Rolling barrage?

[Supertanker]

Is it possible to set a rolling barrage, with my men advancing close behind? Or is this something I have to do manually by retargeting, etc..

I ask because I've been reading Closing With the Enemy (M. Doubler), and he says that by 1944, the US was advancing infantry 100-200 yards behind the arty. He cites to three US War Department publications for support of that claim.

[Doug Beman]

You have to do this manually, with retargeting. However, as each turn is only one minute, I don't think this will excessively hurt the realism, as I don't think a rolling barrage was advanced more often than once per minute in reality. If the turns were 5 minutes it might make things difficult.

Just make sure your arty observer is pretty good at his job, and maybe is in command radius of an HQ unit.

DjB

[Formerly Babra]

Unfortunately, retargeting causes serious delays in the barrage, which has the effect of a series of individual TOTs rather than a rolling barrage. Also, since the rounds are aimed at a target rather than a front, they impact in a cluster rather than in a line.

I think artillery functions need to be expanded.

[:USERNAME:]

I think they need to be expanded especially for the Eastern Front CM2.

I imagine preset barrages would be needed for the soviets. During setup, barrages could be specified. These would come in maybe within a turn or so of the specified time.

Lewis

[Guest Germanboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Formerly Babra:

Unfortunately, retargeting causes serious delays in the barrage, which has the effect of a series of individual TOTs rather than a rolling barrage. Also, since the rounds are aimed at a target rather than a front, they impact in a cluster rather than in a line.

I think artillery functions need to be expanded.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I would agree with your assessment that a rolling barrage is difficult to simulate in CM. I am not sure however whether that has a serious effect on the gameplay.

The accounts I have read (mostly on Commonwealth attacks using rolling barrages) seem to indicate that the actual objectives were mostly taken with little trouble, if the infantry kept up with the barrage. The defenders are often described as 'bomb-happy', and did not offer much resistance.

The problems started with exploitation, when the attack ran into defense-in-depth positions that were no longer covered by the barrage, or when the infantry did not manage to keep up with the barrage, giving the defenders the opportunity to recover. Another problem would be a counter-attack in strength once the objective was taken.

All of these you can simulate, by e.g. creating a scenario in which you downgrade the quality of the defenders, to account for the beating they just took, maybe keep them short on HQ units etc. And then you just attack as you would otherwise. Or you create a sort of meeting engagement where your men can not dig in before they are hit by a strong counter attack, to simulate the situation when you have just taken the objective.

It would be great however if you could specify patterns of firing, e.g. for smoke you might want a line paralleling your own MLR, instead of the current pattern. Don't know if that would be realistic though and am quite sure it has been discussed months ago.

Sorry for the ramble.

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Andreas

[guachi]

Could you set up a rolling barrage with muliple FOs? just keep adjusting the fire from one FO in front of the other and that should work to keep the barrage moving forward.

Jason

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Betas available to everyone are just publicity stunts anyways. -FK