Aircraft....armamet's

[fire-fox]

in the unit editer there are some aircraft that say that they carry e.g. 96x5lb bomb's (Hs-129)

and the IL2 sturmovik (all vereants but the IL2T)

can carry 92x2.5Kg AT/AP/insendurry bumb's this is no modeld in the game evan thowe they were use to devistating effect on the easten front.

[prime^]

I think this is represented by them doing continuous air strikes throughout the course of a game, I'm currently playing my first quick battle Vs AI game and the 2 IL-2s I have bought have been bombing and firing rockets at then enemy positions pretty much every round now....

Another point... I played the first battle of the 1st Russian Operation (21st army counterattack i think?) about 4 rounds in, the bulk of my army was advancing up the right flank, a large number of infantry units spread out, most in dense trees, and 3 vehicles and several heavy tanks, 2 of which were out in the open. During the next round, a German aircraft dropped a bomb on one of the tanks out in the open, the tank died. As did all the tanks and vehicles within at least a 400 meter radius. As did EVERY infantry unit within at least a 500 meter radius (including the ones in dense trees). I should have taken a screenshot of it really, but it was just a mass of "eminated"s over a large area. This is surely a bug? 1 bomb literally took out 60% of my entire army, spread over a reasonably large area - moral droped from 98% to 52% in one foul swoop.....

As a second note, whats with the support artillery now? used to take 3 -6 rounds to call in an artillery strike in CMBO, now it takes 6 - 25(!) rounds?

[Foxbat]

Originally posted by prime^:

As a second note, whats with the support artillery now? used to take 3 -6 rounds to call in an artillery strike in CMBO, now it takes 6 - 25(!) rounds?

It now uh.. takes longer and is less flexible. But you can use prep barrages so your rounds will start falling inside the duration of the scenario

[prime^]

Thats a bit pants isnt it?

The idea of arty spotters is that they hae been given priority over artillery assignments, when you pay the points, you arn't buying the spotter, you are buying the attention of an artillery unit. SO when they radio in an artillery strike, they do exactly that, it didnt take 10 -25 minutes when it was organised back then, so why should it do that in the game now?

[Lindan]

Originally posted by prime^:

Thats a bit pants isnt it?

The idea of arty spotters is that they hae been given priority over artillery assignments, when you pay the points, you arn't buying the spotter, you are buying the attention of an artillery unit. SO when they radio in an artillery strike, they do exactly that, it didnt take 10 -25 minutes when it was organised back then, so why should it do that in the game now?

The delays depend on the "level" of the assigned artillery. Getting Corps level stuff takes a while longer then battalion level.

[Sigurd]

I find the bomb effect stuff quite srprising, have some here encountered such devastating effects of aircrafts bombs ?

[Foxbat]

Originally posted by prime^:

Thats a bit pants isnt it?

The idea of arty spotters is that they hae been given priority over artillery assignments, when you pay the points, you arn't buying the spotter, you are buying the attention of an artillery unit. SO when they radio in an artillery strike, they do exactly that, it didnt take 10 -25 minutes when it was organised back then, so why should it do that in the game now?

There was a reason for pre-plotted artillery, the spotters are there to make sure that it lands in the right place

And yes it could take that long, depending on who-when-where-what.

[prime^]

Artillery spotters have the attention of an artilery unit assigned to that spotter, what the spotter says, they do (thats why when someone other than a spotter calls in a barrage, they have to wait for one to become available). By having a spotter, you have the artillery, the spotter relays the coordinates, and the artillery fires. This dosnt take 25 minutes, there is absolutely no point in calling in a strike if it takes 25 minutes before the rounds start falling - or even 15 minutes for that matter 10 is pushing it), this just seems pointless and has ruined the effectiveness of artillery in the game.

Maybe im wrong about the time factor in ww2, but from a gameplay point of view its impossible to predict 25 turns ahead (chances are your spotters gona get fired at in 25 turns as well) so it makes some of the heavier artillery peices almost useless.

[Foxbat]

Originally posted by prime^:

from a gameplay point of view its impossible to predict 25 turns ahead (chances are your spotters gona get fired at in 25 turns as well) so it makes some of the heavier artillery peices almost useless.

That's why you have pre-planned artillery, if you plot the strike on the first round you won't hav the penalty. That's how most the big stuff was used anyway (....kgghk... this is Ivan, we have some jaegers in a bush near hill 145.1, please drop a fair amount of 152mm rounds..over..)

