105mm Artillery Cost

[Dr Dave]

I've a picture somewhere of my 13yr old son pulling a German 75mm IG on his own. He found it easy. They're very nimble.

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

It could well be the mission you are intending to use. Setting a towed gun up for indirect fire would take about a 1/2 hour since you need to know where you are, so need to survey it in. With AT guns then it becomes a matter of mass. Weapons up to 60mm are reasonably handy, but the bigger weapons take time to hide, and are difficult to manhandle. So an leIG18 is lumbering despite it's size because it takes time to survey in.

[toxicpixie]

The manual for the 17pdr reckons they take a day to emplace! There's the actual stopping, then finding the right position in the area, preparing the position, getting the gun in, finding ranges, checking sight lines, naking sure the whole battery is mutually supporting, communicating with the arms you're supporting, settling the guns in and sorting egress points, camo'ing up & hiding the gun, ammo etc.

And that's not even for indirect fire, which as Ian says adds a whole new level of fiddling about.

Whilst you can come to a dead stop with a gun from road march, swing it out, jump off the van and just start blazing away I don't think it's very effective (or safe...) unless you're in an utter emergency and don't mind sitting bare arsed naked in a field wherever you happened to stop, flinging shells off with a bit of "it's close enough for artillery work" Some armies procedures and technology makes it much easier than others, but you need good troops, the right kit and little/no worries about getting mullered in the open to pull of stunts like the New Zealanders etc "five minutes from road march to regimental fire" abilities.

There's a reason infantry mortars teams were very often "self spotting", as it were, in BKC terms using their own LoS (or via the other stands in their "unit" as an abstraction)

[sediment]

So AT crews rumbling through Villers Bocage hear the rumble of Tigers in the distance.  Over a cup of tea, they casually measure out range sticks, cut themselves fields of fire, dig a weapon pit and 24 hours later they are ready to fire.  Only problem is, the Tigers are back at the beach.  Oh wait, that didn't happen, they set the guns up pronto and started to fire back as best they could, maybe not harming the Tigers, but the accompanying PzIVs and APCs were shot up.  I seriously doubt any AT officer in WW2 had the luxury of 24 hours to set up and measure out positions, except maybe the prepared positions on the Atlantic Wall or Gothic line, etc.  They might even have spilled a bit of tea in their haste.  I agree if your infantry guns are going to fire indirect via a spotter that it might be useful to know where they were and to range in the guns, net in the radios, etc. but lets face it, the officer had a map, a compass and a rangefinder, which in 1944 was all you needed (it was all I needed to navigate until SatNav and GPS drained my initiative away).  AT guns in the advance would have engaged enemy tanks in sight as required, from the march.  The rate determining step being how long it took to get a gun in position to fire and a PAK 36 and similar light AT guns could be made ready in minutes and they were designed to keep up with the infantry, for the IG75, the clue is the IG bit.  Your "hours to emplace" are for, in game terms, off board artillery firing indirect - they would have needed a significant amount of time to be ready for the next mission after moving.  All that is taken care of in the FOO CV rating - you get it or they aren't ready.  Inaccuracies in positioning of guns, ranging in and inaccuracy of spotters sightings are elegantly handled by the deviation dice.

When we are playing, except for prepared defences, aren't all our engagements emergencies.  I'd see it as a blooming emergency if I saw an enemy armoured vehicle coming towards me while my gun is still limbered.  I reckon the crew would be getting ready PDQ.

Cheers, Andy

[toxicpixie]

Two issues - first, AT guns, especially Commonwealth ones

Actually no, those 24 hours to emplace are in the field manual for the 17pdr

It was regarded as a very unwieldy weapon, and required a lot of prep to get into action *properly*. In BKC terms that's actually all pre-game, and would be in an entrenchment, in cover and preferably hidden with proper fields of fire sorted and a HQ near enough to crank out the rapid fire orders!

Of course (as I said as well!), you can crash into action much quicker, it's just very much not ideal. Heck, even the 2pdr was a sod to get set up - it's why despite the "book doctrine" to dismount the crews in the desert kept them on the trucks as portee's whenever possible.

But when the enemy comes knocking, you don't have that time. It's why Commonwealth commanders preferred to have the tracked tank destroyers follow up close after the assault echelon - they could be driven straight up into the captured positions, ready to fire (mostly), before the inevitable German counter attack got under way. They could then bring the towed guns up at their best speed and once set up, free up the TDs to go elsewhere. But repeated experience taught them that AT guns simply couldn't make it up and deploy in time, at least not effectively, and not consistently, and perhaps most importantly - not safely.

The same is true of the German experience - a gun small enough to be portable is not enough gun, and still isn't very portable. Hence the attempt to shift to self propelled units, and the big German losses in AT guns every time the Russians thumped them - remember also, most German guns, even AT ones, were horse drawn!

I'm not saying that AT guns never came off line of march and straight into action, but if they have to your plan has gone seriously wrong, and they should be hammered for it (unless your opponent has other things to occupy him until you get the barrel pointed in the right direction and loose off half a dozen ranging rounds and bodge the set up well enough to get somewhere close on target!).

