Rifle grenades - worse than useless...?

[Bulletpoint]

So, talking about rifle grenades in forest... I need to use the regular "target" command to throw hand grenades at an enemy contact, but then my troops start firing rifle grenades, straight into the trees in front of them, killing their own guys. Shouldn't rifle grenades benefit from the same rule as other weapons, where they can't hit the trees immediately in front of themselves? (so that infantry and tanks can fire out from forest, assuming they are intelligent enough to position themselves so that they don't shoot straight into a tree...). Or use the "hand grenade rule", where a team is generally protected against its own grenades, because it's abstracted that troops take care to not hit friendlies.

Also, I guess in real life, rifle grenades were useful to shoot through a window of an occupied building, or into a trench, or a wooden pillbox, or maybe at a vehicle (with AT ammo). But that's not how troops use the rifle grenades in this game. No, they either fire them all at long range against infantry, without a chinaman's chance of hitting anything, or they fire at close range, hitting themselves.

In the rare case where they fire at a medium range, they are still worse than useless, since at that range, rifle fire would be much better. It takes a lot longer to fire a rifle grenade than to fire a bullet, and a bullet works just fine against an enemy soldier. In the timespan they are fumbling with their "fireworks", they could have gotten maybe 2-3 regular shots off.

So, the rifle grenades turn into a liability. It would be so great if the TacAI would just save those darned things for what they are actually good for... 

Edited October 13, 2015 by Bulletpoint

[Pak40]

I've had some success with rifle grenades at close range against armored vehicles. Every other time I've seen a rifle grenade fired it's like you said: long range and way off target, as if they never had any training whatsoever firing them. Bracketing a target doesn't seem to make the following rounds fall any closer either.

I can't recall seeing a friendly kill in the forest like you describe but IMO this shouldn't even happen in real life because the HE rifle grenades were the pineapple grenades (US troops) modified to fit in the rifle grenade adapter and I think they were fuse based rather than impact based. I could be wrong about this. Now, if they were firing the HEAT round then I suppose what you describe would be possible but the HEAT rounds weren't particularly dangerous to infantry unless they're behind the impacted target.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Pak40

[Los]

stupid privates....

[Warts 'n' all]

Their use does seem to be totally random, so I never plan on my troops actually being able to put them to good effect. Of course, the enemy AI does appear to get them on target more often... grrrr.

[womble]

I've never seen a RG kill a member of the shooting element. Seen 'em kill members of the Assault team when fired by the firebase team, though.

An on-target RG is more effective than a bullet. It's just that on-target RG only ever seem to happen when the opposition fire 'em... I completely agree that the TacAI uses them entirely inappropriately; they should only be used against spotted targets or explicit area Target orders and the engagement range at which they choose to employ them should be at least halved, just based on the effectiveness observed at current range selections.

You can usually avoid having RG be used when you want to throw hand grenades by splitting the Assault team off the squad. They'll take almost all the hand grenades with them. In forest combat, you can use Target Light for the firebase (B) team to stop them using their RGs, and you often want your LMGs and rifles area targetting "as far into the vegetation as you can draw the Target line", so that doesn't gimp your suppressive fire too much.

[Bulletpoint]

the engagement range at which they choose to employ them should be at least halved, just based on the effectiveness observed at current range selections.

Yes, I think that would go a long way to make them at least viable weapons. A simple "max range" rule would do the trick, at least for the long distance problem. The short distance issues would remain. You're right that it's possible to split off the assault team and use Target Light for the firebase, but what happens when your firebase or any other team suddenly spots an enemy hiding in the forest? Rifle grenade time.

Right now, if I could choose to simply drop off all rifle grenades before the mission (not to substitute for anything else, just to get rid of them), I would do that. Call the EOD.

[RockinHarry]

RG are most useful in MOUT situations, from my experience. A single RG may take out 2-3 enemies if hitting the appropiate window. At medium to long (max) range, their effect is mostly suppressive, unless a lucky hit can also take out 2-3 enemy guys if target density is high enough.

For close range area fire hand grenading, the procedure described by womble would work the best. Only if the area fire target has no actual direct LOS/LOF (beyond high walls), you can depend upon hand grenades to be used exclusiveley. If there´s direct LOS/LOF to area fire target AS and at very close range, every weapon in the arsenal could be used and that´s  a dangerous affair. I´d also area firing a squad down through a bulding, less than 10m away with the result, that at a time a soldier selected to use a Panzerfaust, hit a wall in front of him and killed himself, as well as 2-3 other squad members. 

It´s then always a good idea to somehow remove those guys with RG and Fausts, when direct LOS/LOF area firing at targets within hand grenade range (30m), or bad things can happen.

