joesnuffy Posted August 18, 2004 Share Posted August 18, 2004 I was playing a CMBB QB the other day. At one point in the battle, I had ID'd a wooden bunker with a machine gun. I had my 82mm spotter target this bunker indirectly using the LOS of the HQ. A target line was placed right on the bunker, and "area fire" was indicated. A few minutes later, when the mortars began firing, I noticed the rounds were landing off the map . I could see the rounds exploding off the actual map, hundreds of meters from the target line. :mad: Minute after minute went by with the rounds landing in the same general area off the map. I tried to reposition the target on the bunker again or somewhere close, but this would take another 7 minutes to set up. By this time, the battle was lost; the MG in this bunker was well positioned and ripped me to shreds. This is the 2nd time this has happened to me in CMBB. Has anyone experienced this before? Is it a bug or something I did wrong? :confused: 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted August 18, 2004 Share Posted August 18, 2004 If the LOS of the spotter is blocked during the end of targetting the barrages comes in off-target. Another, worse, bug is that if you adjust, then it doesn't come on-target either, and that is no matter how clear LOS you have. That doesn't make sense. The first behavior might not be a software bug but it is a logic bug. No real spotter would say "hmmm, I didn't see the spotting round and I have no idea where the FFE barrage will land, but what the hell, pour it on. FFE!". [ August 18, 2004, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: Redwolf ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joesnuffy Posted August 18, 2004 Author Share Posted August 18, 2004 The spotter didn't have LOS to the bunker, but his HQ did. I understood that this indirect fire method simply results in less accurate area fire, which means the spread of rounds is wider than direct LOS fire, but should at least be centered more or less on the target. But in this case, the rounds are landing off the map literaly hundreds of meters from the target. It's not like some land far away and some land close; all the rounds land in the same area hundreds of meters from the target and don't even make it onto the map. It seems like this has to be a bug. It's incredibly frustrating. I don't have a lot of time to spend playing. To invest a couple of hours and then have something like this happen is a complete waste of time. If it is user error, I would like to know what I did wrong. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingknives Posted August 18, 2004 Share Posted August 18, 2004 What you are trying with the HQ only works wit on map mortars. Spotters for off map artillery requires that the spotter has LoS himself. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingknives Posted August 18, 2004 Share Posted August 18, 2004 Oh yes, and using mortars to KO Mg bunkers doesn't work, unless you're using smoke to obscure it's LoS 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agua Posted August 18, 2004 Share Posted August 18, 2004 Originally posted by joesnuffy: I had my 82mm spotter target this bunker indirectly using the LOS of the HQ. As Mr. Knives, of the flaming variety, stated, HQs only spot for on map mortars, not for spotters. Redwolf also noted for you a notorious flaw which rears its head once in a blue moon involving spotters with direct LOS to the target. These are two separate matters, however, and the flamingknives' explanation is what caused your problem. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joesnuffy Posted August 18, 2004 Author Share Posted August 18, 2004 Flaming K, Thanks for the advice. Your comment about LOS and off-map arty does make some sense. It does seem a bit strange to have an HQ spotting for a spotter. This would be indirect indirect fire. However, I was under the impression that, when you are targeting, the text next to the target line tells you if you are successfully targeting or not. If it is NOT successful, it says, "sight blocked." But, in my case, it said, "area fire," which I thought meant successful indirect targeting. Please correct me if I'm wrong. secondly, the bunker was wooden, which I thought would be susceptible to mortar fire. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joesnuffy Posted August 18, 2004 Author Share Posted August 18, 2004 I also thought that the guys wouldn't fire unless a successful target was achieved. So, if the off-map arty spotter is not able to use HQ LOS, why did the off-map mortars fire? Isn't this a bug? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joesnuffy Posted August 18, 2004 Author Share Posted August 18, 2004 sorry to send this in pieces. Also, this has happened to me twice in seperate QBs. In both cases, the rounds landed beyond the far left corner of the map relative my point of view. It seems a stretch that this would be a coincidence. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingknives Posted August 18, 2004 Share Posted August 18, 2004 Originally posted by joesnuffy: I also thought that the guys wouldn't fire unless a successful target was achieved. So, if the off-map arty spotter is not able to use HQ LOS, why did the off-map mortars fire? Isn't this a bug? No, it's not a bug. you are 'map-firing', which means that you are ordering down fire on a set of map co-ordinates, but these may be wrong. The far left corner probably is coincidence, though I do recall I saw a similar thing on the occasion I saw the CMBB Beta. Given the number of patches in the intervening time, it is almost certainly coincidence. The moral of this story is to not fire at targets that you cannot see. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted August 18, 2004 Share Posted August 18, 2004 No, spotters for off-map arty will always show "area fire" on the targeting line, whether they have LOS or not. This is because you *can* order them to attempt fire on a point that they don't have LOS to. As you've discovered, though, the results are usually very inaccurate. I suppose it might be nice to have a color indicator or somefink to indicate LOS on the spotter's targeting line. Supposedly, if you "adjust fire" once an off-target barrage starts falling, the adjustment is more likely to come in closer to target. I've never actually tested this myself -- I generally use Off-Board Arty with LOS, and if I can't do that, then I use it with a TRP or as a pre-planned barrage. Cheers, YD 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AC Posted August 19, 2004 Share Posted August 19, 2004 Atleast in CM:AK you get a BLUE line when you have LOS with spotter to your target and some other color when not. You should never use "map spotting" with less than veteran spotters, even then chances of landing your fire way off target are high. The delay is also a lot longer. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted August 19, 2004 Share Posted August 19, 2004 Originally posted by AC: Atleast in CM:AK you get a BLUE line when you have LOS with spotter to your target and some other color when not. You should never use "map spotting" with less than veteran spotters, even then chances of landing your fire way off target are high. The delay is also a lot longer. The quality of the spotter does not have anything to do with the chance of the barrage to land off-target. The Blue line when you plot the target is nice but useless, as the decisive moment is right before the spotting rounds would fall, except they will not fall in that case. In a word, it's screwed up and highly unrealistic. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flamingknives Posted August 19, 2004 Share Posted August 19, 2004 In a word, it's screwed up and highly unrealistic. That's a sentence . I've never had a problem with it. Though it could do with improvement, it isn't a game breaker. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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