as promised... arty stats! (longish)

[John Hough]

Here it is: Arty Stats

Ain't pretty, but it does the job. Anyone who wants to grab it for his site, or host it a better place, or pretty it up, or make it more accurate, go ahead. Just give me credit for what I've done.

You'll need the excel viewer.

A few words of explanation:

Unit: Self-explanatory

Type: 'Gun' is normal artillery, 3 minutes to call in, normal target area. Mortars take a minute less to call in, and have a slightly larger target area. Rockets have a VERY large target area, a very fast ROF, and, I believe, a generally larger blast radius than other weapons of the same firepower. 'Fast' arty, mostly American, takes a minute less to call in. I suspect the British 14" is fast because it's a silly weapon and the person responsible at BTS just didn't bother tweaking it from the American version.

Cost: Point cost.

Blast: The reported blast firepower from the 'black box'.

Ammo: Number of shells.

ROF: The number of seconds between 4-shot volleys. (Not sure if that's the proper term, but it seems a good enough one.) The important piece of information the 'black box' just doesn't give you. A fast ROF is not necessarily a good thing, there's good reasons, like keeping the enemy supressed longer with lower ammo consumption, for having a slower ROF.

Effect Radius: In meters, the distance from the shell impact in which infantry in the open were forced to take cover. I tested this by forming a 200x200 m square of regular Heer panzergrenadiers (motorized), with a panzergrenadier squad every 20 m, not allowed to dig in. The HQ units were in the square too, but I ignored them for the purposes of this test. I estimated based on the grid thus formed. The number here is the approximate maximum distance I was SURE the shell had an effect. I was planning on measuring shell damage by the distance a shell did a certain percentage of casualties consistently (thus the 10-man motorized squads), but it was highly variable, and more subjective than a manual recount, so I had to scrap the idea.

If anyone wants to put the effort into measuring the effect radius more precisely, I would love it.

(A note: I noticed, during these tests, that infantry panicked by shellfire would rush, lemminglike, toward the center of the shell impact. A quirk of the tacai and the complete lack of cover... The only cover available was the crater. Not exactly the best place to be when there's more shells about to come down, but I don't know that there's anything to be done about it.)

Damage: (HIGHLY UNSCIENTIFIC!!) The number of casualties caused by the FO firing all available shells, wide dispersion, at the center of the previously mentioned 200x200 square of men, now allowed to dig in, to avoid the 'lemming effect'. Casualties were measured by perusing the endgame screen. This would probably be a very good measurement, if I actually did it more than once for each gun. As is, though, it gives a general idea, but the exact number is probably way off. (A good example is the American and British 4.5 and 14 inch guns, which I think are the same guns, but came out of the tests somewhat different) It also makes the larger artillery pieces and rockets seem better than they really are, as the setup here is just about a perfect target for them.

Again, I'd love feedback on a better way of measuring damage.

VT is incredible. Perhaps not as incredible as this makes it seem, because other shells can get treebursts, but even firing into tall pines, you don't get nearly as many, and airbursts make a tremendous difference in the damage and supressive power of the shell. I should play Americans more.

As far as good guns choices, it really depends on what you want them for. If you want mainly supression, I'd suggest anything with a lot of ammo and a 15-25 second reload time. Particularly the 105 VT. If you want supression with pretty good damage-dealing capacity, go for the 150, 155, or 5.5. Anything with a reload time upwards of 30 seconds is probably mainly useful for dealing damage.

-John Hough

[TexasToast]

Thanks John, very interesting. I knew VT was good, but wow. I will have to try that 155 VT next time.

[Hans]

Well done John!

Must try a "FO duel" scenario

[Wilhammer]

Good, Handy Chart.

Thank you, thank you very much.

Question, does the experience level of the Arty FO have any effect on any of the stats?

Does its commander or lack thereof have any effect?

Are any arty pices more prone to start fires than others?

How many blast points does it take to bring down each building type?

Thanks.

[coralsaw]

John, you are one good man of action.

Thanks for the fast post man!

Regards

------------------

I feel like I'm standing in front of the monkey cage at the zoo. - HiramS

[John Hough]

Wilhammer, there appears to be absolutely no difference in ROF based on FO experience or in-commandness. I didn't look at the other things I measured, but experience shouldn't have any effect on the power of an exploding shell.

I did some preliminary testing on fires, and shooting at wheat, in very dry conditions, about 1 in every 50 shells started a fire, regardless of size. So it looks like 81mm mortars are the way to go there.

Haven't got to buildings yet. I suspect it'll be very hard to measure exact effects unless I'm lucky enough to get only direct hits.

-John

[Doug Beman]

John, how could the Brit 4.5" and US 14" be the same?

DjB

[John Hough]

Jerk.

