Artillery

[narwan]

Hi Miki,

that may be very true, especially if the panzers you were using have relatively thin armor. There's a good chance that a tank in the blast circle of an artillery round gets hit by flying shrapnel and/or the concussion from the blast (more than in MBT). Panzers with thin armor on certain sides or especially those with have no armor on one or more sides (like many SP-AT's) can suffer badly from artillery.

Narwan

[Mobhack]

There were no changes between MBT and WW2 in the arty (some think the blast circles are new, but they are not and have been there all the time - we just added a switch (originally just for debug, but we allowed this for the end user as the playtesters liked it) to show the circles graphically.

I will monitor this thread and see what the consensus is. But it is possibly because the armour in WW2 (esp top armour) tends to be thinner than in MBT. And many open-topped "shell spitoons" exist.

Anecdote: The first Royal Tiger kill in Normandy was with a 2 inch mortar. The guys who fired it cannot agree if the tiddly little 2lb bomb went straight down the turret hatch or simply into the ammo truck it was parked beside and replenishing from. Either way - the turret was lifted by an internal explosion, a halftrack nearby was abandoned, and the other Royal Tiger exited the village sharpish! .

Cheers
Andy

[cbo]

There was a well-documented test conducted in the UK in 1942 where 16 Churchill tanks were driven through a 600x400 yeard area, pounded by 72 25-pdr guns firing at 72 RPM for 8 minutes while the tanks drove slowly through the area.

Just for the fun of it, I tried replicating that by parking 16 Churchill IIIs in such an area and pound them at roughly 84 RPM (24 guns each firing 7 rounds pr. 2 min. turn) for three turns. The catch is, that in the real test, they timed the shells for airburst whereas SP represents the shells gonig off on impact.

In the real test, many tanks were hit, one lost a track and another suffered damage to a bogie but managed to crawl out of the area.

The SP equivalent produced the following:

Game: tanks destroyed/immobilized
#1: 3/2
#2: 6/3
#3: 5/4
#4: 3/3

I did a fifth run, monitoring the hits

#5: 2/2

The two kills were by top hits, the two immobilizations were from "NON-PENETRATING" hits. There were plenty of both that did no damage. There was also a lot of side and front turret and hull hits which did no damage, but the PEN value of the 25-pdr hits on these locations could sometimes go as high as 5 (most are less though).

The 25-pdr has HE-Pen=2.

I replaced the Churchills with Crusader IIIs with lesser armour, particularily top armour which is 1 vs the Churchills 2

#6: 8/1 (one or two imobilized vehicles were later destroyed)

In this case, 6 were destroyed by top hits, one by side turret hit and one by a front hull hit.

Replacing the Crusader IIIs with open topped M10s resulted in carnage

#7: 11/3 (two of the immobilized vehicles were later destroyed)

All destroyed fell to top hits, which also caused most of the damage to the immobilized vehicles.

In the final test, I replaced the M10s with Staghounds with thin side and rear armour (1) but changed the top armour to 10 to prevent top penetrations.

#8: 5/3

In this case, all the destroyed vehicles fell to side turret and hull penetrations.

IF the number of vehicles destroyed or damaged by artillery fire is excessive - and I'm not saying it is - then there seem to be two culprits:

A: Too many top hits, as this is the real killer
B: The penetration value from HE is too high. In this test, a gun with a HE-pen value of 2 could end up anywhere between 0 and 5 and thus would be deadly to many armoured vehicles, particularily those with thin armour.

That's my take, anyway

Claus B

[Mobhack]

Remember to add WH size to the HE pen, as some (not all) shots will add Random(WH) to this as a "weight" factor. same as with direct AP fire. Max pen can therefore be the sum of both.

Open topped vehicles have almost no defence against HE or AP rounds if hit on the top (even rifle/mg rounds will go through if fired from a higher level and produce top hits).

