JasonC
-
Posts
8,438 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
6
Posts posted by JasonC
-
-
c3k - the game can't even start, so not an issue. I literally can't get past the set up without resolving this.
Cool - you don't seem to understand the actual realistic design of MG fire schemes. Firing positions in real life are selected not just on the ability to see location X, but the ability to see entire avenues while also avoiding being seen by specific bits of cover likely to contain enemy overwatch. The whole point of such schemes is to block enemy movement in an interlocking manner. If everyone looks out the front windows straight ahead, the enemy just sets up his overwatch in his own front windows and suppresses the defending MGs before moving. That way lies sorrow. In addition such schemes are always designed with choices of positions that can break contact by short movements, and still fire on secondary axes after forced to do so.
What I am finding is that the quirks I have described drive reasonable locations for such a scheme to the vanishing point, leaving only (1) positions the entire enemy side of the field can see (2) positions that cannot see anything (3) positions that can only see small disconnected bits of no great importance.
I know exactly how I would actually defend a town that looks like this one if I could position the MGs for real. But with the quirks described above, my options seem to be sit in wood buildings (concealment not cover) directly facing the enemy with wide LOS, or see nothing. In real life, both are just different methods of suicide.
-
"JasonC, did you run though the scenario to test out how your defence did once the enemies showed up?"
No, I am not cheating. Also this is a human vs human quick battle, infantry only, on a randomly selected map. Which happens to be one with a water barrier in a town, perfectly sensible idea for the engagement (Russian assault scenario type), but just pants in practice because the defenders cannot select a single starting location for a single machinegun.
It has been literally 3 days since my opponent sent me the set up, and after 3 attempts I have yet to place a single team. I can't believe everyone has just been putting up with this state of things...
-
c3k - I am perfectly willing to have my plan conform to the terrain. If the frickin terrain would tell me what is visible from where, in some remotely intuitive or realistic way.
Vanir - understood, fair distinction.
-
Baneman - lol. OK then. Actually I thought about it further and realized that 6-7 of the other Shermans may have been Sherman 75s and only 1 other may have been another Firefly. From a flank that maybe shouldn't have mattered so much, but at least some of the other tanks may have been hitting but failing to kill. Just a thought...
-
The tac AI is very good at this? I just spent 30 minutes looking for decent starting positions for my MG teams in a town fight. I needed to find a dozen. I found none. Not one. Face routinely failed to produce a clear LOS to the actually selected point, and when it did the cone was very narrow, and the actual placement of the weapon insanely stupid. With the advice provided I was able to see down the road to the ford, for example - with a field of view that was 60 meters wide at 250 meters distance. The MG at the southwest, south facing window was actually placed between the corner and the window, so it had to look out slight eastward or due south - despite an actual Face location just west of due south.
Basically, this uncontrolled micropositioning is --- pants.
-
"Under ideal conditions..." - so why didn't the other 8 Shermans get more than 2 kills, out of the other 7 targets?
-
The tips are helpful, keep them coming.
In my last outing, I had a full squad on the 4th floor of a tall rowhouse, with gable style windows front and back, two per wall. It was a 2 LMG German motorized Pz Gdr squad. In real life they should have been ungodly terrors up there. Wide field of view to the whole left side of the map from one wall, equally wide to the other side from the opposite wall. Brick cover, not just concealment. Short movement able to break LOS to either side. A pair of buzzsaws either way, K98s to keep up pins and check anyone approaching the opposite way. Too high to grenade out. Solid wall with no openings in the direction facing the enemy, giving total cover to his frontal overwatch.
Commander immediately downstairs, with MP 40s and grenades out the second floor windows, nearby smaller buildings covering them. 2nd squad on the ground floor to prevent assault, sweep the streets, if necessary climb up and replaces losses.
This position was meant to interlock its 45 degree side lob fields of fire with 2 HMG teams in some woods 350 yards away to the south, and a single 2 LMG squad in a lower building 120 yards to the north, which between them could sweep all approaches to that high rowhouse. It was the fortress center of the defense. The enemy was pure infantry, no tanks, and no direct fire guns could bear on the position. Mortars maybe, but they could just descend and wait it out if that happened.
But they fired practically not at all, all game. I tried face commands, split and reform, descend and come back up with face commands, etc. They frequently rotated to face the south windows and wound up with a LOS line 2 meters long that stopped at the wall, as though they couldn't reach the windows. That way they at most had a line five degrees wide straight normal to the wall, at high elevation, like they were trying to shoot from the wrong side of the room. In the other direction, maybe 30 degrees to either side of normal to the north wall, was it, and those lines grey, even for a half squad with 1 MG.
