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WW2 mortars and artillery. Most important thing to "get right" in the CM2 series?


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CMBN has got me rethinking what I thought I knew about WW2 mortars and artillery.

So, I googled.--so much easier than decades ago to look up stuff, but of course I don't have the grog depth to evaluate everything I find.

For example, this:

http://www.balagan.org.uk/war/ww2/snippet/artillery.htm

Looks goods. Is it good information?

My understanding of the CM series is that, for playability and enjoyment reasons, the scenarios are generally thought to begin after the initial bombardment. Yes? That seems to be relaxed a bit with CMBN (I know, CM1 had pre-planned bombardment, but I hardly remember ever using it--too scattered to usually be worth using the artillery that way). Not having the initial bombardments would mean that a smaller percentage of casualties will be from artillery than occured in real life.

It would also appear to me that the common fire plan in WW2 was neither point nor linear, but rectangular (or square). Off-board multi-tube assets would not have their tubes all aimed, usually, at one point, but be in somewhat parallel, with the result, with variability, being at least an oval. [i realize their are game-engine issues to consider]

The British in WW2, in particular, according to this one source, seemed to make very rough fire calculations, presumably helped by the fact that their rounds were going to cover a large area (sort of like what they did with Strategic bombing of cities at night). Currently in CMBN, the artillery is either on-target, and incredibly lethal, or off target, and then of minimal effect. My concept of WW2 reality was that it was usually more in between--one cranked metal knobs, with your weapon in, say, the mud, and putting HE in a big area which had the target in it. One could do pin-point missions, and it looks as though the Germans, in particular, could be quite good at it, but, at the level most of our scenarios are at, particulary when the battle is mobile, wasn't it more of a get-the-rounds-into-the-enemy-position-and-let's-not-mess-up-and-hit-our-own-people situation? In other words, information and battlefield awareness in WW2 battle situations was not like a HDTV, but more like an old black and white TV, with "snow" and "rabbit ears" you moved around with your hands.

The article also discusses the high drop-off in lethal effectiveness with even "normal" terrain, versus something like a flat street.

(It is also interesting that a 30% casualty rate was considered to be enough to "destroy" a unit)

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(It is also interesting that a 30% casualty rate was considered to be enough to "destroy" a unit)

Casualty rates in % in most sources usually relate to a formation's entire allotment of personnel, including non-combat personnel. In many cases, a typical formation does not have more than 30% combat personnel in total in its ranks (everyone else is supporting the top fighting third - i.e. transport, supply, kitchen, staff etc.).

Martin

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I have stated since CMSF that we need an artillery "box" option, along with linear, circular and point. Rectangles would be so much more useful in many situations. So many rounds are wasted when you have to area fire with a circle when your target would fit a box perfectly. Maybe BF left out box targets because they would take artillery destructiveness to a higher level.

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I suspect that mortars are very well done at the moment but I'm not convinced that WW2 artillery was quite as precise as it appears to be in the game either. I believe in its accuracy in CMSF but in WW2, I'm not so sure. I'm working on something just now where the German AI side has a FOS with a module of Light Nebelwerfer rockets on call. Playing in Scenario Author mode I watched the guy call in a point target and when the rounds came in, they all fell within a very tight little pattern indeed. I remember back to my school wargaming club when somebody first modelled a Nebelwerfer and the plastic artillery fire overlay for it was huge. After playing this particular mission several times, I can't get those Nebelwerfers to scream in and devastate a portion of the battlefield. They fire more like mortars when their call-in pattern is tight. And the same goes with Naval artillery. It's just so damned precise that it's beyond belief.

I like the idea of an artillery box as opposed to a point or linear target, especially for the bigger stuff, but I have no idea how accurate that would be. I'd like the player to be able to set the centre point of the box but have its minimum boundary automatically laid by parameters set by the scenario designer with the option to expand it further. Very board-gamey I know but that's where it all started for me. :)

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I tried to raise this issues about linear and point target command in WWII evironment already for at least 2 times without any satisfying awnser. Good luck ;)

So far noone could provide any documents/evidence that linear fir missions were used at all, besides lining up the whole battery. Not even the 1944 us army field artillery manual mentions it.

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BTW i agree with the need for rectangular targets, but don't feel that artillery is overly accurate. try to make a test with Nebelwerfer on point fire - you will see.

with 1.0 there was quite an issue with lethality against dug in troops. this has been tuned down in 1.01. enough? i don't know. but in the battles i played it felt quite right.

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Artillery is outrageously imbalanced at the moment, mortars in particular.

It's like they used the CMSF model without taking into account the yawning gulf between modern equipment and their WW2 counterparts ie: GPS and Laser Rangefinder vs. Compass and Set Square.

don't think so - the CEPs match pretty well with WW2 data in the tests i did. why mortars in particular?

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Because 81mm mortars are the equivalent of an Orbital Bombardment while light mortars can obliterate entire rifle sections in the space of a couple of turns?

You take a rifle.

I'll take a light mortar.

We'll go out to a field for two full minutes.

Winner gets dinner with your Old Lady.

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these observations coincide with my real life experience - well aimed and time mortar fire against troops in the open is devastating. :(

One solitary WW2-era light mortar can not annihilate an entire rifle section (literally no survivors) in the space of 3 minutes firing from 300m. The accuracy and lethality simply isn't there.

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i agree with the need for rectangular targets

I disagree. A linear mission gives you roughly a rectangle now. Any lager than that and you should really be using a series of overlapping circles (to create a rectangle) from separate fire units, rather than pretending with an uber awesome single fire unit.

