Brixia Mortars - Realistically Portrayed In Game?

[slysniper]

poesel71 and BFC,

Occasionally, in this case after many hours of digging and painstakingly poring through various reports, I catch a huge break. Here is a most remarkable distillation of War Office (WO) weapon effectiveness studies, compiled by our own John D. Salt. Believe you'll find the Incapacitation Probability figures for a standing man at 200 and 400 yards in both LA (Low Angle) and HA (High Angle) fire downright shocking. I sure did! WO 291/157 Performance of 2-in Mortar (p. 9). This doc is full of fabulous effectiveness data on direct fire and indirect fire weapons.

http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/ww2eff2.pdf

Regards,

John Kettler

I am not sure if I am understanding the information correctly, but from what I see the odds of getting a direct hit with the 2" mortar seem pretty low.

But some of the other data shows that when a hit or close hit is adcheived, looks like men are getting wounded, not just hiding. but that also does not appear to take into account if they would be prone at the time.

[slysniper]

Strangely enough, calling people fan boys rather than addressing the points they raise doesn't do much for game development either.

I think the problems with light mortars are two-fold:

1. The bug mentioned whereby all area target orders subsequent to the first one dispense with the need for spotting rounds.

2. The action spot system means that infantry-even in split teams- are less dispersed than they probably would have been in rl (although this might not be the case depending on their level of training, terrain type etc...).

Hopefully the 1st will be addressed and fixed by bf sooner rather than later but I think we'll just have to live with the effects of the 2nd point (as we do with other weapons systems) for the foreseeable future. I think the suggestion of making tweaks to the TacAI whereby personnel under mortar fire would crawl into cover is probably going to be problematic as there will likely be instances where your men actually crawl into a more exposed position. Also, I for one would be fairly irritated if all the enemy had to do was pop a couple of mortar rounds in th vicinity of one of my fire teams to get them to abandon their position.

The general feeling amongst posters seems to be that light mortars are just too potent. I recently found an article discussing light mortars online. While the article didn't provide any of the technical details I was looking for, it certainly conveys the impression that light mortars are indeed very potent and deadly weapons in RL. Here are a couple of quotes from the article

Link here:

http://www.asianmilitaryreview.com/upload/200711272205571.pdf

Also, I believe the following clip demonstrates just how rapidly light mortar fire can be adjusted onto a target. WARNING while there is no gorrey imagery in the following clip, some people may still find it disturbing.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=2b1_1312498613

Disclaimer: I cannot definatively say that the explosions seen in the clip are the results of light mortar fire but the 'splashes' do appear to be consistent with those from a light mortar. Also, the lack of smoke and dust clouds prior to the initial two explosions do seem to indicate that these are the initial spotting rounds although it is possible that the effects from prior rounds may not have been caught on camera.

Now, I find this as somewhat enlightening.

Notice that after the hit, you will again hear gun fire coming from this group of men. So, not everyone was wounded. ALSO, ONCE THE HIT IS OBTAINED, WHY WOULD THERE NOT BE ADDITIONAL DIRECT HITS FOLLOWING IT.

It reminds me of another problem the mortar crew has, that is many times from their vantage point they would have a hard time knowing if they are hitting on target or not. Not like the in game ability to hit and then for sure drop every round after that on target.

In a real world situation, you are trying to see through the dust and debrie you are creating, if the target is behind cover like a wall or hedge and you are dropping rounds behind it. It would be very hard to judge whether you are 2meters or 10 meters behind it as to where your rounds are landing.

All I know is , I wonder if them guys think it is a good tactic to move and relocate before they are zeroid in on now. From what I saw, they had time to bug before that round came, but they were firm and steady.

I would move down the bank, relocate and start firing again if a target reveals itself. Force the enemy mortar to try to pinpoint me at the new spot.

I just heard it called, whacking the Mole recently. The best defence is to never let the enmy lock in on you. Bug and relocate and pop up from a new position. Only fools fire away from a known location. You only do that stuff if you are trying to win firepower supremacy. Not something that is going to happen often fighting gurrilla tactics.