[RockinHarry]

I just remember some time ago I had setup a test game, where I needed to figure the effects of very close range area fire in wooded terrain. I placed a german squad in terrain with 3 trees/AS and let it area fire into the next possible wooded AS, which was at about 10m away when the target command "stuck". The squad unleashed a heavy fire (considering at close range, ROF for any soldier is at MAX), with some soldiers of team B (non splitted) fired partly through the AS of team A and vice versa, since area fire is distributed rather at an arc and not on a single point towards the selected AS. This wide fire dispersal was amplified by the closeness of the selected area fire AS. However, ....at a time I´m fairly sure that a particular soldier from team A received a light would (yellow dot), either by rifle fire or hand grenade. This soldiers also was almost hugging a tree, while lying prone. The next turn this already wounded soldier got killed. I watched the recorded game turn over and over again, unless I was sure that a particular soldier from the the same squad killed his buddy with a shot from his rifle.

Hypothesis: A soldier can be injured/killed by friendly small arms fire and some small HE, if either the shot previously bounced from a particular object (tree, wall...) very close to the affected soldier and/or the soldier is so close to this object (intersecting geometry), that the game routine tracing the projectile and its effect, can´t properly divide between both game objects (soldier - tree/wall), so that somehow the friendly projectile looses it´s non lethal effect. Call it bug, or game limitation maybe. How does that sound?

[Bulletpoint]

The next turn this already wounded soldier got killed. I watched the recorded game turn over and over again, unless I was sure that a particular soldier from the the same squad killed his buddy with a shot from his rifle.

Hypothesis: A soldier can be injured/killed by friendly small arms fire and some small HE, if either the shot previously bounced from a particular object (tree, wall...) very close to the affected soldier and/or the soldier is so close to this object (intersecting geometry), that the game routine tracing the projectile and its effect, can´t properly divide between both game objects (soldier - tree/wall), so that somehow the friendly projectile looses it´s non lethal effect. Call it bug, or game limitation maybe. How does that sound?

I'm pretty sure friendly fire is actually in the game, but it's rare. Yesterday I saw one of my troops get killed by friendly machinegun fire (30 cal), in the same situation. He was suppressed and hugging a tree. I have a save game to show it.

Your hypothesis is probably correct. I can imagine it happens because of a rebounding projectile, I previously thought that was just a graphical effect, but seems rebounds can be deadly.

[womble]

Hypothesis: A soldier can be injured/killed by friendly small arms fire and some small HE, if either the shot previously bounced from a particular object (tree, wall...) very close to the affected soldier and/or the soldier is so close to this object (intersecting geometry), that the game routine tracing the projectile and its effect, can´t properly divide between both game objects (soldier - tree/wall), so that somehow the friendly projectile looses it´s non lethal effect. Call it bug, or game limitation maybe. How does that sound?

Your hypothesis has at least something to it: ricochets have no friends. Even rifle-calibre ricochets from "friendly" fire can cause casualties, whereas (unless the second part of your hypothesis is also true) direct hits won't. I haven't ever noticed a ricochet casualty, so they're rare, and I'd imagine the edge-case where the code can't tell what's what (if that is indeed a factor) would also be pretty rare.

[Bulletpoint]

It seems to happen when a bullet directly hits a soldier who is directly in contact with cover. The ricochet is then generated inside the body of that guy.

Edited October 14, 2015 by Bulletpoint

[womble]

Yeah, I almost edited my last post to suggest that might be what was going on: a "direct hit" passing through the pTruppe's voxels and ricocheting off the surface he's in contact with, losing its IFF capability at that moment and therefore becoming deadly on its way back through the poor guy. Though I guess the soldier doesn't need to be touching the surface, just close enough to the surface that the path of the bullet after the "reflex angle" goes through him.

[RockinHarry]

Even if it´s not a bug, or just a limitation, I could live with that well. Bits of friendly fire ain´t that bad, considering that in the game you do not have to make any mind about fire lines, fire gaps and such, although I would greet any improvements in realism here. Maybe in CMX5...who knows, but I already very much appreciate that we now have Schrecks and Fausts able to be fired from confined spaces with chances of friendlies to be injured and self suppressed.

I do much more have problems with friendly fire to the enemy AIP, who does oftenly great damage to itself by engaging targets with HE, when friendly infantry is nearby. I´ve just setup a situation, where the AIP is about to attack a pillbox with both infantry and tank support. Most the times the tanks do the finishing job, before the AIP infantry arrives, but if not, the AIP with its obsession to (enemy held) pillboxes, keeps up a hail of fire (HE and small arms) on the pillboxes and any AIP infantry that comes near the pillboxes this time, will suffer heavily. I´d like to see some standoff (security) range implemented here as well, so that when friendly AIP infantry is near the enemy, that any AIP HE support weapons stop engaging this enemy unit. I know, we won´t see this anytime soon (priorities, difficult to code, ect ect.)