Brixia Mortars - Realistically Portrayed In Game?

[akd]

B10 is suppression, not casualties and is concerned with distance from the burst, not area of coverage.

[dieseltaylor]

c3k - I cannot agree with your conclusion. Figure B10 has radius shown for clarity and is talking about suppression. Figure B5 is:

for planning purposes, each mortar HE round is considered to have a circular lethal bursting area

[akd]

Unless I'm looking at that wrong I think that is the diameter of the area of effect, not the radius. So the radius would actually be 10 meters.

In my testing I saw prone men regularly hit at much longer ranges.

I hope it is clear that the lethal area/casualty radius is not the limit of potential casualties.

[c3k]

Agreed. The casualty radius is the 50% likelihood of receiving a wound. (Other %'s can be used, but 50% is, in my experience, the distance usually given when speaking about effective range.)

There is, indeed, a difference between B10 SUPPRESSION and B3's effective distances.

Obviously, suppression can and should occur at a greater distance than assured incapacitation. However, is it beyond 90%? I think yes. How about 50% Yeah, I'd be ducking down. 25%? Hmm, probably. 1% Not likely.

These are "fuzzy" numbers. Similar to CEP. They use probabilities, statistics, and underlying assumptions (obviously). Prone, erect, sheltered, hard ground, etc.

My point was merely that the diagram showing diameters is an aberration - in my experience - from every other diagram of effectiveness. I would more likely ascribe it to a mis-transcribed diagram rather than give it full weight and validity...without a separate source.

It's an odd diagram. A first blush check would be to turn the diameter into an area, then see if there are any other sources describing the same effect, and does that other source give a similar area?

I'm not making a single statement about anything else given in this thread. Merely, the diagram using diameter strikes me as needing a double check.

(A 100% radius, delineating the extreme limits of possibility of death/wounding due to a shell, would be extremely large. The drop off is very quick, but the odd chunk of metal certainly does fly quite far.)

[JasonC]

VanirB is correct, and the amendment is friendly. The diagrams are showing burst circles are showing diameters. They don't fully match the areas given in the table below, which e.g. gives 250 square meters for a single 60mm round of the improved type, with a 40% higher diameter than the older round. For a circle, that 250 figure corresponds to a 9 meter radius and an 18 meter diameter affected area (9^2 * Pi = 254.47). The actual burst patterns are not circles, of course.

A 60mm mortar round has to land quite close to hurt even a standing man, even without soft ground. Like, 4 meters away for a prone man without other cover. It *might* hurt someone farther than that, and that "might" will tend to suppress many it doesn't actually hurt. But it is the small size of that effective blast against a typical target (which isn't a man still standing, for more than the first round's impact, but at least prone and often worse than that from cover reached), compared to the typical dispersion of the shells, that makes them relatively ineffective weapons.

[John Kettler]

Sublime,

I basically carried the mortar discussion forward by presenting factors which would naturally distribute the arrival times of mortar round impacts. If we implement your solution/s, but we do nothing to tame the mortars, then the overall lethality of the battlefield becomes proportionately higher.

I absolutely think MGs are presently glitched, perform unhistorically, don't do what they should (ROF and doctrinal problems), don't hit where they're aimed, etc. No need for the whole list.

Vanir Ausf B,

The default sheaf for both field artillery and mortars is the parallel sheaf, but your shoot is being conducted with what appears to be a converged sheaf. This becomes, everything else being equal, a bias in terms of calculating weapon effectiveness. How?

By creating an atypical concentration of rounds in a relatively small area, a concentration which was not the norm. Were you to rerun the shoot with everything else held constant, but the mortars now arrayed in a line parallel with the principal axis of the target platoon, and the aimpoint right in the middle of said platoon, I believe you'd see considerably different results.

