Urgent for BTS: artillery pattern orientation

[John Kettler]

Dear BTS,

For CMBB and all future CM games, please implement at least rudimentary player control over offboard artillery pattern orientation. True, you gave us the rough equivalent of the standard sheaf and open sheaf, I think. But you also set it up so that artillery always falls E-W. This is not a problem as long as the map is N-S, since the rounds land parallel to the player's lines, as they're supposed to. But try playing on an E-W map. The rounds land perpendicular to the target, missing most of it and wind up in all sorts of embarrassing places.

You can have the mean point of impact (MPI) well away from your troops and smack on target, but will still have part of any salvo landing on your own positions. This has been a real problem for me in the Invitational, because many of the maps run E-W.

The seriousness of this problem is multiplied under reduced visibility because you model map firing as being subject to greater pattern dispersion (ground separation between rounds), not deviation of the MPI from the desired MPI. Some are gutsy and/or crazy enough to bring FOs to sneezing range, but generally one winds up paying big time penalties, suffering greatly reduced artillery effectiveness and entertaining one's foe while shelling or mortaring one's own troops.

I've lost armor and infantry because of this, not to mention suffered lots of unnecessary unit pins and worse. 81mm mortar fire lands all over the place, and VT is terrifying. Fortunately, 155s seem to be very accurate.

I believe it is urgent that this matter be addressed head-on in CMBB because the primary

strategic axis will be E-W.

Sincerely,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

Um, you do realise that the reason the scatter pattern is elongated E-W is because that is assumed to be the direction of fire, don't you? Errors in the range are generally larger than errors in the direction. They are subject to the same pointing uncertainty, plus uncertainties due to powder charge and its burn, windage, temperature and pressure changes in the intervening air, the aerodynamic properties of flying shells, etc. The gunners are not purposefully laying out a barrage on a certain axis for your benefit. That is just the way they come down when they are aiming at one point, while firing east to west or west to east.

[Michael Dorosh]

I think he's asking that we not assume that - ie let us be able to set the direction of fire either E-W or N-S.

[JonS]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JasonC:

Um, you do realise that the reason the scatter pattern is elongated E-W is because that is assumed to be the direction of fire, don't you? Errors in the range are generally larger than errors in the direction.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

PEr (Probable-Error-range) is indeed much greater than PEd (Probable-Error-drift, though to tell the truth this one is refered to SO seldomly that I can't recall the exact term).

But, in practical terms it doesn't actually matter that much*. Certainly not as much as is shown in the game. Nowhere near as much. When firing a circular pattern, say, the pattern of the rounds falling on the ground is indeed a circle. In fact I vividly remember watching a circular distribution impact, and being able to tell exactly which part of the circle each gun was aiming at due to the tight little groups of impact craters at each designated point in the pattern.

Its been a while since I studied stats, but IIRC what you are dealing with is the average of a group of averages, which tends to cancel out individual error. In other words, the error for individual guns within a pattern should be masked by the overall size of the pattern itself.

Sure, each gun will have its own little impact footprint, but those 4 (or 8 for a proper battery) individual footprints combined as part of a pattern don't affect the shape of the pattern.

Regards

JonS

*There is a time when PEr does matter, though. During adjustment of a target the FOO needs to know what the PEr is for the type of gun he is using, at the range he is firing, in order to be able to make accurate corrections without wasting time trying to adjust within the PEr limits either side of the target. Since CM doesn't really model adjustment (except as a general time delay), this doesn't count/matter in game terms either.

Note1: I've used 'pattern' where 'distribution' should more properly be used.

Note2: There are lots of different patterns/distributions available, though for speed and ease in pre-digital days the parallel (all guns firing the same bearing and elevation) distribution was most common.

[ 09-05-2001: Message edited by: JonS ]

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

With all due deference to your formidable historical research abilities, I am well aware that range errors are more common than deflection errors for conventional artillery, resulting in a 100% zone (imaginary box on ground in which all rounds fired from a given gun at a defined charge, elevation, deflection and projectile will land) much longer than it is wide. Got all that, read the JMEMs (Joint Munitions Effectiveness Manuals) too. These are the mostly classified volumes used to compute weapon kill probabilities by the U.S. military.

