Current TRP model

[SenorBeef]

I'm not an FO, and don't have excessive knowledge in the area of ww2 era artillery, but I think the current TRP modelling (1.1) is faulty. The 20m limit around a trp seems completely arbitrary, and without reason.

I could imagine a command such as: "Target battery at TRP 4 minus 100 yards" as practical and common. If a spotter can call in adjustments (up to 100 meters, as currently modelled), why can't the same be done with TRPs? Essentially, in a normal (non-trp) arty call, he gives the coordinates, then adjusts them onto target, and then, if necesary, adjusts the focal point of the artillery. With a trp, the first step is already taken.. the coordinates are already known. So you should easily be able to adjust the artillery as you would normally, correct? I think there should be an ability to adjust within 100 meters (I think thats the normal artillery adjustment limit).

Also.. think of this..

If you call down fire onto a trp, and wait out the 60 second turn (A completely arbitrary limit), then you're allowed to adjust the fire, afterwards. Lets say it takes 30 seconds for the called artillery to start firing on the target. Thats equivelant to the FO saying "Ok, fire on trp one [30 seconds later] ok, its coming down [30 seconds later], ok, now we can adjust that to the left 80 yards....".. the second 30 seconds is a completely arbitrary limit imposed by the CM turn system. Theres no reason a spotter can't order an adjust in that time, BUT hes allowed to adjust it immeadiately after. So the FO can adjust the target off the TRP, he just has to wait an arbitrary 60 seconds to do so. That doesn't make sense. I think that it would be much more realistic and accurate. That'd make trps much more powerful.. but thats the whole sacrificing realism for gameplay thing. Raise the price, so you could have fewer. I'd rather have 2 realistic trps than 5 of these ones. Or.. If you insist on having the FO call in right over the trp, and then needing to adjust it.. at least take away the arbitrary time between the call and your next order. In other words, model the time it takes to call the arty down (say 30 seconds), and then add the time needed for adjustment fire (say 12 seconds), and then start the adjusted fire 42 seconds into the turn. (Instead of the current system, where the adjusted fire would come in at 1 minute 12 seconds). Anyway, opinions are welcome.

[109 Gustav]

Well, in a way, the whole battlefield could be counted as one of your "realistic trps." gun crews would have a good idea where to shoot, aided by a few spotting rounds. This is exactly like CM already has.

TRPs in CM just model places that are "boresighted." An observer could just yell on the radio "Gimmee ten rounds on the stone bridge now!" He'd get them just as soon as the gun crews could swing their pieces around and start firing.

Also, I don't know if you noticed this yet or not, but you can adjust fire from your original target, you just can't adjust it very far. Get some arty shooting. When the rounds start firing, tell the spotter to target a spot 50m or so away. It will only take him 15-30sec to adjust fire. The adjust fire line is green, as opposed to a normal red, BTW.

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

Well my skiff's a twenty dollar boat, And I hope to God she stays afloat.

But if somehow my skiff goes down, I'll freeze to death before I drown.

And pray my body will be found, Alaska salmon fishing, boys, Alaska salmon fishing.

-Commercial fishing in Kodiak, Alaska

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Well, in a way, the whole battlefield could be counted as one of your "realistic trps." gun crews would have a good idea where to shoot, aided by a few spotting rounds.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thats true. You can probably cover a small area with several trps to get a pretty good coverage.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

This is exactly like CM already has.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hmm? It has trps that you have to fire on for 60 + (+ for adjusting time) seconds before you can adjust them an inch.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

TRPs in CM just model places that are "boresighted." An observer could just yell on the radio "Gimmee ten rounds on the stone bridge now!"

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

"Yes. He can also say "Give me ten rounds 100 meters forward of the bridge, now!"

