5-inch naval guns defeat VS bunker (and town house)

[Bulletpoint]

Just some thoughts about naval artillery now that I started playing Blue and Grey that opens on Omaha Beach.

I thought the destroyer's 5-inch guns would be able to crack the concrete bunkers, but despite many direct hits, I have yet to see any bunkers knocked out.

But ok, I know the German defenses at Omaha were very tough, and I guess that I'm simply not meant to be able to destroy the bunkers.

Then I noticed two direct naval hits on a small town house, with the house taking no damage... and I thought I would ask here: Has naval artillery been toned down in some patch due to multiplayer balance issues? Or did I encounter a rare bug of some sort? Or is it working as designed ?

[womble]

Well, I've seen small arms finish off a concrete bunker (Destroyed, not just empty), so naval guns should be able to do the job, I'd've thought. Are you sure the shells aren't bursting on overhead foliage? That can look like it's hitting home, when in fact it's doing significantly less damage than a direct hit. Might help explain the house, too, but I suspect it's just going to take more than 2 hits to completely drop some of the tougher (Modular) houses.

Oh, when you say "...many hits..." do you mean "...on the same bunker..." because, again, I wouldn't necessarily expect a single or couple of hits to be enough.

[YankeeDog]

IIRC, the concrete pillboxes that were neutralized by the destroyer guns at Omaha were actually taken out by multiple near and direct hits degrading the bunker's foundation to the point that they collapsed. This sort of extended bombardment is not really within CM's scale.

Also, the two destroyers who offered the most effective support at Omaha, the USS Frankford and McCook, closed to less than 1km from the shoreline and bombarded the bluffs with shallow-angle, direct fire from their main batteries. This is not possible to represent in CMBN -- all naval gunfire comes in at a fairly steep angle of descent in CMBN. Closest you could come to modeling this type of large caliber, shallow trajectory fire on a bunker in CM would be to use ISU-122's gun in CMRT as a proxy for direct, short range naval gun fire (and you'll just have to wait a little longer to try this for yourself, but trust me, it works! )

[YankeeDog]

As a further note, while I have the utmost respect for scenario designers who have tried to create Omaha beach scenarios in CMBN, the game engine really isn't designed to model this type of fight, at least not the initial fight from the surf to the top of the bluff.

The aforementioned lack of short range direct naval gun fire is one important missing piece; there are others. So you won't get completely "realistic" results playing this kind of scenario. It can still be fun, mind you...

[Bulletpoint]

Well, I've seen small arms finish off a concrete bunker (Destroyed, not just empty), so naval guns should be able to do the job, I'd've thought.

I suppose you were firing from quite close then? I'm pinned down about 500 metres out, so that's not an option in this case.

Are you sure the shells aren't bursting on overhead foliage? That can look like it's hitting home, when in fact it's doing significantly less damage than a direct hit.

100% sure there's no foliage in the way. Toggled trees on and off to be sure.

Might help explain the house, too, but I suspect it's just going to take more than 2 hits to completely drop some of the tougher (Modular) houses.

It's a pretty little white 2-story home with a nice view of the beach I'm not an engineer, but intuition tells me a single 5-inch naval shell should not leave much of it standing, let alone two.

Oh, when you say "...many hits..." do you mean "...on the same bunker..." because, again, I wouldn't necessarily expect a single or couple of hits to be enough.

I counted somewhere along the lines of 9 direct hits on the same individual bunker, plus many many more close strikes.

If concrete bunkers are normally destroyable by naval guns, then maybe the scenario designer has enabled some kind of special option to make them invincible for the sake of not giving the player any chance to win the scenario?

Please note that I am not complaining about the scenario being unwinnable, just wondering what's going on here

[YankeeDog]

Again, note the angle of fire. Concrete bunker roofs are usually a full meter or more of steel reinforced concrete; they are designed to withstand direct hits from aerial bombs.

So high angle top hits, even from fairly large guns like 5" naval, aren't going to do much of anything.

Shallow angle fire is a different matter as this has some chance of penetrating the firing slit, or at least sending shrapnel through it.

[womble]

I suppose you were firing from quite close then? I'm pinned down about 500 metres out, so that's not an option in this case.

Actually, it was the AI doing the firing. The closest fire came from about 100m out; most of it was from 3 times that distance. There was one hit from a bazooka, which was maybe 10 minutes before the thing collapsed and ejected my HMG team, and 2 near misses from artillery, which looked, from the crater size to be 81mm mortar or 75mm pack howitzer (the attackers were US Airborne). Don't think it was 105mm.

It's always good to check that one, when odd terminal effects of fire are observed...

I have no idea. 5" is about 125mm. Are naval shells more potent than their terrestrial cousins? In-game, many (even small) houses will take more than a couple of 155mm howitzer shells. I agree that this seems particularly sturdy, in comparison with RL, and certainly wouldn't like to be in a house (hell, in a town) hit by such things...