I understand the urge towards wanting more efficiency out of each artillery round, but I understand even more that that just isn't realistic. If you have to 'waste' rounds to get the target coverage that you want then ... you aren't wasting rounds. Or if you still feel that you are wasting rounds, then target coverage isn't really that important to you after all.

but don't feel that artillery is overly accurate.

I agree.

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I disagree. A linear mission gives you roughly a rectangle now. Any lager than that and you should really be using a series of overlapping circles (to create a rectangle) from separate fire units, rather than pretending with an uber awesome single fire unit.

I understand the urge towards wanting more efficiency out of each artillery round, but I understand even more that that just isn't realistic. If you have to 'waste' rounds to get the target coverage that you want then ... you aren't wasting rounds. Or if you still feel that you are wasting rounds, then target coverage isn't really that important to you after all.

I do not talk about "ueber" units, but about realism.

You are right with the line or overlapping circles - these are (to seome extent) workarounds. In WW2 it seems (based on manuals) that you often fired at rectangles. In my experience in the 1970s/80s (before we got GPS, Lasers and the stuff) we still worked pretty much like that. The main difference to WW2 were the first computers artillery had to calculate the fire parameters. Guns and ammo were roughly still the same.

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In WW2 it seems (based on manuals) that you often fired at rectangles.

My understanding is that they mostly fired lines-of-fire-parallel. That is - for a general, or immediate neutralisation, mission - all guns fired the same bearings and elevation. So, in theory, the rounds would land in the same configuration in which the guns were laid out on the ground. It didn't work that way, of course, because slight changes in elevation at both ends, differences in barrel wear, differences in barrel temp, differences in propellant and round, all meant that there was some variation. But since the guns were, usually, sort of, laid out in a square then the rounds tended to fall in a square. A square that smudges out to be a circle* due to the CEP of each gun. At least for a 4-gun battery (or a British troop). Two batterys (or two British troops) with their rounds landing side by side would tend towards a rounded rectangle.

Other missions - linears, circular, larger or smaller distributions (including point targets) - could be done, but all involved significantly more calculations.

So, if BFC wanted to be totally bitchy and realistic about it, what they should really do is only allow one size of target, which is a circle about 70m across (with some slight differences for different calibres). If they were feeling especially generous they could allow linears, and larger or smaller target areas, but only if targeted during the setup phase (to represent the gunners sorting out the calcs in the infinite amount of time available before each scen starts). Once you press go you should be limited to the stock circle for that calibre.

But because they're such a cuddly bunch of teddy bears they've actually provided a much more flexible artillery interface. But you need to realise that it is already unrealistically flexible. Requesting even more flexibility amounts to asking for an even less realistic treatment of artillery.

Jon

* actually an ellipse, but then you need to know what the direction of fire is. A circle is a good enough for our purposes.

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Two batterys (or two British troops) with their rounds landing side by side would tend towards a rounded rectangle.

This was probably why the stupid guys on the front calling for a fire mission used a rectangle to understand fire distribution.

But because they're such a cuddly bunch of teddy bears they've actually provided a much more flexible artillery interface. But you need to realise that it is already unrealistically flexible. Requesting even more flexibility amounts to asking for an even less realistic treatment of artillery.

There you have a point. Usually you would just designate a target like "mortar position", "infantry platoon preparing to attack", "infantry in foxholes" etc with the location, maybe the extension of the target and the mission type and then the fire control center would do the rest. you then just had to do the spotting. and with your argument, that the actual fire distribution would be (almost) circular the approach BFC took seems to be acceptable to provide point (a special case of circular), circular and line.

The distribution for an individual gun would be a rather long ellipse by the way. usually deviation on the side is rather small (except for rocket artillery) but in the direction of the fire it usually is a percentage of the distance between gun and target.

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One solitary WW2-era light mortar can not annihilate an entire rifle section (literally no survivors) in the space of 3 minutes firing from 300m. The accuracy and lethality simply isn't there.

The accuracy of the M2 mortar was pretty good up to 1000m it seems (although I have not found a CEP figure yet), rate of fire was approx 18 rounds/minute. The M49A2 High Explosive shell produced approximately 200 shell fragments within an effective radius of approx 15m. So to smash a single squad or even a platoon within 3 minutes does not seem completely unreasonable - depends a bit on how they were bunched together. You have a screenshot?

The M2 was still in service in Korea and even in Vietnam it seems.

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As far as I've found, CEP for the M2 is not available anywhere. It would appear that operator error tends to be far too great a factor to have any certainty of dispersion. As far as I've been able to piece together, the ellipse of equal probability should be larger than 20 meters range and 30 meters side to side in combat conditions, based on vague estimates from Korea.

To atone for the vague statements above, here's a snippet from a US umpires booklet from 1944, wherein firepower (much as in CMx1) is listed from several weapons:

6240990260_351a9ab1a6_z.jpg

A 60mm mortar is pretty much equated to a light machine gun in fire effectiveness.

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As far as I've found, CEP for the M2 is not available anywhere. It would appear that operator error tends to be far too great a factor to have any certainty of dispersion. As far as I've been able to piece together, the ellipse of equal probability should be larger than 20 meters range and 30 meters side to side in combat conditions, based on vague estimates from Korea.

Probably a good estimation. The FM for the infantry company says that three mortars will have an effective area of fire of 50x50 meters.

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