"Why do rules use artillery deviation / drift mechanisms?" Topic

After a few years off, I'm again gaming WW2. My chosen battle scale is for command to be set at Battalion level with the smallest playing piece generally representing a platoon of infantry or about 5 tanks / guns. Why, in games set at this level, do off table artillery rules use a drift mechanism?

If someone can give me an answer, beyond 'because most game always have', I'd like to know because, historically speaking, it doesn't miss the zone it's called in on.

There are several detailed references of how artillery works on line, some more detailed than others, but here is a link to one by a wargamer who has done his homework.

link

It is well worth reading. It is quite a concise 'wargaming' view of what artillery is about. It is an 'in a nutshell' explanation of artillery practices for the Brits, Germans, USA, USSR.

It's interesting to note that the fire basically lands 'on target zone' every time. There is no such thing as 'barrage deviation / drift' because artillery didn't fire for effect until its firing solution had been established with ranging shots. It doesn't mean, of course, that any shells hit individual targets in the zone, it just means that it lands within the correct pre-designated area.

I'm playing Blitzkrieg Commander 2 and it bugs the hell out of me that it uses a deviation / drift mechanism for impromptu artillery barrages. It is interesting to note that scheduled barrage fire never misses in BC2 whilst impromptu barrages have deviation. I find that funny, as it would have been 'ranged in' in exactly the same way. The only difference is that the firing solutions for scheduled barrages would have been stored for use later.

I believe that we should all do away with artillery deviation rules as something misconceived in an ancient wargaming bible, and though proved wrong headed on so many levels, it has been perpetuated, parrot fashion, as gospel, in sets of rules ever since.

I hope this is food for thought, at least.

James

James,

Interesting thoughts and I sort of agree.

I agree in the wargaming sense that artillery drift is probably not necessary in a wargame. First for the reasons you say and secondly because it's simply speeds up game play. Why bother with numerous rules covering deviation if for the majority of the time it will have no significant impact and not effect the game outcome?

Therefore you either receive an "on target" barrage or not and of course wrapped up in the "do not receive a barrage" aspect are all the occurrences where barrages did drift. Such instances where FOOs simply got it wrong, very wrong such as bringing a barrage in on their own position! So maybe you could simply cover this "very wrong aspect" with a form of artillery blunder rule, such as losing your FOO, or your ability to call in future barrages, etc.

Just some thoughts.

DB

Normally you have spotting rounds to determine targeting. Once that is determined its pretty much on target. Drift or off target barrages should be minimal from WW2 on.

It doesn't miss? Man, I wish you'd been standing where I was a couple of times, and I was in a peacetime howitzer unit! There are guys who didn't come back from Vietnam because someone managed to read a grid coordinate backward.

Sorry. Calmer now.

Individual rounds can land anywhere, though it is getting better--what war are you representing?--and we'd all like to tell ourselves that when we're firing for effect we know where the rounds will land. Clearly the more time represented by a turn and the bigger the unit--and the more everyone just stands still--the less provision you need to make for deviation. Personally, I prefer rules which delay the fire: someone called in the ranging shots, and they're still trying to figure out where they landed. (Yes, it happens. "The first round for God, the second for the Devil and only the third for the King.") Sometimes there just isn't time for multiple successive ranging shots--not to mention someone screwing up the math.

But it's also true that our stands are nice discrete things, and without deviation a barrage lands on one and not the other. In real life, especially with close assaults and pinning fire, sometimes the best you get is that most of the rounds fall on the enemy and only a few on our own side. You could, I'm sure, devise a very complicated mechanism to replicate this, but deviation may be a simple one.

I'm talking, you understand, late WWII on. Picture correcting fire by frequently cut land lines, or trying to pick out the fall of one's own shot in the middle of some horse & musket grand battery.

As I say, not my preferred mechanism for post-radio warfare, but I don't think it's wrong by nature.

What annoys me are the rules that don't!
If you are not on target, the shells have to go SOMEWHERE!
I'm Flames of War, if you don't range in, the barrage is aborted. Why?
Not enough rules allow for friendly fire.

Therefore you either receive an "on target" barrage or not and of course wrapped up in the "do not receive a barrage" aspect are all the occurrences where barrages did drift. Such instances where FOOs simply got it wrong, very wrong such as bringing a barrage in on their own position! So maybe you could simply cover this "very wrong aspect" with a form of artillery blunder rule, such as losing your FOO, or your ability to call in future barrages, etc.

