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Fire mission off target


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3 hours ago, Badger73 said:

I suspect English is not your native language.  Please pardon my presumption and accept my apologies if that is not the case. 

The radio message you heard is, "Fire for effect.", NOT, "Fire perfect."

"Fire for effect" is a special radio message transmitted by the indirect fire direction center to the spotter of the fire mission.  It tells the spotter that the indirect firing unit is done firing spotting rounds and will now fire all the rounds requested by the original fire mission.

You are correct. Thank you very much, I have learned something today.

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@Ivanov you are getting some answers in this thread that are not quite correct. I asked the same question way back.

When the fire mission comes in way off target, it's not because the spotter is green or under fire etc*. What matters is if the spotter sees the spotting rounds or not. 

If he doesn't see them, he will call in the fire mission anyway, leading it to be completely off target.

The problem for me was that I assumed that the spotter would NOT order the fire mission if he didn't see the spotting rounds. However, in this game, that's how it works.

Solution: Only call in fire on areas where the spotter has a reasonable chance of seeing the spotting rounds. It's not enough to be able to trace a long thin line through a forest to the intended target. The odds of the spotter seeing the fall of shot will be extremely small.

 

* With the caveat that if the spotter is under heavy fire during the whole spotting round cycle, he will cower, and then probably not spot the spotting rounds...

Edited by Bulletpoint
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If a spotting round is fired with significant error, then the next round and the one after do not have significant corrections toward the intended target, cancel the mission.  The FO is not seeing the spotting rounds.  Basically, if spotting rounds are not correcting and you let the mission continue, you are saying go ahead and try fire for effect with error.

Edited by akd
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13 hours ago, HerrTom said:

Can you cancel your fire missions in case B?  If the spotter is dead?

The 4.0 Engine Manual page 75 states that the support mission may eventually cancelled.  However I have never seen a fire mission cancelled when the spotter was KIA.  I had one mission fire for the remainder of the game (45 minutes)after the spotter was KIA.  It is now my SOP when a spotter gets into trouble and starts taking fire I cancel the mission rather than risk losing control of the tubes if the spotter end up KIA. 

Now that I think of it the situation I described above was for off map artillery.  I wonder how on map mortars would react to a spotter being KIA?  I can't remember if they automatically cancel or not......... To the test map..........

 

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

<Snip> When the fire mission comes in way off target, it's not because the spotter is green <Snip>  What matters is if the spotter sees the spotting rounds or not. 

If he doesn't see them, he will call in the fire mission anyway, leading it to be completely off target.  <Snip> 

Solution: Only call in fire on areas where the spotter has a reasonable chance of seeing the spotting rounds. It's not enough to be able to trace a long thin line through a forest to the intended target. The odds of the spotter seeing the fall of shot will be extremely small.  <Snip> 

@Ivanov    This. +1.

The UI can be a little bit misleading.  It will allow you to plot a Target line (indirect or direct) however it does not indicate the quality of the Target line.  Just that the Target line is good enough to in theory be possible.  I have learned the hard way to evaluate the Target line and to be skeptical if said line passes between very many obstacles.  The spotting rounds for artillery are likely to fall behind some of these obstacles and not be observed by the spotter.        

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@Bulletpoint @akd @MOS:96B2

Some good points here. I agree that the spotting LOS wasn't probably ideal and that could potentially cause a bad fire mission. I was assuming however that the spotter would cancel or correct the mission after not seeing the spotting rounds. In CMBS I had many instances that the fire mission was cancelled during the spotting phase. It was the first time for me when the fire mission went ahead anyway, despite the imperfect spotting conditions.

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1 hour ago, MOS:96B2P said:

Now that I think of it the situation I described above was for off map artillery.  I wonder how on map mortars would react to a spotter being KIA?  I can't remember if they automatically cancel or not......... To the test map.......... 

@HerrTom  Okay.  On map US 81mm mortars in CMFB v2.0 Engine 4.  After the spotter was KIA the mortar continued to fire until empty.  Of course for on map mortars you can hit Clear Target in the mortar's command panel and they will cease fire.  An advantage of on map mortars. :)

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4 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

The 4.0 Engine Manual page 75 states that the support mission may eventually cancelled.  However I have never seen a fire mission cancelled when the spotter was KIA. 

I have a mission cancelled just under those conditions today, onmap arty, CMBN4.0

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55 minutes ago, kraze said:

I have a mission cancelled just under those conditions today, onmap arty, CMBN4.0

So on map mortars automatically cancelled when the spotter was KIA?  Good to know it will sometimes happen.  The manual does say MAY so I guess that is accurate. 

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6 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

So on map mortars automatically cancelled when the spotter was KIA?  Good to know it will sometimes happen.  The manual does say MAY so I guess that is accurate. 

A lot of factors go into it, but basically its possible that after the FO is killed the fire mission continues to completion or stops. Note, that if the spotter is killed AFTER fire for effect is called, the fire mission will not terminate.

Same thing applies to friendly fire. If the spotter observes friendlies taking casualties from friendly artillery, depending on the various soft factors he will attempt to automatically cancel the fire mission. Obviously, if the spotter cannot see the effect of the rounds on target, or is dead, the fire mission will not be cancelled. 

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