Realistic Artillery Management by a FOO

[DRG]

It's a game, accept it as part of the game. We do

Don

[PanzerBob]

Originally Posted by Marek_Tucan

Re smoke, is it so hard to imagine that those puffs of smoke above enemy artillery are just an abstraction to cover: flash spotting, CB aerial recon, noise detection, or, in more modern days, CB radars (used already in 1944) and other technical means? Those are available to artillerymen in real life and would be extremely hard to model in-game.

That is how I've looked at it. So I have no problem at all.

Bob out

[Marek_Tucan]

Some more lazy thoughts about arty...
What about "house rules" allowing just offboard arty and mortars to attack reverse slopes, limiting onboard guns to "direct LOS" only fire? Would be of course complicated, you'd have (prior to setting target) to check manually (Z key) whether the target is in LOS, but OTOH you'd have then to use field and infantry guns in the way they were designed to, ie place them on a place with good field of fire and then blast away... Would apply to rockets most likely as well, in fact (atleast modern) rocket artillery has usually huge dead ground (min. range of MLRS is about 10 km, ie 200 hexes, minimal range of BM-21 less - 1500 m (30 hexes) and 500m for direct fire).
Opinions?

[Cross]

Originally Posted by Marek_Tucan

Some more lazy thoughts about arty...
What about "house rules" allowing just offboard arty and mortars to attack reverse slopes, limiting onboard guns to "direct LOS" only fire? Would be of course complicated, you'd have (prior to setting target) to check manually (Z key) whether the target is in LOS, but OTOH you'd have then to use field and infantry guns in the way they were designed to, ie place them on a place with good field of fire and then blast away... Would apply to rockets most likely as well, in fact (atleast modern) rocket artillery has usually huge dead ground (min. range of MLRS is about 10 km, ie 200 hexes, minimal range of BM-21 less - 1500 m (30 hexes) and 500m for direct fire).
Opinions?

This will force players to use off-board artillery for indirect fire; the good thing about this is that it forces players to target by the troop (instead of individual guns) which is more realistic.

Apart from that, you will be introducing - to many - the joyous art of direct fire howitzers
which I love to use, but prefer to use when there's decent visibility and hills.

It's actually not a bad idea; and it's simple, and will no doubt address some of the concerns of those who want to limit artillery.

But why shouldn't I be able to use light artillery for indirect fire on a 7KM by 7KM map?

It's good to have on map artillery, because it forces players to think about a front line and take break-throughs seriously. It helps model the real concern that Battalions usually had about protecting their rear echelon units.

One of my opponents suggested that you shouldn't be able to use on map arty for indirect fire if you move it. I understand that guns have to be sighted in, but guns in the RA always had a second site ready to move to, when needed. Tough to model these details.

cheers,
Cross

[Marek_Tucan]

Sorry for delay, got a bit of webus interruptus here over the weekend, seems that my ratties have tried whether the ADSL cable is edible

Originally Posted by Cross

This will force players to use off-board artillery for indirect fire; the good thing about this is that it forces players to target by the troop (instead of individual guns) which is more realistic.

Apart from that, you will be introducing - to many - the joyous art of direct fire howitzers
which I love to use, but prefer to use when there's decent visibility and hills.

Was not thinking as much about restricting the guns to "gun shoots where it sees only" but "where flat trajectory allows", ie they may be called by another unit (or may fire beyond their visibility), but only to places with direct LOS.

It's actually not a bad idea; and it's simple, and will no doubt address some of the concerns of those who want to limit artillery.

It requires manual checking with the guns, that is a bother, but needed forit to work...

But why shouldn't I be able to use light artillery for indirect fire on a 7KM by 7KM map?

That's of course the "grey area" But as most onboard light guns (atleast in WW2) are fixed charge guns (even if capable of high elevations), they'd have quite a problem getting at the reverse slopes even if they were low-velocity and high-elevation (as leIG-18) - I always got the impression that the high elev was intended to be used rather for direct fire in mountains etc. than to allow wildly inaccurate indirect fire. Would require further research and won't concern too many weapons I think. Or the rule might be altered to "whatever has "howitzer" in its spec may dire reverse slope missions, whatever is gun has to fire only where the direct trajectory allows".

It's good to have on map artillery, because it forces players to think about a front line and take break-throughs seriously. It helps model the real concern that Battalions usually had about protecting their rear echelon units.