I agree they did get it wrong. They did call artillery in on 'wrong target', but the artillery did hit what it was called in on.

One thing I like about BC2 is the request rules and the possibility of just such a blunder. On rolling double 6 to call, you blunder, then, 33% of the time, the target point is the nearest friendly unit to the intended target.

On losing FAO, most armies should lose the use of their associated batteries.

My issue is with the idea of calling artillery and it arriving willy nilly all over the place. If artillery was (historically) as inaccurate as it is in BC2, no one would have bothered with it.

Sorry. Calmer now.

Being a military brat, I know that blue on blue happens. I also know that there are stray shells – 7% of 25pdr shells fired in a barrage landed out of zone for one reason or another and they did land somewhere.

However, from a gaming point of view, I'm not very interested in 'collateral' damage outside of major blunders (which BC2 caters for with blue on blue as a 'blunder event'). That sounds pretty heartless, initial ranging shots could be outlandishly off target and woe betide any unlucky s*d caught under one, but I'm not interested in such accidents. My point is, once ranged in by an observer, the vast bulk of the munitions land on target when the order to 'fire for effect' is given.

Your point about delay is well made. If you read the linked piece in the OP you will see that German artillery, although extremely accurate, took 15 minutes to range in. Moving targets would be impossible for it to hit because even ranging shots took 3 or more minutes to correct.

All,

First, I think I have an issue with the terminology "impromptu" and "scheduled." My issue is, I'm not sure what it means, but that happens a lot ;)

I think in real life you are firing on targets that have either been pre-registered or they haven't.

Pre-registered: rounds have actually been put on the desired impact location prior to the barrage being needed, usually by forces on the defensive or getting ready for an offensive along static lines.

Not pre-registered: we're being shot at from a location we've never fired artillery rounds at before, and now we want to, so we've either got to use spotting rounds to walk onto the target, then call for effect, or we just go all-in and call fire for effect with no spotting rounds, and live with the consequences.

I guess we could talk about Target Reference Points or 'on-call targets,' but in WWII I imagine if they haven't been registered (actually fired on) it's really not going to help. Nowadays TRPs/on-call targets are much more accurate due to being light years ahead of WWII due to GPS for arty and FOs, and Satellite or real-time, geo-locked imagery from airborne ISR, but even in the 90s we were still being trained to call for fire with our position and shooting azimuths/guesstimating ranges to the battery.

In any case, if a battery has registered a target (fired on it, not just marked it on a map), there should be no such thing as 'drift,' other than the potential for simple human error (the guy in the FDC transposed a grid digit to the gunline), but the rounds aren't magically going somewhere else. And there's no change to the impact point, unless the player/commander desires a change to the impact point (like a walking barrage). If you're calling for fire on a non-registered target, it all comes down to how good the FO is. For that, I'm a big believer in FO having to use spotting rounds.

I believe the first spotting round should be at least a little off target (I personally use a D12 direction and D6 distance), and each follow-on spotting round is -1 to the distance deviation. Theoretically this gets the spotting rounds closer each time, though there can be some bad die rolls that go the opposite way, but the modifier keeps going up (down?) as the FO can still adjust for the last splash and should get the rounds on target after a couple tries. Once you get a round on target you can call in fire for effect with no deviation, but if you fire for effect before getting a spotting round on target, all rounds fired get the regular direction/distance deviation.

V/R,
Jack

Hi Jack,

Sorry for the bad terminology. Scheduled would be pre-registered targets, ranging shots having been fired at some point past, simply awaiting the order to 'fire for effect' as part of a pre-planned artillery fire plan. Impromptu, would be targets where the process of registering had to be carried out with ranging shots as unregistered targets presented themselves.

From my reading, in WW2, for the Brits and Germans there was no such thing as unregistered. Without having at least, as you say "use spotting rounds to walk onto the target" barrages hadn't a hope in hell of hitting anything so they didn't happen – especially as accurate maps were not always available then, especially in places like the desert, or worse the jungle. My interest is the operations in the Western Desert mid 41 – mid 42.

Because artillery does miss. It is that simple. The deviation accounts for improper fuses, being off on grid coordinates, and any of the myriad of things that can go wrong. Also (and correct me if I am wrong, because I have been out of the army for decades) a lot of wargamers don't understand that a round within 50 meters of the target is "on target" and does not get adjusted. I agree with you that once the fire for effect order is given, all of the rounds should fall within a defined area as opposed to landing anywhere on the table.