I have no idea what sort of punishment from plunging artillery fire the bunkers are meant to be able to take in-game, but the eventual ablative destruction by .30-06 would imply to me that what you've seen impact should destroy a concrete bunker in-game. I might fire up a test. It could be amusing, just for the "Boom!"

I don't believe a scenario designer would stoop so low even if such "God-Mode" cheats were available to him.

[Bulletpoint]

I think this mission is actually supposed and designed to be impossible, merely to illustrate the difficulty of D-day. After the inevitable defeat in this mission, the campaign continues to another, likely winnable one (haven't tried it out yet).

[Bulletpoint]

I don't know either, but perhaps they would be designed more for armour-piercing than terrestial based artillery, since the likely target for a destroyer would be other (battle)ships or hardened fortifications. This is conjecture on my part though.

[womble]

Oh, I'm sure a designer would "stoop low" enough to make a supposedly unwinnable scenario. They just wouldn't use cheats to do so. Not that there are any available, which was my major point: there are no "...special option to make them invincible...". You can manipulate the terrain so they can't be area fired from anywhere that it's likely area fire might be coming from, you can put them in a tree line so that until the trees are blown away there's a good chance the shell will detonate in the air and do little damage to the bunker (woe betide any infantry dug in to foxholes or trenches in the vicinty, though . I'm sure there are other "nasty tricks" a map builder can employ to make bunkers difficult to kill. No need for "Invulnerability Mode"...

[akd]

Bunkers are treated as immobile vehicles with very thick armor. There is no cummulative damage or structural degradation from multiple hits like with buildings. The only way to achieve a kill is to penetrate the firing the slit (any weapon, with % chance of kill based on size, plus chance to kill crew) or rear wall (many AP weapons), or hit it with something big enough to overcome the protection offered by the front/side/top walls (I've never tested the threshold, but I suspect it is something like 155mm and up, aerial bombs and possibly large, modern ATGMs).

[Michael Emrys]

This may be a symptom of the Nerfed Artillery Syndrome. Last summer (as I have posted here a couple times before) I played a battle where I targeted a large, three-storied house with an 8" howitzer battery. I observed at least three or four direct hits and as many very close near misses. At the end, when the battery ran out of ammo, the only damage to the house was a hole in the roof. At the present time, I think the odds of any off-map artillery destroying a concrete bunker are exceedingly slim and the odds of destroying a wooden bunker aren't great either. Large caliber on-map might fare much better though.

Michael

[YankeeDog]

Regular buildings not being completely rubbled by an 8" howitzer hit is clearly a problem, however a concrete bunker surviving an 8" howitzer top hit may not be.

IRL, all bunkers were not the same; some were stronger than others. But a fair proportion of concrete bunkers, and especially the really well made ones along the coastlines of occupied France, the West Wall etc. actually had roofs thick enough to withstand a hit that large -- remember, they were build to withstand direct hits from aerial bombs, which can be as large or larger than 8" howitzer shells.

The really dangerous hit to a bunker is actually a near miss from a big shell or bomb set with a short delay fuse. Under the right conditions, a subterranean detonation like this will create a shockwave which can collapse the sidewalls of the bunker, compromising the foundation and burying the occupants inside. One of the problems with having a thick reinforced concrete roof is that something has to hold up all that weight...

[rocketman]

IIRC the scenario was created prior to the machine gun patch improvement, so it will be even harder than it was before.

[Erwin]

Is there any way to test the effectiveness of CM2 arty vs RL arty? Have had a feeling for a while that HE doesn't seem as effective as it should be. But, no way of proving or checking.

[womble]

Bunkers are treated as immobile vehicles with very thick armor. There is no cummulative damage or structural degradation from multiple hits like with buildings. The only way to achieve a kill is to penetrate the firing the slit (any weapon, with % chance of kill based on size, plus chance to kill crew) or rear wall (many AP weapons), or hit it with something big enough to overcome the protection offered by the front/side/top walls (I've never tested the threshold, but I suspect it is something like 155mm and up, aerial bombs and possibly large, modern ATGMs).

So how did the Ami paratroops break one with small arms?

[akd]

Because even rifle bullet penetrations through the open embrasures have a tiny chance to cause a KO (same is true for vehicles).

[RockinHarry]

I´ve seen pillbox crews quite oftenly KO´ed by near miss mortar hits shrapnel and small arms, all through the aperture. Beeing that immobile vehicle type in game and without the ability to "button up", or "hide", pillboxes are a rather ineffective deathtrap, particularly when not just crewed, but also having further teams "loaded". Occupants can´t duck down or shut up the aperture, can´t buddy aid and when leaving, too oftenly run exposed into enemy fire. Can´t tell if the CMSF bunkers worked much better (didn´t play much), but I´d hope for BFC inventing some bunker structures, that more work like normal buildings with better protection and can be occupied by all.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Is there any way to test the effectiveness of CM2 arty vs RL arty? Have had a feeling for a while that HE doesn't seem as effective as it should be. But, no way of proving or checking.

