light mortrars
 

I`m quite sure that this has been adressed before, but why does it take 2.2 turns to call for a light mortar to fire? For example the German 5cm GrW 36 weighted 14kg. You put the base plate on the ground, aim and fire. This should take some seconds. The best I could achieve was 1.2 turns (experienced crew and experienced artillery spotter, while playing for Germany.)
Right now time for deployment of artillery only depends on the experience of the artillery piece and the spotter, so as for the time it doesn`t make a difference if you plot a 150mm gun of 4tons or a small mortar of 15kg.
Is it possible to change that for light mortars only, so they can be used more quickly than the more heavier types? Maybe 1.2 turns as basement and 0.4 with experienced crews and spotters.

Cheers

Mario

Re: light mortrars
 

These small mortars are better used in direct fire.

Re: light mortrars
 

Agreed light mortars are best used as direct fire more an suppressive combat rather than planned plotting,but they are there on the bombard screen if wanted for that purpose also.

Re: light mortrars
 

Light mortars were usually attached to company or even platoon level and therefore should be more responsive than the larger calibre attached to the regiment or division.
It just looks strange, when I look at the bombard screen and see 155mm and 105mm field guns with the same reaction time as the light mortars.
Maybe it`s possible to adjust one unit class for mortars (I think there are four of them; all the rest is fine).

Cheers

Re: light mortrars
 

"Light mortars" are whatever unitclass the OOB designer decided to use to represent within a particular OOB so conceivably between the two games that could be EVERY mortar class available and every mortar class could conceivably contain any size mortar so no, it would not be possible to adjust one mortar class to accommodate this

Re: light mortrars
 

And would you consider to slightly reduce time for plotting of all mortar classes? Anyway mortars (even the large calibre ones) were usually attached to a lower hierarchy level than field guns or infantry guns.

Cheers

Re: light mortrars
 

Right now we are dealing with all the code changes we want to get involved in this close to a release.......so no.

Re: light mortrars
 

Anyway, thanks for your great work in all these years. You`re doing a brilliant job and I think that it is amazing that even this year (in your sabbatical) we will get a new patch soon.

Thanks a lot Don

Re: light mortrars
 

We didn't intend to create one..we INTENDED to do what we said.... take a year off.. it just happened ( blame or thank the long winter here...)

Re: light mortrars
 

All observers (including coy HQ and platoon leaders) can call in any indirect artillery that the force possesses. FOOs just do it faster. All SP FOOs are AOP/MOP/Air/NGFS joint fire teams.

All on-map arty has less delay than off-map arty. That is the ONLY differentiation in artillery types in the game (and we added that - in the original game off-map was as quick as on-map).

Now if we made artillery that was part of a company's formation hierarchy even faster to call in:
- Players would only buy companies with integral mortars/light guns
- And/or players would cross-attach artillery batteries (on or off-map) to rifle etc coy HQS
- If we made observers part of a coy faster - players would ditto x-attach FOOS to coys

And then all human players would get the superfast calls. Since SP does not limit the FOO to fires onto enemy that he knows about, then the players would use their "Gods eye view" of the battlefield to map fire this new superfast arty all over the map in map fires on stuff that B company HQ would in reality know zilch about.

Thus the AI and any PBEM player would find their units followed around by a constant drizzle of low delay artillery wherever they were on the map. Fun - not!. The artillery delays in the game are there to limit the player's God View of the battlefield by simulating the chain of command to call on fires, somewhat.

The AI of course would know nothing of this little party trick, and get even more disadvantaged.

In short - play balance is why the artillery is as it is.

Now, if you really want some sort of insta-bang for your company 60mm or similar mortars then the Z-fire feature probably does what you are looking for already. Simply Z-fire some hex nearby to a unit that you the player-as-all-seeing-God knows about and the scatter may well hit it.

Re: light mortrars
 

Ok, I can see that.

But z-fire is bound to the LOS you have, so actually it means that it`s only some kind of direct fire.

So for me the light mortar in the game is usefull as direct fire but waiting 2.2 turn (or longer) to be able to shoot 11 hexes in indirect fire mode is almost useless.

Cheers

Mario

Re: light mortrars
 

Z fire your light mortar at your target.. You will be reasonably close.

Now got to the bombard window and click on that light mortar.

You will see a hex outlined in red.

Click on the bombard or smoke button and you will be down to a .1 delay for the next turn . If you need to adjust fire that will increase the delay but it will NOT be 2,2 turns so your issue is solved

Re: light mortrars
 

And little 11 hex range 50mm mortars really had no fire control, as in little or no sights and no mortar plotting boards.

The 2 inch mortars we had in our platoon, that lived in the armoury as useless dead-weight, had but a white line painted down the tube, and no bipod as they were held in the firer's hand. There were better things the 2 warm bodies in the TO&E of the rifle platoon HQ assigned to it could do than tote that thing. (Good for setting the heather alight with smoke ammo though:doh:!)

Where they may come in useful is in the defence - if you want to put your gold spots right in front of your defended locales as FDF spots.

Re: light mortrars
 

Thanks Andy, I didn`t knew about that. Indeed my issue is solved with that little z-fire hint.