Arty. . and why it sometimes pisses me off

[Dunnee]

artillery in cm was modeled pretty well, that is, until you start firing. The LOS rule works well, until u wanna shell the middle of a village or woods. Here's my problem. . say i see a large concentration of enemy troops in a large pine forest. Now i start to shell them, trouble is, with LOS, my shells land in the field in front of the forest and only up to about 30 m into the forest. Why o why, can't my FO tell the arty crews to add 50 or 100m so that my shells land amongst the woods and not just in front? Same thing for a village. And what about time-delayed fuses for bunker busting?

[JMcGuire]

I know what you mean. I'd like to hear from a couple of the guys on here who have Real Life artillery experience.

It seems to me when you're sitting high atop your Sweet Spotter Peak, you could call in arty in the middle of the forest in That Valley, even if you can't necessarily see what's in said valley...

In other words, LOS to a unit... or the ground... isn't necessarily required (it seems to me) to call in a strike on a particular coordinate.

Or maybe I should say, LOS should be "clear" if the spotter is at a higher elevation.

Arty guys in the forum, does this make sense?

[Zipper]

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

Here's my problem. . say i see a large concentration of enemy troops in a large pine forest. Now i start to shell them, trouble is, with LOS, my shells land in the field in front of the forest and only up to about 30 m into the forest. Why o why, can't my FO tell the arty crews to add 50 or 100m so that my shells land amongst the woods and not just in front?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Maybe I misunderstand the question, but I use FOs to call down strikes that are not in the FO's line of site. It just takes a little longer for the shells to start falling and accuracy is not as good.

What happens when you try to target an area out of LOS?

Zipper

[ 04-18-2001: Message edited by: Zipper ]

[Lanzfeld]

What he is saying is this:

If I can call in accurate arty in front of a village, why cant I just tell the gunners to "add 100 meters" and it be just as accurate into the center of the village even though I dont have direct LOS into the center?

[Radar]

I hear what your saying, Yes IRL, a 3 round FFE from just a battery (6 or 8 tubes) would make so much dust and smoke that ya would have a time to see a 'target'. Arty is an area effect weapon and the smoke and blast can be seen almost like the fast and intermediate level smoke effects in the game(HE smoke is black, BTW). But the effect varies with the weather and temp.

[Dunnee]

Lanzfield knows what i'm talkin about. . .that's how they call artillery strikes. . first rounds land. . radioman says drop fifty and fire for effect. . and so on

[Simon Fox]

Well you can target out of los and it can be just as accurate the only bizarre thing about CM is that out of los arty has a different pattern (more like a 'wide' dispersion) which is pretty kooky. It just takes a bit longer to get on target with out of los. One trick is to target the in los field and then just as the barrage is starting shift fire into the forest. There will be a delay but not as bad.

Having said all that there are a number of issues regarding the arty model which are regarded as inaccurate by many. Hopefully they will be improved in CM2.

[JMcGuire]

I think I've changed my mind about this.

I live south of Jacksonville, Florida and on I-295 we have this huge bridge (the Buckman). It is very tall, and today I had plenty of time to look aorund while sitting in traffic at the very peak of this very tall bridge, in my very tall truck. The peak is about 1.5 miles from the shore (either shore, the St. John's river is nearly 3 miles wide), and both shores are lined with trees of varying density.

I was not able to see any farther into even the relatively thin patches despite my relatively high position.

The more I thought about it and looked around, the more I realized you'd have to be almost directly overhead in order to see any farther. The only exception would be trees lacking much or any foliage, and in that case your LOS would be similarly improved from ground level, too.

About that time I noticed all the horns honking and gunned the V10 and abandoned my perch... funny how CM can change how you view the world around you...

[jwxspoon]

Hi guys,

I have a bit of experience in this area. I was an FO for 2/75 Rangers for four years, 1/325 PIR for two, and then I moved on to other Army jobs.

In practice we would adjust rounds onto the target. Typically you're looking at about 30-60 seconds for the FDC to compute the data and send it on to the battery and another 50+ seconds for the travel of the initial round. Then another minute and a half for the FO to get the adjustment and for the FFE get on target.

In combat a good FO that has registered the battery (which WILL have been done prior to combat in all but the most extreme situations) would not need to adjust fire because he would already have preplanned targets all over the battlefield. He would simply call in a target number and a correction to the enemy troops and get an immediate FFE. The FDC will already have a copy of the target list and those rounds will come FAST

[Dunnee]

thanks for clearin that up spoon. .i don't know if they used the same system in 44-45, but it seems that they would do something like that, but that is not exactly what's represented in the game.

[jwxspoon]

Yes - my pet peeve with the CM artillery modeling is that while my arty is firing, if I shift the target slightly (+ or- 100 meters or so) I end up starting the clock all over again. This is especially frustrating with 81mm mortars - the M16 plotting board used in most infantry weapons platoons today is virtually unchanged from its WWII counterpart. The mortars would adjust very quickly.

My assumption is that the system is designed to reflect the terrible tactical radio systems in use during WWII.

[Dunnee]

agreed.