Artillery accuracy

[womble]

I may have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick, but I'd gained the impression that artillery, spotted onto target (unmolested observer, proper call for FFE, not "Emergency", decent visibility of target) is supposed to land "on target". It seems to me that many missions I call in land approximately one "pattern dimension" off target, either wide or long. This is often preceded by a spotting sequence that doesn't "bracket" the intended target, range-wise, usually with all shots going "over". This happens with FOs as well as ordinary HQs. Sure, sometimes you expect shots to bunch up at the "wrong" end of the distribution, but when you can see the craters in a perfect-looking gaussian distribution off to one side of where they were meant to be aimed, that's not really attributable to chance.

If it's how the game is supposed to deal with it, that's fine, but as I said, in previous discussions on here, what's come across is that the spread should be centred on the nominated point, once FFE has been called in. It's also something that's, IIRC, been addressed as a bug fix some time ago, and I wonder whether it's crept back in.

As it stands, I might as well not use smoke, because it "never" lands where I need it. HE's not such a big problem, since there's usually more, but when an 81mm section has so few smoke rounds and uses three of them to spot, you don't get more than one smoke mission out of any one unit, and those smoke rounds are more effective as HE in a shoot for damage; at least if they miss they might hit something else; obscuring something that couldn't see you anyway is no help...

[Fizou]

I cant relate to this. My missions are on target in all but the very rare exceptions. From what you say, I cant see any reasons why yours should be off.

[Pak40]

I've only seen some minor variation in FFEs but nothing that I would call 'way off'. I do agree that the so called bracketing sometimes looks suspect but I always get an accurate FFE if as the last spotting round was visible to the FO. I've never had much of an issue with smoke, the FFEs have always been fairly on target. I tend to smoke a wide area to make sure the enemy LOS is sufficiently blocked - never or rarely have I smoked a pinpoint strike.

[womble]

I've only seen some minor variation in FFEs but nothing that I would call 'way off'. I do agree that the so called bracketing sometimes looks suspect but I always get an accurate FFE if as the last spotting round was visible to the FO. I've never had much of an issue with smoke, the FFEs have always been fairly on target. I tend to smoke a wide area to make sure the enemy LOS is sufficiently blocked - never or rarely have I smoked a pinpoint strike.

It's difficult to smoke a wide area with a single section of 81mm mortars and their less-than-half-a-dozen FFE smoke rounds, and even if you choose a pinpoint strike, the scatter when it's on target can mean that none of the rounds land anywhere useful.

The most recent two examples I have were in the "Road to Nijmegen" campaign. In the first mission, the pattern lay almost exactly to the side, and an outlier in that pattern was the only one that had any effect (the target was a trench system, called as a point target on a particular asset in that system). Range was pretty much spot on and the fattest part of the beaten elipse was next to the target. The second was in the second mission. All the spotting rounds fell long (and possibly out of actual LOS of the spotter, since that put them behind things), but I thought the spotting sequence continued until the spotter actually had a reference before he called them in, rather than just saying, "Oh what the hell, fire 'em anyway!" The mission was spot on, if I'd actually aimed it at the front garden of a house I couldn't see, 100m further past the actual target, rather than the front garden of the house 70m away. The scatter was much smaller than the distance between aim point and centre of actual mission.

Perhaps it's because I use point targets, especially for mortars. Oh, and I've only seen this with offboard assets, and I've only just started collecting data in a rough and ready way. If I thought there was supposed to be any random variation I'd not be thinking there was anything wrong, but people seem to be supporting my interpretation that properly spotted missions should reliably come in on target.

[slysniper]

I think you are making something out of nothing.

My off board arty has been working just fine and I see no issues.

I did see a similar event as you are desribing with a on board 80 mil mortar.

It had point target, clear line of site and for some reason a majority of the rounds flew long.

I just figured it something in the game that effects the accuracy if the spotter has been disturbed or not seen the spotting round clearly or something along the lines.

I like the fact that once in awhile there is a error, Like there should never be a gareentee that the mission will land perfect. No matter

[womble]

I like the fact that once in awhile there is a error, Like there should never be a gareentee that the mission will land perfect. No matter

Like I say, if that's the way it's supposed to be, that's all fine and dandy. I'll stop even thinking about using 81mm smoke; it's just a waste of 4-6 minutes.

My point is that it has been asserted before on here, by knowledgeable folk trying to get to the bottom of a bug, and other people's experiences seem to support the assertion, that:

[*]the spotter is supposed to wait to call FFE until he has seen the spotting rounds get somewhere near the intended target;

[*]it's supposed to at least have the centre of the pattern over the target point if the mission has been walked onto target.

[Childress]

Of course, BFC themselves appear to have entered pre-launch purdah

Hehe. Very apt, Womble.

