Art spotters / artillery

[d34dm34t]

Hello all

i have some que about the artillery spotters, that feels like a bug rather then a feature.

QUE A. Shooting with no line of site.

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setup: i put only artyspoter on a huge map and a sniper or something in other team.

I tell the arty spotter to shoot on a target he cant see 500m strait ahead.

The test shot araies 375m 45degrees off.

Case 1(do nothing)

then he tells the battery fire for effect. and the entire burst lands in that area. sometimes the artillery even lands 500m @120degrees off.

Case 2 (Same as 1 but I try to compensate).

I have to wait for the entire time again...

and if that is wrong again and again (with the big once o only ge 2-3 tries.)

So the que is

A1. Even if a spoter doesent have a line of sight shouldent he hear that the artillery is that much off?

A2. After correcting artillery shouldent the other burst/test shot be much faster and more accurate. even if its not a slight move the art crew know what settings they have adjust the cannons for so even if they change a target 1km away the wind and the range changes are realy low for them?

And if the arty regroup to avoid counterartillery, they still know all the setings for the day? else all guns would be far off from each other to or? so one test shoot and then BOOM )

QUE B

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This is the most anoying diffrent from cmbo i think.

Setup: One artyspoter 500m from a wood squar. Hidden enemys in that wood square that the arty spotter hasent seen. But the arty spotter sees one plutoon enemy advanceing on the field 20degrees and about the same range +-100m of on the field.

I order the arty spotter to preebombard the forest. But it allways seems that the boombardment lands on the ppl on the field. witch lead to that when my inf start mooving in to the wood they are massacured. by the hidden units in that wood that should have been messed up by my art. and the known enemys on the field dont walk in to my mg trap 100 m ahead.

If i do the same with a self propeld gun ( i say bombard area) he doesent switch target. so i guess this isent ment? if it is meant to be like this i wounder if i can put the artyspotter in jail for breaking the orders. if its a green spotter or lower i guess this behaivour is accepted but ... ))

B1.is this the correct way??

QUE C.

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Arty spotter dies when its only secs from fire to land.

C1. Why dont they fire a burst any way the test shot was perfect acoording to the spotter and he was just waiting for them to shoot.

))

yeye hope u understand my que and can help me answer them cause i havent figured them out yet it only feel like soomething is wrong.

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thank u in advance for the answers and sorry for my bad eng skill

[ July 24, 2003, 07:31 AM: Message edited by: d34dm34t ]

[Monty]

Hi , welcome to CMBB and this forum !!

There are many, many topics allready posted about artillery , but i will try to answer a few of your answers :

Qua A: In CMBB, you better not use FO's (Forward Observers) with no LOS (Line of

Sight)on the target.

I guess its realistic, because its hard to adjust the artillery just by listening to the impact sounds or observing the dust clouds.

Get the FO's (thats why they called FORWARD observers) close to the target !

They are hard to spot as long as you have them in (scattered) trees.

Que B: The fact your artillery seems to go for the squad in the field in stead of the forest is just bad luck i think.

FO's concentrate fire on the targetted spot, but there is always a (smallish) off target range.

Indeed, guns switch from area target to another unit when they think that unit is a higher threat.

That can be VERY annoying (especially when you are firing smoke) but on the other hand it can safe virtual lifes when the gun spots closeby infantery or even a AFV (Armored Fighting Vehicle).

Qua C: I dont understand the question completely, but prep artillery barrages are completed, even if the FO is dead/wounded.

Normal barrages are stopped, seems to me normal when the (radio) communication suddenly stops.

Monty

[Captain Pies]

In answer to your first question. The behaviour is correct.

If your spotter has no line of sight to the plotted target. How is he going to know where the spotting round falls and adjust before firing for effect?

I think you'll find if you plot a target out of LOS and then move your spotter into LOS your rounds will fall on target if you manually adjust.

There are plenty of threads in this forum about the arty behaviour out of LOS, I suggest you search for them.

Monty beat me to it.

[ July 24, 2003, 08:52 AM: Message edited by: Captain Pies ]

[JonS]

Originally posted by Monty:

... Qua A: In CMBB, you better not use FO's (Forward Observers) with no LOS (Line of

Sight)on the target.

I guess its realistic, because its hard to adjust the artillery just by listening to the impact sounds or observing the dust clouds. ...