[Wolfe]

Nice work, John. Sorry I didn't see your last post on the subject. Probably could have saved you a lot of work. See:

http://users.erols.com/chare/cm/

The damage stats are certainly interesting. Though I don't know how you might make these more accurate since there's so much variability with how much damage is done.

BTW, the Brits also have 25pdr VT and 5.5in VT arty (they get them starting in Dec44). And Brit Airborne troops have 75mm available to them.

Some more info can be found in a previous thread on the subject:

Artillery Range Results

- Chris

[Jeff Duquette]

Very interesting work John...thanks for sharing it.

[John Hough]

Thanks for the heads-up on the missing arty pieces. I'll have to test them too.

There's something bizarre with your excel files, the data shows up in the equasion box rather than the table proper. Makes it pain to look at, but at least the info's there.

I'm interested in how you arrived at your data for time between volleys, as our numbers are fairly different. Looking at both observed time between volleys, as well as ammo usage over a period of time, I consistently got intervals as multiples of 5 seconds before the uncertainty is factored in. (except for that damned 3 inch mortar, which you have at 5 seconds, and I definitely observed at greater than 5 seconds, but less than 10) Something to note is that the uncertainty in firing time seems to affect each volley individually, and won't affect later volleys.

The thing to do for the damage stats, really, would be to do, say, 20 tests and average the results. But that will take a while and be something of a pain.

-John

[Pak40]

Wilhammer and John,

I had done some Artillery tinkering also. I was more concerned with the difference of FO experience. Here's what I found.

Using a Regular, Veteran, and Elite 105mm US FO:

Time of arrival of rounds is decreased with a more experienced FO.

Regular: ~2 mins

Veteran: ~2 mins (sometimes less)

Elite: ~1 min

Damage or accuracy of the round didn't seem to be affected. I didn't check for time between volleys.

[This message has been edited by Pak40 (edited 11-30-2000).]

[Wolfe]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>There's something bizarre with your excel files, the data shows up in the equasion box rather than the table proper. Makes it pain to look at, but at least the info's there.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Really? Damn. They're converted from MS Works files. They're just basic tables; I didn't think they'd be too much of a problem for most spreadsheets.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I'm interested in how you arrived at your data for time between volleys, as our numbers are fairly different.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Originally, I only watched the ammo counter for a few times each and averaged them, which is why you'll get some variation during testing between your numbers and mine. Also, there's a lot of variability with arty in CM. The only numbers I see which are really far off are the German 120mm mortars (which I'm still getting as 10~12 secs, not the 20 secs you have listed), and the Brit 14" Naval, which was a major typo by me. It should be around 2 minutes.

- Chris

[John Hough]

Whoa, you're right. The 120 mm mortar is 10 seconds. I dunno how that happened.

Also, I think the 75 mm British airborne gun is exactly the standard American 75 mm. Point cost, blast, ROF, targeting speed, effect, they all seem to be the same.

-John

[John Hough]

All right, the corrected file, including the extra British guns and the 10 second 120 mm mortar reload time is available from the same link above.

-John

[John Hough]

I figured out what's wrong with your excel files: somehow, there's no font selected. Selecting the entire table, then changing the font to something real, will get it to display properly. If you'd like, I could fix them and mail them back to you.

An additional note on interval times: what I did, in order to get the nice round numbers, is get an approximate idea from looking at the observed interval and the shots over time, and then, with the expectation of a shell falling every so many seconds, check to see if the shells, over time, started consistently falling earlier or later than I expected them to, based on the estimate. Even a small difference would show up after a few volleys, and it consistently gave me multiples of 5 seconds as intervals. Except the damn 3 inch mortar. I'm fairly confident I have good numbers on all the weapons now, except the 3 inch mortar, though the numbers on the larger guns are probably a bit less accurate, because there's less opportunity to see if the volleys creep forward or backward from the expected time.

-John

[Wolfe]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I figured out what's wrong with your excel files: somehow, there's no font selected. Selecting the entire table, then changing the font to something real, will get it to display properly. If you'd like, I could fix them and mail them back to you.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hmmm. That's weird. I've looked at the tables using MSWorks, the free Excel viewer, as well as in Star Office, and everything looks ok. I can't imagine why it would do that on your machine; I just used the default Arial font and nothing fancy in the tables. What program are you using?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>An additional note on interval times: it consistently gave me multiples of 5 seconds as intervals. Except the damn 3 inch mortar.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

It wouldn't surprise me if BTS had used convenient figures to base their intervals on. What I listed was just what I got. It's close enough to give people an idea of when to expect rounds as well as how many may be used in a given turn, which is what I was after. Are my numbers exactly on target? Nah. But they really don't have to be. Close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and artillery charts.

- Chris