can i change a preplaned arti strike somehow?

[oho]

I want to abandon the current bombardment and spare the preplaned (With Q) arti strike. Is that possible somehow?

[Alsatian]

If you already hit the Go button, no. Your arty is committed and you can't recall it. You get that as a warning when order preparatory bombardment.

[dieseltaylor]

OHNO!

Sorry Oho your troops may not like you shortly. ;)

[The Coil]

You can, however, stop the bombardment by loading your spotter onto a vehicle. The arty will resume once you unload them.

[JasonC]

The Coil - does that really work with a QQQ delayed prep fire? If so, it would be news to me. (Welcome, but news...)

[The Coil]

JasonC - yeah, I just stumbled across that in a recent game. Did a quick re-test to be sure.

If you load your spotter onto a vehicle, the countdown stops in place, and resumes where it left off when you unload him.

If you load him mid-barrage, the barrage stops in place, and resumes immediately upon unloading.

Seems sort of gamey, but it makes that conscript spotter pretty powerful, when you can program in a 1 minute delay, have him jump in a truck, and effectively bring down arty on a given spot whenever you want.

Incidentally, if you retreat a spotter with a pre-planned strike off the map, the barrage will still fall (or continue to fall) at the programmed time.

[Alsatian]

Wow that is gamey.

[GSX]

Gamey as a Fox!

[Philippe]

I really don't like jumping on the bandwagon of calling something gamey all that quickly. Especially because people tend to call things gamey more because they don't like them rather than from any deepseated historical conviction.

But I'm having a great deal of difficulty imagining what sort of real-world behavior this is supposed to reflect. I really wish someone who knows more about this than I do would enlighten us on the underlying reality that is supposedly being modeled here. What's being described doesn't really feel right.

[SteveS]

It is obviously just a bug no-one has noticed before. Scenario designers at least should take some steps to counter it. If they clearly want the player to use a pre-planned bombardment they should make sure the FO is not a radio FO. If they must have a radio FO in the scenario then they should enter as reinforcement after turn 1 so a pre-plan strike can't be issued.

[JasonC]

Yeah I always use (and give) line FOs for prep fire, so it never comes up.

[The Coil]

It'd make me feel a bit dirty to knowingly use it. But it's a feature/bug/thingy worth knowing about, if only so you don't board your spotter and unknowingly cut off your key large cal barrage at a critical point in the battle (which is how I stumbled across it).

And also so you know how your sleazy, gamey, unprincipled opponent is always dropping arty on you at just the right time...

[dieseltaylor]

Presumably the firing, whenever it occurs is on a single pre-registered target so though nice it is not overly gamey. The bombardment scheme could well be fire cease fire and then re-new when you think sufficient time has elapsed for the defending troops to re-occupy the line.

[Rankorian]

I, too, don't like to jump on the word "gamey" too often.

But this "FO on and off the truck" is one that I won't be using against the AI, at least.

But thanks for the info--as you said, it would be frustrating for me to accidently stumble into this, and be frustrated by having no idea why my bombardment stopped.

[Leprechaun]

Nice tip Coil. Definitely gamey but good to know nonetheless.

[GSX]

Not really a good thing to have. Preplanned arty is very accurate. So you start your arty, jump your guy into a vehicle and you can use this accurate arty at some future point.

[JasonC]

The big use would not be the accuracy, but the ability to hit blind zones.

You have to pay the extra cost of a radio FO to do it, so it isn't free. Normally with one of those you can call a strike early, and time it by using small adjusts to "bump" the time.

But what you can't do that "legit" way is ensure on target and on time shoots at an aim point the FO can't see.

With this gamey trick, you can. You can thus get the manipulated time of a normal reactive shoot, and the full board aim points of a preplanned one.

There is still a cost, though. You can't adjust that aim point after the first turn. So you are giving up quite a bit to get that "blind spot" fire. If there is never anything there (more common on larger maps or lower force to space or both), the module is still wasted.

[ January 30, 2008, 09:51 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[sudowudo]

thinking about it,i may of had this tactic used against me.
it was a battle where i had infantry reinforcements appear on the map in the same place at intervals.the first two were in instant 120mm mortar fire that lasted for one turn.the third reinforcement was larger and they got what i imagine was the remainder of the spotters allocation that lasted a couple of turns.
obviously my opponent had opened the battle in editor and plotted the strike to coincide but i always wondered how it stopped and started without TRP's or LOS.

[Other Means]

Does it work in operations? There's a large exploit there - if you don't use it then you keep it for next time.

[The Coil]

Originally posted by Other Means:
Does it work in operations? There's a large exploit there - if you don't use it then you keep it for next time. Yup, works in ops, too.