Beautiful and carefully planned position reading the map literally. Completely brain dead Tac AI, contributing nothing. No obvious way to order the right orientation, and not for lack of trying. They fiddled for twenty minutes - literally - and accomplished nothing.
I'd say this needs major overhaul. Exact representation of partial LOS for some men not all, and of each window, is only more realistic if the individual man positioning is intelligent. If just the face command solved it that would be enough. It doesn't now, at least in any clear and intuitive way.
-
"Movement command into the building" - this is at set up.
And what do you mean by "at that location"?
There is no way all 6 men can see out one window, of course. But are you saying your method will ensure that is where the MG will go? Will it ensure placement of the LMG within a half squad?
-
Perhaps CMx2 experts have long since learned how to handle the following issue, in which case instruction and how tos might be all I need. But so far I am finding it very frustrating, to the point where I consider building terrain simply busted in CMRT. Let me explain.
The men have individual positions within a house, which has individual windows. But the LOS tool comes out of a central action spot. I find no way to specifically direct placement of weapons, and the Tac AI does not handle it. Intelligently, or at all really.
Example. I have a two story masonry house with 3 windows along its south wall. Directly south of the house is a smaller, second house, opposite orientation of its long axis. This blocks the view directly south from the center window only. Western window has a perfect line of sight down a critical road to a ford site three or four blocks away. Eastern window has an angled line of sight over lower buildings and gardens to an important bridge site, also 3-4 blocks away but farther, as it is on a diagonal rather than aligned with the street grid.
Place a heavy MG team in the house, second floor. Face command to orient them. Check LOS with the tool. LOS to ford - blocked. To bridge - blocked. In each case, the tool line originates in the very center of the house. There is no way to set up the single HMG to fire down the road to the ford. Even if there were, there would be no way to reposition to the eastern window as an alternate fire position, to cover the bridge.
Real MG fire schemes use keyholes, long narrow lanes of fire, and cross them to prevent enemy movement. But LOS out of buildings is so crappy and so unpredictable, the only locations that might be able to fire are ones with wide LOS facing the whole enemy side of the field from every window - which means lousy firing positions with no hard cover against any relevant point on the compass.
How am I supposed to set up anything like a realistic urban setting fire scheme with these crappy tools?
-
Sgt Joch - note the one sided losses. Note also that only 7 targets are KOed by 9 firing tanks, and 5 others on the targeted side survive unscathed. Did the one best shooter get nearly all the hits? Perhaps he did. Perhaps he only thought he did. The other 8 Shermans were certainly firing, and if the best did hit 5 out of 6, then the other 8 probably missed 46 out of 48, or 22 out of 24 (firing half as fast as the best performer, perhaps). Or if they hit any more often than that, only hit tanks already penetrated.
Certainly all tanks do not get average performance in such cases; the best ones by both skill and luck - and placement to have the most targets - do far more than their share, and equally many of the others do far worse than the average. No, every tank you have in a CM scenario shouldn't get the best claimed outcome of every engagement; all children are not above average...
-
womble - sure there was overkilling. But there was also plenty of flat out missing. Not everyone in the firing formation is an ace, some have the wrong range estimate, the targets start moving, smoke gets popped or targets brew up and obscure lines of sight, the targets try to take cover, gunners get excited... Combat fire is not firing range fire, basically, and its achieved hit rates reflect it.
You can engage still at long ranges and have a quite good effect, if you just have enough shooters and enough target exposure time. But no, they don't need a TRP and they typically aren't boresighted or anything that elaborate. It is enough that one company gets the drop on the other.
The operational histories are full of cases of companies or even whole battalions of tanks being engaged by enemy AT shooters and really not having much in the way of reply, certainly of effective reply. They get shot up and they pull out and lick their wounds, without having done much of anything back.
As for ranges, sometimes as low as 800 yards, sometimes as long as 2.5 kilometers. At the longer ranges, often the shooters are never even located ; the targeted formation has their attention riveting on what is happening to them, very rapidly, and then on their defensive measures.
In CM terms, "panic" for a tank crew does happen, but they typically continue to spot well and even shoot back effectively, when in real life that often breaks down completely. Seeing 3 friendlies brew up and being under effective heavy AT fire is often enough to make any idea of fighting back effectively the farthest thing from the tanker's mind, just like being under sustained MG fire often leads an infantryman to bury his face in the dirt, not scan the horizon for muzzle flashes and try to duel effectively with his own single shot rifle.
Men are not all heroes. Combat is terrifying, and men get out of it when it is clearly going against them - if they can.
-
wadepm - what we actually see much more of in real WW II armored engagements is lopsided shooting by whole units, rather than duels between singles or nearly singles.
