Need some tips for using mortars and artillery

[RexSaur]

Hi All,

I'm playing through the CMSF2 campaign again and my artillery is not very effective. Could you spare some tips and tricks how to use it efficiently?

I tried flushing enemies out of buildings with 120mm mortars but they couldn't be bothered neither with "General" rounds nor "Armour" rounds. Aircraft bombs seem to work well but there are not many available.

Since the enemy likes to occupy the ground floor multi story buildings become bunkers hard to crack.

Also what is an effective range for infantry squads and machine guns?

[37mm]

It depends on the size of the building... Modular buildings are pretty resistant to artillery fire, especially the larger & taller ones.

I've had some limited success with targetting the street right next to building (so that the rounds/blast/shrapnel don't have to penetrate through multiple floors to get to the ground floor)... but, in general, large tower blocks are going to need large amounts of HE.

However, don't forget the vast clouds of dust & smoke (in dry & very dry environments) that mortars can generate. Even if the mortars can only mask/supress the enemy, it should still allow you to maneuver.

 

[Boche]

This is what i ussually do, and this helped me alot in the german campaing,

If i had 155mm artillery available (mortars are too inacurate for this) and I needed a building gone. id set a point target on it and set 1 tube, general and short duration. This is noramly enough to destroy a one to two story building and take out its ocupants while saving on amunition. witht 3+ stories you need more ammo but hey, improvise and adapt. I ussualy save the mortars for area bombardment.

[Chibot Mk IX]

120mm is not so effective against building, you need larger gun.  

 

for the 155mm, even an anti-personal airburst mission can knock down the building very quickly.  I remember saw a two story building knocked down by 3 rounds of 155mm air burst

[MOS:96B2P]

9 hours ago, RexSaur said:

I'm playing through the CMSF2 campaign again and my artillery is not very effective. Could you spare some tips and tricks how to use it efficiently?  

Depending on what artillery assets you have one thing you can try is to use adjusted fire.  Request a large (slow to call) mission shooting at a low tube count and a low rate. Some assets firing 2 tubes at "Light" may last about 45 minutes of FFE.  As long as you keep the FO safe, you can "walk" the fire round the map, hitting targets with a few minutes' delay. 

 

10 hours ago, RexSaur said:

I tried flushing enemies out of buildings with 120mm mortars but they couldn't be bothered neither with "General" rounds nor "Armour" rounds. Aircraft bombs seem to work well but there are not many available.  Since the enemy likes to occupy the ground floor multi story buildings become bunkers hard to crack.  

Generally sweep them out with direct fire.  (Don't send troops in unless there is no other choice).  Again it depends on the assets you have.  In a perfect world a tank firing HE into the building would normally get good results quickly. 

I often have infantry fire at the action spot just in front of the building.  The OpFor in the building will receive suppression along with the OpFor on the 2^nd & 3rd floor.  @RockinHarry did some interesting vertical suppression tests with this.

However It is also possible to pin the OpFor in the building.  They need a chance to run. If they're so heavily suppressed that they're pinned you will have to kill them in place, which may be difficult (unless you have a tank).  

 

10 hours ago, RexSaur said:

Also what is an effective range for infantry squads and machine guns?

Ranges are listed in the SF2 game manual (different from the engine manual).  It varies with all the different weapon systems and what the conditions etc. are.  IMO a general rule of thumb is 300 meters for small arms and about 800 meters for MGs.  Someone with an 11B MOS may have a better answer on this one.     

 

 

[sburke]

5 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:

However It is also possible to pin the OpFor in the building.  They need a chance to run. If they're so heavily suppressed that they're pinned you will have to kill them in place, which may be difficult (unless you have a tank).  

One technique I have used to varying degrees of effect has been to suppress from one side and approach from the other. The TAC AI appears to react to fire and focusing itself to face that force allowing a secondary force to approach from the rear.  I have been burned a couple times on it but most times it seems to work.  It may partly depend on the size of the unit pinned or number of teams. 