<quote>I agree they did get it wrong. They did call artillery in on 'wrong target', but the artillery did hit what it was called in on.</quote>

Wouldn't that be what the deviation roll is for though?

Probably the best resource for this discussion:

link

Battlefront WWII
Artillery Tutorial

I chock it up to Fog of War and would be disappointed if such rules were absent.

Just because I look over the table and know exactly where to place that concentration, doesn't mean the Capt. Teddy Fahrquar-Vereker, with "Tigers" bearing down on him from every bush, knows where, and even if he did he might be mistaken as to distance or grid reference.

Further if we take it that not every shell hits something (other than the ground of course) then a barrage On Target could still have no effect on the target and some longs, shorts, or wides that did have an effect on something that wasn't targeted.

Certainly bating the odd "accident" FDF (Final Defensice Fire) which is pre planned and pre ranged shoul;d hit and hit quickly provided the communication lines are intact.

Fire from supporting add Hoc batteries should take longer to organise and longer to tange in before fire for efftect.

Thre should be an inherent "danger zone" as a minimum about 200 yds fwds and rearwards of the targeted zone where troops are at risk friend or otherwise. This risk zone is a function of the barrages density. It is an "acceptable" risk in a difficult situation to call fite on your own positioin in fightimng positions if enemy are our in the open in the position. It will inconvenience far more of then than it will you.

This is made worse by the fact in reality wargames artillery often does does far more long lasting damage than is generally the case in the real world.

Many rules do not even play lip service as to how artillery is called and used, proping up bad design with illoical die rolling. This to makes them poorer for this failure.

In reality the typical ammount of ammo supplied ro a battery would make their masters think very hard about fire of effcet at an unranged target. It would be wasted when others may need it later. Just using calls as a means to "ration" ammo in a game does not produce an adequate simulation of hww artillery shoud/could be used. Proppear allocation of battries and simplified ammunition allocaton is faster, more accutare in representation and requires mo more and in some cases less rules.

PS we (Maneouver Group) don,t use drift but do use danger zones. Effects are based on published US effects planning data. Although the mabuals themselves are a bit ambigiuos.

Also (and correct me if I am wrong, because I have been out of the army for decades) a lot of wargamers don't understand that a round within 50 meters of the target is "on target" and does not get adjusted. I agree with you that once the fire for effect order is given, all of the rounds should fall within a defined area as opposed to landing anywhere on the table.

In the game we played this week, where 1cm = 10m, with an artillery barrage zone template 20cm x 20cm (200m x 200m), with an FAO spotting from 80cm (800m distance), the battery was rolling for the whole zone to drift 4d6cm in a random direction each time it was requested.

I figure that the zone encompasses the expected 'drift' of shots aimed at the target – the zone surrounds the actual aiming point. I think for the whole 'zone of fire' to drift 40 m to 240 m is not right. That is what I mean by wargame artillery drift, and I think it's wrong. That shots drift within the 'zone' I understand. That they might not have effect on the targets within the zone I understand, I just don't understand why the whole zone drifts.

Olicana,

Ahh, I see. I think we're saying the same thing, just using different terminology.

"That is what I mean by wargame artillery drift. That shots drift within the 'zone' I understand. That they might not have effect on the targtes within the zone I understand, I just don't understand why the whole zone drifts."

Absolutely. If the battery is 'ranged in,' i.e., it either pre-registered the target area by firing on it yesterday, or it didn't but today an FO has called in spotting rounds and walked them on target and now calls 'fire for effect,' I agree, there shouldn't be any drift.

The FO should be able to call in 'repeat' and have another fire mission dropped on exactly the same target (impact area, not point target) as previously, there's no reason the barrage area would pick up and move 40 to 240m in any direction as the guns didn't change their firing solutions.

It's funny, they always told us not to say 'repeat' on the radio, use 'say again,' as 'repeat' meant shoot the fire mission again. Never made sense to me though, what if I was calling for a MEDEVAC, or providing a SITREP? Was some battery just bored and monitoring our net and gonna pick some grids out of thin air and shoot? Marine logic ;)

I think I do understand why some games have the 'drift'-type mechanism though. First, it makes the game more exciting, more unpredictable, which may or may not be your thing, but I'd say clearly some folks like that aspect. Second, most games don't make you go through the 'ranging in' process, i.e., firing spotting rounds until you get the battery on target, before shooting the fire mission. So you get rules for drift to kind of throw in that uncertainty, and the chance for friendly fire. In real life the friendly fire often occurs with the spotting rounds, and one round hitting a bunch of guys standing around watching the target area has proven to be quite a , but I guess that's difficult to represent in games where one stand=1 platoon or higher.