Monty,

I'm not disputing your answers in relation to CMBB, because as far as I can tell they are spot on. But what you base the 'it's realistic' comment on? It is my understanding that sound adjustment, and other methods for adjusting out-of-sight fall-of-shot were reasonably accurate (and not the dice throw we get in CMBB) though slower than a 'standard' adjustment.

Regards

JonS

[MikeyD]

In CMBO it was almost like you were able to chase people around the board with artillery like 'the finger of God'. BFC specifically made it much more difficult to target out of LOS in order to offest that gamey CMBO feature.

As for ease of adjustment, I tried this out one (and ONLY one) game:

I spent the whole scenario down at level one in hilly terain. Also, I made a point to not move ahead of my troops to be certain I didn't see what they didn't see. Played that way I found - first of all - the AI is MUCH more likely to kick my butt! And secondly, artillery spotting out of LOS is pretty much impossible. You hear explosions reverberating off the hillsides and you feel the ground shake beneath you, but you simply do not know if you're 10m or 1,000m off-target. Played that way, CMBB becomes one VERY TOUGH GAME!!!

[ July 24, 2003, 04:42 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[MAUS_TD]

hello,

i've a question too

why cant i give the rolling barage order? :confused:

Expecially when you have an scenario which has an arty barage. I thought that arty most of the time used rolling barages because it's much more effective. (some scenarios have enough stock to do such an attack)

And i also have another,

why is a ref target point faster to fire then a spot which is in LOS :confused:

It has nothing to do with the angle or spot because the spotter knows the spot tells it to the arty guys and they blast the particular piece of map to hell.Or can't the arty guys read a map?? :confused:

pls does anybody know this or has this been posted before

thnx maus

[Joachim]

Originally posted by MAUS_TD:

hello,

And i also have another,

why is a ref target point faster to fire then a spot which is in LOS :confused:

It has nothing to do with the angle or spot because the spotter knows the spot tells it to the arty guys and they blast the particular piece of map to hell.Or can't the arty guys read a map?? :confused:

pls does anybody know this or has this been posted before

thnx maus

If a spotter tells his battery the target coordinates (well, more his best guess of the coordinates, based on errors of his sighting equipment and due to the lack of good maps), the battery does some complex calculations (different arty delay for different nations stems from better or worse techniques to calculate). Then they fire one or more spotting rounds.

TRPs have these calculations already done, careful measuring of the TRP with special gear used on the exact spot of the TRP instead of approximations from some hundred metres away with equipment prone to measuremnet errors.

So the procedure for firing at a TRP is just to get a piece of paper out of the arty battery/btn HQ, turn the guns in the right direction and set the elevation - both noted on that piece of paper - and fire.

Of course most FOs can read maps. But it is a major task to create a map. There are not many people who can do that, as you have to measure the country and then have somebody drawing the map. Then it has to be printed (engraving some plates!) or copied manually - one at a time. Given the abundance of territory in Russia and the lack of skilled map-makers of all sorts, I'm not sure each FO had a good detailed map of where he was.

And yes, I bet this was discussed earlier...

Gruß

Joachim

[MAUS_TD]

thnx for your expl. Joachim

maus

[Michael Emrys]

This part is in most cases incorrect:

Originally posted by Scarhead:

...careful measuring of the TRP with special gear used on the exact spot of the TRP instead of approximations from some hundred metres away with equipment prone to measuremnet errors.

TRPs were locations established in the perfectly usual manner of having an FO correct registration shots until they were falling where he wanted them and then giving that point a code name that both he and the battery would recognize unambiguously in the heat of battle.

But that doesn't matter much to the substance of the present discussion since this part is the important bit and is correct:

So the procedure for firing at a TRP is just to get a piece of paper out of the arty battery/btn HQ, turn the guns in the right direction and set the elevation - both noted on that piece of paper - and fire.

...And explains very well the savings in time.

Of course most FOs can read maps. But it is a major task to create a map. There are not many people who can do that, as you have to measure the country and then have somebody drawing the map. Then it has to be printed (engraving some plates!) or copied manually - one at a time.

I don't know anything specific about how the Soviets went about mapmaking, but I think you may be exaggerating the laboriousness of the process for everybody else. By the time of WW II, the photogravure and photolithographic processes were already well known and in use. The Western Allies could go from aerial photos wet from the darkroom to printed maps in the hands of soldiers in the field in the space of less than a week. The Germans were probably not greatly worse. Additionally, most armies tried to have stocks of maps of regions they expected to have to fight over well in hand long before combat began, though they did not always succeed at at that.

