ARTY SUCKS!!!!!

[Juardis]

yeah, been reading old threads on the accuracy of arty, or lack thereof, and now I wish to add my voice to the complaints.

Plain and simple - arty SUCKS in CMBB. The only good thing I've seen is that barrages land on target and TRPs work. But in a normal QB (i.e., ME), TRPs and barrages are unavailable. So you're left with FO's like we had in CMBO and targetting like we had in CMBO.

Problem is, you can't count on arty hitting the target. My most recent example is my 120mm FO (in a probe mind you). It only has like 50 rounds so arty is precious. I want to drop smoke. It lands >200m to the right of where the target was. So I'm down 20 rounds. I retarget, it lands >100m to the right of where the target was. Now I'm down to 14 rounds. 14 FREAKING ROUNDS!!!!

Who's job is it to make sure the lead hits the target?! Is it mine? NO!!!! I count on my FO to make sure that happens. I should not have to hunt around the map looking for a spotting round to see if the fire will be on target - THAT'S MY FO'S JOB!!!! In my example above, I did not get a spotting round, so retargetting wasn't even plausible.

WHAT GOOD IS THE FO if he can't adjust the fire without me intervening?! Where is the realism in this!?

OK, thanks for letting me vent, I do NOT feel better though.

Are there any plans to fix this? And yes, I do think it's a problem that needs fixing. And yes, I did a search and did not find an answer (which probably means I didn't search for the right combination of words).

[Juardis]

And to offer a solution, I suggest that if you insist that arty is inaccurate, then fine. Have the spotting round land wherever. Have the FO readjust as necessary, as many times as necessary. If the spotting rounds lands spot on - excellent, commence the bombardment immediately. If not, then adjust and see where the next round lands. If that's still off, repeat the process until arty lands where it's supposed to. I cannot fathom a FO allowing 20-30 rounds of HE to fall 200m away from his designated target. Allowing for the spotting rounds to readjust is more realistic and will probably result in an additional delay, but again, more realistic than dumping 50 rounds of HE in a swamp.

[MasterGoodale]

What's your major malfunction numbnuts!!?? :mad: Didn't your drill sergeant teach you the merrits of chucking large amounts of furious TNT in your enemies general direction!!! :mad: You disgust me!! Artillery is always a good thing maggot! I can't think of one single thing in this TNT-slathered world I would rather do then chuck random artillery at krauts!! I love watching them land wherever they might land, giggling as a round haphazardly lands right on top of a kraut's head, blowing him and his buddies to bloody pieces of flesh! :mad: HHAHAHAHAHHAHAH HH AH HAH H AH HAH !!! :mad: That's the best!! :mad: I spend about 80% of my points on artillery! Learn to like that HE or I'll be coming after you maggot!! GAGARGRAGRAGRGRAGRGRAAGRGR!!! :mad:

[Big Ron]

I'm with you on the last bit. One spotting round doesn't seem very realistic to me. The general inaccuracy, particularly with the Russians seems more realistic as arty command tended to be at a higher (battalion?) level but they should get more ammo as that better reflects their doctrine.

[WWB]

Was there LOS? Did anything happen to disrupt LOS? Firing blind WILL NOT be accurate. The uber-accurate arty of CMBO is quite historically inaccrate. CMBB arty, if anything, is too flexible.

If you got a spotting round and the arty was inaccurate, that could be a bug. If you have savegames, send them to madmatt or something.

WWB

[PeterX]

But in a normal QB (i.e., ME), TRPs and barrages are unavailable. So you're left with FO's like we had in CMBO and targetting like we had in CMBO.

Since when is a ME normal? Meeting Engagements bear the same relationship to real battles as Pepsi-Cola does to Imperial Tokay. IOW, very little.

OTOH, I wish that BFC had made TRPs available to the attcking side in Attack/Assault QBs.

[Boo Radley]

I don't know...I have pretty good luck with my artillery. It usually lands where I want it and does it's job.

Well, except for the one time I was planning on using smoke to cover my main advance up the middle of the map and I waited...and waited...and waited...I could hear the rounds hitting, but no smoke showed up. Then, as my troops tried to cover the open ground with no smoke and they all died horribly in the crossfire, I realized that I had accidently turned the smoke feature OFF!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid...