I mean an entire company is in a prepared position with good fields of fire and some camou, and then an enemy columns or approaching wedge drives into view. Maybe well into view while the prepared side waits. Then they open up.
And they fire for several minutes, every tank in the company, blazing away. The other side is (1) panicking, (2) some firing back if they ID something, but that is much less common in real life than in CM, (3) reversing and popping smoke and generally trying to get the hell out of there, plus plenty of (4) dying horribly.
When the smoke clears, the ambushed company of 15 or 20 tanks reports they lost 6 or 8 and had 20 men killed. The ambushers didn't get their hair mussed. But they fired 200 rounds.
-
JK - the amendment is friendly, thanks for the correction. The point is that precision guided munitions achieve 40 to 50% hit rates in actual combat, and that makes them vastly superior weapons to unguided gunfire, on a per shot basis at least. Guns are perfectly effective weapon systems even when firing with average hit rates in the single percent range. Because firing opportunities simply aren't that scarce. Whole units fire repeatedly over a minute or two, or five, and readily rack up large counts of rounds expended. Enough that even if only one in twenty hits, they still kill meaningful numbers of enemies.
-
wadepm - no, 5-10 shots really isn't a lot.
Look at AP rounds issued and fired vs enemy tanks actually KOed some time... We know to a demonstration that the idea the average shot actually fired in combat had a 50% plus hit probability is complete nonsense.
Wire guided TOW missiles with active joystick control all the way in, when actually fired in combat, don't achieve 50% average accuracy.
-
Tiny infantry only QB. Winds up being at night. Russian attack vs AI German defense. Using unadjusted costs, I take a rifle company, MG and 82mm mortar platoons, 3 largest 82mm rocket batteries with an FO, and can still afford Pe-2 air support in addition.
I picked my forces without knowing the conditions, nothing about my force was tailored to a night fight. The whole idea was to see what rocket fire support could do at the costs the game charges for the stuff, and to see whether inaccuracy justifies the low price.
The rockets order a barrage to land on minute 5, center of the map on a small village area and the surrounding woods. 3 different area fire aim points, each a 100 meter circle, touching and covering the center of the village. I don't even consider the second salvo, I don't expect to need it. There is a railroad line short of the village, wooded and higher on both sides. My infantry spends the first 4 minutes just advancing to my side of the "cut", and then "gets small" in the tree cover, everyone on hide for the turn the rockets land.
The rockets pulverize the town and all the tree cover areas nearby. No shorts hurt my men.
The next turn, the squad infantry moves out on "quick", and double-times across the cut and up the opposite bank. They charge into the near side of the village, at first staying just outside the houses on my side, using the trees outside for cover. I want infantry overwatch on the buildings from close range before anyone assaults into them.
I discover some intact defenders - well, not so much "intact" as some still alive. There is a KOed 88mm gun outside one of the buildings. Men scatter down the street and are shot down. A few SMGs hit 2 or 3 of my men before reply fire silences them.
Over the next 3-4 minutes, squads leapfrog into the town shooting cowering Germans, and scattering the fliers. 5 more of my men are hit in the course of clearing the town. Off on my right flank, a separate scouting sniper team runs into live Germans well away from the town and loses both men. That brings my total losses to 10.
The Germans lost 72 men. I set cease fire, it is over. I have the town and resistance is broken etc. I am interested to see how much of it the rockets did.
The answer is they directly did about half of it, hitting 35 men as well as KOing the gun. They also appear to have reduced 2 HMG teams to 2 broken survivors. My squad infantry got the other half, with leading squads accounting for 13 and 10, the rest scattered.
In the town fight, my attacking infantry inflicted 4.5 to 1 losses on the defenders, because they were clearing still shaken and some half squaded etc. Note that the infantry fight started in the 2nd minute after the barrage landed and was over 4 minutes after that, so there wasn't a lot of time to rally.
I would not call that ineffective artillery support just because each individual shot was inaccurate. They simply did not need to be, because I received almost 600 fired rockets in one 30 second prep fire, that clobbered the whole center of the enemy defense.
It is crazy that the point cost of that support was only 87 points. And incidentally, my 3 on map 82mm mortars with their supposedly higher precision, did flat nothing in the entire battle. Visibility for spotting for mortar fire was 120 meters (just from night) - but that didn't degrade the rocket barrage at all.
-
gcrain - agree entirely. My proposal - players just agree that if they do take any 82mm rockets (only those), then they must leave unused a number of points at least equal to 7 times the cost of their 82mm rocket support purchases. This lets them still be taken, if people are willing to pay a fair price of them. It still lets the smallest 82mm rocket cost less than another other form of artillery support, at 112 points for 192 rockets. But it completely eliminates truly "spamming" the things...