V/R,
Jack

Uscha,

Do you mean the Final Protective Fire (FPF)? Certainly arty is part of the defensive fire plan, but the FPF is organic weapons (company/battalion), not supporting fires.

Arty will be pre-registered to walk from 2Km (roughly) down to Danger Close, with coordination of those fires generally controlled at battalion level and coordinated at regimental level (who receives priority fires, at least most of the time when the batteries are in general support, though they can be tasked out direct support to maneuver battalions).

Inside that you get to the battalion and company fire plans (which go all the way down to the fireteam, but that has no real impact on the FPF). Most people read the term FPF and get thrown (regarding arty) as it mentions "direct and indirect fire," but the indirect fire is company and battalion-level mortars, and the direct fire is company level MGs (7.62) and battalion level MGs (.50 and Mk19) firing on an FPL.

The rifle platoons, squads, and fireteams get kinda messy. Their only indirect fire weapons are grenadiers, but the problem in the Marine Corps is the grenadier is also the team leader, and should be controlling his team rather than spending all his time popping HEDP rounds out, and, in the olden days, he needed to be firing illumination rounds at night, not HEDP. The other issue is, and this is where doctrine got kind of gray, some battalions I was with would try to assign FPLs to the riflemen and SAW gunners.

This works in theory, but in reality it's a mess because 1) they're not built for sustained fire, and 2) can't hold an FPL. The way they would try to have a rifle or SAW hold an FPL in the dark was this: in a two-man fighting hole you always drive engineer stakes or tent pegs into the ground on each side, so you can find your left and right lateral limits in the dark. The rifle/SAWs' FPL would be 'crank over to your side's lateral limit and go cyclic.'

In other battalions I was with, when the FPF was signaled (usually by a red star cluster), the machine guns would crank over on their FPLs, the mortars would drop HE right in front of the holes, and the riflemen were responsible to their 12 o'clock, to keep enemy troops off the guns.

V/R,
Jack

A long retired tech-ac tells me he'd expect to get the 1st gun of a 25pdr troop/battery/regt on target in less than 4 minutes from the moment he started talking to the GPO. I'd suggest arty rules for wargames are poor because wargamers want to play with tanks and infantry and because a successful barrage does n't make a very entertaining game.
There's maybe an issue also with gamers and writers getting to grips with principles of artillery…how often do you come across a wargame discussion about 100% zone?

You're absolutely correct. At this scale an Barrage is either on target or not. Scatter sufficient to move it an appreciable distance will also make it ineffective and would be corrected well within the space of one turn.

Ah. The drift as described once the zone has received fire does sound seriously excessive. But that's not a problem with rolling for deviation as such: it's a problem with the amount of deviation BKC allows for under those circumstances. Armor penetration rules are subject to the same problem.

The games I like best use ranging as part of the process. ASL practically has a whole sub-game devoted to arty. I Aint Been Shot Mum has an accuracy roll but if it is not accurate you can hold off a turn and try again with less deviation, and again, and again. Fireball Forward the arty is handled by a snafu roll, it does not drift but a really bad roll allows the opponent to place the arty.

Just Jack,
Brings back memories for me.

In the early 70's our Squad Leader had the blooper and all Riflemen and AR guys had FPF stakes to lean your weapon against and perform grazing semi-auto fire.

The two Company Weapons 60's could drop 30 rounds in 30 seconds walking the rounds across your front 25-40 yards away. The M244 60mm has a stated dispersion error of 3m with minimum increment. I'd hate to have 81's on FPF unless I was in a bunker with overhead cover.

The best WWII description of FPF is the second night on Tarawa. Japs would probe the lines to get the MG's to open fire so they could hit them first. There was a lot of cat and mouse, talking smack and HTH before the Banzai charge. The destroyer 5" guns and 105's by the pier pounded the assembly areas and supplied illum. That was supplemented by the 81's and the 60's fired within 25 yards of the Marines and had been plotted before sunset.

