Arty delay times - Or "The Art of Ti-Ming"

[Sgian Dubh]

Hi all,

I have been working on imporving my usage of Arty. As such, I have been conducting some tests on delay times, rates of fire, etc. in order to improve my awareness of these issues.

Howver, I am puzzled by some of the results and I was hoping that some of the more experienced could shed some light.

That being said, The results below are from a Daytime, clear sky, desert map where I had set up FOs of varying kinds on a tree-covered hill with enemy infantry a long, long way off.

All Arty is Radio, except the British 25 prds and 1/2 of the 81mm mortars. Only US and British arty tested thus far.

No HQs on the map, so no FO is "in command".

I set up TRPs that were both in LOS and out of LOS for all of the FOs on the map.

Where LOS is used, all the LOS lines are a nice, bright blue to minimize the effects of "iffy" LOS.

THe results below will be in the format (as I have never had any luck in producing a table on this forum):

Arty type, LOS & No TRP delay, No LOS & No TRP delay, LOS & TRP delay, No LOS & TRP delay

155mm (US), 3 min., 3 min., 46 sec., 1 min.

75mm (US), 3 min., 3 min., 37 sec., 1 min.

105mm (US), 2 min., 4 min., 27 sec., 56 sec.

182.9mm (BR), 7 min., 9 min., 1 min., 1 min.

139.7mm (BR), 7 min., 9 min., 1 min., 1 min.

88.0mm (BR), 3 min., 5 min., 51 sec., 1 min.

Mortar (radio or no-radio produced identical results.

81mm (US), 4 min., 1 min., 20sec., 58 sec.

Now for my questions,

1)Why is the delay for No LOS & No TRP longer for the 105mm than the 75mm or 155mm?

2) Why, for the 155mm and 75mm, is there no delay difference between No LOS & No TRP and LOS & NO TRP?

3) Why, for the 182.9mm and 139.7mm, is there no delay difference between LOS and No LOS to a TRP?

4) I was also surprised that the delay difference for having a Non LOS TRP is virtually the same as having LOS and no TRP for the 81mm mortar FO.

(although, the thought just hit me that in either case the FO is just calling in a grid reference, so I guess it does make sense.)

The purpose of these tests was to glean the general rules for Arty delay times, and I think that overall the results were as I expected. LOS & TRP is the fastest, followed by LOS only, then No LOS & TRP and then No LOS & No TRP.

The one thing that really struck me as unexpected was that delays in general are not shorter as calibre is decreasing. It sort of is for the British, but the US is most definitely not.

I guess that is enough. I will now hope that a more knowledgable person(s) can explain why this all make perfect sense.

Thanks in advance.

[Redwolf]

What month is this in?

U.S. artillery gets faster in June 1944.

[Sgian Dubh]

North Africa, March 1943.

I thought I had all of the pertinent data. I've been playing the CM gameslong enough that I should know that there is always another piece of pertinent data.

However, I wasn't so much concerned with the total amount of time in any one category and the relationship between calibres and delay times and the effect LOS and TRPs have on delay times.

[ January 20, 2004, 03:37 PM: Message edited by: Sgian Dubh ]

[JasonC]

You still don't have the data. Times over 1 minute are only correct to the nearest minute. After that number of minutes pass, there might be 1 second left or there might be 59. The only way to see for sure is to run the clock off and see.

Second, there is some random variation in delay times. You can take the same FO type with the same quality, call a mission with the same clear LOS, and see 3 minutes for one and 4 minutes for the other. The first may really be 3:45 and the second may really by 4:00. But it can vary, a modest amount, for no reason other than "it wants to".

Then if you want to see the whole story, you need to do it again for different quality levels. Because vet missions are somewhat faster, greens somewhat slower, etc. Larger quality differences also effect reload times between salvos. E.g. conscripts will fire slower than regulars, from first instance of "firing" to second and third.

[Sgian Dubh]

All of the FOs in the test were regular. I didn't test differing types of quality as I figured that this was self-explanatory and that differences in quality would only shift the delay time curve.

So only differences of at least 2 minutes can be clearly seen as a 'real' difference?

Are all of the values estimated with the same bias for a particular FO each turn? In other words, is a particular FO's estimates off by +15 seconds for a turn, regardless of target? Or is the bias calculated each time a new target is selected during the same turn?

It would seem, then, that based on the numbers I collected and also allowing for a +/- 60 second spread, that the only significant difference (in many cases) for DELAY is whether or not a TRP is being targeted.

Accuracy is, of course, another matter.

[Bone_Vulture]

What about the formation levels? is the US 105mm of the same or higher (=slower) than the other tested artillery units? eg. battalion, regimental and so on.

[Redwolf]

As Jason said, the test you dod needs to be done with more effort:

1) place 5 spotters of each type.

2) actually run the game and see when by the second the rounds are falling.

In my tests everything seemed fine, the times are precisely determined by owning formation level.

This aspect seems to work fine to me. Now for ammunition and Quickbattle prices, that's something to bitch about , not to speak of holding fire etc.