Your point is not the issue, though. For one, the firing battery, depending on the scenario and tactical situation, could be sited at any point on the compass relative to the supported unit, though in practice more like a 180 degree arc to the rear and sides of the supported unit. This factor alone negates your fundamental point, since the rounds will now potentially arrive from almost any axis, not just E-W. I maintain the present approach is a coding convenience.

Real artillery patterns are oriented and conformed to the target's size, shape and orientation. This starts with regimental, battalion and battery site selection after identification of likely threat axes, continues to aimpoint selection for batteries within the firing battalion, but it extends down to offsetting aimpoints for guns within the battery by assigning slightly different range and deflection settings for each of the the guns.

CMBO already models intrabattery deflection differences. That's what Target Wide is. The guns, normally modeled as firing parallel trajectories (Target = standard sheaf), angle out a bit to fire an open sheaf. If my understanding is correct, we have no converged sheaf (trajectories all come together), which is used for destroying point targets.

All I'm asking for is a coding addition which would also let me change the intrabattery range settings, the effect of which will be to allow me to rotate the direction of the impact pattern so that it is aligned with the target being attacked. This would free me from the unrealistic and often damaging constraints presently in effect.

I emphatically invite the artillery professionals serving and retired to jump right into this thread. I believe that the issue I've raised is highly germane to future CM realism and good gameplay, but I do not flatter myself that I have the detailed expertise to really get into the nitty gritty technical issues.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

I am an artillery professional - former, that is. Well, professional might be a bit strong; I was only a reservist in the US field artillery.

The idea that you can orient the fall of shot at will onto a preferred axis across the target, with a single firing battery, I think it fanciful. Nothing in CM today will stop you from doing it with a battalion shoot - just put the aim points side by side, etc. But what you are asking, in effect, is for the ability to place all rounds within ~50 yards of the target back to front, and that is simply beyond the aiming capabilities of the guns and their FOs.

The coding convenience involved in the E-W orientation was not simply arbitrary. Yes, in principle the direction of the firing guns could be anywhere in an arc behind your lines. But artillery does not position itself right up on the line. It stays back to avoid counterbattery fire, unless it needs extra reach into enemy territory for counterbattery or indirection fires itself. But in those cases, it isn't firing in support of the front line, which is the kind of firing one gets in CM.

The overall axis of the front line was generally north-south. The rival firing batteries were thus usually seperated from one another east to west. In Normandy it was the reverse, in the drive to expand the beachhead southward, and a few occasions in the Bulge show the same alignment for similar reasons.

But the axis of the longer error was certainly not under the tactical control of the shooter, to twist as he sees fit, the better to fit the shape of a tactical target. It is not like we are targeting wall spells in some RPG. And the axis of fire was generally deeper into the enemy position, not along it - whichever direction "deeper" was in that time and place. Because the guns were behind quite a ways.

Incidentally, FOs generally couldn't judge range error nearly as well as direction error, either. For the obvious reason - they see just spouts of dirt, and how far in front of or behind a target they are they can hardly tell. They are lucky if they get some of the "overs" and "unders" right despite all the dust.

Artillery fire called within 400 meters of friendlies was considered dangerously close in WW II. You are bothered by an inability to place a precise and long barrage exactly where you want it, centered ~100 yards away, without any of the shells hitting your guys. Which is a decidedly unrealistic expectation, in my opinion. The level of control players have over the fall of supporting arty, and its responsiveness, is definitely on the high side in CM already - arguably far above historical levels really achieved in most situations, in practice.

[Roborat]

I wholeheatedly agree, and while we are at it, I want to be able to select the impact pattern, ie: circular, rectangular, line, etc., so I can select an appropriate barrage pattern for my intended target. And, as stated above, the penalty for unobserved fire is wrong, while the point of impact should have some inaccuracy, (not all that great, as long as decent maps are available, the accuracy shouldn't be to badly degraded just because the targer area is not observed, and yes, I am aware that this was likely implemented in the game to counteract the universal spotting issues), the impact pattern shouldn't, that has no relation to the spotter, he would only adjust the spotting rounds, not the entire impact pattern.

[The_Capt]

Hey while we are at it,

Why don't we model realistic "danger ranges" which model shrapnel and not just blast, so that when we use patterns they are in fact useful.

[JonS]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JasonC:

Artillery fire called within 400 meters of friendlies was considered dangerously close in WW II.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The Commonwealth used a technique know as 'leaning on the barrage' to advance closely behind a moving, linear, barrage. Blackburn refers to the official distance in training during 1942 as being 300yards (270m), and the actual distance somewhere around 2/3 of that.