I understand plotting the drift and hit location of every artillery round but I think it has more of an entertainment value than realistic application in a war game. Usually in an assault when the infantry got to within a few hundred yards the prep arty lifted and rolled forward. Lifting too early meant they were out of their holes and firing at you. Too late and you got into your own barrage.

In WWII a TOT could involve hundreds of rounds landing in a couple of minutes including 155mm and 8" rounds basically targeting a grid square. Normally it's game over.

Personally I think it is a waste of time and use a different method to determine causalities and then an unsuppress roll each turn to see if the defenders recover and come out to fight. It does work great for MRL's using a scale of 1" = 25m.

In VN if you had 8" arty coming you got at least a mile away from the beaten zone.

Wolfhag

It's funny, they always told us not to say 'repeat' on the radio, use 'say again,' as 'repeat' meant shoot the fire mission again. Never made sense to me though

It makes sense because a CP is a busy place; I worked in one back in the 70's and had to monitor three radio nets simultaneously as well as the intercom in the track. It only takes one stressed operator in the network to forget to switch to the correct frequency and you get booms going somewhere when there shouldn't be any booms going.

In WWII, most all targets at the level we play would be pregistered, and the whole process really is a sub game in itself (although a pretty boring one). And it would have been carried out hours or even days before that attackers left the start line.

Such drift as there is would be fairly minute and account for things like barrel wear, upper atmosphere conditions and of course human error (the layer not getting that bubble precisely level, as all other calculations are double checked) or perhaps faulty ammunition. We had a 175mm shell go off in mid flight one time – lit up the night sky for miles; Colonel not very happy, immediate ENDEX followed by rousing cheers from the gun line!

I'd say one big reason is that the FO doesn't know exactly where he is if he is advancing. Sure if they sit in a defensive position for awhile they pre-registered artillery. Or, they have up to date maps.

In the invasion of the Soviet Union some of the German maps were travel maps. The Russians didn't provide outsiders with maps. And the Russians often kept military roads off any but their own classified military maps.

It's ironic that the arm normally responsible for 2/3ds of the casualties in the field often gets the shortest shrift in wargame rules. I wasn't there, but I don't think you could possibly game a VN firebase defense scenario without incorporating artillery support (arguably for both sides).

Just sayin'.

B

The drift/deviation possibility is one of the things that I am fond of.

I had a 1LT do just that, say " can you repeat that?" on a fire control net. We where not in a mission, but the battery beside us was, and they cranked out another battery 1. In point of fact, you should not fire on the word repeat, it should be repeat target HT 1784, but people get in a hurry and dont transmit everything.

In the US Army you have 2 types of missions,adjust fire and fire for effect. There are subsets of those, but I dont think we need to go into that just yet. It is up to the observer to decide which one he wants. If you are very confident, or in a big rush, you can call FFE missions. but, like everything else, observers can be wrong. And the FDC can make mistakes as well, I sure did. And as someone mentioned above, most everything is supposed to be double checked, but that sometimes get glossed over as well.

Owen

Badger – That's funny man, and I saw a mistake once. An Army 105 was supposed to fire an illum round, but an HE round went out. I don't think anyone got hit, but we were told a SFC was sent home (this was Iraq in 04).

And our calls for fire are the same: gimme one round on adjust, splash, splash out, make corrections.

Number4 – Sure, but 99% of the time we're not talking on the fire support net, we're on our company net.

Wolfhag – Yeah man, but you push your weapon left or right against the stake, but don't realize you're either firing into the ground six feet in front of you, or your weapon is at a 45 degree angle and your rifle rounds are landing three miles away ;)

V/R,
Jack

As above, I would expect pre registered or observed fire to be on target. However, the safe zones for artillery are HUGE , a few hundred yards for field artillery, and deviation rules are largely there to stop players parking their own chaps right on the edge of the beaten zone.

Yes, I know in WW1 it was common to follow the barrage at 25m, but formations were willing to take 10% friendly fire casualties, instead of 50% losses from unsuppressed machine guns.

I was always struck by the accounts of artillery fire in "Company Commander" particularly the full battalion FFE landing 1000 yards short as the observer couldn't really see what he was directing fire at. The only missions he called in which landed anywhere reliable were pre registered.

Just Jack. I was meaning all pre-programmed fire from M203's (Srep in the sliing at the marked point to get the elevation (US Manual) to support fire that is pre programmed from organic mortars, possibly in exceptional cases even higher up.
it
Grasing fire from MG's we deal with differently but is still "on target" being pre surveyed fire.

