domfluff

Inspired by this, I set up a near best-case scenario against the AI to play around with panzergrenadiers in detail. Using CMRT, a platoon of halftracks against a Soviet rifle platoon, with a couple of HMG's, on an Open map.

The halftracks, perhaps unsurprisingly, dominated. I did find that they were best used buttoned up, minimising gunner exposure time (I did lose two gunners, but one was due to wandering into SMG range, and the other from some sneaky enfilade fire, so I'd be happy claiming both as my fault). Keeping the halftrack's nose pointing towards the enemy made them pretty much invulnerable. The tighter cone of incoming fire was evident, alongside the immediate reaction times of the enemy, but it didn't make a huge amount of difference.

Mostly the engagement was from 300-500m away, and the three HMG and one sdkfz/17 - the 2cm variant. This has all-around armour protection for the gunner, and was extremely effective.

"Assault" orders from the back of the halftrack are interesting - they'll all jump out, and half of them will take up positions next to the vehicle, whilst the other half sprint forward. That's probably the best way to dismount in general.

Knowing that there were not AT weapons on the other side made bolder moves possible. Charging directly in spraying fire would still have been daft, but this is probably the best I've ever seen halftracks operate.
 

Light infantry in open air positions without top cover of any kind. 
Soft targets in minor entrenchments, small structures, and heavy weapons. HE rounds stand a good chance to wreck crewed weapons. 
Most targets lighter than a tank. Very profitable caliber when used against weapon crews and makes short work of most structures. 
Anything. A really ubiquitous caliber for the most part that makes sense against all targets. Good for use in suppression or destructive fires. Airbursting rounds will cause casualties over a wide area. 
Destructive. Even heavy armor should proceed with caution. Will level most structures and wipe out entrenchments with ease. 
See above in most cases. 
Grid square removal. In the old days this caliber was the lighter end of siege guns and naval artillery. I actually think this range starts to become counter productive at the tactical level. The rounds are so dangerous that your own men need to keep well away from them. Best used against map rear areas. 
Angles of fire. Also organization. Mortars are almost always left to the infantry although sometimes heavier mortars will be Division or Corp assets. Field guns trace their lineage back to the age of cannon and musket, being useful in both indirect and direct fire roles. Few exist today. They were usually lighter guns, prioritizing mobility over power but these descriptors varied widely by Army. Howitzers are typically large guns intended for destructive, indirect fire into and behind enemy positions. In the old days there used to be Siege Artillery too and it was used quite frequently up into the Second World War. Aircraft and nuclear weapons took over that job and now precision munitions are replacing both of them too. 

And 3) it is executed before about 1942

Just brought up the Scenario editor in CMBS, to look at the US artillery for comparison:

Comparing batteries of three guns apiece, the ammo counts are:

155mm Self Propelled (Paladin) 
117 HE
12 Excaliber (Precision guided)
12 WP (Smoke)
Call-in time for Typical FO on foot: 4 minutes

155mm 
180 HE
12 Excaliber
18 WP
Call-in time: 5 minutes

105mm
105 HE
30 WP
Call-in time: 5 minutes

60 and 81mm mortars come in pairs, and each pair has:
100 HE
8 WP
Call-in time: 3 minutes

120mm mortars have:
50 HE
XM395 (Guided) 8
6 WP
Call-in time: 4 minutes

The increase in smoke rounds for the 105mm is interesting, although obviously the 155mm WP rounds will have a larger footprint.

Doing the same test with a FO mounted in an M1200 Armored Knight shaved off one minute on each call-in time (so Paladins were 3 minutes, etc.), with the exception of the 81mm mortars, which remained at 3 minutes.

I forget what the equivalent vehicles are in CMSF, but they're in there, and have a similar effect.


Oh, also worth mentioning Danger Close - smaller calibre rounds are easier to use closer to your own dudes, without taking hits.

Blackmoria's answer, unsurprisingly, is the one to pay attention to.

Some more points and an illustration:

Mortar vs. Howitzer vs. Field Gun - the interesting thing is where they overlap.

The main practical difference, in all CM games, is how organic each asset is. In WW2 titles, US infantry have 60mm mortars at the Platoon level - this means they are available for the platoon leader to call down, and that they are going to be quick to respond to changing circumstances. 81mm mortars exist at the Company level, and most formations attach their artillery at higher levels than that, and often these larger assets are only available to Forward Observers. 

In CMBS (and to a less extent CMSF, but we'll have to see exactly how this is modelled in CMSF 2) , the modern US infantry rifle platoon can have embedded Forward Observers, and may also have access to small drones. The rifle company also typically has 120mm mortars, which are gettng to the point where they're no longer really "miniature artillery", since they can do some real damage. It's also notable that the US 155mm and 120mm mortars both have a limited amount of precision-guided rounds, which allow you to call in "precision" missions. In the modern titles, Forward Observers often have dedicated vehicles, which cut down their response time even further.