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

He'd get them just as soon as the gun crews could swing their pieces around and start firing.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If arty crews are capable of doing the calculation for adjusting shots in less than 20 seconds, I'm sure they could figure out how to adjust from a trp in the same time.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Also, I don't know if you noticed this yet or not, but you can adjust fire from your original target, you just can't adjust it very far.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes, I understand. But you can't adjust it until its already been firing for 60 seconds. (An arbitrary limit that doesn't need to be there)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Get some arty shooting. When the rounds start firing, tell the spotter to target a spot 50m or so away. It will only take him 15-30sec to adjust fire. The adjust fire line is green, as opposed to a normal red, BTW.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I realize this, of course. That doesn't change my point.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

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

Well my skiff's a twenty dollar boat, And I hope to God she stays afloat.

But if somehow my skiff goes down, I'll freeze to death before I drown.

And pray my body will be found, Alaska salmon fishing, boys, Alaska salmon fishing.

-Commercial fishing in Kodiak, Alaska

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Guest Pillar]

In sum: SenorBeef wants TRP's do be 100m in radius roughly, rather than as localized and precise as they are now.

Is this correct?

[SenorBeef]

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

In sum: SenorBeef wants TRP's do be 100m in radius roughly, rather than as localized and precise as they are now.

Is this correct?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yeah, thats the end result I'm looking for. The rest of that mess is just telling my reasons why I think its more realistic that way, also. (Sorry, I'm tired).. Anyway, your opinion would be appreciated BTS.

[Guest Pillar]

Makes sense SenorBeef!

[SenorBeef]

I'll be more concise.. and I won't ramble like that. Essentially, the way they are now.. the FO can call in a 20 meter adjustment (can hit within 20 meters of the trp). Thats artificial. Why pick 20? Balancing reasons? Bad idea. 100 meters is accepted (and in the game) as the standard artillery adjustment range. Why change for TRPs? The FO isn't actually going to say "Ok, base, I need artillery 50 meters left of trp one right now" "Uh, no, sorry there smith, but we can only adjust within 20 meters". It'd be more realistic to have an adjustment range of 100 meters, just as it is with non-trp artillery.

[tss]

See http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/013842.html for some numerical data taken from 1930's military manuals.

- Tommi

[Guest Seimerst]

<dusting off my semi-grog hat> Artillery adjustment was and is, still pretty much an art. For those who might be interested, there are two concepts- the gun-target line and the observer-target line. Take some graph paper mark a target, mark the firing battery and mark an observer. Then draw a line connecting the gun and the target and then another line connecting the oberver and the target. Assuming of course that the observer and the gun are not one the same line to the target-- a very rare case. For the purposes of discussion assume the observer-target line is 90 degrees to the gun target line. So if the observer spots the round and adjusts fire left 100 meters is really 100 meters over or short (depending on how your graph is) from the gun-target view. You can see that the adjust fire funtion in WWII is complex. Many FO's were math majors in college and they did much of the computations for the guns that the fired direction center (FDC) does today. Bottom line, I think the TRP in CM is about as good as it can get and not sacrifice the realism they strive for.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

When you say "you can't adjust it until it has been firing for 60 seconds", I simply do not find this to be true. If you call in an adjustment "right when" the artillery is about to arrive, you will bump the time back 30 seconds or so, but get the adjustment, sometimes after an early spotting round, or 1-2 rounds per gun it is true.

As for the "completely arbitrary" time to adjust fire, it seems to me this is based on an exclusive focus on the FO talking into the radio. The battery is where the real delay is occuring. In this thread, one poster seems to have the idea that once they are told, the artillery can easily adjust in 12 seconds or something.

In may interest you to know that even today, an artillery battery trains to be able to put rounds on target from the time of the call in a two minute time limit. If already "laid", ready, and bearing near the target that is not too bad for reasonably trained troops, and some can do it faster. But you should understand what is occuring, pell-mell, in that period of time.

The nature of the fire mission is being transmitted to every gun in the battery (4-6 of them), where loaders are acknowledging getting the order right, are screwing the appropriate fuses with the appropriate settings into the shell, which settings may need to be set with a sort of screwdriver and which fuses need to be locked in place, are "cutting" the powder to the right sized charge for the range, and loading that into the back of the unscrewed artillery round (for semi-fixed ammo like the U.S. 105mm anyway), or ready to go in behind the round.