[MikeyD]

I've been having good luck with my artillery lately. It's been landing where I want it, more-or-less. I make a point of always firing on a target within LOS.

I have noticed the AI's artillery isn't doing so well. It's been a long time since I've had to suffer under an accurate artillery strike when playing the AI. Oftentimes the AI's artillery makes all the difference, waiting til the last few turns before dropping rounds on its own men!

[Horus]

I realized that I had accidently turned the smoke feature OFF!!! Stupid, stupid, stupid...

LOL

[Redwolf]

On a more serious note:

CMBB has this feature that arty lands off-target (with LOS) and is supposed to be adjusted by the player. However, we had several reports that the engine is ignoring the adjustment, continuing to fire on the wrong spot. Only cancel and new fire mission seems to get it off the bad spot.

Any anybody verify that the adjustment ever worked for him?

P.S. when there are spotting rounds, there is LOS. CM doesn't drop spotting rounds when firing without LOS.

[JasonC]

There is a problem, but it is not the accuracy of the behavior, it is the pricing. The pricing still reflects CMBO levels of artillery effectiveness, which were unrealistically high.

As the original poster noted, the rounds are scarce and valuable - that is a CMBO legacy. The guns fire later, with less accuracy, encouraging wider sheafs and more firing batteries to get some of them near the target. Arty is a blunter instrument, more effective against much wider targets - and all of that is as it should be.

The problem is, it is too expensive to buy shells in QBs to use the arty the way it ought to be used with these new, less responsive characteristics. A single light artillery module only pays for itself if it destroys a platoon of enemy infantry - completely. And with current levels of accuracy and responsiveness, that is only possible for TRP arty or against the AI.

(The AI pins easily in the open under MG fire. It can then be massacred with light artillery, and kill totals of 30-40 regularly recorded at game end for a light FO. But this is a "stupid AI trick". Human players do not put whole companies in the same open field under enemy observation).

The corps level heavy guns are hopelessly expensive with rariety on, and have response times so low they must be used for map fire, in practice. And that is so ineffective per point of blast thrown at the enemy, that there is no way the big guns can cover their QB cost. I mean, one battery of heavy shells have to neutralize a company, at the current prices. There is no way prep fire or fire plan fire, wide sheafs etc can do so.

In a recent QB, I was shelled by map fire by divisional 122s - which incidentally should not be considered rare, any more than PPshs are, or Pz IIs in 1941, since they were an ordinary third of the Russian divisional gun mix.

He put down map fire on the right general area, my MLR. A platoon and teams were present, most in foxholes but some moving from position to position through trees. He fired more than a full module of 122s, and wounded all of six men. One HQ panicked for a single minute and a few units were pinned momentarily. I lost a few rifles and 3 schreck shells (a team reduced to 1 man had to move). It cost him a boatload of points to deliver that quantity of fire. I was not in 9% trench cover, just wooded foxholes, some men out of them even. Wide sheafs just disperse a lot of the blast.

Planned fire and wide sheafs and misses are tolerable, if you fire at targets with entire battalions of guns. Right now that means 3 FOs; there should be single FOs that fire with 3 times the tubes and say twice the shells, but have to use a wide sheaf.

In CMBO, infantry wa so robust heavy artillery had a special value as the only thing that could stop mass rushes. That is no longer remotely true. A few MGs can. HE is still a very effective infantry killer, in general, if it can be put on a vunerable target. But almost anything can stop massed infantry now, at least temporarily or in the open. And the guns no longer fire with surgical precession on neat little platoon-sized zones.

That is as it should be. In CMBO, people practically adjusted individual flights of 4 150mm shells on the way to the target, playing "dodge ball" with single enemy platoons on 30 second time scales. Which was silly. But also amplified the effectiveness of arty, particularly (against robust CMBO infantry pinning behavior) the biggest calibers. CMBB rightly takes all of that away, making artillery a blunter and more diffuse instrument.

