Something unusual...........maybe even a bug?

[Bullethead]

Dschugaschwili said:

Bullethead, have you tried your test with radio FOs? Somebody on this thread suspected that only radio FOs miss in-LOS targets.

Not recently. But I have in the past, and their accuracy was exactly the same as with wire FOs. I don't feel like doing it again, which is why I made my test scenario available on page 3 of this thread. Go get it and try for yourself

[Bullethead]

JonS said:

Well, if you want to be like that about it, you're both (you and Bullethead) wrong

A barrage is a line of fire perpendicular to the line of advance that moves forward with the troops, jumping ahead about 100m every three minutes.

JonS, I'm surprised at you!! The type of fire you describe is called a "creeping barrage". The use of the adjective indicates that there exist stationary barrages, which in fact is the original and to this day still they most common type. CMBB has this non-creeping type, which is just called a "barrage"

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Bullethead:

Dschugaschwili said:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Bullethead, have you tried your test with radio FOs? Somebody on this thread suspected that only radio FOs miss in-LOS targets.

Not recently. But I have in the past, and their accuracy was exactly the same as with wire FOs. I don't feel like doing it again, which is why I made my test scenario available on page 3 of this thread. Go get it and try for yourself </font>

[JonS]

BH,

true, what I had was a rather simplified description. The non-moving barrage would be called a "standing barrage". The point is that that ain't in CM either. The fire missions in CM are 'concentrations', not 'barrages'

Regards

JonS

Edit: the key difference is that 'barrages' have a linear aspect, while 'concentrations' are for a point target.

As an aside for those who might be interested(and not for BH, since I'm reasonably confident he knows this stuff ), linear targets need a length and direction specified by the FO in addition to the target grid. ie, how many metres long you want the barrage to be, and running in which direction. eg "fire mission battery, grid 123 456, linear 200, direction 6400" would give a line of explosions 200m long, running north-south. The centre of the line would be at grid 123 456.

[ November 05, 2002, 08:17 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[Treeburst155]

All I know is that when my spotters get into trouble during a fire mission, I often have problems with the fire mission. This is just an observation over years of CM play. I've seen it rarely because I learned to keep my spotters safe.

I'd REALLY like to actually see an off-target fire mission where the spotter has LOS and is not being affected by incoming fire. Right now, it appears to be an EXTREMELY rare occurrence.

Try Bulletheads scenario. You can test arty hundreds of times in minutes. In thousands of tests I've yet to see an off-target/in LOS fire mission.

Treeburst155 out.

[ November 05, 2002, 08:21 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

[Bullethead]

Treeburst155 said:

Actually, we should quit talking about LOS completely. It is the absence of spotting rounds for whatever reason that makes a bad strike possible (with the exception of TRPs and prep bombardment), and maybe not even adjustable. All this confusion is a result of inaccuracies in the manual.

Yup, the manual is wrong on this score. But FWIW, so is the game itself. In real life, when the FO doesn't have an LOS, he can do one of 2 things:

</font>

• Blow off adjusting spotting rounds entirely, just shoot the FFE right now, accept whatever scatter he gets, and hope for the best; or</font>
• Depending on why he has no LOS, use one of several standard methods for working with spotting rounds when there's no normal LOS to them (these vary considerably in complexity, certainty, and time required), take more time than normal spotting, but eventually get the rounds on target.
  </font>

CMBB has the worst of both worlds in this regard. When the FO is blind, there are no spotting rounds, yet the delay time is increased as if one of the blind spotting methods was being employed. I submitted at the time that it should be one way or the other. If no spotting rounds, then the FFE should start immediately, like on a TRP. OTOH, if the delay is increased, then there should be more spotting rounds than normal, and they should probably be smoke (or even airbursts) instead of HE. (edit: AND the FFE should be on target, too--that's the whole purpose of the spotting procedure) Oh well

[ November 05, 2002, 08:23 PM: Message edited by: Bullethead ]

[Redwolf]

I reality you could also have spotting rounds fall until they approch the edge of visibilty and then say "200m more". This would still be extremly precise on the spot, although technically speaking you don't have LOS to the round's impact.

[JonS]

Creeping adjustments (which is what you describe RW) often don't work terribly well.