This topic does highlight the scism between those that want it somewhere near right and those that deliberately favour excessive randomness ro improve a game. Me I'm definirely the former.

Mapping real world directly into a game can produce a game people don't want to play.
Artillery fire is something you can't strike back at. You endure a barrage.
Making arty fire unreliable is thus quite popular with players. Or at least those players who will be on the receiving end.
Introducing drift can be justified in terms of reducing the benefit of the all seeing player, communication friction etc. Maybe the barrage drift represents your men being in a different place to where you thought they were and or the enemy similarly.

In any case. I think the rules designer who has no such variation in a 1:1 scale game is probably going to lose custom.

Hi Martin,

As you say the 'safe' zones can be large and I can see where you are coming from, however, I'm not convinced having barrage zones drifting 'off target' is the answer.

Wargame example: A barrage is ranged onto a target and fire for effect is ordered. Friendly troops are approaching using the barrage as a shield, they are pretty close to it. Suddenly the barrage zone drifts (because of deviation dice), off of the target zone and onto the friendly troops. The friendly troops suffer blue on blue and the enemy, the ranged in target, walks away scot free. That blue on blue happens due to some rounds falling short I do get, but MOST of the barrage should still be falling on the enemy positions. IMHO, as a mechanism, it's a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Surely this kind of incident, if you are to model it at all, can be done in a much better way – perhaps by saying, friendly stands with X of a barrage zone roll D6, on a 6 they take barrage as per the target to represent the X% of rounds falling short in a devastating way: A safe zone is thus created. Just a thought, and I agree that troops shouldn't be placed hard up to a barrage zone.

Hi Andy O,

I know what you mean, but if a game already has a significant chance that an FAO will fail to request artillery at all in a turn – if he fails, that's it over for him that turn, not "I'll spot for something else then" – as a means of representing him not being able to find suitable targets, ammunition supply problems, communication problems, etc., then the unreliability to some extent is already catered for. Also, hitting a target doesn't mean you do any damage – you just get to roll X dice Vs things in the barrage zone. Again, an element of chance is introduced. I guess it's all down to game balance in the end.

I'll go with olicana about barrages not moving a whole lot.

IIRC about 25% of a barrage was supposed to fall in front of the defenders position and not directly on them. Why? The explosions and smoke will screen the advancing forces and create depressions for the infantry to hide in if need be. For a prepared assault the Prep Barrages were fired after guns were already registered to fire the barrages, sometimes days in advance. I doubt if an entire barrage would shift.

I'm not sure what people are trying to recreate with artillery in a game but a prep barrage could last 30 minutes with probably 12 guns (or more) firing 1-4 rounds per minute. If you want to simulate that call the game "Artillery Commander".

Personally I'd start the game after determining the results of the prep barrage.

For squad based games mortars are going to be what is going to be best and most flexible. Light mortars can fire with direct observation and no FO needed.

Wolfhag

Most of the stand + Platoon games have a turn of 15-30 minutes. This allows plenty of time to get the guns on target. Kampfgruppe Commander doesn't worry about on target, but your fire may not arrive until after all your other movement and fire (last action of a turn). Americans usually have the barrage land when requested, Russian get it at the end of their turn. Since the effect of suppression is important to Opp fire and the like, this can have quit a impact (no pun intended) on your turn. I do like BKCs idea of a blunder. Nothing to track and it's over immediately.

The key words in the initial post are "impromptu" and "pre-registered". If it is one, then it isn't the other.

Andy O'Neil,
Artillery barrages were to be endured, only in exceptional cases were they the deciding factor. They are a factor the attacker should consider in the allocation of resources. If you had a points system/force allocation system built in it too should account for this. Departing massively from the real world to prop up a bad model is not the way to go. As wolfram has noted some barrages c old be done pre game start. However this would not cover creeping barrages used in Ww2 for example. Or indeed some cases where the action started and a decision made at some point to go noisey.

If your rules make the landing of a barrage the game winner regularly on its own then you rules are invalid. Even now US manuals say the role of artillery is to suppress and fix in place. This is not the same as destroy everything in the beaten zone!

If your rules make the landing of a barrage the game winner regularly on its own then you rules are invalid. Even now US manuals say the role of artillery is to suppress and fix in place. This is not the same as destroy everything in the beaten zone!

Depends entirely on the density of the barrage, though.