Blackmoria's answer, unsurprisingly, is the one to pay attention to.

Some more points and an illustration:

Mortar vs. Howitzer vs. Field Gun - the interesting thing is where they overlap.

The main practical difference, in all CM games, is how organic each asset is. In WW2 titles, US infantry have 60mm mortars at the Platoon level - this means they are available for the platoon leader to call down, and that they are going to be quick to respond to changing circumstances. 81mm mortars exist at the Company level, and most formations attach their artillery at higher levels than that, and often these larger assets are only available to Forward Observers. 

In CMBS (and to a less extent CMSF, but we'll have to see exactly how this is modelled in CMSF 2) , the modern US infantry rifle platoon can have embedded Forward Observers, and may also have access to small drones. The rifle company also typically has 120mm mortars, which are gettng to the point where they're no longer really "miniature artillery", since they can do some real damage. It's also notable that the US 155mm and 120mm mortars both have a limited amount of precision-guided rounds, which allow you to call in "precision" missions. In the modern titles, Forward Observers often have dedicated vehicles, which cut down their response time even further.

Blackmoria's answer, unsurprisingly, is the one to pay attention to.

Some more points and an illustration:

Mortar vs. Howitzer vs. Field Gun - the interesting thing is where they overlap.

The main practical difference, in all CM games, is how organic each asset is. In WW2 titles, US infantry have 60mm mortars at the Platoon level - this means they are available for the platoon leader to call down, and that they are going to be quick to respond to changing circumstances. 81mm mortars exist at the Company level, and most formations attach their artillery at higher levels than that, and often these larger assets are only available to Forward Observers. 

In CMBS (and to a less extent CMSF, but we'll have to see exactly how this is modelled in CMSF 2) , the modern US infantry rifle platoon can have embedded Forward Observers, and may also have access to small drones. The rifle company also typically has 120mm mortars, which are gettng to the point where they're no longer really "miniature artillery", since they can do some real damage. It's also notable that the US 155mm and 120mm mortars both have a limited amount of precision-guided rounds, which allow you to call in "precision" missions. In the modern titles, Forward Observers often have dedicated vehicles, which cut down their response time even further.

Blackmoria's answer, unsurprisingly, is the one to pay attention to.

Some more points and an illustration:

Mortar vs. Howitzer vs. Field Gun - the interesting thing is where they overlap.

The main practical difference, in all CM games, is how organic each asset is. In WW2 titles, US infantry have 60mm mortars at the Platoon level - this means they are available for the platoon leader to call down, and that they are going to be quick to respond to changing circumstances. 81mm mortars exist at the Company level, and most formations attach their artillery at higher levels than that, and often these larger assets are only available to Forward Observers. 

In CMBS (and to a less extent CMSF, but we'll have to see exactly how this is modelled in CMSF 2) , the modern US infantry rifle platoon can have embedded Forward Observers, and may also have access to small drones. The rifle company also typically has 120mm mortars, which are gettng to the point where they're no longer really "miniature artillery", since they can do some real damage. It's also notable that the US 155mm and 120mm mortars both have a limited amount of precision-guided rounds, which allow you to call in "precision" missions. In the modern titles, Forward Observers often have dedicated vehicles, which cut down their response time even further.

Blackmoria's answer, unsurprisingly, is the one to pay attention to.

Some more points and an illustration:

Mortar vs. Howitzer vs. Field Gun - the interesting thing is where they overlap.

The main practical difference, in all CM games, is how organic each asset is. In WW2 titles, US infantry have 60mm mortars at the Platoon level - this means they are available for the platoon leader to call down, and that they are going to be quick to respond to changing circumstances. 81mm mortars exist at the Company level, and most formations attach their artillery at higher levels than that, and often these larger assets are only available to Forward Observers. 

In CMBS (and to a less extent CMSF, but we'll have to see exactly how this is modelled in CMSF 2) , the modern US infantry rifle platoon can have embedded Forward Observers, and may also have access to small drones. The rifle company also typically has 120mm mortars, which are gettng to the point where they're no longer really "miniature artillery", since they can do some real damage. It's also notable that the US 155mm and 120mm mortars both have a limited amount of precision-guided rounds, which allow you to call in "precision" missions. In the modern titles, Forward Observers often have dedicated vehicles, which cut down their response time even further.