The gun barrel is being adjusted onto the target, except it also has to be near horizontal for loading so often the elevation goes in last. The sight is prepared for that. The breech is opened, the round shoved into the tube and rammed forward into the barrel (with powder behind it on larger, seperate-loading pieces), the block is closed and locked, a priming mechanism is moved into place and charged with a primer round, the barrel is elevated to the proper range, then the gun crew chief calls it "ready" to the battery commander, who may want the guns to fire at the same time to avoid the targets taking cover, and at the signal all the guns are fired.

Additional rounds for the remainder of the mission (as in "battery, fire mission, 3 rounds HE, fuse quick...") are being prepared to follow into the tube, which may need to be depressed and re-elevated or not between each round, not to mention swabbed between in the case of the larger pieces to avoid premature ignition of powder on the next shot by embers remaining from the previous.

"Hey, they should be able to do that in 12 seconds" is entirely unrealistic. The battery is not a cardboard counter nor a bitmap, and its members are humping around 100 lb shells, bags of explosive, detonators, running hydraulics and readjusting the gun's aim after each recoil, shouting orders at each other and running this or that here or there in a deafening din - not playing Nintendo. 12 seconds is more like the flight time of the shells themselves from the time they leave the tube until they finally arrive at the target.

As for use of TRPs in adjustments, adjusting *to* a TRP, whether firing before or not, should be distinctly faster than other shoots, and very small adjustments in aim point can also be done faster than a new fire mission. But complex adjustments from a previous or reference point of aim are only marginally faster than an ordinary original fire mission. About the only time they save is the time spent moving the tube to point that way, which is a tiny portion of the actual time the battery spends to ready and fire a set of rounds.

As for the 20m area around the TRP, my understanding is that just is the TRP, its size essentially. It is not a point but a small patch of ground, which incidentally is about the smallest thing a battery 3-10 miles away could aim at anyway.

In my opinion, the least realistic thing about fire missions in CM is the great flexibility it allows the FO to adjust a fire mission after it has been called but before it has arrived. In real life, this is distinctly harder to do. CM puts only a modest time penalty on it, which I consider quite generous, and allows automatic and instant cut-off of a fire mission in process, which a real-world FO can only dream about having in practice. But these added bits of flexibility are close enough and improve playability, so I don't really mind them.

[Leonidas]

I agree that many aspects of artillery must be abstracted to fit within CM. Real artillery barrages, as I understand them, take place over hours instead of minutes.

Perhaps the most unrealistic aspect of CM artillery is the notion that each battery is tied to a single 2-man spotting team, so if those two men die, the battery is taken out of action for the rest of the battle, or operation. But I accept that as a way to balance the equally unrealistic speed with which the shells can be called down.

The aspect of CM that rankles, me, though, is that you can't delay fire. Sometimes you want precise control over when your fire starts, especially on defense when you expent attacking infantry to pass over a given spot. For some reason, your arty spotter can give coordinates just fine to the battery, but he can't say, "Hold fire for my signal." Once the battery is aimed, it cannot be restrained. Instead, I end up using the alter fire command as a way to artificially increase the artillery arrival time by 20 seconds or so, because the enemy didn't advance as quickly as I anticipated when I issued the order.

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>When you say "you can't adjust it until it has been firing for 60 seconds", I simply do not find this to be true. If you call in an adjustment "right when" the artillery is about to arrive, you will bump the time back 30 seconds or so, but get the adjustment, sometimes after an early spotting round, or 1-2 rounds per gun it is true.

As for the "completely arbitrary" time to adjust fire, it seems to me this is based on an exclusive focus on the FO talking into the radio. The battery is where the real delay is occuring. In this thread, one poster seems to have the idea that once they are told, the artillery can easily adjust in 12 seconds or something.

In may interest you to know that even today, an artillery battery trains to be able to put rounds on target from the time of the call in a two minute time limit. If already "laid", ready, and bearing near the target that is not too bad for reasonably trained troops, and some can do it faster. But you should understand what is occuring, pell-mell, in that period of time.