For one, you'd cover more ground with each volley. Why? A parallel sheaf for 60mm mortars will have a 50% overlap of the casualty radii for the rounds fired. For the sake of analytical simplicity, let's say the casualty radius is 5 meters. Thus, the linear footprint of a parallel sheaf is 15 meters wide (5+2.5+2.5+5=15), with a concomitant rise in the areal coverage, too. Further, you'd typically see the pattern being walked back and forth and, if needed, laterally through the target zone, rather than landing in one place all the time, as is true of your shoot.

In naval parlance, putting all those rounds on one point, as you do, to engage an area target is called overconcentration, or just overkill. If there's one thing I learned about attacking area targets at Hughes Missile Systems Group, it's that, pound for pound, it is better to have the payload distributed over the target (submunitions/bomblets) than to attack the same target with a same payload unitary warhead (bomb/shell/missile). In essence, by overconcentrating, you are crudely representing a unitary warhead, a weakened one at that, since the explosion is not concentrated in time, and are forfeiting numerous potential casualties inflicted by so doing. Converging fire is for destroying a point target, not for going after a platoon area.

If you or anyone else would care to run this modified test, I believe you'd find the results well worth your time.

Regards,

John Kettler

[womble]

The default sheaf for both field artillery and mortars is the parallel sheaf...

Sheaf is used to define battery fire. What was being tested was three independent mortars firing area missions where the on-target munitions are assumed to be spread roughly evenly across the entire area of the mission.

...but your shoot is being conducted with what appears to be a converged sheaf.

AIUI, it'd be a converged sheaf if they were three point missions fired at the same aim point, using the default dispersion of a mortar mission. As it is, the three individual tubes are deliberately scattering their deposits over the same broad area.

[Vanir Ausf B]

By creating an atypical concentration of rounds in a relatively small area, a concentration which was not the norm. Were you to rerun the shoot with everything else held constant, but the mortars now arrayed in a line parallel with the principal axis of the target platoon, and the aimpoint right in the middle of said platoon, I believe you'd see considerably different results.

What on Earth are you talking about? Atypical concentration of rounds? If you look at the document linked above the recommended fire mission for unfused 60mm mortars against a platoon of infantry not in fighting positions is 60 rounds, several times more than I used.

In naval parlance, putting all those rounds on one point, as you do, to engage an area target is called overconcentration, or just overkill. If there's one thing I learned about attacking area targets at Hughes Missile Systems Group, it's that, pound for pound, it is better to have the payload distributed over the target (submunitions/bomblets) than to attack the same target with a same payload unitary warhead (bomb/shell/missile). In essence, by overconcentrating, you are crudely representing a unitary warhead, a weakened one at that, since the explosion is not concentrated in time, and are forfeiting numerous potential casualties inflicted by so doing. Converging fire is for destroying a point target, not for going after a platoon area.

As Womble pointed out it is an area target, not a point target. And the previously referenced document suggests that the concentration isn't anywhere near overkill.

I don't think you understand what the point of the test was or what was being tested. Re-read these 2 posts:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1400239&postcount=182

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1400250&postcount=183

[poesel]

@Vanir:

Thanks for making the test! The causalities are significantly higher than expected.

A good test, but to see the degree of actual overmodeling in CM, you need to put the point of aim *directly* on one of the squads in the target area. Not just nearby, expecting shot scatter to make them approximately the same. They won't be, the shells cluster so tightly that the point of aim being *perfect*, not approximate, will make a serious difference.

If I understand this right then you mean that Vanir should have used a point target instead of an area target. Why do you think so? Wouldn't the mortar team not deliberately spread the round over the target (=the whole platoon) instead of concentrating on the centre?

So assuming the conclusions from the document are right and the test did really recreate the described situations - do we need a tweak to CM? Or is this a possible and realistic outcome of such a situation?

[JonS]

See post No.s 154 and 156 earlier in this thread.

