HE Kill Radius?

[weapon2010]

 Has anyone done a chart or data on the kill radius of the different caliber HE shells?How does the engine handle that?does it track individual shrapnel coming from the expolsion point?I had a soldier get killed at 65m away from the where an American 105HE shell landed.Is that realistic?

[Bulletpoint]

I doubt it tracks individual fragmentation pieces, or if it does, then it must be a simplified version, as real-life shells send out thousands of fragments.

Instead, I think it works by drawing a line from point of impact to all troops within a certain distance, then doing a dice roll with modifiers for cover etc. But this is speculation on my part.

In any case, there seems to be a large random factor. I've seen explosives go off at the feet of running soldiers many times, without effect, and also the opposite, people falling down from the impact of an tank AT shell at 100 metre distance, which seemed a bit odd to me.

No matter how the HE simulation technically works, I think it is a bit too weak at very close ranges, and a bit too strong at very long ranges. In my personal experience.

[A Canadian Cat]

Yeah we do not have clarity about how the game actually handles things internally and i would agree that some of the close explosion effects seem surprising but the long range hits seem fine to me. The kind of long range casualties described are infrequent.

[weapon2010]

so a casualty from a 105he round at 65m would be "realistic"?

[A Canadian Cat]

I think so. I do not claim to be an expert but it seems like it to me. Considering we were always told the radius of the danger zone for a grenade is  significantly longer than you can throw it.

[sttp]

so a casualty from a 105he round at 65m would be "realistic"?

I think it's probably realistic, yes. It's a low probability hit, but still, it will happen sometimes. My educated guess is that the likelihood of being hit probably works as an inverse square law, or perhaps an inverse cube law. Meaning at 2x the distance, there's one-fourth the chance of being hit. (Or one-eighth, under a cube law.)

I remember doing a bunch of mortar / arty testing in the editor several months back, all on flat and empty maps, and the injury patterns and probabilities seemed pretty reasonable. I wish I could've been more scientific about it than I was, but... I simply lack the knowledge to do so.)

Yes, every now and then there'd be a really odd, low-likelihood casualty. So now I tend to think of it like this: given enough trials, even unlikely things are very likely to happen.

 

[Baneman]

... people falling down from the impact of an tank AT shell at 100 metre distance, ...

This, at least, was fixed in one of the CMRT patches - not sure if it made it into BN, but if not, I'm sure it would be in the next patch.

[womble]

BN is due a little patch I think, to include some of the things adjusted in BS. Maybe once Bulge has a 1.01... It's particularly galling when a man dies from a distant bursting charge explosion from a shell that shouldn't have a bursting charge...

[Vanir Ausf B]

Edited November 9, 2015 by Vanir Ausf B

[JonS]

Yeah we do not have clarity about how the game actually handles things internally and i would agree that some of the close explosion effects seem surprising but the long range hits seem fine to me. The kind of long range casualties described are infrequent.

The effects of HE at close range has, IIRC, been dialed down a bit to compensate for the generally-closer-than-desirable bunching of troops.

[Bulletpoint]

The effects of HE at close range has, IIRC, been dialed down a bit to compensate for the generally-closer-than-desirable bunching of troops.

I suppose it makes sense within the confines of the game, since it makes a single lucky hit more unlikely to decide the outcome of the battle. It's a bit opposite of real life:

• In real life, you saturate an area with artillery knowing that most of the shells won't cause any damage at all, but the one lucky shell that hits the right spot is going to absolutely destroy the enemy there. So, on average, the barrage works.
   
• In the game, you saturate an area because the effects of repeated overlapping low-probability damage areas will wear down the enemy, even if all the shells land some distance away from them. On average, the barrage works.

I think I understand why BattleFront have chosen to design it this way, but I just personally like the idea of the lucky direct hit.