With practice and improved techniques I would expect this distance to be significantly lower for operations during 1944/45.

[JasonC]

How about if when you select an aim point for the barrage, the actual aim point jumps to a random location within 200 yards of the point you selected, in any direction? How about if 1/3rd of the time the mission is not fired at all, and 1/3rd of the time 5 minutes is added to the delay?

People are asking for godlike control over the pointing of every tube as a precise packet of dirt. Nobody had such control in real life, with any regularity. I can just hear it now "Battery, fire mission. But first, could you please redeploy to deliver this fire on a long axis NNE to SSW? And tweak the sheaf to 25 meter increments? Oh and have the FFE here within 2 minutes, already adjusted directly onto the target, please. Heck, why not fire every gun in corps at this offending infantry platoon, too, while we are at it? A VT time on target shoot, please. Also, do you have any improved conventional munitions?"

[JasonC]

Jons, you do realize that people regularly put the aim point 80-120 yards away in CM today, right? And not happy with that, they now demand cutting the range error in half so they can put the barrage center about 50-60 yards ahead of their men, safely. Whereas the 300 yards for close following of a rolling barrage figure meant the nearest exploding shells, not the center-line of the shoot.

Yes they did shoot that close sometimes, especially when it was infantry moving up to the already located barrage, instead of the barrage landing that close to where the infantry was (the error is larger for the shells, obviously). They also lost men to shorts and backward whizzing baseplates; they just preferred that to being machinegunned by guys that got their heads back up too fast, if they followed the barrage at 400 yards. They also "lifted" the barrage in 100 to 400 yard steps every 2-5 minutes (depending on the length of the lifts), so the time spent that close to it was relatively brief - the distance between infantry and shells would "accordian" up and down as the lifts progressed.

Nobody has any difficulty in CM today bringing the shells down closer than that to his own guys, with nearly perfect safety. If you put the center of the barrage 120 meters away, you are fine - even with some shells landing very close in front of you. Doing so will typically plaster the entire effective infantry fire range away from your men.

[JonS]

Right. You think there is too much control over artillery currently in CM, based on your worldview. I think the way rounds fall on the ground in CM is grossly abstracted, based on my worldview.

Note that these two statements aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

My point about being able to see where each guns' rounds were falling wasn't a request for individual gun corrections. It was merely meant to illustrate that individual gun PEr's are insignificant within a larger pattern.

[ASL Veteran]

I would have to agree that there are a lot of abstractions in CMBO for artillery. One thing that I would like to see implemented would be to have a little more interaction with the Spotting Round. Maybe I should place the desired location for the FFE, then when the spotting round comes down - that would then become the center of the FFE. I would then evaluate where the Spotting Round landed and decide if that is where I want the FFE to land - otherwise I should adjust the Spotting Round again. Seemed to work well for that "other" game about WW2 tactical combat . I wonder what kind of drift you could expect with an initial spotting round?

[JasonC]

Sure it worked, it just took a while. Drawing chits out of a cup, rolling a die to see if you rolled another die, yada yada. CM replaces that dance with a delay timer than is longer for the sort that are worse at that stuff, shorter for those better at it. By the time you've waited your 2-4 minutes that is all supposed to be done.

Personally I have nothing much against the CM system. It is extremely simply to use and clean. My only qualms about it have to do with responsiveness, speed, accuracy, certainty - all being somewhat too high. But I don't quite see the point in playing "artillery, the atari version", to walk in each shell. It is more work, and its produces much the same result once perfectionist players have tweaked every knob - a little fiddling delay, then a barrage where you want it.

[JonS]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JasonC:

But I don't quite see the point in playing "artillery, the atari version"...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I've seen this kind of snide remark made before, and frankly I don't buy it.

Why is it okay to go into endless detail regarding amour penetration algorithims, including hardness, slope, defects and shot traps, okay to have umpteen dozen squad types, etc, but not okay to request a better artillery model?

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

You have a rare gift of being able to distort a straightforward and, I believe, historically valid request for minor player control over battery pattern orientation into an exegesis on players demanding the in-game equivalents of laser-guided projectiles, with full control over each round. Even more risible in terms of your clearly "not getting it" was your invocation of "RPG wall spells" for purposes of illustrating your point. A unique approach for a professional historian!