[MikeyD]

Some random unreliable advice.  120mm mortar and tube artillery, I think, fires white phosphorus smoke. Pixeltruppen really do not like WP and are likely to attempt to relocate if blanketed by the stuff. 81mm mortar smoke is something different, probably HC smoke, and is unlikely to drive off the enemy. You can tell WP in the game because the warm smoke cloud tends to rise up (annoyingly)  instead of hugging the ground

[General Jack Ripper]

On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 12:18 AM, RexSaur said:

I tried flushing enemies out of buildings with 120mm mortars but they couldn't be bothered neither with "General" rounds nor "Armour" rounds. Aircraft bombs seem to work well but there are not many available.

Also what is an effective range for infantry squads and machine guns?

Your 120's are more likely to force the enemy to bunker up inside the building, instead of escaping it. In Shock Force, the buildings are relatively solid construction, meaning anything short of howitzer artillery is unlikely to smash them down. If the building is in no danger of collapsing, the enemy is not likely to abandon it.

Your best bet is to flush the enemy out of the building with small arms, so they run outside into your barrage. Tank 105mm, and 120mm are also quite good at cleaning up buildings.

With infantry against enemy in buildings, there is no real effective range. Maybe closing to within 50 meters will give some effect, but that is very dangerous. 5.56mm and 5.45mm cannot really penetrate the walls of most buildings to any real effect. The best solution is to hose the enemy enough to get them to displace, and then move into a new angle until you flush them out into a vulnerable position. In fact, your enemy with AK-47's is actually slightly better at shooting through walls than you are.

Your GPMG's in 7.62mm etc, can deal with enemy in buildings, but only at medium ranges out to 300 meters or so. They also often need quite a lot of fire to have an effect. Antimateriel rifles like .50cal can go through buildings quite easily, and if you're playing as the USA, you'll want to bring you .50cal machineguns with you everywhere you go. So if you're dismounting from your Strykers, have the Strykers trail your infantry a few hundred meters to provide some supporting fire from their guns.

I once set up a test scenario in which a complete assortment of buildings were subjected to maximum point barrages from every type of artillery in the game.

Simple list of results:

• 60mm mortars will only knock down a small and medium single-story building, and not have enough ammo left for anything else.
• 81mm mortars will knock down small and medium single-story buildings, and small two-story buildings with just a few rounds left.
• 120mm mortars will knock down small two-story, and almost any size one-story building, with about a quarter or so ammo load for another target.
• 105mm will knock down everything in a single story, and most two-story buildings, using about half their ammo.
• 155mm and larger will reliably blast down anything up to three stories in height, using an average of one third their ammo.
• Four to eight story medium and large buildings are only really destroyable by aircraft bombs.

Strangely enough, buildings with a larger footprint are easier to hit with more rounds, and are thus easier to destroy, but there seems to be a certain zone around three stories high where the building becomes too solid to destroy with artillery. At higher elevations of buildings, the smaller footprint becomes easier to knock down. An 8m-8m eight story building can be knocked down quite easily, while a big, chunky 24m-24m eight story building might have it's façade ripped up, but still standing after a maximum barrage from 155mm.

So, in short, the enemy is far more likely to stick inside a building if it's not receiving enough artillery to knock it down.
Dropping a few mortar rounds on it will likely provoke laughter, rather than the intended panic.

[Erwin]

On 7/21/2019 at 7:51 AM, MOS:96B2P said:

Ranges are listed in the SF2 game manual (different from the engine manual).  It varies with all the different weapon systems and what the conditions etc. are.  IMO a general rule of thumb is 300 meters for small arms and about 800 meters for MGs.

It's highly recommended that you get the mod that gives small arms calibres and ranges (sorry I forget who made that or where to d/l - but it will be at CMMODS someplace).

According to this mod, Brits and Canadians and US Marines seem to have small arms that are good to 400m.  The US Army small arms are only good to 200m.  Can't recall what the Germans and Dutch are using.  MG's are rated good to 1200m.  AK's are generally rated to 300m.