[ParaBellum]

Originally posted by prime^:

Artillery spotters have the attention of an artilery unit assigned to that spotter, what the spotter says, they do (thats why when someone other than a spotter calls in a barrage, they have to wait for one to become available). By having a spotter, you have the artillery, the spotter relays the coordinates, and the artillery fires. This dosnt take 25 minutes, there is absolutely no point in calling in a strike if it takes 25 minutes before the rounds start falling - or even 15 minutes for that matter 10 is pushing it), this just seems pointless and has ruined the effectiveness of artillery in the game.

Maybe im wrong about the time factor in ww2, but from a gameplay point of view its impossible to predict 25 turns ahead (chances are your spotters gona get fired at in 25 turns as well) so it makes some of the heavier artillery peices almost useless.

Yes, you are wrong.

According to your logic an artillery units "belongs" to an FO who then in turn should be able to order barrages with very little delay, since "his" battery already awaits his orders.

You have to understand that many of the bigger arty pieces belong to divisional or even corps level and will surely have more than one FO at a given time. That means you cannot count on such arty to be immediatly at your service. Just because a company of riflemen ran into some enemies in some woods doesn't mean the corps artillery will open fire in support immediatly. They may be busy doing other fire missions already, orders may have to be obtained, fireplans worked out, priorities sorted out etc...

You're right that it's pretty difficult to plot a fire mission 25 turns ahead, so simply don't. Use pre-planned barrages or use smaller stuff.

Quite historical BTW since especially the Red Army in WWII massively relied on pre-planned barrages since their arty wasn't very flexible.

[prime^]

Yea.. but from a realistic point of view any artillery assigned to a spotter should be able to poor fire at very short notice. Also as you do not know where the enemy are in the first round.. whats the point calling in a massed artillery strike on something that may not even be there?

[ParaBellum]

Originally posted by prime^:

Yea.. but from a realistic point of view any artillery assigned to a spotter should be able to poor fire at very short notice.

Why do you think this would be realistic?

Do you have any data to prove this asumption? To give you another example: The russian 152mm arty FO is army level. We're talking about a unit responsible for supporting dozens of bataillons, thousands of men.

Also as you do not know where the enemy are in the first round.. whats the point calling in a massed artillery strike on something that may not even be there?

Yes. It's not that easy. But then you have to think where the enemy might have his positions. In a current PBEM I attack with russian forces a german-held town. I used two 152mm FO to fire a pre-planned barrage into the town. Did they hit anything? Well, I hope so, I'll see soon enough.

They didn't cost too much so I think it was a good deal.

Again, this is quite realistic. A lot of pre-planned barrages in WWII didn't hit enemy positions.

Did you try out TRPs? Response time for arty decreases quite a lot when using them.

[ October 13, 2002, 08:14 AM: Message edited by: ParaBellum ]

[zukkov]

a russian infantry batallion often comes with an 82mm mortar spotter. the delay time for that is a reasonable 2 minutes or so(if not pre-planned). as others have said, the bigger stuff is assigned at a higher level so if it's not pre-planned be prepared to wait a long time for it to drop. unless of course, you're on defense with some trps..

[prime^]

Yea but im not talking about a rifle company calling in an artillery strike, im talking about AN ARTILLERY SPOTTER, meaning they are actually part of the artillery regiment THEIR JOB being to TELL THE ARTILLERY where to fire, not to say "hey guys when u get the time.. over there".

I have a friend who is an artillery spotter in the British army at the moment, he has explained to me how the system works - at least in current day situations. Artillery spotters give the orders, the artillery battery (be it naval, army or airforce) follows the orders without question and imediately.

When a spotter is sent out he is given exclusive control of certain batteries, they are his to command and that can only be superceded at the highest level. If the battery is currently not being used or is awaiting instructions from a spotter, that is when they may get diverted by ad hoc requests for strikes in the field, but the moment the spotter calls in, those strikes are halted imediately and the spotters orders are carried out.

The kind of artillery strike that could take a long time to call in, was the type ordered by platoon/company leader in the middle of the battle, they would have to wait for the artillery to become available or for the mission to be confirmed. Because an artillery spotter is actually part of the artillery regiment, and seperate to any companies/platoons they happen to with, the orders they give are given imediate priority as it is their job to determine the best targets and give the correct coordinates.