[PhilM]

Like I say, if that's the way it's supposed to be, that's all fine and dandy. I'll stop even thinking about using 81mm smoke; it's just a waste of 4-6 minutes.

My point is that it has been asserted before on here, by knowledgeable folk trying to get to the bottom of a bug, and other people's experiences seem to support the assertion, that:

[*]the spotter is supposed to wait to call FFE until he has seen the spotting rounds get somewhere near the intended target;

[*]it's supposed to at least have the centre of the pattern over the target point if the mission has been walked onto target.

My observation is that when 1 doesn't apply (three spotting rounds way off target, FFE regardless), 2 also fails to happen. This is reminiscent of a buggy behaviour from ages ago.

All I'm asking is for confirmation that errant missions are to be expected, contrary to what I think has been said before by BFC and/or their stalwart helpers. I'm entirely happy to hear that my interpretation was flawed, but someone's, even your, anecdote that they "just figured" about isn't what I'm seeking.

Of course, BFC themselves appear to have entered pre-launch purdah, and once RT is out, fixing bugs in CMx2v2.x isn't going to be top of the agenda.

This certainly seems to happen to me a lot (ask my PBEM oppo's, as I whinge about it to them ... ... including asking them is it their arty falling in x location, 'cos it shouldn't be mine ... ): for what are, as far as I can tell, are fully spotted and undisturbed arty calls. I have no game saves nor stats to verify at this point, so it is my subjective memory only (and we remember when things go wrong, and not when they go right ...), but I now expect at least one arty call per game to be "off": the spotting rounds are nowhere near the target area but FFE is called anyway, and the rounds land in a nice neat pattern where the FFE was called, but sadly not near the target area ...

I had been wondering whether this was a game design feature, to represent the vicissitudes of war; or just me doing something wrong. But it does seem to happen a LOT of the time for me ...

[Erik Springelkamp]

Just last week I saw it in Combat Mission Afghanistan, I didn't even see the mission until I heard it, and then I discovered the Fire For Effect was on the other side of a mountain :-)

However, next mission, same spotter, same battery, was right on target, although after a lot of spotting rounds that were pretty far off.

This was Afghan Army artillery, spotted by a BMP HQ.

[womble]

Just last week I saw it in Combat Mission Afghanistan, I didn't even see the mission until I heard it, and then I discovered the Fire For Effect was on the other side of a mountain :-)

However, next mission, same spotter, same battery, was right on target, although after a lot of spotting rounds that were pretty far off.

This was Afghan Army artillery, spotted by a BMP HQ.

My recollection is that there was an engine bug identified that had a big boot of stomping aimed at it a few updates ago. Way after CM:A. I've not seen arty come down halfway across the map from its aim point since then.

[slysniper]

Your post has clarified your issue even more.

Maybe there is a Bug, but like any bug, sometimes not easy to prove or as we have seen in the past, or remove from the game.

So good luck with getting it resolved if it is there.

IF it is a bug, it is one that does not produce results that are non relistic, in the fact that at times, getting a accurate arty result is not going to happen no matter how perfect the conditions, that is all I was pointing out.

[terriergal]

I think you are making something out of nothing.

My off board arty has been working just fine and I see no issues.

I did see a similar event as you are desribing with a on board 80 mil mortar.

It had point target, clear line of site and for some reason a majority of the rounds flew long.

I am having a similar problem. I am on a Mac playing the demo of Battle for Normandy. I'm doing the Busting the Bocage. I tried to call in a point target on that antitank gun (the red X) and it landed where you see the red "O" and some of them were going off the map. I 'adjusted' the mission basically to target the same point I had originally targeted, and it moved it to the place I marked "off map?" in red. The smoke from the howitzers at left of the image was slightly off, but the other smokes were basically correct. In playing the original PC version, I never had quite this problem with the artillery being continually further off the target no matter what adjusting you do. This is not just random failure to communicate, - bad spotting, random AI behavior. This strikes me as a bug, where even if your spotter does correct the location of the barrage, they aim further from where the spotter tells it to go. It's like in the equation they use to calculate where the impacts ought to be, they've switched a positive for a negative, or something.

[akd]

What do you mean by "original PC version"?

[terriergal]

What do you mean by "original PC version"?

I mean...the original PC version... Combat Mission 1. Like, years ago... the very first one. Beyond Overlord, wasn't it? Before any newer versions came out, my husband had downloaded it and we played and he added stuff as it came out. I THINK we also had Afrika Corps and Barbarossa to Berlin. It's been a while since I played, I haven't played any of the ones in between... I don't think...

[akd]

Okay, wanted to be sure you weren't comparing Mac demo to PC full game. Demos may not be up to current version of game engine, and may contain bugs that have since been fixed.

That said, "adjust mission" serves only one purpose: to switch the current mission to a completely new target. The player has no role correcting spotting rounds. By selecting adjust mission when a spotting round is off target, you are actually just restarting the mission.