The nature of the fire mission is being transmitted to every gun in the battery (4-6 of them), where loaders are acknowledging getting the order right, are screwing the appropriate fuses with the appropriate settings into the shell, which settings may need to be set with a sort of screwdriver and which fuses need to be locked in place, are "cutting" the powder to the right sized charge for the range, and loading that into the back of the unscrewed artillery round (for semi-fixed ammo like the U.S. 105mm anyway), or ready to go in behind the round.

The gun barrel is being adjusted onto the target, except it also has to be near horizontal for loading so often the elevation goes in last. The sight is prepared for that. The breech is opened, the round shoved into the tube and rammed forward into the barrel (with powder behind it on larger, seperate-loading pieces), the block is closed and locked, a priming mechanism is moved into place and charged with a primer round, the barrel is elevated to the proper range, then the gun crew chief calls it "ready" to the battery commander, who may want the guns to fire at the same time to avoid the targets taking cover, and at the signal all the guns are fired.

Additional rounds for the remainder of the mission (as in "battery, fire mission, 3 rounds HE, fuse quick...") are being prepared to follow into the tube, which may need to be depressed and re-elevated or not between each round, not to mention swabbed between in the case of the larger pieces to avoid premature ignition of powder on the next shot by embers remaining from the previous.

"Hey, they should be able to do that in 12 seconds" is entirely unrealistic. The battery is not a cardboard counter nor a bitmap, and its members are humping around 100 lb shells, bags of explosive, detonators, running hydraulics and readjusting the gun's aim after each recoil, shouting orders at each other and running this or that here or there in a deafening din - not playing Nintendo. 12 seconds is more like the flight time of the shells themselves from the time they leave the tube until they finally arrive at the target.

As for use of TRPs in adjustments, adjusting *to* a TRP, whether firing before or not, should be distinctly faster than other shoots, and very small adjustments in aim point can also be done faster than a new fire mission. But complex adjustments from a previous or reference point of aim are only marginally faster than an ordinary original fire mission. About the only time they save is the time spent moving the tube to point that way, which is a tiny portion of the actual time the battery spends to ready and fire a set of rounds.

As for the 20m area around the TRP, my understanding is that just is the TRP, its size essentially. It is not a point but a small patch of ground, which incidentally is about the smallest thing a battery 3-10 miles away could aim at anyway.

In my opinion, the least realistic thing about fire missions in CM is the great flexibility it allows the FO to adjust a fire mission after it has been called but before it has arrived. In real life, this is distinctly harder to do. CM puts only a modest time penalty on it, which I consider quite generous, and allows automatic and instant cut-off of a fire mission in process, which a real-world FO can only dream about having in practice. But these added bits of flexibility are close enough and improve playability, so I don't really mind them.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You're absolutely right. Let me try to clarify this.. my complaint is not with how long it takes spotters to adjust fire in CM. 12 seconds is an arbitrary time I picked.. but you can see times that low with veteran 81mm spotters. For arguments, sake, that can be 12 seconds, or 2 minutes.. it doesn't matter, because that wasn't my point. Let me try to clarify.

You can fire within 20 meters of a TRP and get the time bonus. On the next turn, you can then adjust your artillery fire, in 100 meters in any direction, from where the current target is. What I'm saying is that there is no reason you should have to wait that full turn to order an adjustment fire. I think that you should be able to order in the adjusted target you want, so that the spotter can call in the adjusted fire immeadiately (with an appropriate delay).

Lets say it takes 1 minute (just a number off the top of my head) to call in a fire order on a specific spot. And then, once the battery has that location, then it takes 30 seconds to adjust that fire 50 meters behind the current target.

When you have a TRP, the first step in that, the 1 minute it takes to calculate the gun position to hit that target has already been taken care of. So you can immeadiately start firing on that spot once guns are in position. CM models this well. But, since you're already at the point where you have a firing solution, you should, I contend, be able to adjust your fire immeadiately.

Non-TRP

Step 1. Designate target, call in the battery, have them compute the firing solution. 1 minute.

Step 2. Call in fire adjustments to the battery. 30 seconds.

TRP.

