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TheForwardObserver

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Everything posted by TheForwardObserver

  1. TheForwardObserver
    I seem to recall a fair amount of lying, propaganda, and blind patriotism in the lead-up to the Iraq War. I was surrounded by it. I can also recall an extremely marginalized resistance.
  2. TheForwardObserver
    I understand completely.
  3. TheForwardObserver
    @Rustman1980 Nice. Glad I'm not the only one making physical maps for the game, with MGRS coordinates overlayed etc.
  4. TheForwardObserver
    @Sublime Sorry, sometimes I'm unclear. Yes. Battery quality has an impact on the speed of the delivery of the fire support. If you want to see for yourself, grab 1 elite FO, and 4 platoons of arty. Make 2 of them elite, and 2 of them conscript. Load the game. Read the support times. Furthermore to understand the bit I mentioned about the support times dropping; Set up precision missions with those 4 platoons. Begin the match. Immediately look at the Howitzer platoons. Are the new times reflected the same as they were at the beginning of the game? They should be shorter. The elite platoons should be uber short, and the conscript platoons should be a bit longer than uber short. As for whether battery quality has an impact on accuracy of the guns, I don't know, I've been too wrapped up since the beginning on taking quality units in order to maximize speed of delivery that I have neglected to properly analyze the effects of poor quality units.
  5. TheForwardObserver
    @Sublime You're correct in suggesting that we are missing some factors or variables or are running with an incomplete hyphothesis. I just did a test. One conscript FO and 5 conscript Paladin Batteries. They all showed 8 minutes at setup. After firing their initial barrage of Excalibur rounds they all changed to 3 minutes. This behavior is normal but not sure about the how, what or why. So what I do know is that using elite FOs and elite support units will guarantee your times are on the short end of the spectrum.
  6. TheForwardObserver
    As an aside and extension of my previous comment, overall I've been impressed with how the game handles Fire Support, and I've re-iterated that several times since day one here (well first I asked a modding question, but nearly day one!). The game seeks to provide a realistic fire support experience without training or placing an FO behind you constantly urging you to convert your fire missions into dramatic acts of self-expression through performance art, and on this matter I think it succeeds. The small tweaks I would make concern FIST/FO equipment, off-map support ammo counts, and to some extent the effects of some munitions/fuzes. If I were to rate which of those I consider the most important to me it'd be the FIST/FO equipment, just because as it stands they don't have quality all-weather day/night capabilities and are therefore rendered unable to actually see as well as or for that matter operate with a good degree of independence from their maneuver units when necessary.
  7. TheForwardObserver
    John IRL if calling an Adjust Fire mission you; you watch for the burst, mark spottings, convert those spottings to adjustments, then submit over the radio/digitally. If you can't see the burst but can hear the burst you report the round as Unobserved. If the round lands somewhere over the rainbow and you can neither see nor hear the burst you report the round as lost. You may submit adjustments to rounds that are unobserved based upon your knowledge of the situation. Lost rounds are not adjusted. So in the sense that spotters should be adjusting burst, rather than needing a view of an action square, and are able to infer adjustments based sometimes on the sound of unobserved rounds you are correct. That being said I don't have any criticisms of the game on this particular point and don't have a good enough understanding of what's happening under the hood to study the issue and make suggestions.
  8. TheForwardObserver
    Eliminated the sniper section and added sniper teams to the scout teams.
  9. TheForwardObserver
    @Jammersix I won't necessarily end up using more Fire Support personnel than I'd otherwise have because I'll strip FOs and FISTs from where I won't need them.
  10. TheForwardObserver
    My Scout Platoon configured for overwatch looks like this; If they need to go anywhere they'll be travelling via brown cadillacs. (saf is small arms fire, tws is thermal weapon sight)
  11. TheForwardObserver
    I like to leave Barrett equipped units in overwatch, just outside of effective enemy SAF range co-located with a FIST and at least one small team with a TWS Acog. Usually bring three of these overwatch units built from the Scout platoon. I don't usually need the type of forward reconnaissance that would warrant sending scout formations in front of my advance on their own.
  12. TheForwardObserver
    --And I've mentioned this before, but it was a while back-- Typically when you add off-map support units those units are unable to accommodate individual units being added to them (example, adding a FIST to an arty platoon). The one exception I've found is in the Btln Task Force Formations. If you add personnel to the Arty Battery at the bottom you will notice significant support time improvements amongst non-FIST personnel. For example, I just did this, and when the game began my infantry squads were rating 5 minute support times for the howitzers. I used the FIST I attached to my Btln TF Btry to set up 2 Excalibur missions to be fired once the game begins. Clicked start, and now my infantry squads are rating 2 minute support times.