Second, indirect fires -

Commonwealth and US artillery was theoretically capable (and often, in reality capable) of some astonishingly effective techniques, including very swift "on the fly" fires with excellent accuracy, and it's worth noting that most of the world moved over to similar doctrines & techniques post war Most other nations were simply not up to that standard, and couldn't be - they used an evolution of the WW1 arty systems, and required a three point reference so they needed the target position, the observer position AND their own position, all accurately set, and then worked through to generate the fire mission, which took ages (comparatively); even the best of them (German) from already set up guns with a ready observer took on average nearly fifteen mins to call fire to an unexpected point.

BKC did a good job of reflecting both of those, between the friction from the FO's/HQ CV, the simple mods for Commonwealth/US arty and the difficulty in using towed guns on the offence. Even with armoured tows they're vulnerable, and even if they don't attract ops fire unlimbering them somewhere useful is a sod. The variable time length on a turn and variable numbers of orders received within that space also works well to feed into that

BKC2 didn't need any tweaking there, for my money, but if 3 (and successor) is now using "lumbering" as a trait to describe the more awkward/bigger weapons (whilst light stuff like the PaK36 just has the "minimal" gun rules) then *as long as the trait is written to make sense, and is appropriately applied in the lists*, there shouldn't be an issue.

[barbarian]

I'd say the problem in BKCII was the survivability of the AT guns : They didn't last long, even in cover.

[toxicpixie]

Yeah, you had to get them dug in to start with, as with no target priority rules they could be "cherry picked" easily once spotted. Or if clipped by an arty template.

Still, I have to applaud Pete there - it reflects pretty well on real world awkwardness AND vulnerability!

[sediment]

@TP
Once again we seem to be agreeing.

If you have to use towed AT guns from the march, you've been surprised.  If you knew there were tanks coming you'd be damn sure to have everything you could positioned as advantageously as possible.  Great in deliberate attack/defense games.  In hasty attack or encounter, your towed AT guns would be needed in action ASAP if armour appears.  But the real question is do they need to be lumbering if manhandled and in my humble opinion PAK 36, IG75, 37mm AT and 2pdrs probably don't need to be either lumbering or to deploy.  Maybe larger calibre weapons like the 17pdr do, and I'm not sufficiently expert to know where the divide is, but to be lumbering and to need to deploy makes the agile, smaller calibre weapons too weak in game terms, and the PAK 36 was effective during the Britzkrieg and early Barbarossa era, provided you avoided Matildas and KVs.  I wasn't thinking of the IS75s firing barrages either, but firing direct fire in support of infantry, which is what they were for.  Most times I've used the 75s has been as makeshift AT guns, as they pack a useful punch.

Cheers, Andy

[toxicpixie]

Heh

I think it's a question of what gets listed and how - if you as the list/rules writer have made all ATG's Gun-AT, which gives whatever rules apply to that "arm of service"/stand type, AND have made them ALL Lumbering (further restricting them ALL), then it's a cock up (IMO). The lighter weapons weren't very manhandle-able, but they certainly weren't like a mid to late war, weighs literally tons, and when fired has to be dug out the ground gun. TBH giving bit ATGs like the 17pdr ANY ability to move without limbering is probably overly generous

2pdr should be at least Lumbering and likely immobile - the groovy 360 degree flat platform carriage was a cunning plan that just didn't fit on the ground needs, and although you could fire without fully deploying it still weighed almost literally a ton - unlike the PaK36 which was less than half that, and intended to be brought into action without faffing. But that's splitting hairs on individual guns, in general terms I'd leave smaller man-mobile-ish guns without lumbering (but still picking up the the "Gun-AT" or whatever "deploy to fire", spotted as a gun etc overall rules), and then you can differentiate the bigger ones with both game stats AND a nod to historical accuracy...

Those German infantry guns are handy, probably too handy, in most rules sets. Mortars did the job better and quicker. Although if it's all you've got to try and shoot up tanks with, then you ain't got much choice

[T13A]

For my money, BKC-II modeled the survivability of AT guns pretty well. Not a problem with the rules.

Cheers Paul

[Orcs]

We have discussed the survivability of A/T guns  or lack of it in BKC2 several times at club.

In BKC2 a small A/T gun such as a 2 pdr has 5 hits, A large A/t gun such as an 88 has three hits.

If your targeting the weapons crew - which is why doctrine said to use HE ar MG fire the larger gun having a much bigger crew should have more hits than the 2 pdr with a smaller crew.  If your destroying the gun the points make sense.

The other problem is the lack of target priority and large A/T guns such as the 88 are immediately targeted by all and sundry so die very quickly.

Personally I think all A/T guns should be the same number of hits, as smaller guns are harder to target but have smaller crews so casualties have a greater effect.

[toxicpixie]

Yes, I think it's supposed to reflect the sheer size of the target, and the associated difficulty or lack thereof in disabling it. I assume the small crew of the smaller weapons and smaller limbers, easy ammo handling etc all factors into the higher hits as you can crawl over or throw or roll the ammo for 37mm ATG from cover with a little ammo box/limber out of sight, as opposed to having a dozen blokes all lugging massive 30pdr shells and charges from a limber the size of a car for the 88 (etc).

I can see merit either way mind, as it's another encouragement to use the smaller gun sizes, but that's also covered in "do you use vaguely historical TOE's/force structures?" and the sheer points cost. I might rationalise it a little - make the range one either side of five as three hits, no save is a very easy kill.