Step 1. Already taken care of, small time penalty to move guns to already-calculated positions. (20 seconds)

Step 2. Adjust fire based on FO orders. 30 seconds.

CM Method

Step 1. Guns move to fire on already calculated positions, shells travel. (20 seconds).

Step 2. FO keeps on firing on target for the rest of the turn. (40 seconds)

Step 3. FO orders adjustment of target (30 seconds).

In the first example, it would take 1:30 to call in a target, and then adjust it.

In the second example, it would take 50 seconds.

In the third example, the system CM currently uses, it would take a 1:30.

In other words, there is an added 40 seconds in there, because you can't adjust your fire from the trp during the first turn of firing. I think thats a flaw.

If you were able to target, say, 50 meters off of a trp, the sequence would look something like:

Step 1. Guns are brought onto precalculated target, but do not fire, because FO has called in an adjustment from TRP. (Say, 10 seconds, just to move the guns that way).

Step 2. Artillery is adjusted relative to the current plotted target (trp). Say, 20 seconds.

Step 3. FFE. Say, 15 seconds.

Rounds would then be coming down on the adjusted target in 45 seconds.

If this same thing were done in the current CM model, it would be

Bringing guns on target, firing on target, waiting til end of CM turn , ordering adjustment, FFE.

The "arbitrary number" I refered to was not artillery recalculation time. I was refering to the abstraction of 60 seconds that CM uses for turns. It causes the adjustment of artillery fire on TRPs to be artificially delayed, because you must wait until the entire turn is done before making any adjustments, making TRPs much less effective.

This could be corrected, in effect, by giving the TRPs a radius of 100 meters, but adding additional time to have them adjusted off target.

IE, if firing directly on a trp took 30 seconds, then firing 50 meters away from a TRP could take 50 seconds, to account for adjustment time, instead of 1:20, because you'd have to wait til the one minute was up before you started the 20 second adjustment.

I hope thats clear.

[EDIT: I originally quoted the wrong post. fixed that]

[This message has been edited by SenorBeef (edited 01-18-2001).]

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

I know what your saying, I just think you have it wrong and CM has it nearly right. You've got this idea that the delay is all caused by the battery not knowing where on earth you are, a calculating problem (which it could *sometimes* be, as an added delay), and that therefore adjusting fire from a TRP should be significantly easier than a brand new fire mission.

But the artillery battery is laid. It has grid references for every 10 yard square on the continent, and knows "where" it is pointing. The time it takes it to fire a brand new fire mission is the time it takes it to make such adjustments. It is not like the only positions on the earth's surface that it knows the locations of, are the TRPs.

The reason adjusting fire *to* a TRP is faster is not merely that the battery has calculated a pair of angles for the fire mission. It has also chalked them on the sides of the guns, so that every E-3 knows exactly what to do if you call in "concentration Bravo", without having to go through the battery chain of command at all.

The delay is not caused by physical movement of the barrels, nor by the battery fire control center's calculating time, but by the command time to coordinate the guns and the execution time to prep, fuse, load, and fire the shells. The calculation is taking place at the same time as all of the other preparations.

So that you understand what I mean by "the command time", I mean every E-3 on an elevating screw or deflection wheel to rotate the gun, if reacting independently to a call to "drop 100", will turn the wheels in different directions and some of them will get it wrong. They have to be told "deflection 1273, quadrant 312", and they have to call back to their gun chief the number they have dialed to, correctly, after doing so.

What the pre-plotted concentration does is cut out the battery chain of command from the process, effectively. It lets every man in the battery execute his firing task in parallel, instead of waiting for his position in a coordinated sequence for the whole battery. Every E-3 wheels to the white chalk line with the big "B" next to it, as plain as his sergeant's nose. No back and forth sing-song, no cross checking.

[Radar]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

In my opinion, the least realistic thing about fire missions in CM is the great flexibility it allows the FO to adjust a fire mission after it has been called but before it has arrived. In real life, this is distinctly harder to do. CM puts only a modest time penalty on it, which I consider quite generous, and allows automatic and instant cut-off of a fire mission in process, which a real-world FO can only dream about having in practice. But these added bits of flexibility are close enough and improve playability, so I don't really mind them.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here, Here!

