On-map gun, indirect fire testing

Redwolf

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Am I just unlucky?

I did a quick reproduce of the problem where rounds from on-board guns in indirect fire mode get "hung up" on a ridge.

In no particular order just doing this three times (starting making the scenario over three times was required to make it work at all):

Ridge gets blasted and nobody stops it (ok we knew that).

Absolutely non-determinist and not plausible logic to be in contact or not. All the guns are next to each other in sight of a platoon HQ, company HQ, battalion HQ chain and still they are random available or not.

One gun shoots at about 30 degrees off and several hundred meters short, in front of the ridge, hit points in sight of both spotter AND gun. Full FFE, nobody stops it. Fire is precise, always the same point.

Sometimes guns gets back in "not deployed" mode, with no explanation whatsoever.

Dead spotter doesn't stop fire, in fact there is no way anymore from the indirect fire menu to stop it.

Spotting HQ is in a building on top of the ridge. Sometimes gets spotted and engaged by forces in the valley (not realistic IMHO).

6 minutes for a HQ in LOS ordering fire from a 75mm infantry gun? Doesn't get realism brand from me. And as I said, sometimes it still doesn't work because the gun goes on strike (did the Germans shoot people for that?).

Anyway, during all these tests not a single round ever hit the enemy forces in the valley. Also, no round ever went over. All precisely into the same ridge point, except the 30 degrees off incident.

Terrible interface. Why is the "X" with the mouse the only way to get out of the artillery box?

It is the first time I set up a test scenario since early CMSF since I didn't want to get dragged into it. But holy **** this was bad.
 

Elvis

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Please don't take this the wrong but I don't understand a thing in your post except for this:

Dead spotter doesn't stop fire, in fact there is no way anymore from the indirect fire menu to stop it.
IIRC, this was a design decision. In the case of a dead spotter there are 3 choices that a player could have. Player manually stops the fire, game AI stops the fire because the spotter is dead or fire continues after death until mission called in complete. Giving the player manual control to stop the fire of a dead man puts control in the players hand that wouldn't exist in all cases (i.e "I just saw the spotter die...should we stop the fire mission or continue?"). So that leaves allowing the rounds to continue or stop because of the dead spotter. The first place I'd look for an answer to the best way to handle that is, what was the prescribed SOP when a firing unit loses contact with it's spotter during FFE? I don't know. My guess would be that it is carry out the fire mission that it was ordered to do. Which is the path chosen for the game. Was SOP to stop the mission when contact is broken? Again, don't know but if they chose that route there would be people saying "my spotter died and it stopped the fire mission". So the design decision was to complete the fire mission even if the spotter dies.
 

NUTTERNAME

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I think Redwolf is just demonstrating a general dissatisfaction with lame handling of on-map indirect fire. I would claim the 'regular' off-map indirect fire is not a good model, but the attempt to model this 'on-map' fire was a bad design decision. Probably reinforced by bad anecdotal 'evidence' by a beta-tester(s). That seems to be the requirements for things at BF nowadays.

The party-line now is that it will require a AI fix. Which is an excuse to not fix it.

The reality is that the game needs more ACS (artificial common sense). If a firing weapon sees it's rounds not clearing a obstructing terrain, it should check it's own fire. That is the major issue with this.

But, I believe the inclusion of on-board artillery weapons (not mortars) using indirect fire was a faulty decision. It would have been better handled to have these weapons be either designated as a player choice to be on board direct fire, or the option of being off-board indirect fire assets at the start of a game.

I once pointed out that tanks firing through hedgerows would not detonate the HE directly in front of them. This was another example of ACS not in play. Actually, it was an example of the designers not understanding how the weapons work. HE shells are both bore-safe (don't 'splode in the tube) but also they are minimum range safe , around 25-50 meters, once they leave the tube. They would not detonate in the hedgerow to begin with. But the tanks just blasted away, killing nearby infantry, oblivious to themselves and others.
 

Redwolf

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My main takeaway is that the decision-making about who is in contact, who is deployed, how long it takes and hence what is available is overly random, overly pessimistic and clearly not realistic. The HQs were stacked perfectly and the guns, all in the same area, were all randomly available or not. That very much goes along with the random spotting where you can have two squads sit next to each other with completely different spotting. Neither do they see the same thing nor do they tell each other, no matter how close they are.

The 30 degrees off firing is a straight bug, as is spotting my spotters. Heavy trees as cover for the spotter were useless, as was other vegetation (WTF?) and even a solid building on top of a ridge didn't do it every time. What are these guys doing in there? Disco party bus?

The "hitting the ridge and not stopping" issue is just the tip of the iceberg and really not that big a deal.

The UI we talked about before.
 
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Fleischer

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Every time you do tests like these with the CMx2 engine, is when you realize that it isn't the advanced, detailed, überrealistic system BF claims it is, but rather a hastily made, "fudged" system dressed up to seem OK in most situations. Under the hood it's just an illogical mess.
 

NUTTERNAME

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Am I just unlucky?