[akd]

poesel71 and BFC,

Occasionally, in this case after many hours of digging and painstakingly poring through various reports, I catch a huge break. Here is a most remarkable distillation of War Office (WO) weapon effectiveness studies, compiled by our own John D. Salt. Believe you'll find the Incapacitation Probability figures for a standing man at 200 and 400 yards in both LA (Low Angle) and HA (High Angle) fire downright shocking. I sure did! WO 291/157 Performance of 2-in Mortar (p. 9). This doc is full of fabulous effectiveness data on direct fire and indirect fire weapons.

http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/ww2eff2.pdf

Regards,

John Kettler

Everyone at BFC and most here have been aware of Salt's collection of WO reports for a long time. Has been posted here many times.

2-inch mortar effectiveness report is difficult to compare to the game. It does not state if fire is at a known range and whether the total rounds required to achieve a hit include those fired for adjustment. Also, you cannot force pixeltruppen to stay standing in open ground, so very difficult to test regardless.

[black_prince]

TBH I don't think you can draw much in the way of hard and fast conclusions from the clip. However, note that after the cameraman is injured there are not only no further direct hits but there are no further audible mortar rounds impacting at all. It seems to me that it is more likely that the mortar team stopped firing for some reason (shoot and scoot, ammo conservation, thought the target had been suppressed/destroyed etc...) rather than that the folowing rounds missed by such a great distance as to be entirely inaudible.

Also, prior to the mortar strike which injures the cameraman, there are only two of the men seen in the video that actually fire their weapons-the guy with the mg and another man who fires a couple of rounds from his ak before taking cover when the initial mortars land nearby. However, the succession of single shots which can be heard after the mortar strike can be heard during the early part of the video as well. This leads me to the conclusion that this fire was actually coming from elsewhere. Probably only a little further along the bank but not in the immediate vicinity of the mortar strike.

[slysniper]

TBH I don't think you can draw much in the way of hard and fast conclusions from the clip. However, note that after the cameraman is injured there are not only no further direct hits but there are no further audible mortar rounds impacting at all. It seems to me that it is more likely that the mortar team stopped firing for some reason (shoot and scoot, ammo conservation, thought the target had been suppressed/destroyed etc...) rather than that the folowing rounds missed by such a great distance as to be entirely inaudible.

Also, prior to the mortar strike which injures the cameraman, there are only two of the men seen in the video that actually fire their weapons-the guy with the mg and another man who fires a couple of rounds from his ak before taking cover when the initial mortars land nearby. However, the succession of single shots which can be heard after the mortar strike can be heard during the early part of the video as well. This leads me to the conclusion that this fire was actually coming from elsewhere. Probably only a little further along the bank but not in the immediate vicinity of the mortar strike.

VERY POSSIBLE.

Makes sence as to why no more rounds are heard. The mortar crew likely saw what appears to be a good hit, whick likely did take out the guys firing over the bank. They saw no more fire and ceased. As for the continued firing. yes it might be others we do not see in the footage.

Again it does show a point that I tried to explain before. Mortar crews will likely conserve their ammo because of limited supplies. Only if the target was really killing friendly units and causing hell would I see a crew droping 5-10 rounds on target to make sure it was eliminated for good.

It is just one aspect of the game that just is not seeming right.

The fixes should likely be,

First: somehow make it harder to lock on target and a little more dispersion than even the present adjusted spread.

Second: less rounds fired per minute unless given a command to do so, they tried fixing this because many did not want to see all their rounds used in a minute of wego anyway. But the command does not work well.

there should be a max rate fire button and a slow rate button. or just a option to select how many rounds are fired this turn.

Maybe if the hits were not so quick to be dead on, less likely to be hit with 5 rounds within 30 seconds. Then maybe the defence could react, or if not react at least hide and ride out the storm if at least some of the rounds were landing outside the 3 meters that they do at the moment.

As for what they do when they hit, I think that seems pretty realistic, I really do not think the game is all that flawed there.

What we really need though is a grog that actually has used the weapon in combat, they might be the best source as to what is possible with the weapon and what to expect. Since much of this issue is opinions anyway, someone has to have some actual working knowledge out there in the world.

