What causes an arty mission to go off target?

[GreenAsJade]

I've had a linear arty mission miss completely: I only realised what was happening when I saw this line of mortar fire over in another field and suddenly realised it was exactly the shape I ordered, just not in the right place.

What do you have to do to avoid this?

[LemoN]

First of all, make sure that your spotter has a good view on the area that you want to call in arty, second, make sure he isn't supressed or under fire, third, don't use the "Emergency" call if you want it to be anywhere near the place you ordered it to as that does away with ranging shots.

[Mistah Kurtz]

don't use the "Emergency" call if you want it to be anywhere near the place you ordered it to as that does away with ranging shots.

Yeah, after using that command I had to check the manual to be sure it didn't mean "fire everything you got on my position, we're being overrun". Because that's what it did. Exactly the pattern I wanted, but not in the place I wanted. :mad: :eek:

Good thing only the AI got to laugh.

[aleader]

I played the training mission again last night and had the mortars go way off target every time. I kept the HQ (with radio\binoculars) in the first 2 storey building and the mortars in the little courtyard there. I tried targeting (point\area\linear - medium\heavy - not emergency) the AT gun with both of them several different ways and every round missed completely by about 200m. The pattern was tight, but I could not get them to hit accurately no matter what I did. Spotter had LOS and was not suppressed. Mortars blew all of their rounds with zero effect. Had to take the gun out with a tank\MG suppression.

Also, what is the 'XO' unit that shows up with the 2nd set of reinforcements? What do I do with him? Is one a better spotter than the others?

[Rokko]

What is "Emergency" good for? It doesn't seem to reduce targeting time.

[MikeyD]

I used to not know what people were talking about with far off-target artillery, but playing last night my mortars weren't just off-target, they were off-map! I was flabbergasted. It was a very cluttered map and off-map mortars. Can not spotting the fall of the spotting round throw things off that much?

About 'Emergency'. It discards the spotting rounds and adjustments, the artillery falls where it falls. You've got to be in a lot of trouble to resort to 'Emergency'.

[Myles Keogh]

First of all, make sure that your spotter has a good view on the area that you want to call in arty, second, make sure he isn't supressed or under fire, third, don't use the "Emergency" call if you want it to be anywhere near the place you ordered it to as that does away with ranging shots.

I learned all this the hard way. I was playing the Bocage scenario as the Americans and ran into heavy resistance on the right flank. I immediately called in every artillery asset. I did point targets with the 60mm's, but decided to do a linear on a German trench with the 81mm's. Further, since i was taking a beating, I called in the 81mm's as "emergency."

My spotter was up on the front line. So he had a good view of the area he was spotting. However, he was under fire. A few minutes later I learned the errors of calling in an emergency FFE while spotting under fire: almost an entire squad, the platoon HQ, and the spotter were wiped out by the 81mm fire mission that fell a hedgerow short! That was the end of my advance on that flank.

[mjkerner]

I learned all this the hard way. I was playing the Bocage scenario as the Americans and ran into heavy resistance on the right flank. I immediately called in every artillery asset. I did point targets with the 60mm's, but decided to do a linear on a German trench with the 81mm's. Further, since i was taking a beating, I called in the 81mm's as "emergency."

My spotter was up on the front line. So he had a good view of the area he was spotting. However, he was under fire. A few minutes later I learned the errors of calling in an emergency FFE while spotting under fire: almost an entire squad, the platoon HQ, and the spotter were wiped out by the 81mm fire mission that fell a hedgerow short! That was the end of my advance on that flank.

Ha! The same thing happened to me last night in that scenario...a squad got beat to hell by a bunch of Jerries in a trench behind a hedgerow, about the same time as a Sherman to their flank brewed up, and a mortar barrage started falling on the rest of the platoon along the hedgerow, so called in emergeny arty and high-tailed it back to the hedgerow they came from. When the friendly barrage hit, it was one h-row short and finished off that squad, a MG section, and various others.

Its realistic that would happen in close country. War is Hell!

[Drescher]

I thought about the ops question a couple of times. Other than the emergency mission its my impression that for a succesfull fire mission it all comes down to being able to track the spotting rounds. If the FO can view the impact point of any spotting round( and it might even be that he does not have to actually see the impact point at all, sometimes in MOUT it seemed that the dust cloud+shot fall was enough) the mission will be on target. I also had the impression that the last spotting round made the biggest difference. Obviously suppression plays a big role in this as only few spotters will continue to work while under enemy tank fire, and frankly i dont think they made it in the game...

I did not really test this though, its only watching things in SF and the demo. When my spotter cant see the impact point of any spotting round i usually cancel the mission right away, as they seem to come down in wild places. With modern troops this is only a small delay, not so on the ww2 battlefield, when easily half of an artillery pieces ammo is already fired on the wrong point until the cancel order is submitted.

Also, what is the 'XO' unit that shows up with the 2nd set of reinforcements? What do I do with him? Is one a better spotter than the others?

The XO is the assistant company commander and has nothing to do with FO.