-
You are talking about utter nonsense, we are talking about a clearly stupid price that everyone knows is wrong. And we don't need the programmers to fix it, we can just agree to raise their price by a factor of 8, by leaving 7 times their printed cost unused whenever we take them.
-
womble - we are not idiots, we know. But when I am not firing at a single half squad but an entire battalion, it doesn't matter that that rounds land in a 300x400 area. There are targets all through that 300x400 area. The loss of flexibility is worth some decline in point value, certainly. But not an 93% decline.
-
Don't judge them by their first shot accuracy; it rises for later shots and it should. Judge them by 5 or 10 shot accuracy vs a stationary target.
Just saying...
-
Erwin - we know, but for the 132s the accuracy discount is 25%, for the 82s it is 93%, and the effectiveness doesn't move that much. Accuracy matters a lot for fire at thin enemies; it doesn't matter so much for denser targets. The small rockets are commonly map fired at locations that are expected to have to have enemies present - near set up zones, just ahead of them early, defenders on objectives, and the like. There should be a discount for their lack of accuracy, sure. But not 93%, that's just nuts.
-
cgrain is right, and no it is not just a factor of 2. As cgrain shows above, 82mm rockets are ~ 1/12 the cost of 82mm mortar rounds, which have the same explosive power.
With the 132s, we see an expense about 3/4 of the cost of a 120mm mortar, per shell, which is a reasonable deduction for their lower accuracy, perhaps offset a bit by higher explosive power each. But with the 82s, we don't see 75% of the cost of an 82mm mortart, or 67% - we see more like 7-8%. And that is silly.
You could multiply the 82mm rocket costs by about 7 and they'd be fair.
-
Combatintman - sorry, that's just silly. First, 3-1 is nonsense on this scale. Second, if you are designing for play vs the AI one way (a human side designated), then it is only the human side force size you need to keep at the manageable scale. And then AI will never be able to use its force as well as a human could, so the practical odds ratios move again. Third, on single mistakes or turns mattering, um, that will always be true, and is even more prevalent when losing a key tank than a half squad. But a platoon sized force can readily lose a half squad and continue the mission. It is not something designers need to protect players from. You can't do things like force the player to move over a tiny choke point that is TRPed for a howitzer barrage, but such scripting is bad design to start with. About it.
-
Akd - you are right, I was thinking of the 3 heavy PAK at regimental level in a standard infantry (grenadier) regiment...
-
Good catch. You are correct that a regimental AT company had only 3 PAK.
There is common confusion over unit size and equipment designations when it comes to artillery unit types. The basic point that needs to be understood is that a battery is a company sized formation in normal field artillery terms. This means that a single gun, which you might think is only a squad sized item, is a platoon sized item in field artillery terms. Sometimes they may interleave gun sections of a pair of guns. But basically, a 3 to 6 gun formation in an artillery type unit is normally going to get a company designation, not a platoon designation.
This is also how you get things like a battalion sized formation of self propelled guns being designated a "brigade", and similar confusions. Worse, it is inconsistent in its application, with a "company" sometimes meaning a battery and sometimes meaning 3 batteries.
In the case of infantry formation PAK components, there can also be other bits besides the heavy PAK themselves - a FLAK battery as a 3rd of the formation e.g., or a "platoon" of half a dozen Panzerscreck teams.
The standard PAK loadout of a mid to late war German mobile division was just 3 heavy PAK in each regiment in one PAK company, plus a divisional Panzerjaeger battalion of 3 companies, which might have StuGs, Marders, towed PAK, or light FLAK in any kind of mixture. A common case was 1 company of 10 StuGs, 12 towed 75mm PAK in 3 4 gun batteries, and a light FLAK company with 9 37mm or 12 20mm light FLAK.
Annoying building LOS issues
in Combat Mission Red Thunder
Posted
Now you are all just telling me that I should not believe my lying eyes.
No sale.
The "map selection" part of the briefing reads "Small City Water Assault - 051.btt"
Since it was selected automatically, that is all I have to give you. It features a city region of mostly wooden structures, mixed 1 and (mostly) 2 story, most of them small houses with a few larger "wooden apartment block" style, larger buildings. There is a stream about 60% of the board width toward the attacker's side, with one bridge and one ford, center of the right half and nearly centered / slightly left respectively, from the defender's orientation. A church on the far side, a few masonry houses, and concrete apartment blocks on the attacker's side of the city (dissuading far forward defenses). Most of the houses are surrounded by fences with some hedge or brush, gardens around everything, basically. Some scattered trees but no heavy forested areas. River is low lying, and there is another long gully, 2/3rds of map width, in front of the church (and mostly dead ground to it).