I remember watching our weapons mortar teams firing only once in any field practices. And to be truthful, I remember very little as to what they did.

It was a hill in the distance, they did a general bombing of where the trench line was and I remember a few rounds landing around the trench, maybe some went in. but that the dirt and dust began making it hard to tell where many of the impacts were going. Then they smoked the target which they shifted the landing area so the smoke would drift over the objective., with that they intentionally spread the impact area. so still cannot say what they are capable of.

[womble]

Second: less rounds fired per minute unless given a command to do so, they tried fixing this because many did not want to see all their rounds used in a minute of wego anyway. But the command does not work well.

there should be a max rate fire button and a slow rate button. or just a option to select how many rounds are fired this turn.

Works fine for me. Target gives max rate of fire: 4-5 rounds, a quick fiddle with the sight, another 4 rounds. Probably 10-12 rpm. Target Light makes the team fire after the previous round has impacted, giving RoF of about 3 per minute.

[Sublime]

Great idea. I personally think first the setup time bug absolutely has to be fixed. Also, the mortars not needing spotting rounds after ranging in on the first target absolutely has to be fixed.

After that, or simultaneously, I really think BFC needs to take a serious look at MG performance, at least for HMGs, and do something about the mortar issue. It seems we have an absolute consensus here. Of course, if it can be proved this is historically accurate then I think it should not be changed. Still, the fact is it does affect game play to a significant amount, and until its addressed in the meantime Ill just try (at least in QBs where I have an option) to reduce the amount of on map mortars with agreements with opponents, and also reduce the crew experience of armor as well...

[John Kettler]

poesel71 and akd,

Firing against a single standing man, represented by a suitable plywood target, a target which neither moves about, nor changes protection posture, gives a best case performance against a small point target. WO 291/157 shows that it takes 7 rounds, fired from 200 yards Low Angle, to get a 50% chance of incapacitating one man. From there, it's all downhill, requiring many more shots to get half or less of the 10% Incapacitation Probabiity listed for that best case.

Now, I grant that if one of these happens to land nearby, then there's a big problem, for the fragments can wound or kill over and area of 2060 square feet, per the Zuckerman tests cited in WO 291/128. Thus a hit on or near a crew served weapon is likely to result in one or more casualties and may well destroy the weapon as well. I leave it to someone else to determine what 2060 square feet translate to in terms of casualty radius. Any such shoot must also take into account the cover the target's in, and that makes a big difference, with artillery's performance being worse than mortars to begin with (mortar bombs have more explosive and thinner case walls than do artillery shells, resulting in dramatically better target effect) and decaying rapidly as cover gets better. This shows up in WO 291/139, which is all about cover states and their classes. Because the mortar trajectories are generally steeper than artillery's, the effects of cover are both less severe and more gradual in their onset.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ForwardObserver]

Works fine for me. Target gives max rate of fire: 4-5 rounds, a quick fiddle with the sight, another 4 rounds. Probably 10-12 rpm. Target Light makes the team fire after the previous round has impacted, giving RoF of about 3 per minute.

The target briefly command introduced by CMFI is a extremely welcome addition.

@black_prince: Thank you for the post. That was one very unfortunate cameraman.

[black_prince]

@ Forwardobserver: You're welcome.

Watching the video, it looks like he was standing while filming or standing but stooped over so maybe a mix of unfortunate and unwise. In case you didn't watch the video all the way through, you can see the guy's face at 00.55 and it looks like one of the lenses from his sunglasses has been damaged so he must have got some frag in or near his left eye. Nasty.

OTH he probably survived this particular encounter.

[c3k]

I'm NOT saying anything about accuracy, suppression, etc., etc. However, did the test to wound one man have JUST one silhouette there? If so, that may be a bit understated.

It is 10 times harder to hit one man in a given area than it is to hit 10 men in that same area. If they were all standing (simulating the moment before impact, at maximum exposure) when the round hit, then the one guy who lost a leg/arm/jaw or just got holed would tend to get everyone's attention. THAT could cause a bit of suppression...

Now, if the test mentioned above had 10 (or whatever number) of plywood mannequins (sp?), then ignore the above.

