Fire from short halts

[Amedeo]

Is there a way in CMBO to have your AFV fire from short halts while continuing to travel along a given path? For vehicles whithout stabilizers it should be the only realistical viable option to deliver fire while advancing.

Suggestions?

Amedeo

[PantherGunner]

Only if your short halt is at the beginning of your turn. If at the start of your turn, issue pause command so your tank will shoot for 15 secs (or 30 or 45 depending upon the number of pauses) and then move. OR issue a hunt command and the tank will shoot on the move if it sees a non-tank killer or will halt automatically and shoot at a tank killing system; it will then start moving when the threat disappears.

[Amedeo]

Yep, I know that I could have my tank shot from a single short halt but I hoped that there was a way to have the tank advance continuosly and make several short halts for each shot. As I said this was the most common system for advancing fire in WW2. The problem is that with a MOVE command your tank will fire on the move and with a HUNT command your tank will stop until the target is destroyed instead of changing position between shots.

Hmmm... maybe this could be a command worth to add in CM2

Amedeo

[Mannheim Tanker]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Amedeo:

Yep, I know that I could have my tank shot from a single short halt but I hoped that there was a way to have the tank advance continuosly and make several short halts for each shot. As I said this was the most common system for advancing fire in WW2. The problem is that with a MOVE command your tank will fire on the move and with a HUNT command your tank will stop until the target is destroyed instead of changing position between shots.

Hmmm... maybe this could be a command worth to add in CM2

Amedeo<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think this would fall under the category of micromanagement. "Hunt" seems to work fine for me...

[Cos]

I think hunt is the right command for the job, since a turn is only a minute. How many fire/move/stop/fire/etc could a tank have done in real combat in a minute anyway.

[Dunnee]

HUNT. . an old professor of mine gave me the best piece of advice I ever recieved. . KISS: keep it simple stupid. Why micromanage when you can just HUNT. . .

[Jeff Hays]

I believe if you end your movement path in short ranges you may achieve the desired effect depending on the delay between each stop and move point. I would probably stick with hunt since your apt to engage the enemy than to risk moving with out taking some kind of action.

[Amedeo]

OK let me rephrase my point in a (hopefully!) better way. I'm under the impression that actual field practice in WW2 was to fire always from short halts when you had to deliver aimed fire while advancing. Since in the game you can only 1. advance firing on the move 2. advance stopping to fire but remaining still until the 'duel' is resolved, I was wondering whether there was a mean to reproduce what I assume was a common practice. This was intended as a realism issue and not a request for more micromanagement (in fact I wanted a way to do this avoiding mircomanaging the unit involved!).

For what concernes the number of times they would actually stop in a minute, well IIRC standard practice was to move after each shot, at least for the Soviets (but for the very slow ROF of the bigger calibres this should amount to stop onli once or twice in a minute anyway )

Regards,

Amedeo

[chrisl]

There are a couple of ways that you can sort of simulate this-- the one already described is to let the move orders end (or cancel them at the start of each turn) and use that time to fire.

I like to plot orders for my tanks that are all fast orders from one bit of cover back to safety (a few turns later) with a large number of waypoints. Interspersed will be very short segments of either move or hunt, depending on what I think the targets will be. If the tank will only have one target and it's likely to kill it, then I'll use hunt. If there are multiple targets that will be shooting back, I'll use move.

The difference is that with hunt, the tank will usually stop and shoot until the target is destroyed, and with move it will just slow down. If there are a lot of things shooting back you don't want to come to a full stop and park there. If a tank stops in hunt and you want it to continue, you can always change the waypoint to fast at the start of the next turn.

Not exactly what you were looking for, but it works well.

[PantherGunner]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Amedeo:

OK let me rephrase my point in a (hopefully!) better way. I'm under the impression that actual field practice in WW2 was to fire always from short halts when you had to deliver aimed fire while advancing. Since in the game you can only 1. advance firing on the move 2. advance stopping to fire but remaining still until the 'duel' is resolved, I was wondering whether there was a mean to reproduce what I assume was a common practice. This was intended as a realism issue and not a request for more micromanagement (in fact I wanted a way to do this avoiding mircomanaging the unit involved!).

For what concernes the number of times they would actually stop in a minute, well IIRC standard practice was to move after each shot, at least for the Soviets (but for the very slow ROF of the bigger calibres this should amount to stop onli once or twice in a minute anyway )

Regards,

Amedeo<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You are correct about the standard practice of shooting from the short halt. I think the reason this was not modeled in CMBO is to prevent the micromanagement of individual tanks and the consequences of the command. For instance if you plot a hunt from point A to point B and get ambushed by an AT gun firing from the side, the hunt command would let you stop, rotate your frontal armor towards the gun, and continue to fire. If you used a short halt command, from the time you were ambushed until the time you finally got to point B, your side would be exposed to the gun while you moved, halted to fire, moved, etc. In this instance I would much rather pivot my front towards the enemy. I know there are other factors involved but this is just a simplistic approach.

[Eric Alkema]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Amedeo:

[QB]This was intended as a realism issue and not a request for more micromanagement (in fact I wanted a way to do this avoiding mircomanaging the unit involved!).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I know what you mean. It amazes me how often folks around here will dismiss the idea of a new movement or targeting order as "micromanagement" and then suggest a workaround that involves issuing six different orders.

As it stands you have two choices, stand and fight or accept the reduction in accuracy.

[Olle Petersson]

Amedeo, your grasp of the historical part is pretty accurate. Your only misunderstanding is about the gyro stabilizer that did not allow any precision shooting while moving.

The advantage of the gyro was that it took slightly less time to adjust the aim after stopping the tank, thus getting the first shot off faster.

Then it took more time to reload the gun while moving, and the loader risked breaking his arms to the jumping breech...

My way to handle these short stops in CM is to just imagine they're there when the tanks fire while moving. This makes do since that kind of fire is way too accurate in CM anyway...

Cheers

Olle

[Amedeo]

Olle,

thanks for the precisation. In fact now I remember to have read something like this on the use of gyros.

About firing from short halts I came to your same conclusion: I simply pretend than when I issue a movement order the short halts are actually there!

Regards,

Amedeo