Support delay question

[James]

I've just played a battle on iron setting & found that it took 3/4 minutes for a US para platoon's Hq squad to call in support from its own mortor section which was 15m away & in visual-voice contact. Surely the minutes spent reciving could be cut & they should go straight into spotting & adusting their fire. I can understand the reciving delay taken in contacting a distant battery by radio but not your own mortor squad right next to you.

Have I over looked something here? Is there a way to get quicker fire support in this situation?

[luckyhendrix]

In 4 min the HQ calling the support , has to : locate precisely the target position on his map, estimate precisely the azimuth form the mortar to the target, then estimate the range from the mortar to the target, lookup in a range table the corresponding elevation for the mortar. And once the mortar squad receive this information , they must setup their mortars with the right elevation and deflection , take the shell out of their casing, put the right amount of charges on the shell and finally fire the shell. 4 minutes doesn't seem that much for doing all this.

[gunnergoz]

In 4 min the HQ calling the support , has to : locate precisely the target position on his map, estimate precisely the azimuth form the mortar to the target, then estimate the range from the mortar to the target, lookup in a range table the corresponding elevation for the mortar. And once the mortar squad receive this information , they must setup their mortars with the right elevation and deflection , take the shell out of their casing, put the right amount of charges on the shell and finally fire the shell. 4 minutes doesn't seem that much for doing all this.

Not bad for a first post. Welcome to the forum.

[luckyhendrix]

thanks! :-) I'm enjoying reading it, lots of interesting conversations.

[YankeeDog]

This is an acknowledged issue that has been brought up in a couple of threads already and the Beta testers have said BFC is looking at it.

3-4 minutes is reasonable amount of time for a support request from Company mortars that is communicated over radio net. But right now, it also takes 3-4 minutes in situations like you describe, where the spotter can communicate directly with the nearby mortar(s) by voice. Clearly, doing things by voice would be significantly easier and faster than by radio.

[James]

In 4 min the HQ calling the support , has to : locate precisely the target position on his map, estimate precisely the azimuth form the mortar to the target, then estimate the range from the mortar to the target, lookup in a range table the corresponding elevation for the mortar. And once the mortar squad receive this information , they must setup their mortars with the right elevation and deflection , take the shell out of their casing, put the right amount of charges on the shell and finally fire the shell. 4 minutes doesn't seem that much for doing all this.

Thanks for the heads up Lucky. My historical knoledge does'nt streach to this situation - I had no idea it was so compleacated!! I envisioned the calling up & spotting of a platoons light mortor situated right next to its HQ in the heat of battle would go sometihing like this: "Hey Miller, drop some rounds 200 yards that way!" (the CO points, Miller quickly aims-elevates in that direction & shoots one off)....."no left a bit 30 more"....

[YankeeDog]

Thanks for the heads up Lucky. My historical knoledge does'nt streach to this situation - I had no idea it was so compleacated!! I envisioned the calling up & spotting of a platoons light mortor situated right next to its HQ in the heat of battle would go sometihing like this: "Hey Miller, drop some rounds 200 yards that way!" (the CO points, Miller quickly aims-elevates in that direction & shoots one off)....."no left a bit 30 more"....

Actually, you're more or less correct. In the case where a spotter with the proper training (which would include any CO unit from Platoon up, as well as dedicated mortar section leaders), is only a few dozen meters from the mortar tube, they wouldn't need to bother with complex trig calculations and precise map positions and the like; the spotter would just estimate the range and bearing to the target from his own position, and then relay this back to the mortar team. Then they'd fine-tune the aim based on a spotting round or two.

This type of fire call should be much faster than a call where the spotter is, say, 500m away from the tube and calling in coordinates over a radio. Still not as fast as a situation where the mortar team can see the target themselves and directly sight, to be sure. But faster than distant radio calls, definitely.

Hopefully, we'll see this adjusted in a patch soon.

[James]

Excellent, the more reality that goes into this simulation the better!

[MikeyD]

Whenever you go to Youtube to watch (insert weapon type here) being fired its often amusing how much unnecessary fumbling and fidgeting goes on before someone finally pulls the trigger. Yes, I know Youtube demonstrations - usually by jackasses doing things they hadn't ought - should not be seen as equivalent to the weapons being used in the thick of combat. Its just insteresting that you hardly ever see an efficient '1-2-3 BANG!' in those darned filmclips

[James Crowley]

Have to agree with James on this. US, British and German armies relied on mortars for instant fire support for infantry, providing covering fire and particularly for short range work. Four minutes for a trained mortar team, attatched to a platoon HQ, to get around to firing a spotting round seems far too long.

[SlapHappy]

The reason why it is important that BFC gets these variations in detail modelled correctly is fairly well illustrated in the above thread. Generally speaking, most agree that good tactics should be rewarded and bad tactics punished in the game system. So if the game can't adequately delineate between the player who strings his spotters halfway across the map, vs. the guy who keeps his C2 and spotting close to the artillery element, then the realistic benefit can't be pulled out of the simulation in actual game play.

Let's not forget, the 2nd guy is taking quite the risk by bunching his spotter and firing elements together when they could all be lit up by counter-battery fire. He should receive the benefits and not just the risk of doing so.

[James Crowley]

I posted this in another thread, unaware of this one.

"I don't have a huge amount of experience with CMBN but, from what little that I do have, there appears to be some oddities with artillery.

It seems that most, if not all, platoon HQs have acces to onboard assets, irrespective of their C2 condition. In a recent game, such a unit was over 500m from mortar units, had no sight to them, no radio and had no C2 to any higher HQs but was able to call in fire from them. Is this a hang over from CMSF? Just dosen't seem correct.

By the same token, mortars attached directly to platoon HQs - and deployed - within 50m of them and in sound and sight contact, still take four minutes to start firing, which seems way to slow. Surely they should be able to commence fire in less than a minute.

Overall, the artillery system 'feels' a little too 'modern' for WW2, at the higher command level but too slow at the lower command level."