Let me be clear. I'm not asking for anything other than what could be done historically. I don't want range errors artificially reduced or any other similar bizarre notion or strawman you may wish to offer. Nor do I care for the cynicism, derision and general dismissive tone you've adopted toward me or my idea. Kindly lay off the ad hominem attacks.

As noted before, CMBO already models different intrabattery deflection settings. They are depicted in Target Wide. Are you saying that if I can angle out the individual guns by varying amounts to fan out the pattern, I somehow can't similarly crank the elevation wheels, thus shifting the way the impact pattern lands on the ground? If so, I believe

you have eliminated known period technology, ballistics, and at least fifty years of technical advances in artillery theory, design and employment. The keyboard's mightier than the sword!

I raised a serious point, one which evidently was a hot button for you, since much of your reply was anything but topical or well reasoned. It seems as though your fears were in control of your typing fingers when you keyed your replies. Let's go back to facts, figures, science and technology.

Do you happen to have the appropriate prior to the War or World War II field artillery manuals which define the actual procedures for

planning and conducting a battery shoot? Is there a website which discusses the matter to which you can refer me? Do you know some WW II

artillerymen to whom I might speak? In short, do you have anything to add to the discussion other than your obviously strong, apparently visceral, negative opinion?

Sincerely,

John Kettler

[Scott B]

Several good points in this thread so far, so I'll concentrate on them based on my knowledge of the art.

On John Kettler's initial question on direction of fire: You are correct in that the game included an arbitrary "cardinal points" direction of fire for all off-table artillery-- I believe the best reason for this is one of expediency. It is theoretically possible that the firing unit could be in any direction from the battlefield-- for simplicity's sake, BTS chose not to model the gun-target angle outside of generalizing that the firing unit is directly East or West of the maneuver units on the CM battlefield, depending on what nationality it is.

Certainly, in reality an artillery unit placed 1/3 of its maximum range back from the front lines still has about a 140 degree fire fan toward the enemy (might want to check my math, but I think this is right), which is to say incoming fire could be up to 70 degrees off of the line running East to West that artillery commonly aligns itself with in CMBO, and this is even before you take into account that the front wasn't a straight line from North to South.

In any case, positioning the firing unit is not something typically within the control of the maneuver commander at the Combat Mission scale, at least. The maneuver commander is concerned with the effects of his indirect fire support, not so much where it's coming from.

On Sheafs: There are a good number of possible sheafs, but as previously mentioned the most common of these would most likely have been the parallel sheaf, as it requires the lowest amount of computations and can be fired more quickly in general as a result. The "standard" sheaf in Combat Mission seems to be a closed sheaf, with each of the guns firing roughly at the same point, while the "target wide" sheaf seems to be a modern circular sheaf, although it could conceivably be argued that it is in fact a parallel sheaf fired by a battery arranged in a circle.

At any rate the reason a parallel sheaf is the most common is because once a deflection and elevation setting for the adjusting piece is resolve, each of the remaining guns in the battery will follow the same deflection and elevation, and the FFE rounds will impact with some measure of error in a pattern based roughly on the positions of the guns. Any other sheaf requires the firing unit to calculate different elevation and deflection settings for each weapon. While not impossible, it was quite often not necessary.

My impression is the kind of customized targets that people are talking about here, whether it's a wide sheaf to suppress an area, or a linear sheaf across a woodline or exposed road, are more the realm of predesignated targets than of the Combat Mission standard impromptu fire mission. At Combat Mission ranges, your opportunity to get creative with your artillery mission is largely past; calling for fire at a target within 500m with anything 105mm on up is beginning to risk friendly casualties anyway, and by then most observers should be far more worried about response time than sheaf pattern.

At any rate the current system is workable. I certainly have my own list of modifications I'd like to see to the fire support system, and some of those items I'd probably place ahead of this one (such as The_Capt's suggestion on more accurate modeling of projectile effects), but I certainly understand where you're coming from, John-- there exists an amount of inflexibility to artillery in-game that likely did not exist historically to some extent. But at the same time, artillery is not an exact science by any stretch, and the current abstraction of it in CM is something I can live with for the time being.

[Ex Bellator]

As there are a lot of arty experts here this might be the right thread to get a question answered for me.

I'm not sure about the way CM models rocket impacts. AFAIK one reason Nebelwerfers were so feared was that the rounds would land virtually instantaneously and give the target almost no time to seek cover.