Obviously within the game, its easy to pre-determine where the enemy will be, when you are attacking, as the control points are flagged, but when you are the defending army, you just endup wasting ordanance.

I guess I'm just annoyed cause support artillery was a major piece in my CMBO arsenal for any mission type.

[ October 13, 2002, 08:56 AM: Message edited by: prime^ ]

[Panzer76]

prime, please do a search or read the manual. This has been explained dozens of times. Simply put, ur wrong. You are comparing apple and oranges. What your friend tells you about modern day army methods has NO relevance to this issue.

CMBB is reflecting the historical issues for each of the nations and for the different org levels.

[Voxman]

We really need an English spell checker on this web board any chance for one

Originally posted by fire-fox:

in the unit editer there are some aircraft that say that they carry e.g. 96x5lb bomb's (Hs-129)

and the IL2 sturmovik (all vereants but the IL2T)

can carry 92x2.5Kg AT/AP/insendurry bumb's this is no modeld in the game evan thowe they were use to devistating effect on the easten front.

[ParaBellum]

Originally posted by prime^:

...I have a friend who is an artillery spotter in the British army at the moment, he has explained to me how the system works - at least in current day situations. Artillery spotters give the orders, the artillery battery (be it naval, army or airforce) follows the orders without question and imediately...

I guess there might be a slight difference between the british army in the year 2002 and the Red Army in 1943...

Here's something interesting from www.combatmission.com

"To call for fire, an FO had to scurry off to one of the firing points, and take an angle and range estimate to the potential target from the known firing point. Because of the need to do spotting from known points, and the technical training required to be part of this fairly complex system, only specially trained FOs were ever likely to call for impromptu fire support (I believe). The data was called in to the firing battery over the wire. Human computers back at the battery then did the trigonometric calculations (by hand or maybe with limited slide rule assistance) to calculate where on the map the apparent target was relative to the firing point, and from that then calculate the apparent angle and range to the target from the firing battery. Part of the calculation was to factor in the meteorological data (apparently even a slight cross-wind can hopelessly throw off the accuracy of a shell fired through miles of the troposphere and stratosphere. Other variable also had to be factored in (gun wear, temperature, gun caliber, munitions type, etc. Now the battery was ready to fire one spotting round. Time from initial call-in to first spotting round: Approximately 15 minutes. Then if the spotting round's explosion was visible to the FO, the FO could correct (i.e., "left 200, down 400 yds") and another spotting round fired and so on until one fell "close enough". At this point the FO could do the call for "fire for effect" and the entire battery and/or batteries could open up..."

And this is about german FOs who were usually better trained than their soviet adversaries.

[prime^]

Pointing out spelling and grammar mistakes on a forum is incredibly pedantic and pretty pathetic to be honest, its the internet, we are not writing formal letters to people, it does not matter if "you" is spelt as "u" or that "the" as "teh" etc, its a simple type-o and you still understand what is being said. In some cases (as FireFox has previosuly indicated to be true in his case) there is a specific reason for the type-o's in his posts. In short : get over it, it REALLY dosnt matter.

Secondly I am not plain wrong, what is the POINT in having an artillery spotter, if what he does is EXACTLY the same as an officer in the field requesting a "fire mission" . Artillery spotters were there for a reason and by world war 2 artillery was sophisticated and accurate enough, combine with radio technology to provide a reasonable turnaround on artillery requests. 15-25 minutes does not seem to, in anyway accurately reflect the 'average' response time for a request for artillery.

By actually "buying" a specific spotter, what you are actually buying is the "specific" attention of an artillery battery, not the ability to make requests, but the ability to ORDER an artillery battery to fire on a location of your choosing, at short notice.

When you embark on a 30 turn game and include spotters in your army, the relative orders that will have been given to the off field artillery would be akin to : "between the time xx:xx and xx:xx you will be receiving your targeting information from spotter x". Is artilery priority being given to spotters really that hard to understand?

If a strike called in by my battalion HQ was going to take 15-25 minutes I could beleive and accept that, in fact i would even beleive it being rejected flat, but as i have "booked" the artillery for this specific engagement (IE the battery has provided me with a spotter to direct the fire they have PROMISED me)it does not seem realistic that it can take so long.