I've found that out to my embarrasment on a couple of occasions

[Bullethead]

JonS said:

The fire missions in CM are 'concentrations'

Yup, another sore point with me. In real life, the guns of a battery are usually all in a straight or staggered line more or less parallel to the FEBA. With 4 guns per battery and 50m or so between guns, you've got about 200m between the end guns, which is rather wider than the left-right scatter inherent in any gun over multiple shots. Thus, getting all the guns to hit the same point, which means making their oval impact patterns to all correspond as they do in CM (see that screenshot of mine on page 3) requires figuring the firing data for each gun individually.

So what normally happens is that each gun fires straight ahead using the same data. Thus, instead of the type of pattern we have now for a whole battery, what we should normally get is multiple copies of that pattern laid side-by-side, with the gun spacing in the battery between the centers of the ovals for each gun. There would be rounds landing up to 100m long and short for each gun, but most of the shells would be toward the center of the pattern, and this area of concentrated fire would form a line parallel to the front. Which is WAY more useful against area targets like grunts in line of battle than what we have now. What we have now is only useful for killing bunkers and similar point targets.

So what I would like to see is a pattern like the above. It would be of about the same overall size (when you count all the outliers) as the current "target wide" pattern, but would have a concentrated zone running N-S through the middle, whereas the "target wide" pattern is an even distribution. This is what I would have as the normal pattern. If you wanted to shoot what CM currently has, this would be called "target tight" or some such, and would have an increased delay time due to the extra calculations needed to pull it off.

[StellarRat]

I think in "real life" the pattern of fire can be set by the FO. I believe they have several possible spacings to call upon, but I don't know if this was true for all nations. Imagine some armies were just happy to have the artillery land anywhere on the target area.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by JonS:

Creeping adjustments (which is what you describe RW) often don't work terribly well.

I've found that out to my embarrasment on a couple of occasions

They certainly work in TacOps - for single volleys

[ November 05, 2002, 09:43 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Ace Pilot]

Originally posted by Treeburst155:

Great contribution, Ace Pilot!

Aww...shucks. I just do what I can.

Besides, the folks doing all the testing, like yourself and BH, deserve even more credit.

Ace

[Capitalistdoginchina]

Bump!

[Treeburst155]

Play games running north/south for more deadly arty strikes. Then you can hit 100 meters of front line instead of the rounds falling short and going deep.

Treeburst155 out.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Treeburst155:

Play games running north/south for more deadly arty strikes. Then you can hit 100 meters of front line instead of the rounds falling short and going deep.

Do not remind me, it's too painful.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by redwolf:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by redwolf:

But CM does not have any capability to have multiple units in one foxhole, no matter what the sizes of units and foxholes are.

Hmm. I had an HMG and an FO in the same foxhole not too long back. And believe me, I was checking closely to make sure that both were in fact in the foxhole.

Michael</font>

[Neutral Party]

I was wondering if there was any resolution to this issue about artillery accuracy. AFAIK there was no mention of any changes to artillery targeting in the 1.01 patch. In a few recent games with said patch I have experienced the "features" described earlier in this thread. In particular off-target (very) delivery not improved by green line adjusting. In fact the adjusted fire came down in almost exactly the same place as the original.

Now this doesn't happen all the time of course. In most of my experience artillery lands on-target but when the original is widely off, re-adjusting doesn't seem to help.

Joe

[Battlefront.com]

Neutral Party,

I was wondering if there was any resolution to this issue about artillery accuracy.

Apparently this is still an open topic. The problem appears to be that some people are sure they are doing nothing wrong, yet getting very inaccurate and unadjustable fire. But by and large there doesn't appear to be a problem. BH's test at least indicates that there shouldn't be.

Perhaps it is user error or perhaps it is a bug. Unfortunately, without seeing this for ourselves we can't tell one way or the other. Perhaps if someone could send me a savegame file where the artillery is falling way off target Charles might be able to spot something in the code (1.01 only please!).

steve@battlefront.com

Thanks,

Steve

[Neutral Party]

Thanks Steve

Glad that you're taking an interest in this. Of course there is a human tendency to remember (and possibly misinterpret) instances where something bad happens and forget all the times where things work out the way they're supposed to

I will keep an eye out for the situation arising again and send a savegame if it occurs.

Joe

[Egan]

I had an infantry company one time that got one hell of a shellacking from russian heavy mortars .

the withdraw command was the only thing that saved them from getting slaughtered. I only ended up with three units getting routed which i thought was acceptable considering i couldn't affords to lose a full company. used at the right time, like all other commands, it can be invaluable. the thing is to know when to use it.