[img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27811682/5b86b8de3a57e791dacc9eb00c88124f49ed4214.jpg[/img] Next patch will introduce certain new mechanics which we'd like to explain a little bit. [h2]The problem[/h2] As all of you guys surely know, in Command Ops 2 you, a human player, can issue bombardment mission orders directly to artillery units. This feature itself is realistic and quite a natural way to employ your artillery, however, people often have been complaining that it is way too powerful. Some players are even used to have a kind of house rule, when they are not using artillery (directly) at all, keeping all of it attached to battlegroups and thus performing automatic CAS missions only. This house rule, they believe, makes the gameplay more balanced and realistic. So what's the problem with the artillery? Let's see how it is currently functioning in the game. We have here a 122mm battery, which we assign with a 10 min long firing mission: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27811682/8e2a2643c09ec60c6d617f922ccbfea8a83e8378.png[/img] It is 02:30 now, so the bombardment will start in five minutes and it will hit precisely the designated point. After the bombardment is over (at 02:45) you will be able to create another firing mission and it, again, will take only five minutes to start firing and the shells will land precisely on target. Being able to fire valleys of fire continuously with 100% accuracy is the easiest way to stall en enemy attack or pinpoint their key defensive positions. This is why it is considered a kind of abuse by veteran players and is being often frowned upon. [h2]The solution[/h2] Instead of just increasing the minimal time between bombardment missions, say, to 10 min, which would be the simplest and the quickest solution, we've tried to introduce some more realistic modelling of the artillery mission in general and Forward Observers (FO) in particular. Unfortunately, the game currently does not support modelling of wires, comm links and radio networks (although communications are implemented in the game engine, and you may have actually seen radios in the estabs, the feature is currently turned off for certain practical reasons). Therefore, for now we have to use a simplified way to model the FOs, but it should also not be oversimplistic and allow us to integrate easily the actual communications model, if we ever decide to switch it back on in the engine. The resulting approach is described below. First at all, the game will determine, whether the firing mission is observed or not, meaning if there are any friendly units: [list] [*] being able to see the target location; [*] being able to conduct FO in general; [*] being able to conduct FO for that particular firing unit through the Chain of Command. [/list] Basically, an observed mission is (supposed to be) more efficient than non-observed. First topic is simple, a unit must be able to "see" the target location. If there are no units able to "see" the location, then the mission is definitely non-observed. This has an interesting consequence: now it will be slightly more beneficial to occupy and control certain hills or ridges, giving you a better field of view, because this will make more of your firing missions observed. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27811682/176efacb796c19e20509054acb7f989d28094ce0.jpg[/img] Second topic is slightly more complicated. Being able to conduct FO means that your potential FO unit must: [list] [*] not be routed or recovering from routing (it is somewhat difficult to FO if you're fleeing or hiding in a cellar) [*] occupy a prepared defensive positions (be dug-in or better) or, if it isn't (meaning the unit is in the open) it must not be significantly suppressed; [*] unit size must be bigger or equal to the minimal allowed artillery liaison unit size. [/list] I'd expect all these points are pretty clear and natural except the latter one. There is a parameter in the Estabs which tells the minimal size of a unit capable of doing artillery liaison. If it is set to, say, Battalion, then only Bn HQs (and above) are able to conduct FO duties. This parameter abstracts the "communication level" of a certain Service. Say, one could expect that US Army in 1945 would have this set to Section (meaning FO missions are virtually unrestricted), whereas for Red Army in 1930s we may want to set this to Battalion (meaning FO are only attached to Bn HQs, rendering companies and platoons incapable of performing FO duties). Then, the third topic (FO via Chain of Command) is the most interesting. There is always a certain Chain of Command (CoC) existing between the firing unit and the FO unit. The longer the CoC the longer it will take firing mission to start. At the extreme CoC lengths (say, if the firing unit is a Rgt Btry at one infantry division and FO unit is an infantry company at another infantry division) it may not even be possible to establish a comm link at all. So