If you want to locate the particular building that prompted the thread, it is approximately center line of the map from left to right in the defender's orientation (facing river), slightly left of it and basically aligned with the lone ford. It is a masonry building, and several blocks back from the river shore, a little over 200 yards from it. The long axis of this house is parallel to the river, so it has 3 windows on the side facing the river. There aren't many on the map that are (1) masonry rather than wood (2) 2 story to see over all the garden walls, (3) oriented with windows rather than blank walls facing the river. It should not be hard to pick out, from those criteria, if you are looking at the right map. The HMG position I was first trying to select is on the left side of that house when facing the river, corner closest to the road down to the ford, and the desired LOS / LOF is toward the ford. Especially important is the coverage of the open ground up at street level on both the far and the near side of the ford - the ford itself will be too low to see from that far back. It is also important to see the wooden building immediately across the ford, and *not* to see too many (preferably, *any*) other 2 story buildings on the far side of the river.
The effects desired are (1) that the HMG can deny crossing of the ford to leg infantry until it is suppressed or KOed, (2) that replacement shooters can be funneled up to the spot from shelter on the ground floor or the rear of the building, outside of it (in its shadow toward the river), (3) that the lone spot the enemy can duel effectively from is a wooden upper story (quite vulnerable to MG42 full caliber fire), (4) that the spot be beyond effective SMG range from anything not yet across the river (plus masonry walls to stop such fire effectively, as cover not just concealment), (5) that the building the enemy would select to duel from is also the one he would want to "stage" into, around, or through to get troops to the ford and the low ground around it, because (6) a TRP for 81mm mortars will be placed right on the corner of that building that is "in line" with the ford. Additional benefit is that (7) the same house should be able to put a LOS / LOF onto the bridge, out of the right front window rather than the left front one, at range.
So if what one I saw were really what I got, that house would be perfect and I'd build a core concept of the whole defense around it.
Other areas on the same map giving me trouble, for those interested...
A - I want flanking fire on the crossing sites from ground as low as the crossings. The natural spot in the clump of woods on the right edge close to the water, near side of the river. I have foxholes for such a position. It can see the bridge and one wood building on the other side nearest the bridge crossing, while being low enough to avoid LOS from most of the other good cover on the enemy side of the river. The problem is, checking the the LOS tool those locations do not appear to be able to see past the bridge, pretty much at all. It is only a narrow defensive position, therefore, good for fighting a bridge crossing but little else. That means only squad infantry with LMGs could go there, since they would need to relocate if the enemy just doesn't try to force a crossing at the bridge.
B - I considered trying to make the gully area ahead of the church on the far side of the river a forward threat zone. That requires enfilade fire from the left, not guys in the church, since the latter can't see the dead ground of the gully area. All the second story buildings left of the gully with upper stories that might see into it are wood. And most fail to see into it, either at all or to any great coverage, due to grazing fences and the like nearer to the spotting building. The next thing I tried for that was a corner of a garden with hedge / brush not just fencing, sticking out nearest the drop off into the gully. I could put a foxhole there for an OP half squad to cover the gully, I thought. But checking with the tool, I find the slope of the ground makes practically the entire gully dead not swept ground from that "street level" position. Basically, if not on a second story I'd have to be *in* the gully to see anything in it. Note that if I can't sweep the gully from a practical position, the church is a death trap, with south facing windows, only room for one fire team, and lots of good enemy cover that "bears" on it.
C - my force structure is 2 smaller platoons of 2 squads each, 2 LMG varieties, meant to operate split into single LMG fire teams, 4 to an HQ. Plus a weapons platoon with 4 similar sized teams with HMGs rather than LMGs. One company HQ and 81mm support off map. Thus, I want to find positions for typically 3-4 firing positions near each other for command purposes, and to find at least 3 such and perhaps 4. They need to interlock their threat cones, and not readily be "rolled" by expected superior enemy numbers, especially at SMG ranges. That means avoiding straight up everyone sees each other firefights between similar building cover at 80 yards or less especially, and I'd prefer 150 yard engagement ranges as much as possible, to maximize the edge of an MG42 over an PPsH. This is all one problem, "C", because joint positions for 4 shooters at a time seem to conflict, on this map, with avoiding front windows of wooden buildings right along the river. Obviously I still need to contest passage of the river, because otherwise numbers and SMGs in town fighting are strong, and their need to expose themselves at bottlenecks is my strongest single card.
Any substantive comments on any or all of the above, welcome. "It always just works on fine for me", not welcome.