There's a reason we call the Russian/Soviet Arty the "Grid Square Removal Service"!

Specific to Flames, I think the fail to range in = no barrage is a failure of the FO to get rounds onto target. There are enough reports of spotting rounds landing out of LOS of the observer to make failing 3 (or 4) attempts to range in one of those times.

The rule I really miss from Flames v1 was when Air Support failed to range in, the opponent could place the barrage template.

I did not read the other posts. so I may be repeating. Sorry.
These are basic game mechanics that are founded in sound military science. As such it becomes a required mechanic for designers like myself who are veterans. Most of us, veteran-designers tend to like a lot of realism. This runs counter to the preference of many of the current players who prefer speed of play over slower realistic systems.

As an army scout and later mortar platoon leader, the deviation process was second nature. You had the location of the guns which at an artillery level was different than the spotter. The FDC could be with the guns or many yards away and on a different firing axis. The spotter was not always with the ground unit being supported either. So you would get a request from the unit in danger to a spotter in a different direction (axis) and then they would send the data to the FDC in another axis. The FDC would make the calculations and send the firing solution to the guns. If multiple batteries were involved, the process was more challenging.
This is why a spotting round was fired so corrections could be made. Even for mortars, firing for effective on the first volley was not done. Corrections are made by the spotter or unit and the process is repeated. All the time the target force may be moving out of the first targeted area.

So in realistic game mechanics there is a need or the range variations. If not indirect supporting fire would be devastating and unbalance game play.

…and Wolfhag crossed the line for 5 points…..
I think that having the effect of bombardment assessed before the game on the table top is really the only way. We play company level games with a 'field-stripped' version of Bolt Act (in fact Bolt Action 2 kind of confirmed a lot of what we were already doing) so we've developed a system for barrages. It does cause casualties – potentially quite a lot if your guys are n't in any kind of cover – but mostly it inflicts disruption and fear in the form of 'pins'. We think it works reasonably well, but our parameters are maybe a bit different to most people; we want a company level action to be done and dusted in two hours of playing time and we don't much care who wins.

Hope you don't mind me chipping in with my two penn'orth. Barrage drift to me seems very unrealistic as it wouldn't happen in real life. You might get the odd round off line but never the whole lot. The gun or mortar crews would be constantly checking their sights to make sure they're firing on target. Besides which the FOO or MFC would be observing the fall of shot and giving corrections if he deems the fire to be ineffective. I don't game by the way, so if I'm teaching you to suck eggs please tell me to do one, but I am however a mortarman by trade.

Could you use a system whereby each player selects a number of points on the table e.g. bridges, crossroads etc before the game, as pre-registered targets with artillery/mortars on call if the enemy enters those areas. Dice rolls could then be used to determine the effect. Equally for targets of opportunity, assume that the first round misses – which they generally do, even when using modern fire control equipment, and then use a series of dice rolls to determine how many adjusting rounds are needed to get on target. Any more than three and you need to sack your observer! Once on target fire effect can be determined as per the pre-registered targets.

I'm guessing that a lot of what is being represented is not the inaccuracy of the gun(s) but of the spotter! He may say "up a hundred" when he needs "up 90" or some such. How good is he at estimating distances, directions, etc.?

There again does 10 yards when ranging really make any difference when you FFE with 6,8, 12 guns…and potentially a lot more.

Exactly. It doesn't! Any round within 50 metres is deemed effective.

Yeah, corrections are made in increments of 50m (minimum).

V/R,
Jack

Even when the observer knows exactly where he is there is the ranging error factor. The best Army observers seemed to be in the 10% error range but the standard in one WWII manual accepted errors to be around 20%.

The observer doesn't actually need to know his precise location (although he should if he's any good) in order to engage a target. He must however be exact as to the enemy location.

The only information the observer sends to the gun/mortar line is the enemy's grid reference, their height above sea level, the bearing from him to the enemy and the type of fire he wants. The gun line will know their precise location and will be able to work out the firing solution i.e. charge, bearing and elevation, from the information given. Adjustments are then given as left/right, add/drop in relation to the bearing from the observer to the target.

Yes the grid reference. That is not something chalked out on the landscape.

Obviously. But if you're any good at map reading – which as a FOO/MFC you bloody well should be or you're in the wrong job – you should be able to get pretty close. Then once you've seen a round land you can give the necessary adjustments to get on target pretty quickly.

The adjustment distance then is chalked onto the landscape?