What to do under arty fire?

[Gen-x87H]

If I am in town and it looks like it is 120mm or less and Im in large buildings Ill stay because by the time myt guys run out from underneath it they will be hurting. Might as well take a chance and let the buildings eat up the arty. At worst my toon will go bye bye but it will take 3 times as much arty to do it. Arty is the number 1 killer on the battlefield.

If we are in trees and it is 105+ then I withdraw as fast as possible. I would rather lose a little ground and live to fight another day. With most of the people I play they follow up the arty attack with an infantry rush.

Gen

[Walker]

So after everything said above, a simple question:

Do you take more casualties from 81mm/120mm mortars in woods or in open ground/brush?

Chris Walker

[Sarge Saunders]

Originally posted by Walker:

So after everything said above, a simple question:

Do you take more casualties from 81mm/120mm mortars in woods or in open ground/brush?

Chris Walker

Well....someone ought to run some tests.

Thing about arty is that if your men are kissing dirt (hiding/taking cover) then they will suffer fewer casualties. However, in open ground they are far more likely to stand up and run for cover thus taking more casualties....

OTOH, treebursts in woods/tall pines/scattered trees will do more damage than shrapnel will in the open regardless.

That being said, I would never keep my men in the open while under any kind of fire at all. Get moving to some cover!

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Walker:

Do you take more casualties from 81mm/120mm mortars in woods or in open ground/brush?

You shouldn't throw 81mm and 120mm into one basket, they are very different beasts. The real quastion here is how 75mm howitzers and 81mm mortars compare.

The open is more deadly. The treebursts feel extremly nasty, but they affect fewer squads at once.

As said in the other thread, I have a gut feeling that 81mm mortar fire is actually more dangerous in scattered trees than full trees.

[Fenster]

It's fine and dandy to have ways to avoid deadly barrages on the attack, but what about escaping heavy shelling on defensive end? Can you make an entrenched heavy AT run fast? what is it you say, North South is that it? Fact is while a heavy gun is dug in, and you're taking intense arty fire, you'll lose it, and more often than not without it having fired one shot. So while you wait for a Sunday pucnch @ close range, and just when you're ready to take out that tiger, you lose your darling AT to heavy arty, and there's nothing you can do about it but lose the war. When being attacked by Tigers and heavy arty, who cares about losing ineffective grunts, it's the big guns that can save your ass.

[Michael Emrys]

Sounds like you aren't putting your guns in concealing terrain, such as woods. Do that and give them a hide order until a proper target comes within range.

Michael

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Fenster:

Can you make an entrenched heavy AT run fast? what is it you say, North South is that it?

No way. You can't even evacuate the crew without the gun, unless you knock it out yourself (which I did).

Fact is while a heavy gun is dug in, and you're taking intense arty fire, you'll lose it, and more often than not without it having fired one shot. [...] When being attacked by Tigers and heavy arty, who cares about losing ineffective grunts, it's the big guns that can save your ass.

Defending in CMBO is very hard if you don't limit the units, like in Fionn rules.

If you play unlimited, and you have to prepare for all ranges of attacking forces, from pure infantry, to Wasp rushes, to Super Pershings, the only way I see is small guns for light armor and infantry, and having Jagdpanther or Panzer IV/70 to shoot heavy armor.

If there isn't lots of woods or bush with good gun positions, and the attacker may use VT artillery, he can just go over all gun positions and kill them without even looking.

I had two subsequent games against the same person, one time me attacking, one time him. If you max out force choices in late months the defender has no chance whatsoever.

I know limits and rules suck, but I require much of them when defending.

[AUSSIEJEFF]

I don't see much mention of the all important (IMHO) words SMOKE BARRAGE so far.

For me, in anything other than dense wood/heavy fog/night scenarios, often one of the most valuable uses of arty is to lay a thick cordon of smoke between my advancing infantry and enemy positions. Or even a dummy smoke barrage to sucker the enemy into thinking you are about to attack that spot on the map when you are in fact about to sneak a flanking move.

Smoke barrages can often let you get real close and enable an infantry rush with full firepower at close range. 81mm and 120mm or 4.2" mortars are ideal for this with their rapid ROF and relatively short delays (compared to big arty FO's). Of course, the occasional big KABOOMBA is fun to watch...... hehe

Does anybody else have a liking for using up some (sometimes ALL!) of their arty resources for smoke barrage tactics in CM? I'm curious,

AJ

[Michael Emrys]

Good point, AJ. I am rather surprised at how little I use smoke in CM, given that is my prime force multiplier in TacOps. There, I use huge amounts of smoke to render OpFor essentially impotent while my BluFor troops continue to use their thermals.