But the collorary to a blunter and more diffuse instrument, is more shells fired in those wider sheafs, by more guns at once. The prices of the rare guns, with rariety on, would be fine for battalion sized shoots. But they are off by a factor of 3 for the present single batteries with such unresponsive fire behavior. The less rare lighter guns are also off, but only by a factor of 2 or so. Note that the bigger guns are needed more against defenders in cover, while the more affordable light ones are still useful against moving attackers in poorer terrain.

TRPs, meanwhile, are way underpriced with CMBB artillery behavior. As delay times have increased and responsiveness and accuracy diminished, the value TRPs add to arty modules has soared. They should cost more like 50 points apiece, rather than 10.

The combination of overpriced arty generally, especially the big stuff, and underpriced TRPs, has resulted in a QB artillery paradox. The attacker cannot afford to blow points on artillery, while the defender can get good value from a few light modules, provided he also buys TRPs. This not only adds to defense dominance, it also perversely makes the defenders artillery rich and attackers artillery poor.

As an example, a friend wanted to try using heavy arty in big fire plans in a recent fight. He had gobs of the big Russian stuff, a 10:1 point edge in the artillery category, by scenario arrangement. Because this is where he spent most of his "assault odds" advantage, he had only about 4:3 odds in the manuever arm categories (armor plus AT, and infantry plus support). I also had obstacles, and of course the defender's role.

He not only couldn't break the defense, my 1 module of 105s, using 1 of the 2 TRPs I bought and expending only 3/4 of its ammo, outscored his whole artillery park by the time the fight was decided. Part of that was that he attacked too fast, before his arty had all had time to help (he was using time planned map fire on various locations, rather than one big prep fire). But he fired off well over 3 times the points for a much smaller result.

Shells need to be cheaper. Especially bigger ones, higher echelon ones, less responsive ones that need to use planned fire or wide sheafs or both, in practice. TRPs need to be more expensive, much more so.

If in the original poster's example, his mortar FO had 100-150 shells, and the sheaf came down wide, minor misses in position would not be critical. He'd put a bigger beaten zone over the target, coinciding with the men he wanted to hit less exactly. Many shells would still fall on useless open areas, unless it was a large target, in number of men as well as in spatial dimension. But he could afford such realistic bluntness. Right now, he is paying scalpel rates for the ammo, and getting the bludgeon behavior.

I hope this is helpful.

[Juardis]

wwb, My FO was within LOS when the target was given. Whether it went out of LOS in between, I don't know.

I said normal QB, not a normal battle. Of course ME's are not normal IRL, but in CMBB battles, ME's ARE the norm.

Jason, makes sense to me.

And finally, in CMBO if you did target something out of LOS, the spread would be huge, say maybe all the shells would fall in a 100m radius. In CMBB, if you target something out of LOS, you still get a tight spread, it's just well away from where you targeted. I don't have a problem with that. The target was out of LOS afterall. My beef is with targetting in LOS. My FO should do the job for me, I should not be required to perform that level of micromanagement, particularly if I have to watch for the damned spotting round. I can see TCP/IP play now if I have to hunt for spotting rounds that may or may not show up.

[vedder]

What I don't understand is I had LOS to a target and it was taking 5 minutes for the rounds to fire, then when it was 47 seconds to firing a small smoke cloud clipped the LOS line and lo and behold 47 seconds later my arty was falling like 400 meters off target. I mean is this how it worked in real life? I thought they gave the coordinents and then the off map artillery would fall, why does my FO need to have 100% LOS all the time? Very frustrating.

[JasonC]

Practical proposals may be more useful than just pointing out a problem, so here goes.

Create a "battalion" type of FO, for gun types besides the light mortars and regimental infantry guns. These fire with 3 times the tubes of the battery FOs. The sheaf must be "target wide" - you don't have to pick that, it happens automatically.

Once ordered, the fire mission can be cancelled, but not moved once shells start falling (to avoid over-effectiveness from unrealistic levels of micromanagement). The mission is fired until all rounds are expended. The total ammo is twice what it is for the battery FOs; at 3 times the fire rate, the firing time will be a couple of minutes.

If directed at a TRP, the sheaf remains wide, but errors in the location of the center of the barrage are eliminated. If observed, the potential error is still there but modest, smaller than the size of the beaten zone - the same should be true for pre-planned fire ordered on turn 1. Unobserved fire ordered after turn 1 should have all of the potential errors it has now, without the ability to adjust the fire if it comes down in the wrong place.