I totally agree.

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

'Lets go you apes! You want to live forever?'

[SenorBeef]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

I know what your saying, I just think you have it wrong and CM has it nearly right. You've got this idea that the delay is all caused by the battery not knowing where on earth you are, a calculating problem (which it could *sometimes* be, as an added delay), and that therefore adjusting fire from a TRP should be significantly easier than a brand new fire mission.

But the artillery battery is laid. It has grid references for every 10 yard square on the continent, and knows "where" it is pointing. The time it takes it to fire a brand new fire mission is the time it takes it to make such adjustments. It is not like the only positions on the earth's surface that it knows the locations of, are the TRPs.

The reason adjusting fire *to* a TRP is faster is not merely that the battery has calculated a pair of angles for the fire mission. It has also chalked them on the sides of the guns, so that every E-3 knows exactly what to do if you call in "concentration Bravo", without having to go through the battery chain of command at all.

The delay is not caused by physical movement of the barrels, nor by the battery fire control center's calculating time, but by the command time to coordinate the guns and the execution time to prep, fuse, load, and fire the shells. The calculation is taking place at the same time as all of the other preparations.

So that you understand what I mean by "the command time", I mean every E-3 on an elevating screw or deflection wheel to rotate the gun, if reacting independently to a call to "drop 100", will turn the wheels in different directions and some of them will get it wrong. They have to be told "deflection 1273, quadrant 312", and they have to call back to their gun chief the number they have dialed to, correctly, after doing so.

What the pre-plotted concentration does is cut out the battery chain of command from the process, effectively. It lets every man in the battery execute his firing task in parallel, instead of waiting for his position in a coordinated sequence for the whole battery. Every E-3 wheels to the white chalk line with the big "B" next to it, as plain as his sergeant's nose. No back and forth sing-song, no cross checking.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I just had a rather drawn out discussion with madmatt (thanks matt), and evidently.. originally, with TRPs, people kept misclicking them, and then receiving a large arty timing penalty. And so they complained, and the "area" of a trp became 20 meters, as an interface reason. I thought they had put in the 20 meter rule as their perception of realism, which I had a problem with. Evidently.. Logically, the TRPs are supposed to be targets on screen that allow no adjustment at all, but you can adjust them by that 20 meters because they had to fudge things for interface reasons.

Ok, that makes sense, I suppose.

Now.. Their position is, essentially, that you cannot adjust fire from TRPs. If you move off the trp, you need to recalculate a fire mission. Is this realistic? Could trps not be adjusted from? I'd appreciate if the more knowledgable in this thread could answer that.

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

You certainly could call in an adjustment from a TRP or pre-planned concentration. The real benefit of it is that the fire would be more accurate. Calling in a grid square, you would get rounds falling farther from the target, because the FO does not really know exactly where he in on any map, and exactly how far his target is from prominent terrain feature ABC.

You still have all of the usual FO problems, misestimating the range from point A to point B, and especially having difficulty telling how far away a shell landed on level ground, with only the left-right location of the plume kicked up by the shell standing out against the background. But the problem of the FO not knowing exactly where he is on the map does go away.

In real fire missions, fire on a new target would involve a spotting round and corrections that might add a minute to the adjustment time, if the initial fire wasn't lucky or the FO wasn't very good about where he was, or didn't have a prominent, easily located piece of terrain on his map and in his line of sight.

In CM, I see single rounds land a little before the fire mission sometimes, which may be meant to simulate spotting rounds. The time between the spotting round and the rest of the fire mission is usually very short in CM, though, so it tends to blend into the scatter of the first round from each gun, in time and in space.

Playing the Americans in CM, I see adjustment times of 2 minutes with 105s and 1 minute with battalion mortars, which is extremely fast, and hardly leaves time for back and forth with spotting rounds.

The effect I would advise for CM, is adjustment *to* a TRP (only) should be both more accurate and faster. Adjustment *from* a TRP, to within 100-200 meters, say, should be more accurate but not appreciably faster.

One man's opinion...