Ken

[Redwolf]

hey guys. recent discussions during my pbems have brought this up. The Brixia mortar is definitely the most effective Italian weapon I've used in the game so far.

How effective were they in real life? Were they popular with the troops? History? Grog references?

Of course I already am damned familiar with the discussions over mortar over-accuracy. Im well aware of the ranging BUG (at least I hope it is) that makes mortars even more lethal.

However Im sure all are aware also that roughly 70% of all the combat casualties in WW2 came from artillery and mortars. Just the devils advocate statement is all

If I could open the windows in this building I would jump out.

At least we just had a half-decent Earthquake, so there's hope something is going to put me out of my misery...

[John Kettler]

c3k,

Just one in that test. The link has other, larger scale tests against extended target arrays. Shoots were with 75mm, 25-pounder, and 105mm, against 81 targets. WO 291/113 Lethal Effect of Artillery Fire (p. 4). There are suppression studies in the same compilation.

http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/ww2eff2.pdf

Regards,

John Kettler

[Redwolf]

There is a perfectly fine way to ensure a 98% direct hit rate with a 2" mortar, btw.

[John Kettler]

Redwolf,

Would that be hitting the target over the head with the 2' mortar? If so, doesn't that count as close combat?

Regards,

John Kettler

[Sublime]

Redwolf, you just felt that too huh. strange.

anyways jump out the window why? I ask because you quoted my initial post...

[newlife]

Also, you cannot force pixeltruppen to stay standing in open ground, so very difficult to test regardless.

Not entirely true. I've been noticing this a bunch in the steep hills of CMFI that infantry looking towards the face of a steep hill appear to remain standing (apparently in order to see better). If you face them to the sides or down they take cover properly. But when looking towards the hill they have this daft notion that if they stand just a little taller they can see over.

So you could test first strike mortar so. (taking advantage of the bug) Have a mortar zero in on a set-up target. Then have the mortar target the actual test subject that is facing a hill.

It's not clear to me how much vertical displacement is modeled in the game with respect to artillery. I recently had 4 different soldiers in 4 different teams all in a drainage ditch (deep enough by my estimation to be a pretty good trench depth-wise if not width-wise) get hit by shell shrapnel over 60 meters away from what I guess was a 105mm shell. MANY more teams were closer and in the open but lying prone (and were not hit) whereas the guys in the ditch were standing due to this weird thing about standing facing a slope. So I'm guessing (not nearly enough evidence to state in either direction) that the game makes the short cut of not taking into account elevation with artillery, particularly with standing soldiers (who probably lose any micro-terrain bonus).

I guess you could theoretically track rounds hitting up or down the hill separately from those hitting on the same contour line as the target.

Mind you I'm not volunteering to run this test...

[sburke]

Redwolf,

Would that be hitting the target over the head with the 2' mortar? If so, doesn't that count as close combat?

Regards,

John Kettler

rotflamo That visual gave me a really good chuckle.

I want that in game!!!! Out of ammo, no problem - wonk!

[Redwolf]

Redwolf,

Would that be hitting the target over the head with the 2' mortar? If so, doesn't that count as close combat?

Regards,

John Kettler

Yeah, sneak up on the and whack them over the head with the mortar. Good work, John.

It's like what I've been told by a Bundeswehr NCO. The service pistol has 9 shots. 8 bullets and one throw.

[John Kettler]

Redwolf,

If you go back to the pistol effectiveness thread, I cited a case from the Vietnam War in which an officer shot through all his .45 ammo, then flung his heavy M1911 smack into an NVA soldier's face in a vicious night action. Whatever works!

Regards,

John Kettler

[vossiewulf1212]

Not entirely true. I've been noticing this a bunch in the steep hills of CMFI that infantry looking towards the face of a steep hill appear to remain standing (apparently in order to see better).

Ha, yeah I've seen that too and was befuddled as to why my guys were standing up, didn't make the connection of facing up a steep hill. Good find, that is indeed a problem as well.

The best way I have of demonstrating the problem with mortars is to pose this question: given a choice on attack in semi-open terrain that we mostly have in CMFI, would you take two full platoons of panzergrenadiers, which would mean 12 organic MG42s plus all the other rifles and grenades, or take three US spotters with six 60mm mortars?

