Anyone else having mortar/arty spotting/targeting problem?

[Malakie]

I am seeing a problem with arty/mortar fire.

 

In a couple games now I have had dedicated spotters call in fire.  And not one yet has hit the actual area targeted using linear or area spotting.

 

The average so far seems to be arty coming in long by a good bit.   Anyone else seeing this?

[womble]

Does your spotter have a good view of the target area, maintained throughout the "spotting" phase?

[George MC]

No electronic counter measures in the scenario?

[Malakie]

I played a number of scenarios all with the same results...  Even with ECM, as long as a physical spotter can see the target area rounds should still impact what you are shooting .. especially after doing a adjust..

 

And yes my spotters had positions that kept them in full line of sight the entire time.  In one game I had 3 of them all with full on view.. same result..

 

My most current game I just played also had another annoyance..  I had 4 spotters plus a bradley IFV FIST//  I first called for a drone, then two arty missions.. It took almost 30 game minutes before any of those missions came in.. by then all enemy forces were well gone or away from the fire mission designated area.

[borg]

I second this. When I use line artillery / the shells hit anywhere except the line I highlghted on the field. Actually shells fell pretty close to my infantry !! Normal or err from my side ?

[Anders_1970]

Same problem here in the tutorial campaign. Artillery hit nowhere near the target even with a spotter and a drone targeting.

[borg]

Seems we have a problem that Is not the norm & not being reported by many others. Do we need to do a re install ? Is it a mac problem ?

[Kieme(ITA)]

Wait a second, is this problem of great inaccuracy showing itself when you use a different asset (UAV recon) for the spotting?

[borg]

It happened whilst I used a scout team on the ground. No UAV. Did line targeting.,, and the result was horrible ! Am I doing something wrong ?

[Der Zeitgeist]

I can confirm this with linear as well as point missions (non-precision munitions). Did a 120mm mission on a point target in the tutorial campagin, when I tried to hit the ATGM team on the roof in the small village (last mission of the campaign). The shells fell more like an area mission, when in CMSF, most shells would have landed on the roof itself.

[borg]

I cannot understand how something so basic , so imp is being under reported. Ppl are playing & ppl are completing campaigns ! There must be something wrong if they haven't encountered this problem.

[Atago]

I was playing the graduation exercise of the training campaign - using the UAV to spot.  120mm mortar barrage on the objective buildings went way back behind the church and out side of town.  Cancelled that one, ran another one, this time linear smoke hoping to see if I could cover the street between the objective buildings and the front row.  I know that was probably too fine a line regardless of spotter or UAV, but I was testing what was possible.  Smoke line was within 50 yards or so of my target line.  Next UAV spotted bombardment was again on the objective buildings - this one spot on.

 

Not a scientific test but that first mission - hearing a fire for effect when the spotting rounds were WAY off - surprised me.

[Martin Krejcirik]

I've had this problem with artillery too, but it seems to me it only happens with out of LOS fire (drone observation). Or it's just more frequent. Lots of spotting rounds way out of target. FFE may or may not be on target.

Edited February 2, 2015 by Martin Krejcirik

[cool breeze]

Different strokes for different folks

All arty has been dead on and devastating.  3 non precision point strikes at vehicles, 3 smoking wrecks wrecks.  one big area fire mission hoping to hit a vehicle, one smoking wreck.  4 or so mortars strikes on the woods the infantry were attacking from, all on target.  My auto nade launcher called for some of those while he was blasting away at em with the nades.  I've been surprised how much better the arty seems to be working compared to CMF

[borg]

It must be a different version of CMBS then.

[womble]

It must be a different version of CMBS then.

Or you're doing something wrong. Until you can show us exactly what you did, the chances are you're not going to get an answer.

[borg]

The detail is in the text above, and i am assuming at least 4 to 5 other players have experienced similar circumstances. Using a scout team to mark Line Target, and calling 'off-map' mortar fire. The shells hit the ground all over the place except the line target. It doesn't seem to occur when using 'area target'.

[womble]

The detail is in the text above...

Except it's not. We have no idea about the LOS you have, only what you think you have. It sounds exactly like you get when you have shonky LOS from spotter to target area in BN. The reasons for your LOS being dodgy are not easily extracted from your assessment of the situation.

Or it could be a bug. But what it certainly isn't is some special version of Black Sea that's especially designed not to work for you. Put some save turns in a dropbox folder and put a share link to it in this thread and I expect someone with traction will take a look. Until then, the 90%+ likelihood is that you're missing something, and because you're missing it you can't report it. The number of reported issues is entirely drowned out by the silence of all those people who haven't had any problem.