As a ex-artillery officer, here are the principal differences between the types of platforms.
Mortars are high angle only and are incapable of direct fire.  Given an equal caliber, a mortar will have a higher rate of fire than a howitzer or a field gun.  Mortars (except for the very largest) can be broken down and man packed or carried by improvised transport (like the bed of a pickup truck).  For getting directly behind tall intervening terrain with fire, they are a preferred weapon.  Most effective against infantry, limited effectiveness against vehicles, emplacements and buildings.   Lethality inceases with caliber but portabillity/mobility decreases.
Howitzers are capable of direct fire, indirect fire and high angle fire.  They are either towed or self propelled.  Can get really big calibers.  Very effective against infantry, limited against vehicles and emplacements.  Preferred weapon of choice of you don't have airpower and want to level a position, a building or structure.  Biggest variety of ammuntion type - illumination, Smoke - Base Ejecting, Smoke - WP, Cannister (anti-infantry direct fire),HE, ICM, DPICM,  and smart munitions and variable time and time fused ammunition.
Field Guns are direct fire weapons and in a pinch, can do low angle indirect fire, limiting their range and usefulness.  A anti-tank gun is a example of a specialized field gun, for example.  Can get to big calibers like howitzers and are either towed or self propelled.  Not a lot of field guns are made anymore due to their limitations as tanks have largely taken over the roles the field guns used to provide.
In general, the larger the caliber, the bigger the lethal zone.  The larger the round, the smaller the CEP (Circular Error Probable) footprint - a fancy way of saying that if you want to hit a point target, you get the biggest caliber you can get as the round is more stable in the air and less affect by meterological and has a smaller CEP footprint.
The larger the caliber, the more destructive it is to vehicles and structures and emplacements.  Bigger is better.
Call or response times are not weapon dependent.  They are determined by the communications capability and doctrines of the C3 systems used by the army in question.  Lighter weapons like small mortars can be set up quickly and torn down quickly but once emplaced, once a call for fire goes out, it is the C3 systems, crew training and observer training that determine how fast you see a round on the ground.
Combat Mission games try to simulate artillery systems and capability.  Why does it take longer to get a 155mm round on the ground verses a 80mm mortar round base on what I stated above?   The delay is to simulate the fact that mortars are closer to the enemy than howitzer systems and to reflect time of flight realities.  For example,  most of the time, a mortar 1 km from the enemy will tend to have a round on the ground sooner than a 155mm howtizer shooting from 7 km away. And the chain of command / communication issues are simulated as well.  A US 155mm is not inherently faster than a Soviet built 152mm yet in game, the US player will get fire for effect well before the Syrian player will.  This is doctrine and C3I being simulated in game.  So the bigger delay in response time is coded into the game to 'simulate' that.
Hope that answers your questions.

Speculating, but I wonder if it depends:

1) Which side of the building it's on

2) Which orientation the building is in

3) What type of building the texture is on

That seems like it would be fairly testable, and might be down to offset errors (flipping a bit somewhere, which might not even be noticable if the vanilla textures were symmetric)

If Combat Mission has taught me nothing else, it's that a lack of patience leads to a lot of dead pixeltruppen.

Each time you F5, another digital chap eats it from overly-friendly mortar fire.

If Combat Mission has taught me nothing else, it's that a lack of patience leads to a lot of dead pixeltruppen.

Each time you F5, another digital chap eats it from overly-friendly mortar fire.

The issue with CM is not to do with controlling the game, issuing orders etc. The UI isn't the greatest, but it's far from the worst, so in terms of actually playing the thing there isn't much to get to grips with.
Learning the capabilities of the weapons and units is a decently long study, but the manual and/or wikipedia will help a lot, and whilst this will help this is not required up front.
Tactically, there are plenty of resources for how to manage things on this scale - Bil's Battle Drill blog was eye-opening, but there are tons of youtube videos which illustrate the same kind of planning that's required - but again, that's really a guide to how to do this *well*, rather than how to play at all.
 
The actual difficulty with CM is that it's a harsh and unforgiving sim - depending on the scenario, a single mistake can set you back a lot.
What really compounds this is the length of the feedback loop - CM scenarios tend towards the long side (even short ones will usually take a couple of hours of actual-time to play out minutes of game time), so it can take a long time to learn from mistakes.
Liberal use of the save button can help, but not if the mistake happened significantly earlier in the game, and the thought of reloading a real-hour worth of time can be demoralising.
 
One of the advantages of Shock Force over some later titles (Red Thunder in particular) is that there are a lot of scenarios with a comparatively small number of (US) units, even in larger battles. That makes CMSF one of the better titles to learn with, alongside CMBN.

