Are artillery rules too restrictive?

[JoshK]

I was reading the online diary "A Platoon Leader In Patton's Army" that John Kettler posted about. The following passage made me think about CM's artillery procedure.

"As an aside, artillery was supposed to be directed by a forward observer officer from their troops. I only saw such an officer once. We infantry officers had not been taught in training to direct artillery fire, but we learned on the job and got very good at it as can be observed from Lt. Taylor's success."

Is CM's reliance on FO units too restrictive? I do not think that Lt. Bell's account is usual. Think back to Company Commander, perhaps the definitive first-person account of U.S. small-unit infantry combat. This method of calling in artillery seems to have been the de facto SOP of the U.S.

I remember a post from a while back that CM had altered the way indirect motor fire was modeled to take this sort of method into account. Should there be a post-release modification to also allow officers to act as FOs (perhaps at diminished capability) for "off-board" dedicated artillery?

What do some of our game designers, testers, historians and/or active duty and retired artillery veterans think?

[Ash]

I think it was mentioned awhile back that Company and maybe platoon commanders could call in fire but it wouldn't be as accurate as an FO (of course, since CC's and PC's wheren't trained as well in arty use)

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The names Ash, Housewares

[L4Pilot]

I've been wondering about this, too.

Quoting Michael Doubler(again ) "Artillery FO's with infrantry battalions often became casualties or were not in a good location to call for fires. To solve these problems, infantry regiments...began to train all personnel, down to and including platoon sergeants in FO procedures."

So the idea of having HQ units able to call for fire seems like a good one, even if with some accuracy or time penalty due to it not being their "full-time" job.

[Aacooper]

IIRC the FO units are also for letting the player know he HAS artillery, and as a way to manage it. I suppose you can call it a game design abstraction.

[JoshK]

As an abstraction (if indeed it is one) it only works to a degree. If other officer's should be able to call in artillery, then limiting that function to a FO unit has two distinct disadvantages. First, it is much more difficult to get LOS to a target with only one unit (the FO) as opposed to several (platoon, company, and battalion commanders). Second, if you FO unit is destroyed, then you lose your artillery.

[Los]

There are a lot of factors to consider before you just go letting everyone call for fire. Primarily is communications. In the military not everyone is chatting on one large party line. Things are broken up into a number of nets. Nowadays with comms being in the advanced state that they are (though FM still seems like "F**king Magic" at times)It's a simple process to switch over to the FO net, authentic and request a fire mission.

(NOte: The folowing is WW2 not modern day)

WW2 radios are not so simple. Most company and platoon level radios have ONE frequency, or a very narrow range, in fact you have to pre-install crystals to work on a set frequeny before you bring them out. (and yes radios did get better right near the end of the war.) Larger sets, battalion level and whatnot have crystals that will work over a larger range of frequencies or had multiple crystals. So even if a platoon leader knows how to call for fire,(If the platoon even has a radio, many TOEs particularly earlier on did not support platoon radio comms) he may not have the comms to get the request to the FO. Most likely he has to request it up to the Company commander, who then requests it through the battalion CP, who then has to pass it across he tent to the artillery net, who then request the fire misison through the battery of the DIV FDC.

Now even in this situation, where you are relying on radios (as in the attack), a syste I describe above might still be workable given a robust network pf preplanned TRPs. But if there is a need to adjust fire you can imagine the horrendous delays, (not including mis-relayed instructions) tha can occur. So there would need to be some major delays worked into the system.

Now on the defense where you have your unit in position with wire laid. Then it makes this whole process much simpler. The bn or rgt CP can switch you right into the artillery net and adjustments can be made. This does spread the power of calling for fire down to the lower levels IF AND WHEN wire is laid.

BTW if you read closely "IF You Survie" or "Company Commander" you will see that the vast majority of call for fire by the infantry leaders is done:

A: When tehy'reon the defense through Wire and even then it's relayed.

B: Using a TRP system.

The you have to take all this and research variations for time period and more importantly national differnces before you make any programming changes...

If this is something BTS would even consider looking into then I can set about doing the necessary research (Time consuming) since I have a good idea where to get at some of the sources, but realistically it's most liekely a post CM modification at this point.

For now just do what I do. Take care of your FOs. They are a valuable resource. Don't piss away your artillery at every shadow and save them up for when they're decisive.

Cheers...

Los

[Spook]

Los:

You might recall that I was one of those who argued months earlier that at least that the company HQ unit should have some "less efficient" FO capability.

By & large, though, I think your comments above are a good "balance" of the back-and-forth issues to consider in giving FO ability to more units besides the CM FO unit.

At the least, I figure that IF a company HQ unit (and platoon HQ?) can help to "spot" fire for on-board mortar units that are also set up in cover (out of LOS of the mortar target), then this would be a reasonable CM mechanism for the present time. I think that BTS mentioned this to be the present case with CM1 anyway, but I don't recall the details.

Ed

[ARCHANGEL]

I must agree with Los, arty should be used only when necessary, not wasted.

I have noted that the number of rounds that are far off target seems to be just a bit high for reality.

Also: When I was taught the call for fire (granted, not during or for WW2 )the MOST important aspect for the FO was MAP reading.

Accurate coordinates made it easier for the FDC (either mortar or Arty), to get the shots on target. So, IF you have accurate maps and an accurate map reader and a decent FDC, you should be able to get rounds on the target reasonably quickly and pretty accurately...even when they aren't all observed rounds.

[Guest rune]

Arty

Remember, you are in an early beta, the arty has been fixed a long time ago. There is a spotting round now, and then the pattern is much better. Remember maps in WWII were not all that accurate, and los' comments about radios dead on.

Rune

[Fionn]

In a current PBEM game (Hiya Bill ).

I have fired roughly 8 salvoes of heavy arty ( 105 and 150mm tube arty) and destroyed about 5 houses with these salvoes.

EACH of these houses has been point-targetted by my FOs. IOW I placed the target location EXACTLY on the house, waited a couple of minutes and let rip with 1 minute of artillery fire.

1 minute of directed fire was all that was needed to bring any house down.

I've used this, and a couple of Panthers, to point target an entire row of houses on my enemy's right flank and where there were about a dozen houses there are now only 3 or 4 left standing.

So, arty can be used MUCH more effectively for point-targetting now IMO.

Are you looking for those Jabos Bill ? I don't hear them overhead .