[Wicky]

Are the innacurate Fire missions being called in as 'Emergency' ? If so try "Immediate' instead so they get processed more carefully.

 

 

Emergency missions shorten the length of the call for fire at the risk of greater inaccuracy; only use these missions in true emergencies!

Edited February 2, 2015 by Wicky

[borg]

Except it's not. We have no idea about the LOS you have, only what you think you have. It sounds exactly like you get when you have shonky LOS from spotter to target area in BN. The reasons for your LOS being dodgy are not easily extracted from your assessment of the situation.

Or it could be a bug. But what it certainly isn't is some special version of Black Sea that's especially designed not to work for you. Put some save turns in a dropbox folder and put a share link to it in this thread and I expect someone with traction will take a look. Until then, the 90%+ likelihood is that you're missing something, and because you're missing it you can't report it. The number of reported issues is entirely drowned out by the silence of all those people who haven't had any problem.

i would be honored to have a special version of BS just for me though i am just a regular infantry man.. and won't be getting specials anytime soon. It is true, might be shady spotting... hence, if i understand correct - Even though my scout/spotter has an 'active' LOS and the tiny icon turns into the orange square highlighting that i can click and drag.. it doesn't mean that it will be good/accurate ? Am i getting this right ?

[Der Zeitgeist]

I'm currently running a few tests on the artillery range mission from the training campaign. Will post the results later. The mission works pretty well for tests, as you can can line up the linear arty with the roads in the gunnery range and then just look at the crater pattern.

 

What's the best way to take screenshots within CMBS? I'll try to upload some shots of the results later. 

[borg]

on a mac i would say, Command + Shift + 3

on a PC i would say press button 'print screen'

 

and you get a whole screen shot. Feel free to 'crop' the photo to remove unwanted borders

[borg]

I'm currently running a few tests on the artillery range mission from the training campaign. Will post the results later. The mission works pretty well for tests, as you can can line up the linear arty with the roads in the gunnery range and then just look at the crater pattern.

 

What's the best way to take screenshots within CMBS? I'll try to upload some shots of the results later. 

...drum roll...

[akd]

A couple of notes:

 

1. I haven't tested this recently, but when calling for linear fire missions, I think it is best to have decent LOS for the length of the line, not just the start and end points.

 

2. UAVs have visibility limitations are that not communicated via the artillery targeting tool, i.e. there are situations in which you can place artillery targets using a UAV observation area, but the UAV is actually blind or has very limited visibility.  This is tricky because you will have to guess to a degree, but it should be pretty logical.  Call for a UAV in the middle of a thunderstorm and expect your artillery spotter to have a very hard time adjusting rounds.  I haven't tested this in detail to determine the condition thresholds for various platforms.

 

3. As already noted, "emergency" will skip the spotting process and fire-for-effect blind.  Sometimes you can get away with this using large area targets and many rounds, but don't ever use it close to your own troops.

Edited February 2, 2015 by akd

[womble]

i would be honored to have a special version of BS just for me though i am just a regular infantry man.. and won't be getting specials anytime soon. It is true, might be shady spotting... hence, if i understand correct - Even though my scout/spotter has an 'active' LOS and the tiny icon turns into the orange square highlighting that i can click and drag.. it doesn't mean that it will be good/accurate ? Am i getting this right ?

Yes. If anything interferes with the LOS during the time of spotting, you could while the spotting rounds are being "walked" onto the target have inadequate LOS to keep the strike where you want it. The UAV might've circled away, the commlink might have been jammed for a while, your spotter might've been killed or forced to cower. The possibilities are myriad. Just because you've apparently got "good LOS" at the time of call is no guarantee that you will have the same LOS during the crucial spotting period.

Or something hinky could be going on. I've seen this same behaviour, in BN, and it's always when I try and push the envelope of what I can call. If I have LOS down the road into a built-up area, for example, and I plot a big area target using two points on the road, even though I've got lousy LOS to the rest of the intended target area, there's a good chance, IME, that I'll get an off-target mission. I had thought that at some point, BFC changed the spotting sequence so that spotting rounds would keep being dropped until either the spotter could see them, or the battery became convinced that the spotter was dead or on drugs (too many spotting rounds fired before FFE). But that doesn't appear to be the case. Your spotter will call for FFE within a few spotting rounds, even if he can't see where they're splashing.