Question on artillery/air spotting.

[handihoc]

If any spotting unit calls in air or artillery support, then moves and/or becomes engaged in combat, does it have a negative affect on the support's accuracy, or anything else?

[Battlefront.com]

Yup, big time. How much so depends on who is doing the calling and what the actually support mission is. The key thing is to maintain LOS to the target, so staying still is the primary thing you should be focused on.

The main problem comes in when the weapon must have spotter LOS. Check out pages 86 and 87 for more details.

Steve

[Kirq]

But what hapens when You stay still, maintain LOS to the target and engage different target ? I had a situation yesterday playing first campaign mission, my M1 was calling for light antipersonel support on trenches next to barracks and suddenly M1 spoted another target, I ordered him to open fire and arty mission came pretty unacurate. Was it coincidence or situation like this also affects support accurancy ? My M1 wasnt attacked, he was only pinning down infantry with MG.

One more question, whats the best munition to deal with infantry hiding in buildings ?

[ April 10, 2008, 11:42 PM: Message edited by: Kirq ]

[Huntarr]

If you notice the little symbol (indicated by the yellow arrow), it shows you the proficiency of the spotter. A large green indicator is best, all the way down to a red x being poor. Use your FOs, JTACs they are your best spotters.

Inside General

Rooftop Personnel

[Kirq]

So, to simplisicate this - the green dots show how quick curent unit can call for sup and green plus shows how accurate support fire will be ?

[Huntarr]

yes the green dots are readiness in the battery and yes the green plus is how good the currently selected spotter is with that Fire support assest.

[ April 11, 2008, 02:43 PM: Message edited by: Huntarr ]

[Kirq]

But due to manual digit next to green plus is number of "barrels" and quoting "gree/red dots showing how quickly the current unit can call in support for that asset".

[Huntarr]

You are right on both your statements

Hope this is clearer.

[Martin Krejcirik]

It's not a skill of spotter, it more like a position in OOB. Same spotter can have a green dot to a mortar in the same company, but a red dot to another mortar in a different company.

What I don't like in the current system is inability to tell in advance what weapon will be used, whether it is precision or not and whether it requires some special equipment from the spotter (like laser designator).

[Kirq]

Thanks for clearing it up Guys. I assume that green plus is combination of spotter skill/training , device he is using to designate target and overall battlefield situation like smoke on target, distance to a target etc etc. I must admit that Ive never seen such a detailed and realistic fire support system in any other computer game, Im realy impresed.

[handihoc]

Yes, very impressive, but not particularly clear in the manual (at least, not to me), so thanks for the info.

Kirq's other question still remains, though. What's the best munition for infantry in buildings. I'm assuming General, but sometimes wonder if Armor would do a better job of penetrating the roofs/walls.

[Kirq]

Ive been trying 120 mm mortar with general munition on low buildings and it seems to do the job.

[Huntarr]

Originally posted by Huntarr:

Inside General

Rooftop Personnel

I thought we hit that one

But handihoc you may be right. BFC has said that Armor is supposed to be a tight pattern with only direct impact rounds. General is supposed to be standard pattern with a limited number of airburst with the majority being direct impact.

I have never used Armor, might be time for some testing. You never know we might get a tweak to Artillery out of this round of questions.

[handihoc]

Originally posted by Huntarr:

Inside General

Rooftop Personnel

I thought we hit that one

[Kirq]

I was playing second campaign mission yesterday and...

POSIBLE SPOILERS

... in the end I had to destroy SF HQ Building. Ive targeted two 120mm mortars on the building and set general ammo , it didnt even destroy a wall. Then I tried same with Anti armour ammo and it colapsed one block of the building and destroyed 3 walls. I was surprised, I thought that general HE ammo has bigger demolish capabilities. I thought that Anti Armour rounds would puncture few holes in the roftop and maybe penetrate couple of floors.

[Huntarr]

handihoc

Civilian buildings right now have a standard durability. BFC's said there will be more versions as they move forward.

[c3k]

Huntarr,

The shortcomings of anti-armor artillery has been discussed HERE , back in November.

Unfortunately, this was never addressed publicly by BF.C. I'm not sure if they didn't see it or just didn't have anything useful to add.

There is a lot of "reinventing the wheel" syndrome on these forums. A lot of it is due to the lack of a rigorous approach by BF.C to open issues. If something pops up, gains some thread-life, and is noticed (seemingly at random) by BF.C, then there is a chance it may get addressed. (Note that I am not stating that every issue is correct and needs to be changed, or anything like that.)

Regards,

Ken

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by Kirq:

I was playing second campaign mission yesterday and...

POSIBLE SPOILERS

... in the end I had to destroy SF HQ Building. Ive targeted two 120mm mortars on the building and set general ammo , it didnt even destroy a wall. Then I tried same with Anti armour ammo and it colapsed one block of the building and destroyed 3 walls. I was surprised, I thought that general HE ammo has bigger demolish capabilities. I thought that Anti Armour rounds would puncture few holes in the roftop and maybe penetrate couple of floors.