I'd call it "gamey" in the sense that it seems to take advantage of the way preplanned arty is implemented with no sensible real world explanation for why it exists. I can't imagine a scene in which the preplanned arty strike is going to fall too soon, so Captain Smith yells to his arty spotter "Bob, hop on the truck so they'll quit shooting." So it seems like it's more a "trick" than a "tactic". Whether or not it gives an "unfair" advantage is maybe up for debate, given the cost of a radio spotter and some sort of transport, and the limitations of having to pick a target point on turn one.

If what Sudowudo is describing is in fact what happened, that seems to be over the edge in exploiting the thing. Yet one more thing to negotiate with your opponent before the game:

OK, so, before we play, a few quick things -
You can't take too many big cats.
No using those Italian SMGs.
No looking at the terrain windows of contact markers to see if my guns are dead.
No edge-hugging attacks.
No turn 1 barrages on my setup zones.
You can't scout with crews.
Or drive jeeps through my lines to try to trip cover arcs.
No reverse slope guns.
Oh, yeah - AND no hopping your arty spotters in and out of vehicles.

[slysniper]

thinking about it,i may of had this tactic used against me.
it was a battle where i had infantry reinforcements appear on the map in the same place at intervals.the first two were in instant 120mm mortar fire that lasted for one turn.the third reinforcement was larger and they got what i imagine was the remainder of the spotters allocation that lasted a couple of turns.
obviously my opponent had opened the battle in editor and plotted the strike to coincide but i always wondered how it stopped and started without TRP's or LOS. Sudowudo,
Who was it that you played in that battle, that is someone worth avoiding and wasting time with

[sudowudo]

Originally posted by slysniper:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> thinking about it,i may of had this tactic used against me.
it was a battle where i had infantry reinforcements appear on the map in the same place at intervals.the first two were in instant 120mm mortar fire that lasted for one turn.the third reinforcement was larger and they got what i imagine was the remainder of the spotters allocation that lasted a couple of turns.
obviously my opponent had opened the battle in editor and plotted the strike to coincide but i always wondered how it stopped and started without TRP's or LOS. Sudowudo,
Who was it that you played in that battle, that is someone worth avoiding and wasting time with </font>[/QUOTE]i honestly cannot recall the guys name but it was about 4-5 years ago.

[Rankorian]

"No reverse slope guns"

This is because of some LOF quirks that could make them unhitable?

[JasonC]

Yes. Guns are height zero. HE only hurts infantry type targets by impacting the ground right where the gun is, while vehicles are modeled as having height and can therefore be hit "on the fly". Also, anything very close to a crestline is allowed to fire "over" that crestline, without the firing location being "moved" up to the "sight point".

The result is a perfectly positioned gun can have wide LOS to a whole valley on the other side of a crest, even to positions lower than the gun itself, such that rounds fired back would have to pass through the hill to hit their height-zero location. With slight unders intersecting that hill not a few meters ahead of the gun, but more like 100 meters ahead of it, and slight overs flying 100s of meters beyond the gun.

The game allows a very small chance of a hit right where the gun is in those circumstances (had to be patched in for even that), but it takes very high crew quality and numerous shots to have any appreciable chance of getting those and so KOing the gun. The gun is much more likely to KO you in the meantime.

If you put the gun in a concrete bunker instead, but then move that bunker up to the crest line, the tank has a better chance of KOing it with a firing slit penetration. When a gun's survival chance *increases* by being taken *out* of a concrete bunker, something is clearly wrong.

Exploiting reverse slope gun deployments is therefore bug exploitation stuff. With me, it will mean it is the last game I play with that person. How you handle it is up to you.

The test for whether a gun deployment is "fair" is to use the LOS tool to scan locations ahead of the gun, at which it can fire. If you see a "kink" in the early part of the LOS line, right near the gun, then your positioning is gamey and exploitative. If the LOS line is straight and continuous to all likely shooting locations, you are far enough forward on the "military crest" for the placement to be "fair".

[dieseltaylor]

Does the gamey crest allow some recompense for borg spotting tanks and infantry, and the therefore rather limited life expectancy of guns?

Personally I had forgotten about the effect but bottom line surely is never go to a party without some mortars. Anybody turning up without one or two deserves whatever they get : )

[JasonC]

No, they really don't.

It completely alters the realistic combined arms relationship between guns and tanks, which is that the former can attrite the latter, and beat them if they outnumber them - but are readily overpowered after single losses if the tanks outnumber the gun and all have LOS.

Exploiting the crestline LOS bug will get you either a drop or at a minimum a need for a new opponent, and rightfully so - at least against me. Just don't do it.

[Rankorian]

I suppose the exploit could also work with Shrek equipped infantry just behind a ridge-line, against AFVs? Or no? (I have not tested.)

But likely less decisive/annoying than guns, because the survival (or not) of some guns can be absolutely decisive for a battle?