Counter battery fire

[profevil]

As the title suggests.. Im working on a mission were the enemy have have artillery spotting radar. To simulate this i planned on making artillery visible to the enemy if in certain areas or if they fired and dident move..

Problem is that i cant find a way to do it, i was hoping for a conditional penaltyzone so i could use a "if" statement and conditions and events.

But i havent found any way to do it, so what are your ideas of simulating counterbattery fire?

Whats on my wish list would be a conditional penaltyzone, so for instance

If unit XXXX in Area XXX reveal to enemy if timer friendly units taking indirect fire

That way i was hoping the enemy arty would fire on them..

[Grenny]

You can not give a condition to a penalty zone.

But you could give the enemy arty a number of random routes of which a few lead them into a "give position to ENY" zone.

[profevil]

The problem is that i want to give it so the enemy knows the blue sides artillery positions if they dont move after fiering to simulate the arty localisationradar.

[MDF]

Counterbattery fire is normally handled by echelons well-above that occupied by the SB player. So maybe the better approach is to leave the matter out of the player's hands.

I have thought about handling CB in the following manner. Set up 500x500m regions covering every conceivable place the player might fire from with his arty. For each zone, set up a corresponding "arty firing from Zone __" condition with the parameters "unit <arty unit> <is> <in region __>" and "unit <arty unit> is <executing fire mission>" Then for each region, create a congruent artillery fire mission area (i.e., in mission editor, right-click on map and select "New arty call") with the following conditions:

{"<Blue> <condition> <artyFiringFromZone__> <is true> <for at least> <1:00>" AND "<0> <= random variable <new> <P1>"}

OR

{"<Blue> <condition> <artyFiringFromZone__> <is true> <for at least> <2:00>" AND "<0> <= random variable <new> <P2>"}

OR

{"<Blue> <condition> <artyFiringFromZone__> <is true> <for at least> <3:00>" AND "<0> <= random variable <new> <P3>"}

and set "After true, delay by <1:00>".

P1 - P3 and the time values are whatever probabilities you think are appropriate for the adversary to locate and target an enemy firing battery.

So, the player can perform a fire mission somewhere, but the longer he lingers, the higher the likelihood that the enemy artillery mission will strike. Downside is that it requires dozens of conditions and regions (but at least you can set the color to transparent and they will not clutter the player's map view). If this takes up too many conditions, you can place them more sparsely around the map and perhaps adjust the probabilities to achieve whatever deterrence level you're seeking. Or you can make the counterbattery arty impact zones larger (within limits, of course).

[Tacbat]

I wonder if making the arty a seperate side, then use the "allied if..." to the red side if the arty stays in region X too long? Then they'll appear on the map. Then apply a "neutral if..." once the arty leave the region so they disappear from the map.

[Gibsonm]

Yes but then the Friendly forces can't access it.

AFAIK, You can be allied to either Blue or Red, not both.

I'd hate to be Blue and relying on artillery but not able to call the fire because they had become allied to Red for the purposes of the counter battery fire logic.

[Grenny]

The problem is that i want to give it so the enemy knows the blue sides artillery positions if they dont move after fiering to simulate the arty localisationradar.

Well, I see no easy workaround for that.

Esim: develop a Green-Archer, ABRA and/or other "fire finding" radars. Uh, Schallmess would be nice too...purty please :-)

[Gibsonm]

So why not use ARAs (Artillery Reserved Area - towed guns) and AMAs (Artillery Manoeuvre Areas - SPA)?

These are planning tools to allocate ground space to guns so they have somewhere to displace to during an engagement.

Draw these regions (e.g.: AMA 1) on your map - usually grid squares.

Set something up like:

If Unit X (the artillery unit) is low on ready ammunition (satisfied when it fires)

AND

Unit X is in AMA 1

Then Blue event "Guns not moving" is satisfied.

On the Red side:

Set up an event "Guns Detected" with a message "Enemy artillery detected in GS X" if the Blue event "Guns not moving" is correct.

Then at least you have a GS to fire at.

Setup similar events for all the ARAs and AMAs on the Blue side.

You can shrink the AMAs and ARAs to smaller than a GS if you want the "radars" to be more precise.

Edited March 27, 2014 by Gibsonm

[profevil]

I made something like a mix of it, now i have different fiering positions and AI controlled arty that after every fire misson move, well if you let them.. If not Counter battery fire!

I also added a trigger to relocate them to new positions if the enemy gets to close.

Here is a short video i made to demonstrate it.. i now realise thou that i forgot to write that after they fire you "give back" the fiering permission with the battery and they return to their ammo trucks.

T7WU-HzULrw

[MDF]

Well, there you go! I was going to say, Gibsonm's idea was really good, and that you could also combine it with my suggested approach to reduce the number of potential arty firing positions and thereby make my approach more practical.