There was a lot less to talk about here than I thought. I was prepared to spend a lot of time teasing out the advantage of TRPs for direct fire, but the testing was pretty conclusively pretty much immediately.

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Combat Mission Basics: Target Reference Points

Welcome back to Combat Mission where we are going to take a look at ingame target reference points: how they work and how to use them.

Target Reference Points or TRPs are basically known points. They represent small areas of the map that have been pre-registered for fire. In simple terms, all friendly pixeltruppen always know the exact distance to all friendly TRPs, so when they engage nearby targets they don’t need to do any guesswork or bracketing to figure out the range, they just pop the numbers in.

Artillery

This is most evident with artillery. Basic fire missions in Combat Mission are an involved process. We need an observer to call the artillery in. The guns fire a spotting round based on their best guess and then the observer relays corrections until the artillery is landing where they want and they can fire for effect.

The observer needs line of sight to the target area, it takes time and the spotting rounds are a pretty good indicator the enemy that they should find somewhere else to be.

If we use a TRP, the observer calls up the artillery asset and specifies which TRP he wants them to target. Because the TRP is a known point, there is no spotting phase, the gunners just look up the calculations they’ve already done and fire for effect straight away. So the call for fire process is significantly faster, the observer doesn’t need line of sight and- because there are no spotting rounds- the enemy gets no warning.

Direct Fire

Less obviously, and somewhat less well known amongst the playerbase, TRPs also work for direct fire. I’ve done a little bit of testing to confirm this: going back to the hull down testing setup from a few episodes ago and counting how many shots it took for a Sherman to hit a Panther at 800m with and without a TRP.

I only did 30 tests each, because while the unaided Shermans varied between 1 and 4 rounds to get on target, the Shermans with the benefit of TRPs got first rounds hits 29 out of 30 times. And the one Sherman that failed to hit on the first go, hit on the second. I think that’s consistent enough to not warrant more testing.

So TRPs also cut the guesswork out of direct fire as well as indirect fire. Engaging an enemy near a TRP is significantly more effective, at least for the opening shots.

Using TRPs

So TRPs are fantastic, but they have two main downsides. The first is that their effects are limited to a 50m radius around the TRP marker, so they mark the centre of a 100m wide circle.

Second, they are usually quite rare. Artillery dominated scenarios which break down into TRP-enabled whack-a-mole are not particularly engaging- even if that is a smart way to fight. And in the quick battle system TRPs are quite expensive so they’re competing with actual combat power in force selection.

In other words, you are generally not going to have a lot of TRPs and it’s very important to get the most out of them.

Luckily, in the deployment phase you can place them anywhere on the map. They’re not restricted to setup zones. It can be tricky to get a handle on exactly what area they cover because that’s not marked. One way to get around that is to select a unit, give it a move command of some description and then put a 100m circular target arc on the waypoint. That way you have a marker you can drag around the map to see your TRP coverage. Just don’t forget to delete that waypoint when you’re done.

It is important to make sure you’ve got your TRPs in the right place before the battle starts. Once the deployment phase is over, they are fixed and you can’t move them. They also lose their icons, so it’s very important to remember where you put them. Despite the fact that they are represented in CM by giant orange markers, they can be hard to find on big maps or in dense terrain.

So TRP locations need to be thought out before the battle starts: you need to have a plan to get the most out of them.

Examples

Obviously there’s an infinite diversity of plans out there so we can work through some possibilities.

King and Country Scenario

This is the King and Country scenario from Battle for Normandy’s Commonwealth Forces module. We’re attacking up the map as the British and we have a choice between advancing across the open ground in the centre and on the right, or going through a woodblock on our left.

The German defenders are likely to be behind a bocage line on the right or in the wood, so those are two good locations for us to put a TRP. Personally, I would favour the woodblock. I don’t like advancing across open ground, I would probably want to attack left and clear the woods. Fighting in woods is a pain, so I could use the TRP to conduct a creeping barrage that should help. This is pretty awkward when the artillery needs to go through the spotting process every time you make a correction… with a TRP it’s much easier.

If we decided to focus on the other flank, a TRP on or behind that bocage line would create a 100m stretch of bocage where our direct fire would be take less time to dial in and become effective. Because we’re attacking, this isn’t all that useful. In theory, yeah, we can build fire superiority faster because our pixeltruppen don’t need to get their eye in, but TRPs essentially confer a first-rounds advantage and if we’re trying to suppress the enemy here then we’re looking at a longer process where that advantage is less relevant. Much more beneficial is the ability to quickly call in artillery to destroy, suppress or smoke up the enemy in that bocage line.

If we flip round to the German perspective, it also makes sense to put a TRP in the woods. It’s a good jumping off point for a British attack on our right flank. If we let the Brits take the woods, we can use a TRP to call in artillery on it even though we don’t have line of sight. That will go a long way towards denying that avenue of attack and- if we’re lucky and our timing is on point- we can catch a lot of British infantry as they assemble.

Alternatively, we could put one in the bocage on the British side of the open ground for much the same reasons as the British would want to put one on our side: to make it easier to gain fire superiority and call in artillery. Here, the direct fire advantage is more relevant. Because we’re ready and waiting on the defence and the Brits are coming to us, opening fire with maximum accuracy is very useful. We want to shut down elements of the enemy base of fire quickly and effectively. This is still not as useful as rapid artillery, but it’s better than in the offence.

Particular to direct fire, we could also benefit from a TRP covering the road. there is only one natural gap through the bocage that British armour could use to advance. Siting a TRP in that gap would give any antitank assets we have covering it a very high first-round hit chance, which might make the difference in an engagement. Obviously it’s a narrow chokepoint as well: if we take out one tank in the road, it’s going to be a lot more difficult for others to get past.

We could also use a TRP to multiply the advantage from an existing engagement area. The British approach over the open fields is dangerous, but their infantry could conceivably go to ground if our troops open fire and have to find the range. A TRP would make those opening bursts much more effective and, if the enemy was forced to take cover, we would be able to quickly get some mortars falling on them.

Or, because we’re defending, we could put a TRP on one of our objectives. That way, if we’re forced out of it, we can easily deny it to the Brits with artillery.

That’s just a quick analysis, but the broad theme is that we can use TRPs to make our engagement areas more effective, close down avenues of attack and strike areas we don’t have good line of sight to.

Conclusion

So, that’s an overview of Combat Mission’s Target Reference Points. There’s not that much to say about them, the main draw is that they allow players to call in fires without line of sight from an observer. They do make the opening shots of direct fire engagements more accurate, which could be the deciding factor, but this is probably less useful than beyond LOS targeting.

Hope you all enjoyed this one and found it useful. If you’d like to see these videos early and support the channel you can do so via Patreon and Youtube Memberships. Whether you do or not, thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next one.