that's why there is another parameter in Estab which determines the maximum possible length of CoC. If the particular CoC length exceeds that value, then this pair of the firing unit and the FO unit may not conduct an observed firing mission. Once all these criteria are assessed, the firing mission is classified either as observed or non-observed. For an observed mission the actual CoC (between the firing unit and the best possible FO) is used to determine the time necessary to start the mission. For a non-observed mission the CoC used is the one between the firing unit and the on-map boss (the highest available HQ deployed), because in that case it is assumed that the mission is assigned directly by the on-map boss. The time needed to start a firing mission consists of a base delay (some fixed time needed to fire a mission, that time depends of the firing unit's training and experience) and command chain delay (every unit in the CoC between the firer and the FO adds some duration, depending of its training and experience). Note: if a firing unit and FO are found within the same battlegroup, it is assumed that there is no command chain delay at all (only the base delay). The reason is, units within the same battlegroup are assumed to be within the same comm network and able to communicate directly. So let's go back to our original example. When new mechanics is applied, the actual delay is no more 5 minutes, but 28 minutes. This is because we fire at the nighttime, so the mission is non-observed of course. The mission, in this case, is assigned to the battery by on-map boss (Colonel Ivenkov, HQ 57th Special Corps) and the length of CoC is 3. This is sampled to 10 minutes of base delay plus 18 minutes of CoC delay, total 28 minutes. Naturally, the delay for an observed mission would be smaller. Also, if a firing unit and an FO (on-map boss in this case) would be within the same battlegroup, the time would also be much smaller even in the case of non-observed mission, because there will only be a base delay of 10 minutes and no CoC delay at all. Of course, all the concrete values are configurable in the Estab editor per each Service, so Luftwaffe units may have longer firing delays than Heer has. Also, the actual delay also depend of the particular unit's training and experience (the better they are, the lesser will be the delay). So one is always able to configure these values in a way that an inferior force (say, Chinese army in WW2) will suffer of much longer delays than a superior force (say, Wehrmacht). [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27811682/830067d369fca21ad44e5dfea0ee670396fc69ec.png[/img] But this is not over yet. After the actual firing starts at 02:58 we will see the following picture: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/27811682/98e90e9a402faef2c0519379105e0b59e81f63fe.png[/img] So, the shells are not falling where we've expected them to be! What's happening? There is another kind of penalty introduced - the (im)precision. This penalty represents the errors in determining the range and the firing direction (from the firing unit to the target location), separately. These are randomly sampled errors and, of course, the better firing unit's training and experience are, the smaller will be these errors. The interesting thing is, that the range error is measured in percents of the actual firing range. Combined with direction error, this means long-range firing mission will suffer of a bigger (absolute value) error, than a short-range mission. Of course, non-observed firing missions are penalized more than observed ones. In the example above, the actual firing location is about 90 meters away of the original target point. This isn't very big difference (could be much more, actually, up to few hundreds of meters), but it is still big enough to deal less damage to an enemy unit if it is rather small (say, just a single company), because many shells will fall off target. Of course, all these error values are configurable. So it is up to DLC (or custom scenario/Estab) creator to find the best values to represent that particular era, campaign and an armed force. [h2]Summary[/h2] [list] [*] Firing artillery missions will take now much longer than before, also these missions are less precise than before; [*] It is a good practice to assign a bombardment mission to an artillery unit within the same battlegroup (or at least same regiment/division) as other friendly units in the area, as it may significantly reduce the time to prepare the mission; [*] Having friendly units located on top of hills and ridges is a good practice, as that would allow more observed missions; [*] Assigning a bombardment missions at the nighttime or against an invisible target (say, in the enemy rear areas) means the fire will not be very precise, and it will also take more time to prepare; [*] Bombardment mission over a long range will be less precise than short-range ones. [/list] That's all for today, folks!