[prime^]

I didnt see your last post, that actually makes more sense, but surely for the purposes of a specifc engagement, most of the area would have been presited anyway, allowing for a much faster adjustment of location? (and im not talking about a round 1 presight either)

[Foxbat]

Originally posted by prime^:

I didnt see your last post, that actually makes more sense, but surely for the purposes of a specifc engagement, most of the area would have been presited anyway, allowing for a much faster adjustment of location? (and im not talking about a round 1 presight either)

That's what Target Reference Points are for (they were in CMBO too, but because arty was so much more flexible, accurate and had next to no delay I never used them either ).

[prime^]

But you actually have to pay for TRPs, which makes any arty spotter 90(?) pts more expensive, combining the fact that the generally have less ammo as well its kind of removing the use of artillery from the game :/

What I also meant was that because the artillery is already aware of teh general bearings of the battle, the arty spotters are merely making adjustments, every grid reference would have been pre-sited in a prepared battle as a matter of course, and firing adjustments would therefore have been much more accurate. I havny played with TRPs yet, but it also seems that these can only be useful at the beginning of a round, so not much use if I want to break an emerging strong point or ruin an attack against a faltering defensive position :/

[ October 13, 2002, 10:02 AM: Message edited by: prime^ ]

[Foxbat]

Originally posted by prime^:

The kind of artillery strike that could take a long time to call in, was the type ordered by platoon/company leader in the middle of the battle, they would have to wait for the artillery to become available or for the mission to be confirmed. Because an artillery spotter is actually part of the artillery regiment, and seperate to any companies/ platoons they happen to with, the orders they give are given imediate priority as it is their job to determine the best targets and give the correct coordinates.

The crux is probably that in Combat Mission the "spotter unit" is an abstraction that represents the link between the forward commanders and the artillery, including calls by platoon/company leaders, plus whatever pre-planned mission are to be plotted.

Imagine if it weren't the case, you could buy 3 Army level spotters and thus halt every fire-mission in the army when you call in fire :eek:

If you want the direct and undived attention of certain artillery it has to be pre-applied for, or it has to be integral (ie mortars and such).

[Foxbat]

Originally posted by prime^:

But you actually have to pay for TRPs, which makes any arty spotter 90(?) pts more expensive, combining the fact that the generally have less ammo as well its kind of removing the use of artillery from the game :/

What I also meant was that because the artillery is already aware of teh general bearings of the battle, the arty spotters are merely making adjustments, every grid reference would have been pre-sited in a prepared battle as a matter of course, and firing adjustments would therefore have been much more accurate. I havny played with TRPs yet, but it also seems that these can only be useful at the beginning of a round, so not much use if I want to break an emerging strong point or ruin an attack against a faltering defensive position :/

That's kind of the point actually, this is not the US Army.. so no fancy-schmancy anytime-anywhere fire support missions.

Not to mention that CMBO artillery was actually unbelievable accurate and flexible, as if you're the only unit in the area and the arty is using GPS indicated maps

[ October 13, 2002, 10:09 AM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

[prime^]

I was under the impression that artillery in ww2 was accurate? or at least as accurate as the spotters correcting the fire.

realism aside, ther was nothing quite so satisfying in CMBO than a big MP game, where ive taken 6+ arty spotters and just raked the enemy side of the map with wide targeted (blind) fire early in the game >

Anyway any thoughts about that plane? ;p

[ October 13, 2002, 10:15 AM: Message edited by: prime^ ]

[Cameroon]

Prime, the best way for you to verify that the delay times are right is to check out the historical sources. I personally have not, but I trust that BFC _has_ because that is their job and they do it for all the other aspects of the game. In fact, that's one of the reasons that arty and its use is a more refined skill than it was in CMBO, more research on the matter.

What you're seeing is how the FOs in the Red Army during WWII worked. More or less The fact of the matter is, if you're trying to use Soviet artillery and you're buying at higher than the Battalion level, you are going to have massive delay times. In "reality" WWII FOs wouldn't even be doing what they do in CMBO/CMBB. There have been a number of threads on that aspect.

You've mentioned that the FO's job is as a FO, and it is, that's the only reason they can call artillery at all. And _despite_ that, they have really long delay times. Especially for higher organization guns and for the Soviets. The Soviet method of artillery at that time was not organized to provide quick, on-call fire.