say if it was common practice for a FO to call in artillery where he couldn't see. Yes, he could pick a spot on the map even if he didn't have LOS to it but permission to expend rounds on an unseen target were probably normally denied.

Also, consider the fact that if Combat Mission allowed all FO's or HQs to call down artillery anywhere on the map even if they didn't have LOS to it, there would be massive abuse of the system by players. Why risk putter your FO on the front line when he can just call it in from anywhere?

Edited March 8, 2016 by Pak40

[Michael Emrys]

To be fair, often the platoon spots something, and that contact marker then makes its way to the artillery spotter through the C2 network. Once the info arrives, the spotter would be able to pinpoint the enemy position on a map, even if he had no LOS to the location, himself.

I more or less agree, but with the reservation that "pinpoint" is a pretty loose term in this era. Sometimes comms were okay and the necessary data was understood correctly, but other times errors of one sort or another would creep in and the mission would not fall quite exactly where it was needed. That's why those who had the necessary tubes and ammo used a lot of it. Artillery could be very effective, but it was a very blunt instrument. Nothing remotely like the kind of precision strikes that can be called in these days.

Michael

[Bulletpoint]

I more or less agree, but with the reservation that "pinpoint" is a pretty loose term in this era. Sometimes comms were okay and the necessary data was understood correctly, but other times errors of one sort or another would creep in and the mission would not fall quite exactly where it was needed. That's why those who had the necessary tubes and ammo used a lot of it. Artillery could be very effective, but it was a very blunt instrument. Nothing remotely like the kind of precision strikes that can be called in these days.

Definitely agree, but I was talking in the context of the game. In Combat Mission, the shared contact info is always precise to the exact 8x8 metre square. Maybe it should be possible for a FO to call artillery on any enemy contact marker, but with a big hit to accuracy? Not sure if it would be good from a gameplay perspective, as it could become too much a game of luck...

[Percival]

Isn't the reality that artillery was dominant on the battlefield in WWII, causing more casualties than any other weapon? Accuracy may have been poor compared with today, but veterans of the Ostfront were horrified when they experienced how deadly Allied artillery was compared with Soviet  I see the strength of the arguments about gameplay, but if you dilute the impact of artillery are you not arguably reducing realism? In the Normandy campaign and Italy airpower was also so important for Allied success but in CM its role seems peripheral.

OK I admit I'm playing devil's advocate! Having read everyone's posts again I find myself agreeing that the impact of changing the way it works now could be bad for realism overall. It's too easy to make a change which improves in one place but wrecks the game somewhere else. Perhaps spotters could be given a little more latitude with LOS though. Also CM models relatively small engagements where forces are already close together so it may be reasonable to assume that the Allies would not call on the full force of air and artillery strikes for fear of hitting their own men.

Edited March 9, 2016 by Percival
Spelling mistake

[Bulletpoint]

if you dilute the impact of artillery are you not arguably reducing realism?

Definitely reducing realism, but there are many aspects of the game that have lower realism levels. Tank turning speeds for example. Spotting ability against hidden rifle shooters at hundreds of metres. Direct hits from artillery being very weak. Hand grenades going off among groups of running troops causing no casualties. A soldier getting hit by 10 bullets going straight through his body without dying (ok, this last one I actually formally reported as a bug, I don't see how it could be a design decision).

I see where you're coming from though, as I also like to play devil's advocate...

Edited March 9, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[Michael Emrys]

Also CM models relatively small engagements where forces are already close together so it may be reasonable to assume that the Allies would not call on the full force of air and artillery strikes for fear of hitting their own men.

That's a good point. Most CM sized engagements would begin at just about the point after the prep bombardment had lifted, which would be fine if the effects of that bombardment were shown, such as squads missing some members or members wounded and/or in a shocked state with reduced morale. Maybe this is a good use of those cheap rocket batteries. Have them give an intense saturation one minute bombardment of the enemy positions before your troops jump off.

Michael

[Thewood1]

Artillery as a killer was not at the tactical level where combat is at small arms ranges.  Artillery killed mostly just past the MLR and into staging areas and then the big stuff at troop and concentration areas.  Its not rocket science.  If it was killing at MLR, it was as a planned bombardment as prep for an advance or as a spoiler for defense.

Mortars are a different story.  But ammo is limited and contact is limited with front line troops for larger mortars.  I would imagine it was frowned upon when you dropped half your ammo load on a farm house that no one had eyes on just sa the rounds fall into the garden or some of your own troops who happened to outpace your own unit.

Edited March 10, 2016 by Thewood1

[Thewood1]

Also keep in mind that your company is probably not the only unit in combat.  Artillery is assigned to specific units to support advances.  If you encountered heavier than expected resistance and you needed more tubes and ammo than were allocated, that had to go up and down the chain.  The FOs were better connected in general, and had a little more authority to get more tubes, but it still took minutes to get anything extra.

The short of it is, there was a limited number of tubes and bullets.  Once you used up your allocation, you had to make your case for more.  That tended to make FOs and commanders a little more willing to make sure they were using them to the best effect.