Michael

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by MAUS_TD:

hello,

i've a question too

why cant i give the rolling barage order? :confused:

Expecially when you have an scenario which has an arty barage. I thought that arty most of the time used rolling barages because it's much more effective. (some scenarios have enough stock to do such an attack)

Rolling barrages would not usually be done by a single battery, but rather by several batteries (i.e., an Arty Btn.) or more working in concert - 4 tubes or so walking their fire across the map just isn't enough fire to be very effective for most purposes. As such, you can come reasonably close to a rolling barrage in CMBB if you get 3 or more Arty spotters of the same calibre and stagger their aim points and TOT times so that the fire walks across the map.

This doesn't give you quite the rolling barrage effect, but it comes close. In a real rolling barrage, you'd have 12 (or more) tubes walking their fire across the map together, which gives you a very intense impact zone that would gradually move across the map. What CM gives you is 4 tubes hitting one spot, then 4 tubes hitting a spot a bit further on, etc. Not quite the same thing.

There is one simple change in CM that could make walking barrages very possible: IMHO, pre-planned arty barrages (i.e, turn 1 plotted) should allow multiple "adjust fire" plots in turn one only. Each "adjust fire" order could be given a delay of one or more minutes from the start of the barrage. In this way, you could pre-plan a barrage that started at one point on the map and then moved a limited distance at pre-planned intervals of at least one turn. This is very close to the way real rolling barrages work - a battery can't just suddenly up and change it's aim point hundreds of meters without relaying the guns, but it can make small adjustments to the aim point with little lost firing time.

I also believe that at least the most common arty calibers (for example, calibers like 76mm for the Soviets, 105mm for Germans and Americans, etc.) should be purchasable in battalion-tube size (usually about 12 tubes) spotters. Much like platoons for AFVs, such large arty purchases should be somewhat cheaper than buying the equivalent number of tubes as multiple one battery (usually 4 tube) spotters. HOWEVER, such high-tube spotters should be considerably less flexible in terms of their use. Basically, these "battalion spotters" should simulate pre-planned barrages only, and should be difficult to use for called fire - probably the best way to simultate this is a very long delay time. Generally speaking, putting a full battalion of guns 'on call' for a given tactical action was extremely rare as it meant the guns were not available to use elsewhere. However, it was not all that uncommon for larger groups of guns for fire on a 'fire plan' for five minutes or so - it's a lot easier to make the tubes avaiable for 5 minutes of pre-planned fire than it is to leave them 'on call' for half an hour or more just in case they might be needed.

IMHO, this would encourage players to make realistic use of Arty barrages as part of a pre-planned attack protocol, something that was quite common on all sides. Even the American and British, who by late war generally had the fastest, most flexible, and most avaiable artillery support, still made extensive use of pre-planned barrages when assaulting prepared positions. The Tommies and GIs were more likely to also have a battery or two available 'on call' to hit strongpoints after the main barrage was done, but this was in addition to pre-assault planned barrages, not instead of them.

The player would then have a choice with arty: Lots of tubes and ammo for cheap, but relatively inflexible and useful only for planned barrages, or fewer tubes and ammo, but more flexible and useful for quick-response concentration fires.

You can just assume that the effects of large pre-assult arty barrages are simulated in CM by setting casualty percentages, but personally I like having such large pre-assault barrages be part of the acutal CM scenario because I think coordinating your attack so your advancing units come in right behind the arty barrage is an important aspect of a well-executed assault. Conversely, I also think it leads to more realistic defensive setups when you have to worry about the potential effects of a large pre-assault barrage. For one thing, large clumps of woods suddenly become substantially less attractive hiding places. . .

There's lots more to get into with arty and how modeling it could be improved for the future. For example, there were wide variances in how arty assets were tied into tactical units between the various combatants. The Americans and Brits especially developed a system whereby theoretically even the lowliest arty FO could call in basically every arty gun in range if an important enough target showed itself. In general, the German system was less flexible and it was more difficult (though not impossible) for a German tactical unit to get arty support from a battery not attached to its parent division or army.

I suspect any major changes to the arty model will have to wait until CMX2, and at some point a compromise has to be made between realism and complexity - otherwise you could easily end up with as many different commands for artillery spotters as the entire game has right now. Playability is also an issue. It might be realistic to give the American player a chance to call for help ask his commanding officers for some 8-in. Howitzer fire to save the day anytime he really gets in trouble and is in danger of being overrun, but this wouldn't lead to very fair games. . .