In short; there is a large degree of abstraction in allowing area fire once a scenario has started, more in allowing precisely tailored area sizes, and even more in allowing single on-map mortars to engage area targets at all. Mortars (and guns) theoretically and mathematically aim all rounds in a mission at a specific point on the ground. Random variation from numerous sources ensures that rounds actually land at the target end in smooshed out area around the nominal point of aim.

The way CM distributes rounds across an area target is a reasonable approximation of that smooshing process.

[JasonC]

JonS and poesel71 - the point of my previous comment about putting the point of aim directly on a specific squad is that the clustering of rounds in CM around the intended point of aim is very tight. A large portion of the rounds land very close to the selected point of aim, and only a portion get spread randomly in the disks at larger radii from that aim point. The whole pattern is "center concentrated", not a uniform distribution over the whole fall-of-shot pattern.

And what the godlike cursor control gives players in CM the ability to do, that no one in real life gets to do, is put the exact center of that center-concentrated smear-pattern, right on a high density target.

In real life, the actual center of the smear pattern will be randomly "off" the intended point of aim. Like firing a rifle before you have zero'ed it in, if you fire the shots from a fixed rest with perfect consistency you will get a tight shot group around some aim point or other. Then, zero'ing consists of an adjustment to put the center of that tight shot group right over the bullseye. Clear enough?

When firing a mortar in the field, you can't do that zero'ing step reliably. The shot to shot variation is too high, you don't get to fire too many rounds before you need to fire for effect (or the target is warned and seeks cover or moves etc). You get a bracket, don't know how far off the center of the pattern is, and fire for effect anyway.

This would correspond to first selecting an intended point of aim for the area target that is on a high density squad and in the middle of a broader target - *then* randomly jiggling the point of aim *away* from that best intended aim point. In CM as it stands, that "jiggle" doesn't happen.

If, in a test, you put the aim point off a specific squad, you are effectively putting such a jiggle in. Which may be more realistic, sure, but doesn't reveal what CM let's players actually do. Which is align the center of the fall of shot *perfectly*, with a perfectly known, high density target location.

The center-concentration of the smear-pattern of shots has a much higher chance of putting one or more rounds *exactly* on that high density portion of the target, than a uniform distribution of shots, over the whole area, with an unset, imperfect point of aim, would have.

The point of my recommendation is not to change the selected target type in the fire mission order, but to change the map location on which the fire mission is called. And the reason for my recommendation, is to stress just how good the CM player can make his mortars perform. We are not trying to get a result as close as possible to real world results. We are trying to see how far above real performance a competitive CM player can drive the in-game performance of his weapons, if he is as gamey as possible about squeezing as much performance out of them, as the game will let him get.

Because that is what determines the in-game tactics the system as coded will encourage. Players in competitive strategy games do not pull punches. If they can raise the men hit per round fired by 30 or 50% by selecting a picture-perfect point of aim, then they will. I don't know that the improvement will be that large - it takes a test to see. But I do think there will be an improvement (on average) from a perfect alignment of the fire mission aim point with a specific target-squad's action spot.

[JonS]

If, in a test, you put the aim point off a specific squad, you are effectively putting such a jiggle in.

... or you are picking the COM of the platoon.

Players in competitive strategy games do not pull punches. If they can raise the men hit per round fired by 30 or 50% by selecting a picture-perfect point of aim, then they will.

No, it depends on whether they're trying to attack a platoon or a section.

[DavidFields]

JasonC: "In real life, the actual center of the smear pattern will be randomly "off" the intended point of aim. Like firing a rifle before you have zero'ed it in, if you fire the shots from a fixed rest with perfect consistency you will get a tight shot group around some aim point or other. Then, zero'ing consists of an adjustment to put the center of that tight shot group right over the bullseye. Clear enough?

When firing a mortar in the field, you can't do that zero'ing step reliably. The shot to shot variation is too high, you don't get to fire too many rounds before you need to fire for effect (or the target is warned and seeks cover or moves etc). You get a bracket, don't know how far off the center of the pattern is, and fire for effect anyway."