[RockinHarry]

I suspect both shrapnel and blast effects beeing part of HE towards personnel and environment. Air bursts and ground bursts apparently have different lethality as well. With regard to "blast" effects I made some interesting observations repeatedly. Rifle grenades, zook rounds, as well as higher caliber HE/HEAT extends "blast" effects straight through buildings. In several cases I had a rifle grenade hitting a window on the front side of a modular building, getting a single wall collapse outside the reverse side of the same building. Or some damaged wooden sheds flattened by blast effects straight through another modular building. Same happened by brewing up of tanks, extending blast effects through buildings and affecting structures beyond. This looks like the blast is channelized through a building and thus increased in force. I would rather suspect the blasts force to be more dissipated, when it goes into and through a building and thus decreased, particularly if it´s small HE component warheads, like those of rifle grenades and zooks. 

[MOS:96B2P]

So in game what would be a good area coverage TACSOP for an area fire mission with the different assets?  

Example: One tube medium mortar fire mission open terrain 80 meter diameter circular area?

Then if you made it a two tube medium mortar mission would it still be effective suppression to increase the circular area to 160 meters? or just 120 meters?

Same question 105mm howitzer?

I always just guesstimate what I think will work in the given situation.  I think it would be helpful to have a base line SOP to work from adjusting it to the situation instead of the looks good guess I do now.  Any ideas / input would be appreciated.   

[Bulletpoint]

So in game what would be a good area coverage TACSOP for an area fire mission with the different assets?  

Example: One tube medium mortar fire mission open terrain 80 meter diameter circular area?

Then if you made it a two tube medium mortar mission would it still be effective suppression to increase the circular area to 160 meters? or just 120 meters?

Same question 105mm howitzer?

I always just guesstimate what I think will work in the given situation.  I think it would be helpful to have a base line SOP to work from adjusting it to the situation instead of the looks good guess I do now.  Any ideas / input would be appreciated.   

 

I've been wondering the same thing myself.

My conclusion so far is that the most efficient use of the ammo is to fire as slow as possible, with a 'point target' that you then adjust to a new target when you estimate that you had enough close hits, or when you can observe the target has been taken out. This is a bit "gamey" though, as it exploits the way the pixel soldiers act. When they hear incoming, they duck down, but then quite soon after, they pop up again. If you fire fast, they stay down during the whole barrage, making them much harder to knock out. But with the slow barrage, they come up after every shot, like whack-a-mole.

If you don't have time for this, then a short barrage is better, firing as fast as possible. Especially with mortars, as they have very high ROF. so you can put quite a lot of bombs on a target before all the enemy troops manage to duck and cover. Also, I think there's a higher chance to "shock" the enemy into retreating if the volume of shells is very high during a short time.

The only thing I never really use are medium rates of fire. I don't know why anyone would ever choose that. It would be nice if firing very fast came with an accuracy penalty (each mortar bomb shaking the mortar a bit, causing it to lose aim, but firing at slow or medium speed would allow to make continual adjustments to keep on target...) but as far as I have seen, the spread of mortars is the same whether fired slow or fast - only "emergency" firing mode has an accuracy penalty, as far as I know.

Then if you made it a two tube medium mortar mission would it still be effective suppression to increase the circular area to 160 meters? or just 120 meters?

When you double the radious, the area is not just doubled, it gets squared. So you'll need 4 mortars to achieve the same weight of fire and four times the ammo to achieve the same saturation.

Edited November 9, 2015 by Bulletpoint

[Doc844]

IntestING point for fast rates because when you are firing between a rate 8 to 12 the No 1 uses his outer marker in his sight rather than his fine accuracy marker.  As long as the aiming post is within his outer mark then he is still ON, because you don't have time to adjust between rounds however this does impact accuracy to a small degree.  The only time u might adjust on a fast fire rate is if the No 2 has to ram the barrel to prevent a hang fire then u have a few precious seconds to re-sight.  Excuse me for the less than technical names it has been a few years since I last fired the 81mm.