  13. TheForwardObserver
    Appreciate the discussion gents, I've been away with limited reception, but I've been following everything that's been said. The various FIST/FO configurations/where they're placed/how they're used are particularly interesting to me as are the rhyme and reasons. I see a fair amount of drones are used in tandem with FIST/FOs. Obviously wise and compensates for the FOs not having proper observation gear-- though I do wonder if this results in the lion's share of fire missions (post initial barrage) going to interdiction of targets behind the enemy's forward line of troops.
  14. TheForwardObserver
    I'm curious how people arrange their Fire Support personnel and who acts as (or ends up acting as) their primary observers. I've played around with this loads myself. What support times do you shoot for/settle for? Do you send your FOs forward, independently of their maneuver units, do you keep them to the rear of their maneuver elements, or are they trail hip on your HQ units? What factors and lessons affect your choices? What problems do you encounter?
  15. TheForwardObserver
    Kind of reminds me of growing up with six siblings.
  16. TheForwardObserver
    Bahahahahaha Ok I don't know why the cave painter that made this marked enemy on only a few of the 'threats' or why he chose the arrangement he did, but I think we're safe assuming they're all enemy, and what's being depicted is the multitude of threats an Abrams faces-- excluding friendly fire. Not my optimal place to battle. I like to be free to employ a wide range of survivability techniques.
  17. TheForwardObserver
    lol
  18. TheForwardObserver
    Looks like a sort of fun that would be too much for me maybe
  19. TheForwardObserver
    @kinophileI've seen the evidence of all sorts of arty being used in Ukraine, plenty of footage of 2S3s and Grads, but rocket delivered ICM and thermobaric munitions for armor are probably the munitions of choice for Russian and Ukrainian FOs or at least they were during the worst of it. The MLRS got its rep as a grid square destroyer from the use of ICM and DPICM which are basically cluster munitions, so your coverage is greater than with HE.
  20. TheForwardObserver
    @antaress73 Afghanistan began as a light fight, and those numbers have significantly changed as a result of the change in operations there. Most of the early deploying units elected to forgo the logistical burden of artillery.
  21. TheForwardObserver
    @panzersaurkrautwerfer Some good case studies on the level of support you should expect when you someday become BC would be the 3rd ID movement north in '03, and of course Phantom Fury November 2004. Before deciding to bypass Nasiriyah, 3rd ID came under Iraqi artillery fire from the east bank, and fired 73 missions, and 1,100 rounds in 2 hours. In '04 6,000 rounds of 155 were fired in the first ten days of Phantom Fury. As a comparison to those large volumes, by 2006 we'd fired 6,000 rounds in Afghanistan total. Regarding your distrust of Arty, rightfully so. I've had VT lobbed at my own track before. End of the day those mistakes can be mitigated by Fisters that are paying attention. As a general rule, get opinions from your FSNCOs, and if they don't have answers demand that they acquire them. FSOs are slimey shammers and will always take the path of least resistance, and their lack of experience is only ever surpassed by their laziness.
  22. TheForwardObserver
    @antaress73 To really make sense of those STANAG 4569 figures you'd need to know what 4569 levels the various components of the Abrams are rated for. I fully encourage this research. Those numbers are like body armor threat level ratings. Being rated at a level implies a 90% crew survivability against that particular threat. @panzersaurkrautwerfer I agree with everything you said with the exception of the level of support and volume you might be able to expect. You've described what specifically sounds like a training situation with a modest amount of support for pre-planned targets and battlefield shaping provided by 1 unit in a general support capacity.
  23. TheForwardObserver
    Truth they are beasts, but it would be loads of fun though to see how they chose to implement MLRS etc if they did make it available. Most of my games involve gentlemen's agreements anyways. @Codename Duchess On CAS I think we may share some frustrations.
  24. TheForwardObserver
    Same. I have considerably better success with arty against the Russian vehicles. It wasn't until I started playing blue v blue that the resilience of the Abrams to arty became apparent.
  25. TheForwardObserver
    From an Artillery perspective firing HE/VT at Abrams tanks would be a waste of ammo and if you didn't specifically request VT but you did provide a Target Description that mentions the armor, the FDC would send you HE/Q (and probably let the Btln FSO know that he should be calling the ALO or DIVARTY pronto). Depending on the volume of the VT and how the arty hits, there are systems that should sustain damage, and obviously repeated hits will have a residual effect, but you'd need surprise and massed fire otherwise the Abrams crew'll scoot before the effective stuff hits. You can always get lucky. End of the day VT is most effective against man flesh. American Artillery has been re-organizing and re-stocking to deal with armor over the past few years, as our ability to undertake this mission has somewhat atrophied due to the unique demands of a decade and a half of American Adventurism.
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