Flaw or reality?

[weapon2010]

Im attacking as red below tree cover with tank support a few hundred yards directly behind me.The enemy is in a large building 50 yards a head.I order the tanks to area fire suspected enemy positions.In doing so the shells hit the trees above my platoon basicly wiping out the whole platoon.At least 3 shells hit trees in this 1 minute turn and Ive seen it at least 10 times in 10 minutes of play.

Is this normal in real combat?Did shells hit trees and explode with such frequency?Was it a bad tactical choice to have tank shells zipping just yards over my troops heads?Is it just a flaw in the game that I have to better manage?

[Damian90]

Yes, HEAT and HE shells will explode if their hit... in anything, this is reality, not any game bug.

[Praetori]

Im attacking as red below tree cover with tank support a few hundred yards directly behind me.The enemy is in a large building 50 yards a head.I order the tanks to area fire suspected enemy positions.In doing so the shells hit the trees above my platoon basicly wiping out the whole platoon.At least 3 shells hit trees in this 1 minute turn and Ive seen it at least 10 times in 10 minutes of play.

Is this normal in real combat?Did shells hit trees and explode with such frequency?Was it a bad tactical choice to have tank shells zipping just yards over my troops heads?Is it just a flaw in the game that I have to better manage?

Yes. It's actually a tactic employed in several armed forces around the world. Both with tanks and IFVs. Though the intention is to hit enemy forces and not your own.

[akd]

Yes, you chose poorly. I try to never allow an area fire vector to cross any tile occupied by friendly forces.

[MikeyD]

Modern combat there's usually a positive prohibition against firing over the heads of your troops. For one thing most weapons these days would shower the troops ahead of them with discarded sabot petals - ouch! Another would be just this problem - hitting an unnoticed tree branch or cable TV line strung across the road.

I recall those many 2004 photos of troops patrolling downtown Bagdad. Soldiers in the foreground with TOW Stryker accompanying them, the street stretching on ahead - But if you look closely there's a forest of electrical wires criss-crossing the street. How can you fire a wire-guided missile the full length of a street criss-crossed with electrical wires? That may have been why TOW Striker's average firing range during infantry support missions was something like 90m.

[Peter Panzer]

Hell, I think it would be great if small arms fire caused friendly casualties too. Any chance we could ever see that added to the "Iron" difficulty setting?

Don't worry weapon2010, you'll really get to play with the big boys when you start dropping your company mortars on your own lead fireteams. Take it from a fratricide pro, If it ain't "danger close" don't even bother.

[Praetori]

Yes, you chose poorly. I try to never allow an area fire vector to cross any tile occupied by friendly forces.

This.

IRL there are some good tricks that various armies use.

I myself prefer the 1:2 rule. Try to always have 2 times the distance in side to what you have in depth when it comes to unit placement and fields of fire. Or rather, don't put a fire order or fire arc more than 1:2 from your baseline.

That way you maximize your options for field of fire width at the same time as you keep the risk of friendly fire at a minimum.

Of course all this goes out the window when you're in urban terrain but it's a good ground-rule.

[Holman]

Hell, I think it would be great if small arms fire caused friendly casualties too. Any chance we could ever see that added to the "Iron" difficulty setting?

Heck, back in CMBB, green troops would open up on each other all the time. They didn't even *need* orders.

[Secondbrooks]

I regard this as bug, even rather major bug under certain circumstances. It's as if troops are unable to say can they shoot past tree or is the tree in way.

Friendly losses due firing over own troops isn't such big problem as at this point commander has made risky decision to order his fire support to fire over his own troops.

More problematic problem are most clearly AT-weapons which often are burdened with both slow rate of fire and low stock of ammo. When T-72 could spent several HE-shells in attempt to get shells behind trees (or even better pepper it with MG), AT-troops don't have such luxury yet too often they seem to score hits just in trees.

I like (or liked) to play in heavily wooded terrain and this is one of those things which i my mind sets armored vehicles way above their league in that particular terrain. Yes they aren't supposed to be totally useless but it's almost as if they become far more competent than what they are at 100-300 meter distances. Against armored vehicle inside dense trees hand grenades by my experience are most useful weapons in platoon armament... Not because they are really effective, but because use of them tends to lead atleast to some results (crew bailing out). AT-weapons tends to blow up in half way to target with out causing any damage to vehicle.

Seeing Kornet crew getting wiped out by premature expolsion of it's own missile (contact in tree, brush, bush) aint' funny either, cladly those aren't happening very often.

[Praetori]

I regard this as bug, even rather major bug under certain circumstances. It's as if troops are unable to say can they shoot past tree or is the tree in way.

Well it does happen IRL, and it's not uncommon in my experience.

When a trooper gets a target in his sights then adrenaline and training kicks in (and there are rarely trees in the middle of the gunnery range).

I saw a trooper shoot a 203 into the branches of the tree that the squad were grouped under. Luckily it was just a smoke shell during training so all they got was a little sparkling shower but the squadleader got pretty angry and said he'd never go to war with that soldier in his unit.

I also saw a AT-4 bounce off a tree when a soldier was tracking a moving target (also during training). And I've also seen a tank aiming right at the trunk of a tree (about a foot from the muzzle) and an IFV tracking a target with the barrel in a bush.