Cheers,

YD

[d34dm34t]

OK thank you for all answers, and for the welcome ). it answerd some of my questions

I still think the artillery should be more acurret after shooting some test shots. and take less time to fire on the secound shot , they know all parameters to hit one area should it then be the same time to hit an area 300m away form the first area?

Ex: You have the map/photo you can messure the distance, they do the test (first shot) it lands x=200m y=-300m off the FO reports 200m , -300m

the battry corrects and calculate err factor 0.03% 0.04% for wind/rain/what ever.

The FO then switch target they know the err factor already so it should be much more accurat.

I still think its a bit unrealistic that a spoter cant hear the diffrent from sounds 45degreas off.

i dont want a 100% accuracy not even ass accurat as in cmbb, but still i think a it more should only make it more realistic.

Fire with no los in night / dusk / dawn should be easy to see the flash count the time and hear the sound count secounds and use easy math to see if it is of or on target.

I liked most of Yankee dog's idees.

Maybe split the command test art.shot and fire for eff. maybe the abillity to save the test shots like a TRP so that arty can easily shoot back at that point. not have to wait for a long time again to strike at the same spot again after a short break for a min or 2.

[MAUS_TD]

thnx YankeeDog,

I miss the barages also because i like normally big or huge battles.

Iam currently building a battle which is a russian assault. Russians more then 120+ tanks and the germans about 40+. Some inf div.Map is 2 by 2.2 km.

I think this is such a battle which is has a need for a rolling barage. Iam testing it and i must say it's ****ing cool see so many tanks rolling over your screen and hearing air power the hole time see your panzer shot to hell of being bomb by a sturmovik.

I've two questions,

the first its so hard to test it against te ai.

probely because i let the ai attack.

The second is because this is the biggest battle i have played ever i scattert the reinforments over the battle but i think when both sides are reinforced it can take about 2-3mins to think.

Does the map has anything to do with it when i make less woods etc will the game be faster or does it only has to do with units .

I'll hope someone who makes big battles can give me some tips

thnx in advance

maus

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by MAUS_TD:

...does it only has to do with units[?]

The units I think. I believe the time required to work out a turn is proportional to the square of the total number of units on both sides...or something very like that. At least it seems to take me that much longer to plan a move as the size of my forces increase.

Michael

[YankeeDog]

Maus -

I think you will find it very difficult to playtest your scenario against the AI if the AI is attacking. Scenario Design is not my forte, but in general, the AI is pretty bad at attacking, especially in large, complex battle. Furthermore, the AI on the attack has particular trouble figuring out what to do with Artillery assets. If you're determined to get the scenario to work as an AI attack, you need to pay close attention to where you place VLs and also make sure that the AI has some good approaches to the VL from its setup zone.

As far as the length of this it takes for the computer to 'think' in large battles, I don't think there's any real way around this. Keep in mind that certain types of units require more 'thinking' than on others. For example, Armor-on-Armor fighting is generally the most processor-intensive activity - the algorithms for armor penetration are very complex and require a lot of calculation time. Infantry units, in general, put less of a strain on the processor.

Cheers,

YD

[Joachim]

Originally posted by MAUS_TD:

thnx YankeeDog,

I miss the barages also because i like normally big or huge battles.

Iam currently building a battle which is a russian assault. Russians more then 120+ tanks and the germans about 40+. Some inf div.Map is 2 by 2.2 km.

I think this is such a battle which is has a need for a rolling barage. Iam testing it and i must say it's ****ing cool see so many tanks rolling over your screen and hearing air power the hole time see your panzer shot to hell of being bomb by a sturmovik.

I've two questions,

the first its so hard to test it against te ai.

probely because i let the ai attack.

The second is because this is the biggest battle i have played ever i scattert the reinforments over the battle but i think when both sides are reinforced it can take about 2-3mins to think.

Does the map has anything to do with it when i make less woods etc will the game be faster or does it only has to do with units .

I'll hope someone who makes big battles can give me some tips

thnx in advance

maus

If the AI uses calculation of LOS for its units (e.g. for potential hull-down positions), map size has to do something with turn processing.

Checking if a given unit x has LOS to another unit y will also need more CPU time on larger maps, as the distance gets larger (makes me wonder if thick fog decreases CPU time)

Gruß

Joachim