Exactly, if I am allowed to agree with JasonC. Other than firing at fixed guns--wonderful targets and the mortar is the counter, and even then we could talk about the gun crew temporarily scattering.

I am going to assert: in WW2, you did not want your light mortars to be accurate, after calling in correcting fire, given the nature of the targets. This is not just doctrine, which could be incorrect, and theoretically could be changed by the player, but reality.

[c3k]

It seems to me that there may be two conflicting errors being chased. Well, the errors actually are cumulative, but the chase seems to be conflicting. First, we have the effectiveness of a given mortar round, then we have the accuracy of the mortar.

Vanir Ausf B's tests seem to revolve around testing how (overly) effective each round of mortar fire seems to be.

JasonC is arguing that mortars in-game are far too accurate.

These two issues are obviously related to the sense that in-game mortars are uberkillers.

VAB's tests are producing casualty numbers which can be compared (in varying degrees) to historical data.

JasonC is (appropriately) postulating that in-game mortars are too accurate and that the player has too much control over the aimpoint/hitpoint.

I would think testing EACH of these factors - separately - is important.

Just my opinion...

Ken

[Vanir Ausf B]

Vanir Ausf B's tests seem to revolve around testing how (overly) effective each round of mortar fire seems to be.

Yep, and that is ALL it's meant to test. Well, that and whether ground conditions effects are modeled.

I did do a couple of separate dispersion tests with point targets earlier in the thread on page 18.

[Thomm]

Last night I attacked two open-topped vehicles with mortars (heavy, short) and scored two direct hits on each. I was pleased, result-wise, but it reminded me of this discussion.

[Steiner14]

JasonC,

you nailed it again.

IMO you even have offered BFC clear enough descriptions how they could improve artillery's realism even further (and as a consequence give the game a more realistic balance).

But i have doubts that they are interested in this problem at all?

[Sublime]

Oh please. If its so easy why are you wasting our time here? Go out and design the ultimate WW2 strategy game. See you in what? 2 weeks? Thats all it should take to fix these stupid problems right?

If BFC didn't care about fixing realism issues.. they wouldn't. They very easily, at many points could have either made a Command & Conquer type game, or given up on CM to make Close Combat style games. I'd take fault with your views (for the millionth time)

[Steiner14]

Sublime,

is this a brown ring around your neck? :eek:

[Sublime]

something must be lost in translation. you could just skip the analogies and say scheisskopf or something. I was born in germany so I'd probably figure it out eventually.

seriously though, neo nazi tendencies aside in your past posts, you've made some useful and well thought out suggestions so I dont understand why you'd post something as ridiculous as 'BFC doesnt seem to care about realism.' I mean thats a laughable allegation. Besides the small size of the company and everything else discussed, these are real people with families that they probably like to see at least annually...

[akd]

The accuracy issue related to the player's godlike knowledge of the battlefield is uncontroversial, but not specific to the topic discussed. It is unsolvable, or solvable only in ways that would be hugely controversial.

The accuracy issue related to indirect fire MPI is a problem, but less so with the specific issue that has been highlighted in this thread: direct lay light mortars at short range. Unfortunately, it is a very complex problem to address.

[Apa]

One possible cure to the players ability to deliver HEAT too accurately would be to make area fire really _area_ fire. Make it dependant on distance and known enemies.

The range penalty could be something like 5m radius per 100m of distance, with minimum radius of 10m. If known enemies nearby, then you get half the range penalty.

[Killkess]

And i still think that the easiest was to get rid of the current issues with artillery would be to reintroduce minimum target areas and "forms".

[Vanir Ausf B]

But i have doubts that they are interested in this problem at all?

You definitely have doubts. No question about it.

[Vanir Ausf B]

The accuracy issue related to indirect fire MPI is a problem, but less so with the specific issue that has been highlighted in this thread: direct lay light mortars at short range.

So is per shell lethality correct? What about soft ground conditions having no effect?