The parallax between the sights and the actual weapon as well as IR optics (which sees right through some foliage) doesn't make things easier in that kind of situations.

[MikeyD]

and an IFV tracking a target with the barrel in a bush.

I was going to mention that. High-up roof mounted sights have a known parallax problem. The 'soda straw' telescopic view often converges with the round's trajectory some dozens (hundreds?) of meters from the barrel. Looking though his optic the tanker may think he's going just miss that tree trunk when in fact he's going to hit it dead center. Theres a reason why tanks don't often fight in th woods.

[shauny1987]

Yes. It's actually a tactic employed in several armed forces around the world. Both with tanks and IFVs. Though the intention is to hit enemy forces and not your own.

ooooo OP got burnnnedd

[tyrspawn]

Well it does happen IRL, and it's not uncommon in my experience.

When a trooper gets a target in his sights then adrenaline and training kicks in (and there are rarely trees in the middle of the gunnery range).

I saw a trooper shoot a 203 into the branches of the tree that the squad were grouped under. Luckily it was just a smoke shell during training so all they got was a little sparkling shower but the squadleader got pretty angry and said he'd never go to war with that soldier in his unit.

I also saw a AT-4 bounce off a tree when a soldier was tracking a moving target (also during training). And I've also seen a tank aiming right at the trunk of a tree (about a foot from the muzzle) and an IFV tracking a target with the barrel in a bush.

The parallax between the sights and the actual weapon as well as IR optics (which sees right through some foliage) doesn't make things easier in that kind of situations.

What is your experience in the military?

[Secondbrooks]

Well it does happen IRL, and it's not uncommon in my experience.

When a trooper gets a target in his sights then adrenaline and training kicks in (and there are rarely trees in the middle of the gunnery range).

I saw a trooper shoot a 203 into the branches of the tree that the squad were grouped under. Luckily it was just a smoke shell during training so all they got was a little sparkling shower but the squadleader got pretty angry and said he'd never go to war with that soldier in his unit.

I also saw a AT-4 bounce off a tree when a soldier was tracking a moving target (also during training). And I've also seen a tank aiming right at the trunk of a tree (about a foot from the muzzle) and an IFV tracking a target with the barrel in a bush.

The parallax between the sights and the actual weapon as well as IR optics (which sees right through some foliage) doesn't make things easier in that kind of situations.

Sure mistakes happen, tries for lucky shots exists as well. Then again they happen far too often in game, at easy stationary targets just sitting there. My rough guess would be that 80-90% of projectiles gets sucked into trees and bushes.

We trained alot in wooded terrain and we didn't have problem to evade trees with bullets or projectiles. If such mistakes would be bound to happen often i'm pretty sure military would cut every tree in training fields in name of safety and screw the requirements for realistic training.

I'm sure that M203 is beatch in wooded terrain due it's trajectory. As are hand grenades to some degree as well.

[Praetori]

What is your experience in the military?

I served as an officer in the Swedish Army, mechanized and mech air defense troop instructor mostly, though I retired for a civilian career some 8 years back.

[Michael Emrys]

Hell, I think it would be great if small arms fire caused friendly casualties too.

It always annoyed me some how in CMx1 friendly fire could pass right through troops without causing any casualties or disorganization. The one exception to that rule was if one unit was providing area fire and another unit stepped into the targeted spot.

Michael

[Sandokan]

Hell, I think it would be great if small arms fire caused friendly casualties too. Any chance we could ever see that added to the "Iron" difficulty setting?

Don't worry weapon2010, you'll really get to play with the big boys when you start dropping your company mortars on your own lead fireteams. Take it from a fratricide pro, If it ain't "danger close" don't even bother.

Mh, I think small arms can affect friendlies within a certain degree. At least if they are in the target area. I made that mistake a couple of times:o But it is true that being somewhere in the middle between shooters and the target has no effect at all, for what I know, and this isn't very realistic.

[Battlefront.com]

Correct, we do not simulate the suppression/injury effects of being inbetween shooter and target. There's no reasonable way to do this and still have a playable game, unfortunately. It's a problem that dogs all games as far as I know.

Now, if this were a military sim for a classroom we could introduce the effects without a problem. That's because the effects are very easy to implement and a military student isn't going to mouth off to his instructor when "the stupid TacAI didn't avoid walking right into that line of fire" because the instructor would likely say "would you like me to reduce your grade further?"

Steve

[Praetori]

Correct, we do not simulate the suppression/injury effects of being inbetween shooter and target. There's no reasonable way to do this and still have a playable game, unfortunately. It's a problem that dogs all games as far as I know.

Now, if this were a military sim for a classroom we could introduce the effects without a problem. That's because the effects are very easy to implement and a military student isn't going to mouth off to his instructor when "the stupid TacAI didn't avoid walking right into that line of fire" because the instructor would likely say "would you like me to reduce your grade further?"

Steve

Honestly. People get shot like that IRL, though most soldiers have an arguably bad TacAI .

So as long as the TacAI doesn't do it on purpose I'd be ok with it. A difficulty setting would be awesome and possibly ignore AI side friendly small arms fire if it can't be done properly. Players can always set fire arcs.