In return for all of these limitations, you get the 3xrate, 2xshell battalion FO for the same price as the current battery FOs. The current battery FOs are available as an alternative, but at 2/3rds of their current prices. So, you can pay 50% more and get big battalion shoots, but wide sheaf and less responsive, or less, and get one battery.

TRPs cost 50 points instead of 10.

Now, notice what happens to e.g. a defender who right now buys one light module for around 100 points, and 2 TRPs. He now pays 120 and gets a good effect on a tight target, if he places his TRP well etc. He gets 1/3rd off on buying a battery under my proposal - that saves him 35 points. But he pays 80 more if he wants 2 TRPs, so overall he pays 167 rather than 120.

If he can pick the TRP location well and only needs 1 of them, he pays the same as he does now for the same results. So, not being particularly good at picking concentrations does not give big effectiveness just for being the defender and buying lots of cheap TRPs. Being good at picking TRP locations can get the same level of defender arty effectiveness seen now, for the same price.

Over on the attacker side, suppose right now an attacker wants a prep barrage at a wide area of the defense. He pays 300-500 points counting rariety premiums, and gets 2-3 medium to large sized FOs (105, 122, 150, 152 - those sort). He orders a big barrage on turn 1. It covers 4 times the area, with 3 times the shells of the defender's TRP shoots, but without knowing where the defenders are yet. He will be lucky to get the same effectiveness; probably he gets considerably less. But he spent 3-4 times as much.

With my proposal, instead the attacker orders 1 battalion FO for his prep barrage. He pays 100-150 for the scale of effect you see in those. Or he could pay twice that, and get a barrage that puts down as many shells per unit area as a tight sheaf by one battery does, but on 4 times the area and in 2/3rds the time. He is paying the price of an infantry company or a tank platoon at that point - but getting a barrage that might actually do something to defenders in cover.

Would you have the problem that the defender would buy the battalion FO, plus 1 TRP, and get way too much bang for his buck? I doubt it. Because the sheaf remains wide, and the defender can't just buy a flock of TRPs and put them everywhere, assuring himself a TRP directed mass shoot. In addition, the whole module comes down. The defender cannot stretch out the barrage to deny the whole TRP area for long periods, whenever anyone enters it. Defenders have to be very careful with their ammo expenditure, and the bluntness of the battalion FO in that regard makes it a risky play.

If the attacker is bunched just right on the right location, yes a defender might catch him with such a shoot and seriously mess him up. That is as it should be - one did something very right, and the other got caught very wrong.

I'd also like to see the rarity numbers for everything "divisional" and below on the arty screen kept modest, 50% or less, and more like 30% or less for anything that was standard issue, like Russian 122s and German 150s. Save the super high rariety numbers for the corps and above, rarest guns.

Then when random rariety hands the option to buy some of these affordably, it is an event. But the bigger divisional stuff is a standing option - for a price increase, of course. This is particularly important for attackers, because the current "rariety cheap" light modules are particularly ineffective against dug in troops, especially when used in prep barrages and the like.

Comments welcome.

[ January 22, 2003, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Doodlebug]

JasonC posts are always worth a read. Makes sense to me. Admittedly I've not had a problem yet but seems like some folk are. Is there an official line on this one?

[Andreas]

Originally posted by JasonC:

In a recent QB, I was shelled by map fire by divisional 122s - which incidentally should not be considered rare, any more than PPshs are, or Pz IIs in 1941, since they were an ordinary third of the Russian divisional gun mix.

I would be interested what you base that statement on.

According to Zaloga, for the divisions it is:

July 41 8 out of 36 (22%)

March 42 12 out of 44 (27%)

Dec 44 20 out of 64 (23%)

The 5th April 41 configuration has a lot more, but I would seriously question the amount to which it was ever implemented before the attack.