[Sgian Dubh]

Originally posted by redwolf:

As Jason said, the test you dod needs to be done with more effort:

1) place 5 spotters of each type.

2) actually run the game and see when by the second the rounds are falling.

In my tests everything seemed fine, the times are precisely determined by owning formation level.

This aspect seems to work fine to me. Now for ammunition and Quickbattle prices, that's something to bitch about , not to speak of holding fire etc.

Redwolf, et. al.

This thread seems to be going in a direction that I did not intend. I never stated that I thought anything was wrong. I was asking for help (and got it) on why some of the times seemed a bit odd to me.

Again, I was not and am not trying to state/prove/hint/etc. that there is anything broken. After re-reading my initial post, I still fail to see why it has resulted in a "defend CMAK" tone. I was asking why *my* expectation was at odds with what I was seeing, not "Hey! There's something wrong here."

I was trying to obtain a better grasp on the general rules governing the delay time for Arty FOs.

I guess what I was really hoping for was that someone would actually explain how the Arty is grouped by formation level, what effect the formation levels have on the delay times, and etc.

Thanks to all for your responses, I have more to think about now.

[Redwolf]

No problem, Sgian.

I'm just pointing out your tests were too simple to get useful results.

And you are right practicing artillery. Back in the CMBO Quickbattle days good or bad artillery was what made players like Swamp so effective. It is a skill worth improving, and many other wargames reward it as well.

However, in CMAK this is a little mood point since as the Allies you cannot really buy decent artillery in a Quickbattle due to that unfortunate ammo and hence price distribution.

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by Sgian Dubh:

I was trying to obtain a better grasp on the general rules governing the delay time for Arty FOs.

Just a quick rerun. The formation levels are following, from the quickest (smallest) to slowest:

Battalion - regimental - divisional - corps - army.

Don't expect to order fire on the go effectively from anything slower than regimental. You'll most likely end up having to cancel or re-target the mission, once you see the spotting rounds landing hundreds of yards off from their intended landing zone. So use planned bombardments for the heavy stuff instead, or TRP's if you're defending. And obviously ditch all the heavy artillery in ME's.

[JasonC]

The one thing I'd change about what Bone-Vulture said is the cut off for useful, reactive arty fire. I'd include division as just fine. With longer delay stuff like most people's divisional guns, and Russian regimental ones - 5 minute stuff - you do have to use it a little differently.

You call the mission well ahead of time, but you fully expect you may have to "walk" the aim point around when the time gets down to 2 minutes, to "update" where you want the shells to land. Doing so will typically add a minute back to the time. But will get you a mission where it will do some good, a few minutes after the last adjustment. That is good enough.

(Incidentally, it also works better if you have 2 FOs, because one can be retargeting recently with a longish delay, while another is nearly at its firing time).

Corps and army stuff is for pre-planned, "map" fire, targeted on turn 1 (in a non ME) and timed by using the "Q" key to increase the delay before the mission starts.

[ January 23, 2004, 01:21 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by JasonC:

You call the mission well ahead of time, but you fully expect you may have to "walk" the aim point around when the time gets down to 2 minutes, to "update" where you want the shells to land. Doing so will typically add a minute back to the time.

It's typically more than a minute for the heavies... This is a question of game time limit.

When attacking, if I have timed my infantry maneuvers to coincide with the original bombardment, and then have to delay it for several minutes because of retargetting, two bad things will happen:

1) Depending on the number of safe pathways to the flag area, my troops might be forced to stand idle for the additional delay time.

2) My opponent gets a chance to maneuver his own non-entrenched stuff, like vehicles or troops in buildings.

[JasonC]

Don't time the bombardment. Just call it ahead of the time the infantry will get there, well ahead. Like setting the first aim point on turn 2. Delay the actual fire as needed by walking the aim point around. I do it all the time.

When I actually get the infantry up to where I will want a mission (the approach march always takes time), the FOs are at 2-3 minutes to firing with recently tweaked aim points. Which is as good as you get from battalion or regimental FOs. Two divisional FOs and lead time are marginally less flexible and involve a tiny amount of micromanagement. The calibers involved are not crippled by delay times, and are often much harder hitting.

A really quick FO can be useful if he also has a radio and you want to call missions from a ridge you expect the defenders to be on initially. But most line spotters are calling their missions from the start line or close to it anyway. You pick set up locations or "first move" locations that will have LOS to the points you need to attack.

Defenders can't plan ahead quite as easily, but have TRPs. They just call the mission early on a spot where they don't have a TRP, and shift it around if they don't want the mission yet. They can always change to a TRP and get fire rapidly. If the FO timer is always counting down, you typically get about half the "sticker price" delay time between the time you actually decide you need the mission, and the time it arrives.

[Joachim]

Originally posted by JasonC:

They just call the mission early on a spot where they don't have a TRP, and shift it around if they don't want the mission yet.

Ahhh.... gamey bastard...

Gruß

Joachim

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by Joachim:

Ahhh.... gamey bastard...

Gruß

Joachim

Indeed.