So I wonder if we should see very high concentrated bursts of half a dozen rounds impacting together to represent each launch rather than the present spread of rounds over several turns.

Thoughts welcome and hopefully this won't detract from the main topic much.

[Andreas]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rex_Bellator:

As there are a lot of arty experts here this might be the right thread to get a question answered for me.

I'm not sure about the way CM models rocket impacts. AFAIK one reason Nebelwerfers were so feared was that the rounds would land virtually instantaneously and give the target almost no time to seek cover.

So I wonder if we should see very high concentrated bursts of half a dozen rounds impacting together to represent each launch rather than the present spread of rounds over several turns.

Thoughts welcome and hopefully this won't detract from the main topic much.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, from my observations it arrives a lot faster than other arty. You get through 25 rounds in one turn, I believe. Which incidentally is almost exactly 4 Werfer battery w/6 tubes each.

What I am not sure about is whether the airburst of the 150mm is modelled. Apparently it should detonate 60cm above gorund. Does anyone know?

[Moon]

Hey Capt - don't be mislead by the fact that CM only lists a "blast rating" for artillery. This rating is for quick reference purposes only. The actual game engine models shrapnel, HE fillings, shell size etc. accurately and does NOT - repeat: does NOT - use a general "blast" rating only. Hope this clarifies some apparent confusion with "blast ratings".

[Andrew H.]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rex_Bellator:

AFAIK one reason Nebelwerfers were so feared was that the rounds would land virtually instantaneously and give the target almost no time to seek cover.

So I wonder if we should see very high concentrated bursts of half a dozen rounds impacting together to represent each launch rather than the present spread of rounds over several turns.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In an earlier artillery thread, someone stated that the first shells in an artillery barrage were much more effective than follow up rounds because people quickly sought the best cover available, making subsequent rounds less effective. Thus, if Nebelwerfer rounds hit at the same time, they would be more effective than if they hit one after another.

But this principle, if correct, would also have implications for all artillery strikes.

[JasonC]

John, the default CM pattern is already a closed sheaf. The range spread is not deliberate, due to the way the individual ovals of the guns have been stacked - it is minima,; the range error of each gun, even aiming at the same spot.

The reason you can't fire closed sheaf unobserved (map fire, no LOS in CM) is because they wouldn't expect to hit anything with a closed sheaf map shoot, so they are firing a normal sheaf. A CM player might want it, but that is because he has borg sighting and somebody has LOS to the exact target, even though the FO doesn't. But the FO does not know the point target to put the closed sheaf on, so he shoots a normal one. The wider CM artillery pattern for unobserved fire simply prevents an unrealistic exploitation of borg sighting to "correct" map fire, as though every unit were an FO.

As for the reason why you've taken offense at my comments, I suggest you read your first post again. You baldly stated that artillery is "supposed" to land parallel to your men, despite what you know about range errors being larger (and thus, narrowest barrages being long ovals, not wide ones). I can put this down to your idee fixe that there are no closed sheafs and thus thinking CM fire patterns are long deliberately, the gunners trying to get that layout.

But you also told me why you wanted it "fixed", in your original "BTS do sumfink!" You said the patterns you called, being narrow and long, missed much of the target (thus is was a rather wide target) and some fell on your own men. To get that result you have to call it in close. You said it was map fire.

You called map fire in close on a wide target, and are complaining that you couldn't adjust it to hit more of the attackers and none of your men. You said so, I don't have to make it up as an allegation.

You are saying "please fix or do sumfink" because a close barrage of map fire didn't, as you think it "ought" to have done, land as a long oval precisely ahead of your troops, not hurting them and plastering the target your borg sighters, but not your FO, could see.

You added that this was a "real problem" *for you* "in the invitational". I didn't say this. You did.

Then you object to my statement that you are calling for god-like control of every tube, beyond what the historical participants could actually count on. You think it should be perfectly normal for unobserved map fire aimed less than 200 yards from your own men to land as a neat line of shells right in front of your positions and exactly parallel to it. When I notice that is exactly what an RPG gamer expects of a "wall" spell you get your shorts in a knot and call it "ad hominem".

Riddle me this - exactly what range error, in the sense of the maximum length between shortest and longest shell, front to back, do you think ought to remain in a typical fire mission, when not deliberately increased?