At the same time, rifle brigades had '0' 122mm guns, and I am not sure about the number of 122mm guns in the initial rifle corps that put together these brigades under a higher HQ.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by JasonC:

As an example, a friend wanted to try using heavy arty in big fire plans in a recent fight. He had gobs of the big Russian stuff, a 10:1 point edge in the artillery category, by scenario arrangement. Because this is where he spent most of his "assault odds" advantage, he had only about 4:3 odds in the manuever arm categories (armor plus AT, and infantry plus support). I also had obstacles, and of course the defender's role.

He not only couldn't break the defense, my 1 module of 105s, using 1 of the 2 TRPs I bought and expending only 3/4 of its ammo, outscored his whole artillery park by the time the fight was decided. Part of that was that he attacked too fast, before his arty had all had time to help (he was using time planned map fire on various locations, rather than one big prep fire). But he fired off well over 3 times the points for a much smaller result.

This is an interesting example, but I wonder what it has to do with the problem at hand? I would certainly not accept the conclusion you draw from it.

It appears to me that your scenario set-up modelled a heavy weight of artillery fire with no previous intelligence. There are a number of accounts on how heavy concentrations of artillery fire failed because of insufficient recce before the attack. All those shells wasted (sounds familiar?). By 1944, when the Red Army had a good idea of what they were on about, they would not contemplate firing a preparation without very good information on enemy firing positions.

I have Soviet officer memoirs speaking of Koniev personally showing up at a divisional CP, chewing out the commander for only having reconnoitered some 40 German firing positions in three days. He expected at least 70, and he was not going to waste a barrage in this sector if the number did not go up.

To simulate this in a scenario, you have to give the Soviets not just the artillery, but also the information. So you have to give them padlocked TRPs right on the defender's trenches, bunkers, and minefields. If you do this, I suspect you get realistic results, with good suppression and kills. If you don't do it, you also get realistic results.

[Redwolf]

Another way to "pay" for TRPs would be that, in setup, the defender could trade some ammo for TRPs, instead of paying points. Seems pretty realistic to me. TRPs created on the fly (that means, revisitable previous firing targets), al la TacOps, also seems worth an introdution.

About prep fires: I just read (I think in Zaloga's bagration book) that the Germans would often vacate a first defensive line when they expected an attack with artillery preparation. I think that prep fire with occasional disappointingly few effect is realistic. In CM you have a too good idea where the defender hangs out.

I don't invest much brain time on thinking about CM prices, but generally I think the CM artillery model is very limited, and some realism improvements in CMBB made it more limited but I see none making it more flexible.

[JasonC]

On 122s, my understanding was that the standard was 2 battalions of 76s and 1 of 122s, each 3 batteries of 4 guns, in the standard rifle divisions. No doubt the size of the divisional park expanded by 1944, with 152s showing up and what-not. And perhaps 122s weren't up to full TOE in 1941, after preliminary losses in the pockets or what have you.

They were, however, an ordinary part of div arty regularly firing missions for the ordinary battalions of the line. As were the German 150s, incidentally.

In CMBB, these types have very high rariety numbers, +65% to price and the like. This does not make sense to me, and suggests some overly mechanical application of some rule of fleet portion or what not. I mean, Pz IIs were 1/5th of the German tank fleet (roughly) in 1941, but they properly get rarity numbers around 0-20, because they were an ordinary item of equipment in lead platoons of medium tank companies. They don't get +65% because they were 1/4 of the mix or whatever. PPsHs were an ordinary part of the Russian small arms mix, and SMG infantry does not pay +65% rariety because only a quarter or a third of units were so equipped.

With items like German 170s, or (at least early on) Russian 152s, I can see higher rariety numbers. But the ordinary divisional guns should not be so expensive they are effectively banned unless random rariety happens to cheapen them. The heavier calibers can be marginally more expensive, compared to a pure effectiveness measure, sure. 20-30% rariety for 122s and 150s would be fine. That way you are encouraged to take the 76s and 105s, if they will serve your purposes. But not effectively banned from taking the heavier pieces from the ordinary div arty park.

It is not like only battalion and regimental guns fired in support of battalions. That was the ordinary role of the div arty, which fired the overwhelming majority of the missions, got most of the ammo by shell number or weight, etc. Nor were these ordinary heavier pieces relegated to other special roles, like corps guns and upward often were.

