The verdict is in

[umbro]

Well my verdict, for what its worth :-)

Indirect arty vs armour: Guilty!

"Why?", you ask? Let me explain... no, let me sum up:

1) It goes against a fundamental precept of the game - "Every SP shall have its day". It is a fixed chance not based on the number of tubes involved. I fire one tube into the hex 5%, I fire 50 tubes 5%...

2) The math simply does not add up. A hex is 250mx250m, 62500msq (that's 12 football fields!). A standard AFV is roughly 7mx4m, 28msq. So a random arty round fired by map has a 1 in 2232 chance of smacking the AFV. To get to 5% you would need to fire 115 shells (and assume that any hit destroyed the vehicle 100% of the time).

3) The rule promotes ahistorical tactics. And before you ask - no this is not because Jason has destroyed five AFVs in 15 turns in our current game! As the rule stands you might as well fire off any arty you have behind enemy lines with the expectation that you can randomly knock off AFVs. Now, I know that allied bombers would empty their bomb bays randomly if need be before returning, but I don't remember any stories of the RA firing off whatever allotment of rounds they may have had so loading up the ammo carrier was easier.

If I am missing something please let me know (I know you retiring wall flowers need the prompting :-))

umbro

[Hawk Kriegsman]

You are missing a couple of points.

The game be designed with a 6 minute turn and rate of fire of said weapons.

A 115 rounds hitting a hex over 6 minutes is quite possible.

Take for example the German 81mm at which had a ROF of 10 to 12 rounds a minute.

In 6 minutes that is 120 rounds for a 2 SP unit. For a 6 SP unit that is a whopping 360 rounds. Both over the 115 in your above math.

At the other end of the spectrum is the 155 long tom which fires a round about every 90 seconds.

This is only 4 rounds per 6 minutes per 1 SP. However if you did get hit by this it would be lights out.

I think the 5% is an approximation. It is designed to give armor something to think about when driving through artillery barrages. The old rule was no good as armor had nothing to fear from artillery.

As for firing random artillery behind enemy lines. I do it all the time.

Thanx!

Hawk

[Huib Versloot]

During Beta period we tested the arty in one of the Hamich scenarios. I think it was "First strike at Hamich" because we had good figures from Charles MacDonald's Siegfried Line Campaign.
At first the % was higher and the artillery casualties where too high. When Wyatt set it to 5% the losses to artillery were remarkably close to what happened historically. This could have been a coincidence, I don't know.
http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/S...h18.htm#b3

page 424


Personally I'm not so happy that the smaller calibre weapons are also included in the %. I can imagine that it may not be programmable in detail though. I would like to see some future changes in artillery; an observer system, as discussed earlier and a separate ammo level.

Here is another discussion recently from the matrix boards:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp...=artillery?

[umbro]

A 115 rounds hitting a hex over 6 minutes is quite possible.
Take for example the German 81mm at which had a ROF of 10 to 12 rounds a minute.
In 6 minutes that is 120 rounds for a 2 SP unit. For a 6 SP unit that is a whopping 360 rounds. Both over the 115 in your above math.

Hi there Hawk:
I agree with you that there should be a difference in the chance for 120 rounds and 360 rounds - but that is not how the rule works.
Certainly it's possible, most things are - however, is it likely? Once your 6SP unit has expended nearly 2 tons of ammo in the first six minutes of the battle what is it going to do for the rest of the week? Also, you assume that every round fired is a live round, further you assume that a hit with a 81mm mortar will destroy the vehicle (and that all vehicles are equally destroyable).

At the other end of the spectrum is the 155 long tom which fires a round about every 90 seconds.
This is only 4 rounds per 6 minutes per 1 SP. However if you did get hit by this it would be lights out.

You are again correct that if a hit was achieved it would have the desired effect, however with only 4 rounds impacting the chance of a hit is .18%. Lets assume that any 155mm round within 10m kills the target the chance would be 4% - much closer. However, to get there we had to use the biggest gun. This rule applies to all indirect fire.

I think the 5% is an approximation. It is designed to give armor something to think about when driving through artillery barrages. The old rule was no good as armor had nothing to fear from artillery.

Again I agree with you that that the 5% is an approximation. However, the rule is the same as in the TS days, the only thing that changed was that the % went from 2.5% (I believe) to 5%, and that some armoured units were considered to be too armoured to be vulnerable.

As for firing random artillery behind enemy lines. I do it all the time.

Well yes, that is my point, lots of folks do - except the guys that actually fought on the battlefields 65 years ago!

umbro

[K K Rossokolski]

Now, I know that allied bombers would empty their bomb bays randomly if need be before returning, but I don't remember any stories of the RA firing off whatever allotment of rounds they may have had so loading up the ammo carrier was easier.

As for firing random artillery behind enemy lines. I do it all the time.

Well yes, that is my point, lots of folks do - except the guys that actually fought on the battlefields 65 years ago!

umbro

Sailors are always very good at attending to their own comfort and alleviating the difficulties facing them. Soldiers, so my Army (or ex-Army) mates tell me are probably even cleverer. We know that the Brits would happily fire off a belt or two of Vickers ammo to boil water for a brew...why should arty ammo have been treated with greater concern for the taxpayers money?? Husbanding ammo for a tactical contingency is of course a different story.