I have tested US 60mm mortars against men prone in an open field. Casualties were over twice as high as predicted in US FM 7-90.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?p=1400299&highlight=60mm#post1400299

[Bulletpoint]

I've tried keeping the concrete bunkers under machinegun fire from the front. Saw a couple of "penetrations", but not causing casualties. Not causing suppression either.

Concrete bunkers are not deathtraps in this game.

[Michael Emrys]

Is there any way to test the effectiveness of CM2 arty vs RL arty? Have had a feeling for a while that HE doesn't seem as effective as it should be. But, no way of proving or checking.

In contradistinction to my 8" impotency of last summer/fall, I am currently playing a battle in FI/GL where I am attacking a village with lots of stone buildings. At the high point of the battle I had a single battery of 105s shelling the place and rapidly causing building to collapse all over the place. Apparently 105mm shells are several times as powerful as 8". Gee, if the real life Army had known about that, they could saved the American tax payers a bunch of money.

Michael

[akd]

In contradistinction to my 8" impotency of last summer/fall, I am currently playing a battle in FI/GL where I am attacking a village with lots of stone buildings. At the high point of the battle I had a single battery of 105s shelling the place and rapidly causing building to collapse all over the place. Apparently 105mm shells are several times as powerful as 8". Gee, if the real life Army had known about that, they could saved the American tax payers a bunch of money.

Michael

I do think the "curve" for blast effects might be a bit off, with small charges having too much cumulative effect at a distance and large charges having too little up close, but I'm not sure to what degree blast and fragmentation effects are separated, so that may play a role. However, you are seldom definitively shooting at stone, brick, wood, mud structures. Models, not textures, determine the durability of structures. The textures are variable and infinitely moddable.

[womble]

Because even rifle bullet penetrations through the open embrasures have a tiny chance to cause a KO (same is true for vehicles).

That is, frankly, ridiculous. What could a bullet hit in a Shelter bunker (the 'crew' brought their own MG, which exited, in serviceable condition along with them) that could possibly KO it? I'm emphatically not talking about the personnel; they exited unharmed (though they went from "Cautious and a bit suppressed" to Shaken at the moment of the bunker's destruction without suffering a casualty; sheer amazement, I imagine, given that they recovered in double-quick time, and not, IIRC, back to Rattled as most troops Shaken by casualties do) and the bunker was "destroyed" with no chance of being reoccupied.

Sure, bullets, grenades etc can get in through the slit and kill "crew", but dead or demoralised crew can be replaced by new teams.

I'm not doubting your explanation, I'm just more than a little shocked that "realism first" BFC have left such a ridiculous "feature" in. It might apply to armed bunkers, where the gun is part of the structure; there has to be a way of showing the MG stopping a bullet, but Shelter-type? Incredible.

[Apocal]

Just some thoughts about naval artillery now that I started playing Blue and Grey that opens on Omaha Beach.

I thought the destroyer's 5-inch guns would be able to crack the concrete bunkers, but despite many direct hits, I have yet to see any bunkers knocked out.

But ok, I know the German defenses at Omaha were very tough, and I guess that I'm simply not meant to be able to destroy the bunkers.

Then I noticed two direct naval hits on a small town house, with the house taking no damage... and I thought I would ask here: Has naval artillery been toned down in some patch due to multiplayer balance issues? Or did I encounter a rare bug of some sort? Or is it working as designed ?

The campaign was built prior to the machine gun re-balance. In order to get MGs to fulfill their combined arms role before, it was necessary to make them elite and highly motivated, whereas non-heavy weapons were lower experience and motivation. Functionally, the campaign is broken post machine gun re-balance for this reason, at least in my opinion.

You're meant to worm your way closer and closer, using engineer demo charges (standing in for flamethrowers), bazookas and close assault to destroy the bunkers, a la Saving Private Ryan. If it was meant to reflect reality, you'd get about four or five additional modules of destroyer 5" halfway through and they'd be responsive as 155mm with vet FO calling.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

I is very hard to knock out bunkersand destroy buildings with indirect fire in my experience with this game. You will certainly do some damage hough. . Those large apartment blocks seem virtually impssible to destroy. Which is fair enough.

A few rounds of direct HE from a tank are often enough to destroy most buildings and bunkers at close rangewhich seems fair enough. It does seem o depend on the kund of structure we are taliking about however.

It did take me a whileto learn how to deal with thosepesky bunkers however. There are times when the PBI have to get up close and personal withgrenades, demo charges and close assaults before you can be sure of knocking out those pesky bunkers.

ll in all I think tihe game mosdel is pretty close to reality on this pont though not perfect. Flamethrowers would be really helpful and hopefully we will finally get them in a post CMRT upgrade.to CMBN and CMFI.