Artillery Spotting & Changes

[Jason Petho]

A primitive but effective first step would be a separate ammo level, that's my idea.

This is by far the simpliest solution. While highly effective for scenario designers (as that is where the levels would be set), it would generally go unnoticed by players.

And it would not effect existing scenarios as the artillery ammo level could be set to default whatever the present ammo level is for the scenario.

Jason Petho

[FM WarB]

This has been a good discussion about possible, on the back burner changes both here and at Matrix. Alot of good technical information. I'd like to see more about the Germans, Italians, French.....AND Romanians.

[1925frank]

I like the idea about a separate ammo level for artillery.

When you have more than one country on a side, it might be nice to have individual ammo levels as well.

How about a drift element for some countries even when there is a LOS? It wouldn't necessarily happen every time, but there could be a percentage. Right now, if there's a LOS, the accuracy is 100 percent for everybody.

I'm no authority, but what I've read is the Japanese had the worst artillery skills. This is somewhat reflected already in the game as more of their artillery is limited to direct fire.

I've read the Italians were nearly as bad as the Japanese.

The French in May-June 1940 were highly dependent on telephone lines which were quickly severed, so communication at all levels became an immediate problem.

[FM WarB]

Alot of French arty in 1940 were 75s, from WWI, essentially direct fire weapons, due to their limited elvation.

[K K Rossokolski]

I don't have too much trouble with spotted arty missing sometimes. A garbled transmission, an error in map reference, stuff like that happened all the time.

[Hawk Kriegsman]

I don't have too much trouble with spotted arty missing sometimes. A garbled transmission, an error in map reference, stuff like that happened all the time.

Spotted artillery should not miss its hex considering the turn time scale we are talking about (6 minutes per the booklet or more depending on who you talk to). More than enough time to correct the spotting rounds and fire for effect.

Also the game already has the missed your target result. It is called no effect.

If you take a 250 meter open sigle hex and a single 6 SP infantry (about 30 men) platoon could be anywhere within the hex.

Lets say they are of the western 25% of a 250 meter hex (which is 62.5 meters) lets say your "on target" artillery hits the 25% eastern half of the same open hex. Well it missed the infatry platoon by a 125 meters. Most artillery is not going to cause a single wound when it missed by that much.

We also know that if artillery was to land among troops in the open then they would take heavy casualties.

But yet we see artillery hit open hexes all the time with a no effect result. How can this be? It is becasue even though the artillery hit the specific 250 meter hex it missed the target in the hex.

So you do have artillery missing in the game all the time. It is called the no effect result.

Thanx!

Hawk

[Chuck10mtn]

Hi All,
I just have to jump in here. This GAME was never intended to be a simulation of WWII. Lets stop trying to get there.

I quote from my now quite dogeared West Front manual...Part 1 Introduction..."West Front is a tactical level game portraying some of the most significant and challenging battles fought on the Western Front in WWII." The other theatre games have something similar. I for one would be interested in your thoughts of what it was meant to be.

One problem I see is as the game moves forward it risks losing the people who have played it the longest.

An interesting point...I suspect you're right

Its a game and the word game implies that there is luck, wonder and even sometimes true amazement as to the results.

Not just in a game, but as in life, love and war. Was it not Napoleon, history's greatest soldier, who demanded one quality above all others in his subordinates...luck!!

Sorry I know that the topic has vered off in a different direction, but as you said West front is a GAME and my brand new non dogeared copy of the west front players guide doesn't state anywhere that its a simulation. If you want a sim then go get your ps3 of your X-Box whatever and get a 1st person shooter that will have a lot more simulation than JTCS will ever have.
I Like MWEST think that people are quick to jump to changes because we can. With all the new units and all the new changes some of the old scenarios are gone from real play. I'm not sure how the play testing goes but IMHO there is no way to simulate all the several thousand possibilities that could arise. We have all seen the put it out then OOPS its not quite working right and half have new and half have the old, games in progress and a host of other problems. I would suggest extreme caution changing one small seemingless minor thing.
Chuck