Umbro also states the assumption that for a 155mm weapon, a hit within 10 m of target is a kill...IMO a very dodgy assumption for a well armoured tank such as a T-34. And the arithmetic appears to assume that a hit within range but anywhere within the clock will have an an identical result. I doubt this.

But returning to random fire. The US Army, the Australian Army and ARVN fired off God only knows how much arty in Vietnam, at areas of possible bad guy activity. Does anyone know for certain whether such essentially random fire was NOT used in WWII? (No need to comment on the ARVN in this context). I accept that in general, ammo supplies were probably better in the Vietnam War.

As with Huib, I am concerned that light/medium mortar fire will have an unrealistic effect against armour. Remember too that most indirect arty fire uses HE shell. Do we have any hard evidence of the effect of such random non-penetrating fire against armour.

[Von Earlmann]

Most every wargame I have every played concerning WW II has struggled with the arty vs armor thingy. The first version of CS were not bad for indirect fire however I felt the direct fire capabilities were way of esp for the 75 and 105 guns.

This version gives the indirect fire way too much capability (IMHO). Doing campaigns it doesn't hurt quite so much as I can add the disabled vehicles back calling it repair. I suspect this might be a problem tho in playing regular time limit scenarios.

[Huib Versloot]

Does anyone how the artillery actually works? Suppose I have a artillery gun that has ammo and can fire. However I decide not to fire it during this turn because I think I need it more the next turn. Is it sure that this gun will have ammo the next turn, or can the supply check routine cause that the next turn this gun has no ammo even if I haven't fired it? I always wondered about that.

I guess my other point is, when we have other sysems to control the artillery, like needing special observers to direct fire, or a separate ammo level, players will be more inclined to conserve their ammo, or choose to fire their shells on infantry instead of gambling on a 5% kill chance on enemy armour and randomly firing all over the map.
Right now most scenarios have constant artillery barrages for the duration of the entire battle, historically this was not always the case.

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

Maybe institute some sort of supply into the game, but that would also mean adding suppy trucks, puter keeping track of ammo for each unit involved etc etc.

Arty similar to Steel Panthers, x amount of loads to fire. Spotting round no problem, but if fire for effect, the supply for that arty unit goes down by one point, when no points left, no fire until a supply truck arrives with more. But the same would have to be worked in for inf and armor also. When they fire their supply drops a point, when it reaches zero, no more fire except defensively as it seems somebody always has a few rounds just in case, stripping the dead and wounded etc.

In the end, supply would be a very important factor in the game, just don't know if people would buy into it. Would also have to figure out how many supply trucks would be needed in the game, if he resupplies, his number drops by one and when he reaches zero, he either becomes useless or return to a supply dump to reload and head back out.

Just a thought.

[umbro]

Umbro also states the assumption that for a 155mm weapon, a hit within 10 m of target is a kill...IMO a very dodgy assumption for a well armoured tank such as a T-34. And the arithmetic appears to assume that a hit within range but anywhere within the clock will have an an identical result. I doubt this.

My apologies, I was trying to show what gross assumptions one would have to make to get even close to the number the game is using right now. I agree with all your points.

Does anyone how the artillery actually works? Suppose I have a artillery gun that has ammo and can fire. However I decide not to fire it during this turn because I think I need it more the next turn. Is it sure that this gun will have ammo the next turn, or can the supply check routine cause that the next turn this gun has no ammo even if I haven't fired it? I always wondered about that.

The answer is that it WILL have ammo. The OOS check is performed only if the unit fired.

I guess my other point is, when we have other sysems to control the artillery, like needing special observers to direct fire, or a separate ammo level, players will be more inclined to conserve their ammo, or choose to fire their shells on infantry instead of gambling on a 5% kill chance on enemy armour and randomly firing all over the map.
Right now most scenarios have constant artillery barrages for the duration of the entire battle, historically this was not always the case.

All this is true, furthermore, most scenarios have relatively high ammo levels so conservation is not required.

Also bear in mind that a historic loss rate of 5% to indirect fire does not translate into a 5% chance of a disable per strike. Purely anecdotally - in my current test game of 104 options against Jason I have lost 5 armoured SPs (all half-tracks some combat) every one of them to unsighted indirect arty.

Rather than more systems to deal with these issues:
1) Add a separate ammo level for artillery.
2) Differentiate between mortars and field artillery for the purposes of AFV disable. i.e. Mortars have no chance to disable. (Note: mortar will still attack HTs at 1:2 with a 5% chance of a regular loss)
3) Reduce the disable percentage from 5% to (say) 3%.

umbro

[Huib Versloot]

Maybe the beta test in First Strike Towards Hamich went so well because I used a base ammo level of 50 in that scenario. Most scenarios have much higher levels, leading to over effective artillery.
A lower ammo level also forces the players to be smart with their HQ units and keep them in range. Atm there is not much more to steer with in the design editor.