Chad Harrison Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 last night i had two PBEM that were pretty darn close, i mean CLOSE with regards to how close our men were to each other. both were a situation where our men were in a section of woods duking it out. on both i was also outnumbered by about 2 to 1 (platoons), and the OPFOR was veteran troops versus my vanila amis. luckily (i thought) for me was that in both i had a sherman105 close by with a LOS to the OPFOR platoons that were within meters of my men. i had to make a decision: do i fire with the MA a 105 shell into the OPFOR platoon and hope my men dont take some losses? in both cases i decided it was better to face that than to be wipped out by the platoon. so i odered in one case a direct fire order, in another a area fire order to fire in the middle of two OPFOR squads. as i watched the next movie, my tanks both just sat there and did nothing. NOTHING. they still kept their target lines to the men, but they did not even give suppresing MG fire. next turn i cancelled the order (i assumed i had pressed NO on wheter or not they should use their main gun), and regave the order assuming that that would fix it. next turn the same thing happened: no main gun fire! has this happened to anyone else? my only thought is that they did that because the tacAI decided that it was close to my men, and did not want to take a chance. does anyone else have any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 I've never seen tanks or other units refuse to risk friendly casualties. Are you sure they had LOS to the enemy units? I suppose you know you can target units our of LOS. The program will then wait to see if an LOS develops. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conscript Bagger Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 I remember reading either in the manual or here on the board that an AFV under area fire orders will stop shooting if friendly troops enter the vicinity of the aiming point. Don't know what happened with that one you gave direct fire orders to though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Offwhite: I remember reading either in the manual or here on the board that an AFV under area fire orders will stop shooting if friendly troops enter the vicinity of the aiming point. Don't know what happened with that one you gave direct fire orders to though.<hr></blockquote> I don't know if this is supposed to be the case or not, but I have observed enough cases of my troops continuing to fire when it endangered (or even in some cases inflicted casualties on) friendlies that I now watch carefully when I mean to move into an area that's been targetted and give cease fire orders to all firing troops. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Harrison Posted November 2, 2001 Author Share Posted November 2, 2001 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Offwhite: I remember reading either in the manual or here on the board that an AFV under area fire orders will stop shooting if friendly troops enter the vicinity of the aiming point. Don't know what happened with that one you gave direct fire orders to though.<hr></blockquote> from what i have seen, this is not always the case. i have had many times a covering MG continue to fire when my men came into the are the MG was covering. so why would my tanks refuse to fire? has this ever happened to anyone else? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfe Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 Tanks will stop firing HE when friendly units are near to try to avoid friendly casualties, but MGs will not. I guess HE is thought to be too dangerous to use very close in to your own troops while MG fire is not? Tank MGs (hull, flex) will also continue firing even though their main gun stops. - Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolfe Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 BTW, during daytime engagements your MGs have absolutely no negative impact on your own troops. You can't kill 'em or even supress 'em. Hopefully BTS will look at this for CMBB. - Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 I had a case where I gave a PIAT in non-hidden mode a target command to a tank that was out of LOS, but on the way. The PIAT didn't shoot when the tank came into LOS, it just sat there, the tank stopped without spotting the PIAT, nothing happend. In orders I regave the target command. Next turn still nothing happend. Then I removed the target order. I don't remember whether I gave a new order or not, sorry. In any case, after the "stale" target order was resetted, the PIAT fired. No of the units moved meanwhile and the PIAT was rested all along. So, I think there may be an obscure fire-prevention bug in CMBO, but it certainly is rare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Wolfe: BTW, during daytime engagements your MGs have absolutely no negative impact on your own troops. You can't kill 'em or even supress 'em. Hopefully BTS will look at this for CMBB<hr></blockquote> Definitely untrue. I was doing an attack once where I had a platoon of infantry in halftracks assaulting a treeline where I thought there were probably Germans. So I had the halftracks fire their MGs into the suspected areas as they approached in order to provide supressive fire. Then when the halftracks reached their destinations, they stopped and the infantry hopped out and ran into the trees. In one case, a squad got popped, took some casualties and panicked. I watched that movie a dozen times trying to figure out where the fire came from. Finally I noticed that the squad had stepped into the HT's line of fire just as it sent off a burst, and that's when they got popped. Since then, I've observed the same kind of thing on several occasions, and there may have been others that I didn't notice. Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanir Ausf B Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 Michael, I think in the example you gave your troops must have been fired upon by an unspotted enemy unit. Wolfe is correct that MG and small arms fire during the daytime cannot injure friendly troops. Do this test: set up a game where you have a tank a short distance behind a friendly platoon of infantry sitting on open ground. Order the tank to area fire with MGs only directly at one of the squads. The tank will blaze away turn after turn with no effect on the infantry. Then order it to area fire with main gun. It will not fire the main gun, but will fire the hull MG (also to no effect). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ogadai Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 While I know this is most probably beyond the sophistication of the present game engine, several times I've want to be able to move my troops close to an objective thats being shelled, before my men move onto it. With the present system, I have to cease firing at the start of a turn, rather than as I'd prefer, in the middle. I can see two possible remedies - one an automatic cease fire when friendly troops get within a certain distance of a target, the other a specific order to cease firing by a certain 15 second segment of a turn (ie like the pause the command). I'd like the former perhaps for direct fire, artillery/mortars and the latter for indirect fire weapons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
russellmz Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 i once had a case where a sherman refused to area fire because a scared squad was near the area. after the squad panicked and ran away, the tank fired almost immediately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 Michael and Chris are both correct. You will take friendly casualties from an AFV's MG's if the friendlies are close enough to the firing unit and they are moving, else the MGs will have no effect. Happened to me several times. Ron Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted November 2, 2001 Share Posted November 2, 2001 <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Ron: Michael and Chris are both correct. <hr></blockquote> Ooooo! I love hearing that! Could you say it once more? (Although if it will save you time and trouble typing, you can leave out the part about Chris.) Michael [ 11-02-2001: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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