[WWB]

And finally, in CMBO if you did target something out of LOS, the spread would be huge, say maybe all the shells would fall in a 100m radius. In CMBB, if you target something out of LOS, you still get a tight spread, it's just well away from where you targeted. I don't have a problem with that. The target was out of LOS afterall. My beef is with targetting in LOS. My FO should do the job for me, I should not be required to perform that level of micromanagement, particularly if I have to watch for the damned spotting round. I can see TCP/IP play now if I have to hunt for spotting rounds that may or may not show up.

That additional spread is what has been patently unrealistic about unspotted arty in just about every tactical wargame since SL. The spotter not having LOS decreases the accuracy of the strike--shifting the mean point of impact (MPI). It does not make the guns shoot a wider pattern. When spottiog out of LOS in a CMBB battle, try using the Target Wide command. It will spread a bit more and make the strike less of a crapshoot.

Finding bugs takes micromanagement and careful watching. There have been numerous reports of arty falling off target even when there was a spotting round, but I have never reproduced it or seen hard evidince that such an event happened. If anyone has proof, send it to matt.

Also, there is a workaround to getting TRPs in MEs. Just get with your opponent, agree on the number of TRPs per side. Then go into the editor and generate a battle. Remove the flag & setup zones and buy the agreed-upon number of TRPs. Then start the battle as a map import with forces and you are good to go. It should place setup zones & flags for you.

As for 122mm, Andreas has the numbers. Regarding organization, they were in the same place within the TO&E as the german 150mm pieces, and have a similiar rarity figure. Also, if you want some more interesting force options while maintaining rarity try going with the variable sort. It does a very good & realistic job of making some things more avaliable, almost always including some cheaper higher level arty in the discount package.

WWB

PS: Jason, for divisional level 122/150s it is a 30-40% rarity surchage at standard levels. Oftentimes worth the price.

[ January 22, 2003, 02:20 PM: Message edited by: wwb_99 ]

[rune]

Let's start at the beginning...what do the costs reflect?

Base cost takes into account weapon's effectiveness, ammo, resonse time, and flexibility (i.e. radio or wire).

Rarity takes into consideration TO&E level, availability to a Infantry Battalion, and general availability.

Key here is an typical Infantry Battalion, not one with extra guns that the Soviets would mass before an attack.

Based on this, the rarity numbers make sense.

Rune

[Cogust]

People seems to believe artillery is a waste of points in a typical QB setting, but I disagree. Artillery is by no means as effective as in CMBO where maxing out on artillery while purchasing troops for a QB was one of the most basic lessons in successful CMBO:ing as it was waaaaaaaaay too powerful.

In CMBB you have to either fire prep bombardments, carefully timed so that your battleplan can take full advantage of the barrage, or with LOS and then only with lower echelon stuff unless you really like to wait for the good stuff. Firing out of LOS is completely out of the question and it seems like you have to be carful not to have the LOS to the target broken by smoke or something similar to get good results.

German stuff is useful up to about divisional level and Russian stuff is good up to about regimental level when you're firing a normal barrage, when shooting prep bombardments you want as cheap (the lowest possible quality) and heavy stuff that you can get hold of as you will hit what you aim for unless you bought rockets.

In a normal game you will end up with 'normal' artillery, 82mm and 120mm as Russians and 75mm-150mm as Germans, which IMO is GOOD. Low visibility will render your artillery pretty useless (especially your telephone guys as they're slow as hell) as it will be hard to get LOS to the enemy, prep bombardments still work as usual. This is also very realistic as bad weather really makes the use of artillery ineffective uless you have a really good picture of your enemy's deployments.

Artillery is very important to have around, it can break up enemy concentrations, suppress enemy positions, lay a lot of smoke and a number of other things that other weapons can't do. It's not as über as in CMBO though and you have to THINK before you buy your artillery and choose appropriate FOs, not just maxing out on the heavy stuff as was done regularly in CMBO.

Jason's comment that an FO must kill a certain amount of troops to 'pay off' is just plain silly. If I must assault collection of buildings containing say a company of troops and a large VL and the surrounding terrain is pretty open, how could I possibly succeed without either suppressing the entire area (by using a medium or heavy AFO with LOS to the target) or laying smoke (with a light AFO). I'd prefer to both at the same time actually and I don't care if my artillery kills one platoon or just one guy as long as they help me achieve my objective. The thing is that artillery is a tool designed to do things that few other tools manage and I generally like to bring as many tools as possible to the fight. You can use a hammer for many things, but sometimes a screwdriver is the tool of choice.