Do you think every shell should land in a band only 20 meters long? Why not? Why do you think the ~100m spread you see in observed closest possible fire in CM today, isn't a realistic minimum? Do you think typical WW II FOs - heck, do you think typical FOs -today-, with GPS systems - called or call map fire less than 200 yards from friendlies and expect it to be perfectly safe, no friendly fire "embarassments" possible?

Isn't that exactly what you are asking for? Isn't that what you did in "the invitational"? Aren't you complaining that it didn't work like a charm? Saying you ought to have 2 knobs to dial so that next time you want to do the same thing, it -will- work like a charm?

Gee, Ma, it worked with "wall of blades" in "exile" - I just hit space bar and the axis of the 'barrage' rotated 45 degrees - why doesn't it work in CM?

[MikeyD]

The impact pattern is due to dispersion. Each shell follows a 'cone of fire' it's most likely to follow due to various factors, which is indeed circular. The thing is when the shells come screaming in at a 45 degree angle ( for instance) that circular 'cone' inersects with the hozontal terrain at an angle, causing the elongated pattern along the path of the shells, like slicing a circular tube at an angle. If John is talking about adjusting line of the dispersion pattern, that would imply the squads have would a significant amount of control over just where the artillery is being fired from, which sounds a big 'gamey'.

[Scott B]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JasonC:

The reason you can't fire closed sheaf unobserved (map fire, no LOS in CM) is because they wouldn't expect to hit anything with a closed sheaf map shoot, so they are firing a normal sheaf. A CM player might want it, but that is because he has borg sighting and somebody has LOS to the exact target, even though the FO doesn't. But the FO does not know the point target to put the closed sheaf on, so he shoots a normal one. The wider CM artillery pattern for unobserved fire simply prevents an unrealistic exploitation of borg sighting to "correct" map fire, as though every unit were an FO.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree with the above, with perhaps one exception. The current Target and Target Wide sheafs seem to be random distributions within a set area rather than any model of the actual aimpoints of the guns of a battery. Again, I assume this is due to expediency-- it's less of a pain to code this way, certainly.

What JasonC calls a "normal sheaf" would in all likelihood have been fired as a parallel sheaf, with the round impacts roughly approximating the location of the individual guns in the battery, with an amount of error thrown in for each projectile's flight. As it was not uncommon to deploy batteries in a linear or zig-zag pattern parallel to the front lines, units firing this sheaf would tend to have a distribution of rounds roughly parallel to the front regardless of their direction of fire. The error based on range would naturally vary based on how far the target was from the firing battery.

What's important to note is that at shorter ranges or with very good survey and/or accurate weapons (some guns were more accurate than others-- another issue understandably not modeled in CM), the "footprint" for incoming rounds might very well be smaller than the 100m x 50m area; conversely, at longer ranges or with less accurate firing systems the error could conceivably be much more.

As an extreme example, any FO trained in calling for naval gunfire probably learned on day one the dangers of calling for NGF over one's head; far more than even conventional field artillery, naval guns employ very high velocity, low trajectory projectiles that result in a much greater range dispersion than field artillery does for the most part. Add to that the variable stability of the firing platform and the potential power of its rounds, and you begin to understand the risks of employing such a system within 1000m or so of friendly troops on the battlefield.

At any rate, CM does not seem to simulate variances in weapon accuracy nor differences in firing unit size. Other than adjustments to response time, the varying fire support systems of the different nations also do not seem to be modeled within the game. Given these issues, it is apparent that the designers chose to abstract the indirect fire support system to some extent in order to give priority to the maneuver battle, which was probably justified-- this is a maneuver game, and nuances to fire support generally weren't the province of the CM-level commander. But the end result was some issues like Gun-Target angle and firing unit size did not seem to make the cut.

Hope this helps a bit.

Scott

[JasonC]

Oh, insofar as greater artillery detail is what is wanted, I am all for it. In ways that don't interfer too much with playability (playing "atari artillery") or give unrealistic, excessive control to players.

There are certainly things wrong with CM artillery fire - Brit 4.5" guns are almost twice as effective as they should be, Brit 25-lbers have too much blast but not enough rate of fire, on-map mortars use the direct fire procedures and are too accurate (especially side-to-side misses) because of it, and if they tweaked typical CEPs 5% less for this gun type and 10% more for that one, it'd be great.

Total front to back range error for typical shoots just isn't one of them.