I did a quick reproduce of the problem where rounds from on-board guns in indirect fire mode get "hung up" on a ridge.
One gun shoots at about 30 degrees off and several hundred meters short, in front of the ridge, hit points in sight of both spotter AND gun. Full FFE, nobody stops it. Fire is precise, always the same point.
Sometimes guns gets back in "not deployed" mode, with no explanation whatsoever.
6 minutes for a HQ in LOS ordering fire from a 75mm infantry gun? Doesn't get realism brand from me. And as I said, sometimes it still doesn't work because the gun goes on strike (did the Germans shoot people for that?).
It is the first time I set up a test scenario since early CMSF since I didn't want to get dragged into it. But holy **** this was bad.
One of the problems with doing testing is the interference of other issues. I suppose this is a good case. Any good testing seeks to eliminate the other parameters. Of course, BF would just accuse you of 'Ping-Ponging' since their game is designed as a melange of interplay of weapons systems and command and psychology and battleship fire.

But, to get back to your point, what could these odd events possibly be modeling? Any fire that is "30 degrees off" is probably way past the traverse angle possible. In fact, it may be beyond the aiming stake or reference. Any fire so precise as to hit the same spot is not showing dispersion and is just highly improbable. Guns going "not deployed" might model the gun moving it's carriage to get inline with some odd random result of firing.

While some may accuse me of being overly focused on detail...well, I am. And actually, so is the scale of the game. I just played the demo for CMFI to test the on-board indirect fire. I wanted to see if the airborne pack 75mm could indirect fire. Of course, they can't (and shouldn't) but technically they had very limited traverse. Any firing outside the traverse would need to move the whole weapon. Realistically, for one of these weapons to fire HEAT (supercharge), it would need to be emplaced and moving it's carriage would be quite an effort. I suppose in this case, it should be non-deployed for a few minutes or more.
 

Redwolf

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One of the problems with doing testing is the interference of other issues. I suppose this is a good case. Any good testing seeks to eliminate the other parameters. Of course, BF would just accuse you of 'Ping-Ponging' since their game is designed as a melange of interplay of weapons systems and command and psychology and battleship fire.
I agree but interpret it the other way round. There is a lot of strange stuff happening in the CMx2 engine and it is usually explained away with "well in combat strange stuff happens", as if any randomization was necessarily good. I disagree, the randomness there is in areas that isn't realistic.

I'm unsure right now, does CMx2 finally model traverse for towed guns? I though we are still in a mode where there just is rotation of the gun and it makes no difference whether a certain new target is inside or outside the traverse angle. For towed guns, SP guns do it.
 
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NUTTERNAME

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I agree but interpret it the other way round. There is a lot of strange stuff happening in the CMx2 engine and it is usually explained away with "well in combat strange stuff happens", as if any randomization was necessarily good. I disagree, the randomness there is in areas that isn't realistic.

I'm unsure right now, does CMx2 finally model traverse for towed guns? I though we are still in a mode where there just is rotation of the gun and it makes no difference whether a certain new target is inside or outside the traverse angle. For towed guns, SP guns do it.
But you get a really good 'MikeyD Anectdote' along with the randomness.
 

NUTTERNAME

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I was screwing around with the game and saw that FlaK 88mm are on-board artillery? 88mm were used as indirect assets but its a bit of a stretch to expect on in the front lines to be called upon to deliver some goods. The basic issue is that they have fixed rounds and a fixed HE velocity. Pretty high too...Like 800m/s?
 

Redwolf

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I was screwing around with the game and saw that FlaK 88mm are on-board artillery? 88mm were used as indirect assets but its a bit of a stretch to expect on in the front lines to be called upon to deliver some goods. The basic issue is that they have fixed rounds and a fixed HE velocity. Pretty high too...Like 800m/s?
In CMx2 all guns behave as if they only have fixed (maximum charge) propellant so it's evenly broken :)
 

NUTTERNAME

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In CMx2 all guns behave as if they only have fixed (maximum charge) propellant so it's evenly broken :)
Is that true for mortars? If mortars used maximum charge to hit targets at 100-200 meters range, the time of flight would be considerable. And accuracy would suffer. And the mortarmen would go deaf. Mortars use the least charge possible to hit the target solution. Mortars firing at 100-200 meters, when using minimum charge, are actually quite accurate. as the range and charges go up, and the barrel angles down, they become area fire weapons.

The 88mm FlaK gun, even when firing out to 2000 meters, is using no more than one degree of elevation. The 88mm was used as an indirect fire weapon and video shows this. The gun crew is firing at an angle that could not possibly be a ground target nor an aircraft. But to have a weapon like this used in the CM game scale as an on-board asset is pretty gamey. The 88mm could put out a fast rate of fire when firing indirect, and also reach out to a decent range. It could use it's AA shells with time fuse and really put an attack under a beating. But, just like any other artillery, it needs to be brought in the loop and have the communications, etc. to be 'on call'.

I see the German 15.0 cm IG is also an on-board asset. I have to see if it has a minimum range.
 

Redwolf

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Yeah the mortars fire sky-high due to the same problem.

They are dead accurate at all range anyway so I don't think this makes it much worse.
 

goomohn

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The German 8.8cm is well known as the greatest anti-tank gun of world war 2. In North Africa and Europe, it was used as a directly fired anti-tank artillery piece.
 
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