Artillery

[PoorOldSpike]

ARTILLERY TRAINING RANGE
Select a Forward Observer team. (the tanks are dummies) and click the gun icon (yellow circle)
Note the guy packing a radio to relay the FO's instructions to the offmap arty. (All heavy arty is off map)

And this screen will come up showing the FO is in contact with 2x 81mm mortars and a battery of 4x 105mm guns.
Let's take the 105's. There are 3 patterns available, Point, Area and Linear, let's select the Area Pattern.
Note there are 140 HE shells available, ha ha-

You then choose params like the duration of the fire mission, the intensity, the delay (short delays have an accuracy penalty), blah blah, click the desired impact point and drag an expanding circle over the area you want to plaster, then click 'Confirm' -

And in it comes-

POINT PATTERN: (As before, select your pattern at the FO screen)
Click the impact point, and the shells will saturate in a tighter pattern, here a tank takes a direct hit-

LINEAR PATTERN: click a spot on the map then click another spot and the pattern will fall along the thick line between the two clicks, ideal for duffing up a line of trenches-

NOTE- With all types of pattern, arty scatter happens sometimes and is never guaranteed to fall exactly where you want it.

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ARTY NEEDS NO LOS IF ASSIGNED IN SETUP PHASE

The Forward Observer team (circled) has no LOS to the farm-
(noob note, the blue foreground is the setup zone, click a unit, select 'Move' and click where you want to place it in the zone. The blue vanishes when the game begins)

And because it's the setup phase the FO can assign arty in the usual way even without LOS-

And in it comes, it's only 60mm mortars in this case but will certainly frighten the hens-

 

[PoorOldSpike]

AIRBURST!

With some arty types you can choose 'General' or 'Personnel' shell types-

This is the 'General' type, standard impact-fuzed ground-bursting shells..

and this is the 'Personnel' type which seems to be a mix of impacts and airbursters.
Note the puff of dust on the ground underneath the two airbursts caused by red-hot shrapnel blasting downwards, lethal to anything in trenches, emplacements or open-top AFV's etc-

 

[PoorOldSpike]

YOURS OR HIS?

It's sometimes hard to tell who artillery belongs to, especially if you and your oppo have both got barrages dropping at the same time.
Orient the view so that you can see the angle the shells are dropping at, here they're angling down from the righthand (German) side of the map, so they're German (ignore the raindrops)..

While this barrage is coming in from the left (US) side of the map so these must be American-

 

[Hiram Sedai]

very good showing of where I am and where you are not.

 

[PoorOldSpike]

STOP IT!

To halt a barrage, select your spotter and click the Arty button (circled)-

Then click the Available Arty window, then the 'Cease Fire' button-

 

[PoorOldSpike]

very good showing of where I am and where you are not.

Rest assured that when I post screenshots of ongoing games, I make sure that my oppos only see what I want them to see..

 

[Rico]

Tried a Nebelwerfer battery laying down a barrage -- they fire and reload a lot faster than in CMx1 -- that's a LOT of HE arriving at once

 

[Hiram Sedai]

Rest assured that when I post screenshots of ongoing games, I make sure that my oppos only see what I want them to see..

yours is the superior intellect

 

[Cue-Ball]

And this screen will come up showing the FO is in contact with 2x 81mm mortars and a battery of 4x 105mm guns.
Let's take the 105's. There are 3 patterns available, Point, Area and Linear, let's select the Area Pattern.
Note there are 140 HE shells available, ha ha-

One other thing to note is the yellow triangle next to the 105mm Howitzer (upper right corner), compared to the green circles next to the 81mm mortars. These denote how well matched the observer is to the artillery being called. For instance, an HQ that is in command all the way up the command chain may be able to call in a shore bombardment from a battleship, but it will likely be a bad match and take considerably longer for the barrage to arrive than if it was called by a designated FO, for instance. The icon color gives you an idea of how well the observer and asset are matched and how much of a penalty you're going to get if you call that asset from that particular observer.

 

[PoorOldSpike]

THE 'EMERGENCY' ARTY CALL IS A WASTE OF SHELLS

Let's select the offmap 81mm mortar-

And give it a 'Point' target smack on that small barn.
(Note that although I clicked in the middle of the roof, the end of the target line jumped to the nearest tile, that's normal for Cmbn arty and area-fire placement)
I make it an 'Emergency' immediate mission and begin the turn-

And less than a minute into the turn the shells start coming in, but impact hopelessly off target at top left-

Now let's restart the test and use any mission type except 'Emergency'. I select a 'Heavy' immediate mission-

And start the turn. Nothing comes in until almost the end of the turn when the spotting round on the right arrives, followed by two more the next turn.
(Note- sometimes only one or two spotting rounds arrive, whatever the spotter thinks are needed)

Finally the first shell of the barrage arrives about halfway through the turn-

Quickly followed by the rest of the barrage smack on target-

scratch one barn-

Summary- Emergency missions arrive less than a minute into the turn, but because they don't use preliminary spotting rounds, they're likely to be off target.
So tactically they're only useful if the target is spread across a huge area of the map, for example a zillion men and tanks coming at you, as no matter where the shells fall, they're bound to hit something.

Non-Emergency missions won't arrive for about one and a half turns/minutes, but they'll arrive on target, and you'll have to hope the enemy is still there.

Note- times may vary slightly from game to game, and might also vary according to wahat calibre shells are being called in)

(Incidentally if you plot any arty in the Setup phase, it arrives with no delay and smack on target even if the spotter has no LOS, so beware getting a bombardment on you on turn 1 if your oppo guesses where your start line is)

 

[Cue-Ball]

Non-Emergency missions won't arrive for about one and a half turns/minutes, but they'll arrive on target, and you'll have to hope the enemy is still there.

Note- times may vary slightly from game to game, and might also vary according to wahat calibre shells are being called in)

I've found that times vary a lot more than slightly. One and a half minutes to call 81mm using an FO is about right, but when using other units it can take substantially longer. I've had 105mm off-map arty take 12 minutes to arrive, because it was being called by a lower level HQ unit rather than a FO. Even on-map mortars can take 3-4 minutes if calling them with something other than a dedicated FO.

(Incidentally if you plot any arty in the Setup phase, it arrives with no delay and smack on target even if the spotter has no LOS, so beware getting a bombardment on you on turn 1 if your oppo guesses where your start line is)

Note that pre-planned arty works even in Meeting Engagements. There's a big thread about this on the BFC forum because it's very easy to barrage the enemy's deployment zone on the very first turn. I highly suggest making an agreement in multiplayer games that no arty will be called on the first turn in an ME battle.

 

[pillar]

Spike,

All this stuff should go into a wiki for CMBN.

 

[Dutch Grenadier]

Pillar welcome to the FGM.
Post a thread in the introduction section.