Cheers
Andy

[Smersh]

historically HE shells, even while not being able to penetrate armour, if large enough can crack armour just from the concussive forces of being hit with say a 122mm artillery shell.

[Charles22]

I have played all the SP incarnations since the game came out, with the exception of the original SP2, and to this early point the arty seems too effective to me.

At first the AI Poles were mostly bombarding with 75mm HOW's in places where I had little or no units. Now, however, they have found a good sized force of mine and it's pretty awful; something I surely wouldn't expect from 75's. About that time I noticed this blast radius thing and turned it on. As I've read so far, it would appear this radius is always in place and it may have just coincided with the Poles finding a good-sized force, but the carnage seems extreme to me.

In the span of approximately 3 turns I've lost an estimate of 12-15 vehicles; mostly tanks such as the PZ38t.

Another frustrating thing is I can't figure out just what sort of mission I have. Normally I know such a thing, from the start, but I do question whether I know it when I thought I was in an assault and haven't seen a single mine. I have a 3200pt force and have met 3 PO AC's with maybe 15 squads of infantry and I have spotted some arty puffs of smoke, etc. I'm not quite through with the battle, but it definitely has airs of being a basically non-existent enemy. This is all the more frustrating combined with arty devastation noted above. Are the Poles picking almost nothing but 75 HOW's? That's not too interesting. The force seems extremely light for a tank-heavy force option. I believe I'm playing on a 200X140 generated map. I may be on a mission that isn't an assault, as I've restarted the campaign so many times I may had got mixed up.

One last thing, I have brought up a lot of things that don't have too much to do with arty here, but I do that to not only give the overall atmosphere but also because I can't see how I can start a new topic. Supposedly I do have that privilege.

I have bought the cd too and hope that the arty will be adjusted. I'm not too keen on fiddling with things like armor toughness as it just seems too arbitary and I'm not too sure how it works anyway. I must also say that I don't think I have ever seen anyone give the Polish tank guns so much penetration. Combine that with the arty in this game and the Gerrys wouldn't have accomplished a thing. I have hardly used my own arty in this game, and I'm glad of that as it turns out, because if it had been otherwise I guess I wouldn've had even less fights than I did by far. Well, I'm sure it will be adjusted in some manner.

Now how about telling me how I start a new topic? Thanks.

[DRG]

To start a new topic go to the main forum area ( where you see all the different topics )look at the top for the line on the left that says "The Camo Workshop >> WinSPWW2 " then look to the right of the screen on that same line and you will see...

Post .. Previous .. Index .. Next .. Expand

Press POST. The rest should be self explanatory

Re " I can't figure out just what sort of mission I have"


When you end your turn look below the flag on the top right of the screen that indicates if it is your turn ending or the AI turn running and it will tell you what you or the AI is playing.

Your mission is also given to you at the start before you buy your core force AND it is given again after you pick your core force and there is a "mission" button on the formation selection screen that you can press at any time to check what type of mission you are fighting while you select your support troops. Then, after you select your support troops and are given the option of human or auto deploy or quit deploy or Save game there is another "Mission" button that allows you to re-check what type of battle you are fighting. After pressing "Quite deploy it appears again as I described at the start after you end your turn so we're not trying to keep this info a secret.

Don

[cbo]

Andy,

Forgot about the warhead thing - in this case it is "5", so I guess that theoretically, the penetration could go as high as "7" (HE-pen=2 + warhead =5).
I assume that the randomness in the penetration values of HE hits on armour is there to represent the difference between shell fragments hitting the vehicle (very limited effect except for open-topped vehicles) and a direct hit by the complete shell, which could have rather dramatic effects?