Anyone in the real war would choose the former. In CMFI, I'd choose the latter in a heartbeat and be way more successful doing so.

Another question, does anyone else think infantry in general in CMx2 are way too vulnerable? I had tons of infantry-centric battles in CM1 that would involve long firefights with classic infantry maneuver, use two squads to pin and another to flank/assault. I haven't seen anything like that in CMBN or CMFI. Soldiers get wounded or dead very quickly in CMx2 and squads panic and stop listening to orders, firefights at anything less than like 500 yards begin and essentially end very very quickly.

Between that and the mortar problem, it (to me) makes infantry almost irrelevant and that's disappointing, because with a bit of tweaking these games could be really amazing.

Not to say CM1 was perfect, it had lots of problems too like AT guns being pointless because one nanosecond after they fired, every enemy armored vehicle within 50 miles had them spotted and targeted. Somewhere between CM1 and CMx2 is a very nearly perfect WW2 tactical sim, I just wonder if we'll ever find it.

[JasonC]

MikeyD - what is wrong with mortars in CMx2 is that are way, way too accurate. This is compounded by the way the game bunches up the men around action spots, but the underlying issue is that the action spot targeted by a light mortar is hit by that light mortar very rapidly and repeatedly, and therefore everyone on or right next to that action spot is rapidly made a casualty.

In the real deal in Normany, an outlier case of mortar effectiveness would be - a US rifle platoon advances into a small field between hedgerows that it does not know is registered for German 81mm mortars. While walking across the field, the Germans detect them and call a fire mission from 4 81mm mortars on that registration point, which continues for many minutes, firing in total something like 100 81mm mortar rounds. We are talking about 40 men lying prone in a field perhaps 80, perhaps 100 yards on a side, under that stonk.

And it is outlier effective because it causes 15 direct casualties, the platoon breaks completely as a result, and thinks of nothing but getting their wounded out of there, all day. The entire company pauses its operations while that is being accomplished, and advances much more cautiously thereafter.

The target area is 100 meters by 100 meters, not 4 meters by 4 meters. The firing weapons are 4 81mm mortars, not 1 60mm mortar. The fire mission lasts 10 minutes or more, not 60 to 120 seconds. The total shells fired reach 100, not 10 or 20. The target is exposed and goes to ground, unable to move under the barrage. A large number of men are exposed in the full barrage area. And the men hit as a result are less than 1 for every 5 shells fired, and around a third of the men present - not 1 for 1 and 75 to 100% of those present.

The suppression effect and lasting morale effect may even be undermodeled in CM (x2 or x1). But the accuracy, specifically in CMx2 and specifically in direct, observed shooting, and the resulting direct wounds caused per round fired, are way, way too high.

A real typical light mortar shoot would scatter the rounds in a 50 yard circle around the aim point, and that aim point itself would *not* be centered directly around the *intended* aim point or target location. It would instead be off that point, randomly, in a bubble 50 meters in diameter. And the shooters would not be able to tell where the aim point being off ended and the random scatter of the shells began. If they tried to chase their last error shot to shot, inside a 50 meter radius, they would *double* the total smeared-out, random scatter of the shells, not reduce it to zero.

This is why light mortars were area denial weapons, suppression of movement in the open weapons, and occasional ways of taking out single point targets if given enough time to eventually get a random direct hit on such a target. But not laser cannons, which is about what they are in CMx2.

This has been pointed out N times. It has not been corrected.

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Bravo Jason, well said.

Regards

KR

[John Kettler]

vossiewulf1212,

When I was researching sangars for a discussion in CMFI, I found a tutorial on building same on a slope. If you can find that, I believe it would be useful to your main discussion. What the sangar side of the matter boils down to, though, is that the rocks have to be stacked differently than when the sangar is on a level surface.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Redwolf]

So will there be a fix for this?

Isn't it 5 years? I can see that not everything can be fixed easily, especially around action spots and 3D tracking and whatnot, but it really doesn't sound that difficult to either get the accuracy down or give more cover to units not standing in the open.