Possible bug: Aiming artillery at the tops of things

[crabbit]

Having a spotter target artillery at the top, rather than the base, of a hedgerow, building etc. causes very strange artillery behavior, at least in the second "Panzer Marsch!" campaign mission. I was trying to call in 150mm artillery to fall inside the American-held farm complex. I started out having the spotter call a linear fire mission right along the middle of the front-facing hedgerow, just as far back as I possibly could. Since the spotter can't see through to the middle of the hedgerow at ground level, this presumably means he's actually aming at the TOP of the hedgerow. After some extremely erratic spotting rounds, the spotter nevertheless seemed happy with the result and called fire for effect. Unfortunately the "Wirkungsschiessen" was just as far off as the spotting rounds, with half landing in the next field over, and not a single one in the actual compound.

Baffled---because I'm pretty sure arty isn't supposed to be THAT inaccurate---I ran a few more tests. I tried calling in a linear strike using the two buildings inside the farm complex as the endpoints...again, a case where the top of the landmark is visible, but the base is not, being obscured by the hedgerow in front. Same deal; the artillery strike now landed way back in the field behind the farm complex. It's worth mentioning that the strike WAS tightly clustered, just that it was clustered in totally the wrong place. Finally, I tried instead targeting a patch of ground just in FRONT of the obscuring hedgerow. This time, the artillery strike was dead on.

So based on this, it seems to me there's something funky that happens when you target artillery at the top of something, rather than the actual ground. Anyone else run into this?

[womble]

Having a spotter target artillery at the top, rather than the base, of a hedgerow, building etc. causes very strange artillery behavior, at least in the second "Panzer Marsch!" campaign mission. I was trying to call in 150mm artillery to fall inside the American-held farm complex. I started out having the spotter call a linear fire mission right along the middle of the front-facing hedgerow, just as far back as I possibly could. Since the spotter can't see through to the middle of the hedgerow at ground level, this presumably means he's actually aming at the TOP of the hedgerow. After some extremely erratic spotting rounds, the spotter nevertheless seemed happy with the result and called fire for effect. Unfortunately the "Wirkungsschiessen" was just as far off as the spotting rounds, with half landing in the next field over, and not a single one in the actual compound.

Baffled---because I'm pretty sure arty isn't supposed to be THAT inaccurate---I ran a few more tests. I tried calling in a linear strike using the two buildings inside the farm complex as the endpoints...again, a case where the top of the landmark is visible, but the base is not, being obscured by the hedgerow in front. Same deal; the artillery strike now landed way back in the field behind the farm complex. It's worth mentioning that the strike WAS tightly clustered, just that it was clustered in totally the wrong place. Finally, I tried instead targeting a patch of ground just in FRONT of the obscuring hedgerow. This time, the artillery strike was dead on.

So based on this, it seems to me there's something funky that happens when you target artillery at the top of something, rather than the actual ground. Anyone else run into this?

Making a conclusion out of one situation is perhaps somewhat premature. There are a lot of questions to be answered before you pin 'off target arty' on 'aiming at the top of a sight obstruction'.

Your strike will be off target if your spotter couldn't see the spotting rounds. Sounds to me like, since the off target mission landed where the spotting rounds were, and that location was ay past the hedgerow you were targetting it on, that the spotter wouldn't have seen where the spotting rounds landed. The flaw lies in the spotter actually calling FFE, rather than waving the mission off. This has been recognised as a problem, and there's some sort of solution, I believe, in the first patch.

[crabbit]

Making a conclusion out of one situation is perhaps somewhat premature. There are a lot of questions to be answered before you pin 'off target arty' on 'aiming at the top of a sight obstruction'.

Your strike will be off target if your spotter couldn't see the spotting rounds. Sounds to me like, since the off target mission landed where the spotting rounds were, and that location was ay past the hedgerow you were targetting it on, that the spotter wouldn't have seen where the spotting rounds landed. The flaw lies in the spotter actually calling FFE, rather than waving the mission off. This has been recognised as a problem, and there's some sort of solution, I believe, in the first patch.

Thanks for the explanation! Indeed, I wasn't trying to assert that targeting the tops of things was necessarily in itself the whole story. A problem with unseen spotting rounds makes perfect sense. In fact, based on your reply I did a bit more searching and came across this, which I believe is what you were referring to...?

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=98163

What's being described there does sound like it's almost certainly the same phenomenon I was seeing. I'm very happy to see they've got it targeted for the next patch. I think I'll put that particular scenario aside until then, because if I can't get that fire mission to land halfway correctly, my Panzergrenadiere are going to have a very bad time of it when they make the final push into the farm compound

[DavidFields]

My question is this: Other than waving off the FFE, is the inability to target behind things working as intended?

In other words, I think someone put on the board a post about how difficult it was, in real life WW2 Normandy, to see spotting rounds in the bocage.

So, for crabbit's purposes, the patch may keep him from wasting artillery, but will not get his wished for FFE into the compound?--on purpose?

[womble]

My question is this: Other than waving off the FFE, is the inability to target behind things working as intended?

In other words, I think someone put on the board a post about how difficult it was, in real life WW2 Normandy, to see spotting rounds in the bocage.

So, for crabbit's purposes, the patch may keep him from wasting artillery, but will not get his wished for FFE into the compound?--on purpose?

I think you're right. The impression I've gained is that artillery must've been mostly used on TRPs or as prep bombardment, apart from directly-fired 60s. With a cancelled mission, though, at least you get the chance to try again and hope enough of the spotting rounds fall short or at least in sight. I wonder whether it's harder to spot for smaller rounds... 155 throw stuff a lot higher in the air than light or medium mortars do...

[YankeeDog]

I think I'll put that particular scenario aside until then, because if I can't get that fire mission to land halfway correctly, my Panzergrenadiere are going to have a very bad time of it when they make the final push into the farm compound

I definitely wouldn't assume that the patch is going to make calling in artillery fire any easier in the situation you describe. If I read the tea leaves correctly (and I don't have any special channel into BFC's ideas or intents), BFC's view is that the thing that needs to be adjusted is the fact that FOs will call for FFE even if they have failed to observe the spotting rounds and accurately adjust the strike. But I think the fact that it's difficult to accurately target and adjust artillery strikes in situations where the observer has limited LOS and may not see the spotting round impacts is actually intentional and a design feature.

Not sure exactly how they plan to adjust things, but I would be VERY surprised if they change things so that spotters can accurately call in fire when they fail to see any of the spotting rounds. More likely, they'll do something like have the FO call for additional spotting round(s), until random luck results in a spotting round that the spotter actually can see (which will mean in a significantly longer time to FFE), and/or, after some number of spotting rounds which fall where the FO can't see them, the spotter may simply waive off the strike entirely, forcing the player to either start again from square one, or call for an Emergency strike and hope for the best.

Calling arty, and especially larger arty, in very dense terrain with limited LOS is a very tricky thing... it's definitely not (and shouldn't be) something you can count on.

[Michael Emrys]

I have to wonder about something. The LOS is a straight line. I wonder if the game projects that line until it intersects the ground in all cases. That is, it does not terminate at blocking buildings, trees, or other non-ground obstructions. If thats the case, by pointing it at the top of a building, the game interprets that as pointing at some point on the ground where that LOS intersects the ground. If that is the case, there lies your bug...or at least a negative feature.

One thing you might try is to see if you can target the building from a directly overhead view. If you can do that, then see where the salvo goes. If you can't, then that may be your bug.

Michael