This would also force player to think about another historical matter - that "infantry escort" field guns (like French 75 or leIG or Russian 76mm shorties) had to be moved relatively close behind the infantry and hunt for places with good fields of fire rather than be sitting in a battery in a wood back behind the lines and shelling whatever spot the commander wants them to...
And it would also show why the mortars became so darn popular - because they do not need to be in the line of fire (old truism that if the enemy is in range, so are you).

One of my opponents suggested that you shouldn't be able to use on map arty for indirect fire if you move it. I understand that guns have to be sighted in, but guns in the RA always had a second site ready to move to, when needed. Tough to model these details.

cheers,
Cross

Possible via house rules (of course, depending on player honesty) For example re. the second site an agreement might be made that each player chooses alternative site for each of his indirect arty units and may fire indirect missions only from these two, or direct from anywhere else.

Thanks for your reply, at the very least now I know the idea is not entirely insane. Just mildly so

[PanzerBob]

IMHO these ideas have merit, implementation either by rules, or hardwiring (Not sure if that would feasible) is the problem. The other thing that comes to mind is what kind of slope does it have to be before the reverse slope is a problem?

As far as the "shorties" go, with the new arty routines getting those guns more forward maybe a more effective way to utilize them, especially against mobile forces. If I'm not mistaken this was how they used at certain times anyway.

Bob out

[Marek_Tucan]

[quote=PanzerBob;664021]IMHO these ideas have merit, implementation either by rules, or hardwiring (Not sure if that would feasible) is the problem.
[quote]
Not even thinking about hardwiring

The other thing that comes to mind is what kind of slope does it have to be before the reverse slope is a problem?

Here I have to frankly admit that I do not know One of the reasons why I posted the idea here in fact

[Marek_Tucan]

Okay, a bit o' good ole' thread necromancy.

The thoughts were still nibbling at me and having too little imagination, I called in the physics to my aid. What did I end up with is kinda Excel-based ballistic calculator. You put in a gun you want, set up the gun at its max range settings (45°or so elevation) and tweak ballistic coefficient until your and theroretical max range agree. Then you can play with angles.

The recults are shown in three graphs. One for "long range arty", reaching up to 80 km, and two "SP-scale" reaching to 10 km (200 hexes). You can even set up terrain of your choice there

Tried to factor in even changing air density, but the formulae are still rather "approximate", not least because not only air density changes with altitude, but also the aerodynamic coefficient changes with speed. But what the hell, it is "accurate enough" for my purposes. If you want to play a bit with it, you have it here

[Marek_Tucan]

Help! Where did the "Edit" button go?

Anyway found out I should not post such things when I'm already half asleep - the columns got messed up a bit. Should be OK now.

[mosborne]

Hi:
I posted a message on mbt and someone mention checking out this forum also. Glad I did.

Walking the line between reality and simulation is not easy. Nor is drawing the line between abstraction and detailing. While reading I could see the battle between these concepts playing out.

I think all the comments are good, but some are good but harmful in the way they are proposed to be implemented. The community on this forum is pretty broad as well as the experience. Trying to translate the broad experience into code though can have some nasty side effects, one of which is to discourage newcomers with too many restrictions, tedious matters, or actions that don't make sense on initial appearance, or inability to use imagination. I think the best wisdom is as someone quoted what the most important rule was - that both sides agree.

I think that as you continue to change the code in hopes of making it better you don't end up pigeon holding everyone into the same mode. I would actually like to see more emphasis on coding what the physics permit and focus more on implementing more capability in the models. I believe that is the path to making both variants even greater. Perhaps even thought should be given to integrating the two. This would allow more resources to focus on one product as oppose to splitting it across two. I am sure they are more alike than different.

I suggest that before you code something out, you consider whether or not there is any possibility of it being done or to rephrase it - if you needed to do it, how would you do it. If you can figure out a way to do it, then don't code it out, because more than likely some one figured out how to do it in real life. Please code in more flexibility, not more restrictions.

I think a great example of flexibility added (which I was overjoyed to see) is the filter for firing, just as an example.
Reading through this thread, there were a lot of artillery features that can be added to make things work more smoothly. It would be nice to specify some artillery patterns as oppose to trying to manually fudge it.

I offer as an alternative to coding in restrictions in how the system operate is to instead add an auditing feature that would allow you to print out a step by step replay of clicks at the end of the challenge. In fact, this could even have some side benefits (more features) of allowing players to create actual tutorials, movies, etc. - flexibility. So now if you want to check cheating - its recorded on video as to who did what when. But I think a feature like this would be worth more than just checking cheating. I suspect that a lot of the coding is already in place and the technology (larger hard disk space) is at hand. People would surely pay for this option alone to save and replay some of their greatest challenges or campaigns.

Thanks for reading.