Enough rambling for now, back to lurking.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by JasonC:

On 122s, my understanding was that the standard was 2 battalions of 76s and 1 of 122s, each 3 batteries of 4 guns, in the standard rifle divisions. No doubt the size of the divisional park expanded by 1944, with 152s showing up and what-not. And perhaps 122s weren't up to full TOE in 1941, after preliminary losses in the pockets or what have you.

Sorry, but Zaloga gives the TO&E figures, i.E. full strength assumed. I am not just talking 1944 either, but from the official 29th July 41 TO&E onwards the 122mm is only 1/5 to 1/4 of the gun mix (on paper). Your assumption is wrong because it seems the heavy battalion only had two batteries @ 4 guns ea. Leaving aside actual issue.

Originally posted by JasonC:

They were, however, an ordinary part of div arty regularly firing missions for the ordinary battalions of the line. As were the German 150s, incidentally.

Yes, and what about the other formations I mentioned? Independent brigades, mech corps, tank corps, cavalry corps (neither of which had any), or 1942 infantry corps (which had fewer than divisions). Leaving aside the thorny issue of how many really were on the battlefield. Wartime production given in Zaloga says 13,100 122mm Howitzer produced, compared to 68,800 76.2mm guns.

Originally posted by JasonC:

In CMBB, these types have very high rariety numbers, +65% to price and the like. This does not make sense to me, and suggests some overly mechanical application of some rule of fleet portion or what not.

Well, I agree that 65% does not make sense, so it is good to see that a quick look in the editor shows you are quite wrong with that figure. Soviet 122mm Howitzer always 50% (tested Inf wire for June 41/42/43). German 150mm div howitzer (wire) ranges from 5% to 20%. which makes sense, if one takes into account the fairly evenly distributed independent heavy regiments. The soviets did not distribute their RVGK rgts as evenly because they were massed in breakthrough sectors.

[JasonC]

On prep fires, no the problem was not that he didn't know where the defenders were. Sure, he did not have perfect knowledge in that regard. My forward line was farther forward than he had expected, hidden by a reverse slope. By he correctly IDed my MLR, which ran along a gulley about half way up the map. This was quite a small map, only about 500 yards wide, and he had scads of FOs. He had TRPs as the attacker, to put on suspected defensive positions, which the terrain and likely defense schemes could suggest to him.

In the event, he hit a platoon position consisting of - 2 squads and a company HQ in foxholes, the former in woods, the latter in brush at the bottom of a gulley, plus a schreck team caught moving in woods, another schreck team in a wooden building near the edge of the beaten zone, and finally a squad plus platoon HQ in woods without foxholes, close to each other, who had just withdrawn to this MLR from their outpost positions when the shells began to fall.

Over 40 rounds of 122mm fell all told, on and around this position - a full module, and the begining of a second somewhat to the side of the location of the first module's worth. I suffered 6 men hit - 1 man from each of the two schreck teams (in the second, the building was rubbled but one man survived). 2 from the squad not in a foxhole (it had previously taken 1 at the outpost position - it had fallen back primarily because it was at half ammo). And 2 from the platoon HQ, also not in a foxhole. 3 of these - 2 HQ and 1 to the nearby squad - were suffered from the worst single shell, which was a tree-burst - not a direct hit but not terribly far away either.

The moral effect was as follows. The HQ panicked when it lost the 2 men. The squad with it passed to the company HQs command radius. The platoon HQ rallied to "cautious" by the end of the following minute, but its immediate mission (it was headed back to pick up stragglers from the outpost line) was delayed. Several of the other infantry units "pinned", none for more than a minute. Several were "cautious" during the barrage, and "alerted" was everywhere. The company HQ was a good one, including +1 morale, and the men were veteran.

A modest number of heavy shells simply has only a modest effect on dug in men, particularly when the barrage cannot be expected to be perfectly centered on the target, or aligned with its exact dimensions. Which will always be true of map fire.