Anyway, I'm currently in a campaign battle as the Italians, battling the French in the Alps. Somehow the bastards managed to drag a bunch of Char B1-bis up there . My AT-guns and puny Italian tanks are not really a match for those and the infantry seems more keen to run away than do close assaults, so I've been pounding the Char Bs with 75mm and 100mm artillery. I'd say that even if artillery may seem really deadly to AFVs when you are on the recieving end, it doesn't seem so when you need it to destroy opposing armour The 75mm guns have made no impression, while the 100mm guns have claimed 3 Char Bs. They have only fired at tank concentrations (mostly 2-3 tanks around the target hex sometimes a few others further away) and mostly out of LOS from the artillery observer. They have now fired most of their ammo, so that is about 250 rounds of 100mm HE to claim three tanks. A likely explanation for this result could be the thick roof of the Char B - it has top armour of "3" (which is correct, I was so shocked I looked it up )
My own pesky M13/40 tanks with top armour of "2" have been hit by French 60mm and 81mm mortars as well as 75mm and 105mm artillery, though not to the same extent that I've pounded the Char Bs. Still, I havent lost a single vehicle to enemy artillery, not even an immobilization. The supporting infantry is running away, though!
Incidentally, the bastard AI started the game by dumping a pre-emptive turn 0 barrage on the only left-right road. I did the same to the AI the difference being that I had stacked up on the road, he hadn't This was 75mm fire and had no ill effects on the M13/40s either (a platoon of infantry had to sit pinned for a couple of turns though).

Claus B

[chuckfourth]

Hello
I should of course firstly say thanks to all those who have brought to me so many many hours of enjoyment by contributing to this game.
Below I have attached the "results" of a test I did on the DOS version some time ago which may have some relevance to this thread. Of course I do not know if the causes of this descrepancy in results between indirect and direct fire has been addressed other than to make open topped vehicle a bit cheaper.

Thanks for your time Chuck

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control;
DIRECT fire of 50 mm Russ mortar (range > 250m) at sdkfz251 face armour 1 target, yields from 43 hits: 1 destroyed, 3 immobilised, 1 "*" hit. About 300 (give or take a couple) rounds fired.
test;
INDIRECT fire of 50 mm Russ mortar at sdkfz251, yield from 48 hits: 15 destroyed, 5 immobilised, 3 "*" hits. Total of 360 rounds fired.
test conditions;
big park of sdkfz251(1 per hex) surrounded by snipers (if not in view I dont get the 'hit, no effect' message) Artillery spotter AO cannot see target.
All shots reported as 'No Line Of Sight'
My conclusions;
The ratio of kills to hits is much higher for indirect fire than for direct fire
Possible cause(ignoring airburst);
shells falling directly in open back of vehicle
problem;
Probability of round falling in open back if they fall randomly in the 50 m hex, about 1 in 625 (given open back area of about 4 m sq.)
Actual probability according to test, 15 in 360. ie 104 in 2500 or 1 in 25
Possible causes;
1. Being in view is being interpreted by the Game as being in Artillery OP view(ie directed fire).
2. Consistency or Dispersion of the mortar is much less than "random in 50m square" ie by a significant digit shouldnt apply to "undirected" fire however as in this test.
3. Game considers being in blast zone equivelent to direct hit for purposes of calculating indirect fire effect, as this is indirect (plunging) fire the game is testing the HE effect against the top rather than the much more probable side, rear or front armour. This effectively increases the vehicles open top to the size of the blast zone explaining the difference if kills between direct and indirect fire.
While watching the fall of shot for results you soon realise that the distrubution of the results is even enough for this to be considered a big enough result set to draw conclusions from.

Also No. of rounds fired for the indirect test is an underestimate by about maybe 5% as rounds that fall in a hex where the vehicle has already been destroyed should be ignored.

Re: point 3 If this is in fact the case then (for closed top vehicles) near misses from indirect fire are being tested against the top armour rather than the side armour.
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[Cameronius]

In Avalon Hill's Advanced Squad Leader, HE and Arty AFV kills are quite common. An 81mm mortar can be a better AT weapon than a 37mm ATG. Try firing your mortars directly at the AFVs in line of sight, the Polish AI has been doing this to my Panzer IIs with some good effect!