CM arty modeling
 

Following a post by DRG have startred this to see if anyone has a better way of modeling its effects.
No expert on as only looked briefly at in the past & obviosly diffrent types will vary slightly but how do you model its effect any better?
2 Types I think cluster which produces a cloud of hundreds of explosives. Smart munitions seek target & think level of airburst can be set as launched. Devastating to all in area including soft targets, large multidirectional shockwaves. The other type are really armour killers like the Bonus shell which fires 2 seekers at about 2000m above target area per shell. These probably have no effect whatsoever on other units in the area as it ignores them so perhaps HE kill of zero.
As regards area of effect clusters are nasty Bonus each penetrator scans an area of 32,000m square, over 3 hexes across in game terms, probably closer to 4 by time allow for slight dispersal. So one shell should target 2 armoured vehicles in that area, 3 shells slightly stagered a bit more area & 6 vehicles targeted.
Videos of test fires (Boffors I think) cleary show the penetrator firing at targets well off centre like 40 degrees /
So perhaps as said Gun fired should have no or very low HE kill component while rockets like MLRS stay as are but I have not looked at the subject thouroughly.

Re: CM arty modeling
 

Actually the most common type is still the non guided variety.
Typically a small submunition with a HEAT charge capable of penetrating four inches or so of armor and a pre set fragmentation pattern for soft target, with a 155mm artillery round carrying several tens of them.
Such munition rely on numbers to achieve coverage and lethality, with the HEAT warheads penetrating the roofs of most
AFVs out there (and the engine decks of those few with reinforced top armor) while the storm of fragments kills anyone exposed.
A lot of specialized HE submunitions also exist, as antiarmor capability is both expensive and not always necessary.

Re: CM arty modeling
 

Like I said no expert & I am happy with it in game even if its painfull if get caught by a strike but thats not as easy as it used to be due to LOS being needed for rapid adjustment.

Re: CM arty modeling
 

As I said elsewhere, I have zero issues with CM type munitions (or FAE rocket barrages) getting multiple kills, thats the whole point of CM munitions after all!

I am however curious about how large an area CM currently effect in-game.
It's apparently more then just the target and adjacent hex (at leas in some cases) as I've seen them effect stuff two hexes from the target hex. I'm wondering if that might be too large a radius for something like an artillery round or maybe a bomb. Now for a CM MLRS (or similar) to blow up stuff in a half km radius is "reasonable" given the point it's a barrage of 10-20+ (generally large) rockets.

Re: CM arty modeling
 

I think its a case of game mechanics to stand a reasonable chance of killing adjacent also needs the offchance of destroying 1 hex further out. More often than not they are fine if a bit shaken also some bombs have pretty large coverage.

Re: CM arty modeling
 

As a further food for thought on BONUS/SADARM types, keep in mind that these are going to be very limited issue weapons. SADARM production was terminated after few hundreds rounds; only 300 were issued for the iraqi campaign and less than half of that were actually used, about the 0.7% of the rounds fired by the units equipped with them.
High cost, lack of worthwhile enemy AFVs in the current campaigns, and high demand for Excalibur type unitary rounds better suited for engaging most common targets mean they are not going to mass produced in serious numbers.
Throw in the coming budget crunches and you see you won't have to to worry too much about how they perform

Re: CM arty modeling
 

The "real" frequency of any weapon/equipment system use VS how often players buy/use them is always an issue in any game. The AI can be "forced" to buy them less often via the X2, X0, X1, X3 radio codes. But most players will buy what looks good or what they want. Some (most?) do so out of ignorance (they have no clue how (un)common anything is), many just like playing with the best toys, and others just plain don't care about such things and only want to win their battles so pick whatever allows them to do so.

All that said all we can do is try to model any equipment/weapon as best we can keeping in mind it's "real" effects, it's "game" effects, and it's "game balance" effects.

Talk about walking a greased high wire!

Re: CM arty modeling
 

What I was trying to get across is that they are a niche weapon at best for the time being (and the 2010-2020 timeframe in all likelyhood) and since they would be hard to differentiate from conventional cluster ammo in terms of game mechanics anyway it is not very cost effective to do so, say by using scarce weapon slots for example. The game is inhrerently inflexible when it comes to handling different types of ammunition for a given weapon.

Re: CM arty modeling
 

Just curious, but does anyone know what the exact area of a SP hex is? I know the width, which is 50m, but I don't know whether that width refers to the longest line of bisection or the shortest line. If I knew which bisection the 50m refers to I could figure out the area myself.

K.

Re: CM arty modeling
 

I agree.
They are certainly a high-tech niche weapon due to real-life cost and mass production manufactureing difficulty.
The problem, as was pointed out, is how can the game best model the overpressure effect of this sort of weapon.
Currently it's been decided the "flame effects" do the best job, with the unintentional (I assume) side effect of an automatic fire in the target hex.
Without knowing what the flame effects vice the CM effects are in the game code we can only look at the results produced in-game by a weapon and extrapolate on how it was produced.
While the overpressure effect is (I'm sure) best modeled via the game codes flame efects I'm just wondering if the end result, i.e. how destructive these weapons are in game (with the side effect of hex fires) is best modeled this way?
The in-game cluster munition effects seem to accomplish the same job of simulating AoE destruction without the fire side effect.
My question is - might this not be a "better" way to simulate these sorts of weapons?