Arguing that it is realistic that map fire be ineffective misses the point of my comments. I agree that artillery behavior is vastly more realistic in CMBB than it was in CMBO, and I like the realism of the changes. What I don't like is the holdover of CMBO levels of artillery pricing, to CMBB levels of arty behavior.

In our scenario, a Russian attacker with a reinforced company (with 6 tanks) faced a depleted German company position (with 2 tanks and 1 ATG), with *1000 points* of artillery to fire in support, but restricted to planned fire according to a fire plan set on turn 1. The attacking artillery's influence on the battle was tiny, and outweighed by what one defending battery of 105s managed to accomplish by firing 3/4 of its shells at 1 out of 2 TRPs, over 3 seperate minutes.

This is a ban, whenever it is a question of QBs and so of actually paying for the stuff instead of having it award to you by a scenario designer. There is no way an attacker can buy prep fire and expect it to pay. In fact, attacking artillery under QB conditions, particularly for the Russians (the German 105s are reasonably useful), is so poor in bang for the buck, that the less spent on it the better the attacker is likely to do.

A single module for smoke or gun-suppression is probably optimal. Anything spent on specifically prep fire artillery under its current realistic effectiveness, but CMBO level prices (boasted by standard rariety) is completely wasted.

"It was realistic that prep fire was often wasteful" is not a response. People don't do incredibly wasteful things more than a couple of times, once they notice they are wasteful, when they are under a competitive budget constraint. In particular, CMBB QBs will not feature realistic prep fires, ineffective or not. They *will* feature defenders blasting TRP artillery traps successfully, and a few stubborn attackers trying to get modest amounts of unresponsive and light guns to hit anything, and failing at it.

This is not realism. It is unrealism introduced by distortive incentives from the pricing system, despite the realism of the underlying engine behavior. Bludgeon style attacking artillery is indeed realistic. But scalpel style artillery module pricing relegates it to TRP-directed defender use, in QBs. Because everything else is a waste, at those prices. Only successful scalpel-ing pays, and these days that means "with a TRP".

So you here people calling for attackers to have TRPs. They are noticing that arty is a waste without them. But that just brings back scalpel usage by the back door. It was an improvement to get rid of the scalpel usefulness, or to make it a special case.

But the special case should have a special price, while the un-special case should have the ordinary price. The low price of TRPs currently keeps the special case price and the ordinary case price very close to each other. Only the TRP special one is worth it, though, so it is used and TRPs are asked for, and the ordinary use is avoided.

The solution is to divide the special case from the ordinary case in pricing terms. You do that by raising the price of the TRPs, which distinguish the two cases. TRP arty is vastly more useful than non-TRP arty, under realistic CMBB artillery rules.

Well then, since prices are supposed to track usefulness, TRP arty must be vastly more expensive than non-TRP arty. Which means TRPs must cost a significant fraction of the price of an arty module - like 50 points.

And ordinary, less useful artillery must cost less. People aren't using it because maneuver arms are a better place to put the points. That is a sign that prep-fire arty use is too expensive. People do use TRP arty - that is a sign that the common modules plus 10 points is a pretty fair price for what those do.

So, make the module alone cost 60 and the TRP 50, instead of 90 and 10. Someone paying the TRP plus module price gets an effectiveness he can get now, for a price close to what he can get now (if he can hit one TRP). But someone without the TRP behavior available, gets for 60 what he won't currently pay 90 for.

Or, under my battalion FO proposal, he gets for 90, twice as many shells - but fired at 4 times the area and with less MM flexibility. Instead of demanding scalpel use, attackers get bludgeons, but bludgeons they can afford. If a defender can get by with a buldgeon, without TRPs, more power to him.

[JasonC]

On German 150 rarieties, I am happy to stand corrected. The +10-20 figures are right where I want them; I was misled by the numbers for the regimental 150s (sIG firing indirect), which are 50-65. The Russian 122s at +50 still seem high to me, and I think they should be more like 20-30, making them a reasonable option for Russian div arty, as 150s are for the Germans at 10-20. As things stand, the reasonably priced Russian stuff tops out at the regimental 120mm mortars.