Hitting my own spotter with arty

[Bloody Bill]

Hey gents,

I have had a situation happen twice now and was just curious if it was bad luck or if I was doing something wrong.  I have hit my own spotter with the spotting round twice now in two separate battles.

First situation was my spotter unit called in 60mm mortal fire on a wood shed that had an MG inside of it 167m down a country lane.  My spotter had good sight on the shed and he called in a heavy, quick immediate fire order.  two minutes later the first spotting round came in and direct hit my spotter team killing both of them.  Spotting team were regulars.

 

Second situation was I had a company command team up in a third story building calling in 105 fire on a German HQ building.  The distance from my command team to the target was around 300m.  I called in the arty and the first spotting round landed 100m behind my command team and the next came in maybe 20m closer and so on and basically walked the arty spotting rounds right onto  the commander in the house hitting the top and killing the radio man.  Command team was regulars.

 

I have played CMBN for a few years now and have never had this happen before and than it happened in back to back games.  I also played a PBEM battle in which my opponent killed his own spotter with his German mortars around four turns into the game and asked to stop the battle.

 

Is this something that is happening now sometimes or my luck is really what I was wondering.

 

[womble]

I don't think I've had spotting rounds fall directly on my spotter, but I have had them fall that short. I guess I got lucky, and you didn't. The only thing I want to check for "forehead slap prevention" is that you didn't call the 60mm mission as Emergency fire: those sorts of missions can go pretty wild. Obviously, the105 blue-on-blue wasn't cos Emergency missions don't have spotting rounds to walk onto the target.

[A Canadian Cat]

Yeah same here it has not happen to me yet, Cross fingers. Usually it is enemy fire that gets my FOs

[hobo]

Did the FOs pay off their gambling debt to the arty platoons?

[Bloody Bill]

It was only recently that I had this happen.  The first time it was a heavy quick order and the second was medium long order.  I don't even bother with emergency orders anymore.  It very easily could of been on my end.  After some late night beverages my officers seem to give some questionable orders.

[BLSTK]

Was your spotter well liked?

[BLSTK]

Was there a woman involved?

[Ithikial_AU]

Did the FOs pay off their gambling debt to the arty platoons?

It's a little known fact but that is actually modeled in the game. (Yeah... maybe not)

I've done it in the past, usually due to the on map mortars being directly behind the spotter compared to the intended target. In effect the mortars have to literally shoot at an unseen target and over the FO team's heads. As a result the chance of friendly fire goes up a notch the rounds fall short. My experience at least.

[Bloody Bill]

Was there a woman involved?

There is always a woman involved.  lol

[DasMorbo]

Just bad luck, never happened to me in 3+ years.

 

[BLSTK]

There is always a woman involved.  lol

Good point, BB.

[BLSTK]

Was your spotter cross-eyed?

[BLSTK]

Was your spotter afraid of his own shadow?

[RockinHarry]

I´ve seen a number of fubared missions, but never the first spotting round killing the calling FO team. Really baaad Luck.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Friendly fire isn't. That sort of thing probably happened to some forward observers. A map reading error perhaps?

In game terms though I wonder whether the FO in question was located close to the point hr was calling fire down on. That practice is not healthy