But in CM, where artillery availability is more limited, and one is forced to choose between HE and smoke (somewhat of an artificial restriction, BTW, as a battery would likely have had both kinds of shells on hand, though in limited supply), I tend to opt for the destructive capacity of arty. Still, I have done just what you suggest at times and put down a curtain of smoke to get troops (and more often, tanks) across a dangerous stretch of terrain.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by redwolf:

You can't even evacuate the crew without the gun, unless you knock it out yourself (which I did).

This caused me to have a brainstorm: CM needs a new order for gun crews: Abandon or Spike the Guns. The Abandon Gun notion has been floated before, I know, but the thought was to leave them in working order so that they could be remanned. But if you knew you wouldn't likely be returning to them any time soon, you wouldn't want them to fall intact into the enemy's hands.

Michael

[Big Ron]

I tend to take an 81mm mortar FO and something big and tasty. Save 20-30 rounds of the 81mm for use as smoke during the 'assault phase' of the battle. Use the big stuff with the 81mm as described earlier i.e. mortars to pin my opponent while waiting for the heavy stuff

[exSpecForSgt]

I find this a very "interesting" topic, having some small experience with it.

I've played CM quite a bit and can't really comment on how "accurate/realistic" the results are. (Sometimes it seems to be more and sometimes less. <shrug>)

In RL, however, you need to understand what exploding shells 'do'. Yes, of course, they throw sharp bits of metal all over the place ... -but- =how=?! If the round hits the ground, it goes off so-called "instantly"; i.e.-it goes off right away...but the shell is still dropping, burrowing into the ground while the fuze burns off. So, you get a crater of x-size in the dirt, a '-cone-' of shrapnel, and an expanding ring of blast (=not= to be discounted as 'only hot air'!). If you hit the deck, you're relatively 'safe' as long as the shell doesn't drop right on you. Crawl just as fast as you can towards 'hard cover'. -Do- =not= rise up even as high as 'hands & knees' because that will put you within range of one of those 'cones'.

Then again, if you're unlucky enought to be "infantry in the open", hey, you're scr#wed anyway! Oh, and forget completely about guess-timating the 'size' of the in-coming! If you're "veteran", you -might- have a small chance of doing it while under fire ... but even then you're going to be spending more time melding into the dirt than calmly analysing the caliber of the stuff falling on you! Trust me on this one!!

If you're in the woods, et al, well, yeah, you have a bunch of cover to try to hide behind/under, and that -is- worth something. OTOH, sharp pieces of wood traveling at high speeds will mess you up just as badly as sharp pieces of metal. Hmmm, so I guess that in some ways, getting shelled while in the woods is worse than being in the open ... but that =really= isn't saying much!!

You know, this is beginning to bring back 'bad memories', so I think I'll stop here and go have lunch, or something.

Take care, all, and remember: there is a -very- good reason artillery is called the King of the Battlefield.......

[Aco4bn187inf]

US Army infantry doctrine in the mid 1980's was to run away as fast as possible if you come under artillery fire. I always wondered about that one, but fortunately never had to find out if it was a good idea.

In CMBB I like on map mortars as an anti AT gun weapon. Here's a trick also- you can knock out an AT gun without actually coming into its field of fire by firing HE shells right next to it. This is a good method for thin skinned SP guns or tanks to use. (You must locate the AT gun first of course, usually the hard way.)

Also, an artillery trick- if you have artillery that takes a long time to plot a fire mission, call for the mission early where you expect enemy targets might appear. When your spotting round arrives, keep adjusting fire around the map until you have a target. The point is that the adjustment takes a lot less time than initiating a fire mission. The only drawback is that you expend some ammo as spotting rounds while you're doing this, but it can be worth it. It might also cramp your opponent's style if he is seeing spotting rounds coming down all the time.

[tar]

This caused me to have a brainstorm: CM needs a new order for gun crews: Abandon or Spike the Guns. The Abandon Gun notion has been floated before, I know, but the thought was to leave them in working order so that they could be remanned. But if you knew you wouldn't likely be returning to them any time soon, you wouldn't want them to fall intact into the enemy's hands.

This could be combined, in necessary, with the "Withdraw" command. Either unconditionally, or using a pop-up like the "Use Maingun?" one for tank targetting.