AFAIK, there is no dedicated anti-armor round currently in general service for the M120 mortar. I know there have been some attempts in this direction, and IIRC a couple of militaries have exprimented with a guided 120mm mortar anti-tank round, but I don't think the US military has, as of yet, added anything like this to the general inventory.

So the 120mm mortar bombs coming down for an "Armor" mission would be the same as for a "General" mission -- just good 'ol HE. From what I can tell, selecting an "Armor" mission type does seem to drop exclusively impact-fused shells, while "General" mixes impact-fused and airburst (as the manual implies). So against buildings you would expect a slightly better demolition effect from an Armor mission, at the cost of a smaller area of effect -- a single 120mm airbust has a lethal area of roughly 70m radius against exposed targets. If the shell explodes on impact with the ground, or inside a building, the danger area is much smaller, esp. wrt prone or dug-in targets.

IMHO, for off-map support systems like the 81mm and 120mm mortars that don't really have a purpose-built anti-armor munition, they should just rename the mission types "Airburst", "Mixed", and "Impact". But it's no big deal; I just make the mental switch in my head.

Cheers,

YD

[Field Marshal Blücher]

I conducted an artillery effectiveness test in which I K-Killed two T-72s with 120mm mortars. The biggest problem is not what happens when it hits, but rather if you can get it to hit in the first place.

-FMB

[Kirq]

Yesyterday I tried for a first time to destroy tank with support fire. My FS squad sitting in FS stryker spotted enemy T-55, I called for 155mm Hovitzer fire on tank location ( It was direct targeting , not area fire ) I called for aa munition, medium intensity, short duration. Several shells landed next to T-55 , I didnt noticed any direct hit. And when the dust moved away I saw T-55 unscratched I had to move in with Inf squad and Jav the tank.

[Field Marshal Blücher]

Originally posted by Kirq:

Yesyterday I tried for a first time to destroy tank with support fire. My FS squad sitting in FS stryker spotted enemy T-55, I called for 155mm Hovitzer fire on tank location ( It was direct targeting , not area fire ) I called for aa munition, medium intensity, short duration. Several shells landed next to T-55 , I didnt noticed any direct hit. And when the dust moved away I saw T-55 unscratched I had to move in with Inf squad and Jav the tank.

That's generally been what I've noticed. Even "Point Targets" can't hit a tank-sized target with any sort of reliability. If you want to take out a tank with artillery, aircraft does the job the best; save your artillery for infantry and buildings.

-FMB

[Battlefront.com]

As has been noticed, artillery isn't a good option for taking out armor for most situations. Massed armor and a lot of artillery should result in something positive (even if keeping them buttoned up and distracted), but that's a rare case.

Anti-Armor missions for HE based shells means they are not set to airburst, but instead are designed to explode on impact. There are no special guided anti-armor rounds in CM:SF, though they do exist in extremely small numbers starting within the last couple of years (the old Copperhead 155 round was withdrawn ages ago). We didn't include them in CM:SF because they were still undergoing field tests when we finalized the game data and secondly are super expensive and not generally available as a result. They are probably kept reserved for situations where collateral damage is the primary consideration. That's really not the case for CM:SF's environment so I doubt many would be used in such a situation.

Steve

[Dirtweasle]

Is there a table, or maybe expanded information, on-line describing better what each fire mission and type combination means?

I don't have the manual in front of me at the office, but my recollection from reading the manual is even it is not clear.

...or quite possibly my memory is not clear.

[Huntarr]

This what you were looking for?

Excerpt:

These are the Parameters for all Artillery Missions:

Target - sets the size and shape of the area to hit:

Point Fire - focuses on a single Action Spot or unit

Area -one click for the center and one for the perimeter

Line - requires two clicks, one for each end of the line

Number - sets the portion of the Asset to use from 1 to the total

number in Asset (usually 2 or 3)

Mission - responsible for establishing initial Rate of Fire (ROF)

and sustained ROF:

Precision - uses Copperhead rounds (only available for FIST)

Emergency - no spotting rounds, otherwise like Heavy

Light - slow ROF, remaining at slow ROF

Medium - medium ROF, then going to sustained ROF

Heavy - max ROF, then going to heavy sustained ROF

Duration - determines number of rounds to use per mission:

Quick - 2-4 rounds

Short - 6-12 rounds

Medium - 12-18 rounds

Long - 20-28 rounds

Maximum - exhausts ammo supply

Type - sets the munition mix based on the target type:

General - generic setting

Armor - weights towards anti-armor rounds

Personnel - weights in favor of airburst antipersonnel rounds

Delay - establishes when to start the support, prep time inclusive.

The options are:

None - no extra delay

5 Min - sets for 5 minutes min

10 Min - sets for 10 minutes min

15 Min - sets for 15 minutes min

[Battlefront.com]

Huntarr's quote is from page 81 in the manual. The Support section in the manual is pretty detailed and it covers a lot of issues from page 75 through 88.

Steve