Here ya go - the original demo scenario for CMBS Rolling Thunder as on the demo.
Now on TSDIII 
Nice wee opportunity to thank @Bootie's fine efforts in running and maintaining this facility.
Grand the ORIGINAL and ONLY Rolling Thunder as played on the demo.
http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/uncategorized/cmbs-rolling-thunder/
 

Here ya go - the original demo scenario for CMBS Rolling Thunder as on the demo.
Now on TSDIII 
Grab the ORIGINAL and ONLY Rolling Thunder as played on the demo.
http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/uncategorized/cmbs-rolling-thunder/

Just to confirm, as I'm the original author, this is not the original scenario. To reiterate the demo version is Rolling Thunder (which is what the OP is discussing), the (my) original version of that, which I could have sworn was on the original scenario depot, is Rolling Thunder_v1. The one you have lined to @IanL is 'a' version someone else has done, based on my orginal, and is NOT the one the OP is discussing.
I'll upload the (my) original as used for the demo to TSDIII on Thursday (I'm away from my PC just now) as a standalone scenario.
Cheery!
EDIT to add
It is on the FGM site http://www.theblitz.org/scenarios/combat-mission-black-sea/rolling-thunder/b-15.htm?action=scenario&id=11869 This is the ORIGINAL as used in the CMBS demo.
For background, my original thread re the scenario (note the dropbox and repository links no longer work)
From this thread, it was originally uploaded to the repository but does not appear to have migrated over to TSDIII, which, as I said I'll fix tomorrow (Thursday)

Once you've contributed half as much to CM as @Combatintman has, we might start taking your posts half as seriously. 
Until then.....  

They can weight-wise, but in games they don't (I think it's 75 rounds per carbine vs. 104 per Garand), I assume because those who carry carbines aren't expected to use it much. I know in the game I see SMG rounds bouncing off buildings more than rifle rounds do, so I assume that would apply to carbines as well?

Setting up two platoons to "Typical" in the Editor -

The Infantry Platoon consists of:

39 dudes w/
3x Thompsons
3x BAR
3x M7 Rifle Grenades
2x Bazookas
3x AT Grenades
2x Carbines
+Rifles

Each 12 man squad (something close to)
1620 .30 cal rounds
180 .45 cal rounds
16 Grenades
3 66mm HE


The Straggler section consists of:
51 dudes w/
4x Thompsons
10x Carbines
+Rifles

Each 12 man squad (something close to)
1056 .30 cal
180 .45 cal
150 .30 cal Carbine
12 Grenades

Soft factors were generated identically in this test.

Setting this to "Excellent" gave me two BARs on this test, obviously there's a die roll involved here for all of this, but I think you usually won't get BARs.

Speculating, but I wonder if "Typical" is lower than "Average" for Straggler sections?

Obviously there are the aforementioned differences up the org chart as well. They're definitely a weaker formation, and very different to the mainline infantry.

Straggler sections tend not to have BAR's or other specialist equipment (they don't get bazookas, BAR, rifle grenades, etc.), and have a mix of Garands and M1 Carbines. Typical settings seem to give them lower motivation and possibly lower leadership, although I'm not confident about that one. They also have fewer grenades and less ammunition per soldier.

Infantry battalions also have integrated AT, Engineers, Jeep transport , etc. Having access to integrated Jeep transports will mean access to more ammunition.

The infantry HMG's are part of the Weapons company, along with the 81mm mortars, which the Straggler formations also don't have access to.

With how comms work in the game, having weapons integrated into your command structure is more effective than attaching them ad hoc.

With any points-buy system, there's always a possibility that you can break things by min-maxing, picking and choosing elements from A or B to produce something ahistorical, that's just the nature of the beast, but the main thing is that these are worse units, and ones you can't create in the editor.

Straggler sections tend not to have BAR's or other specialist equipment (they don't get bazookas, BAR, rifle grenades, etc.), and have a mix of Garands and M1 Carbines. Typical settings seem to give them lower motivation and possibly lower leadership, although I'm not confident about that one. They also have fewer grenades and less ammunition per soldier.

Infantry battalions also have integrated AT, Engineers, Jeep transport , etc. Having access to integrated Jeep transports will mean access to more ammunition.

The infantry HMG's are part of the Weapons company, along with the 81mm mortars, which the Straggler formations also don't have access to.

With how comms work in the game, having weapons integrated into your command structure is more effective than attaching them ad hoc.

With any points-buy system, there's always a possibility that you can break things by min-maxing, picking and choosing elements from A or B to produce something ahistorical, that's just the nature of the beast, but the main thing is that these are worse units, and ones you can't create in the editor.

You could check the forum four times a day.

You could check the forum four times a day.

Is there actually any reason why the pre-planned artillery can't be "x minutes", rather than 5/10/15 - having "danger turns" seems incredibly gamey, given the information you can derive from it.