[chuckfourth]

Hi Andy
Fair enough, Knee mortars stay direct fire, its your game after all. But one can only wonder why. Having a close look at your post It seems that all you concerns are easily fixed, perhaps I can help you?

Mobhack said: A member of the now-gone OOB design team tried this once. Result was hundreds of little tiddly mortar icons on the AI's baseline.--- AI does not move mortars. the AI rarely fires mortars direct if it has LOS but will plot for indirect.

How about this for a solution,
Replace all the direct fire knee mortar (Gl's) sections in each japanese infantry platoon with indirect fire weapons. Remove all these formations from the AI picklist. For the AI create some direct fire Gl platoons and use these to build coys, these direct fire formations need not be available or visible to the human player. So... AI no longer has any problems, Human Players can now choose wether to use the knee mortar direct or indirect instead of being forced to use them direct.

Mobhack said: 10-hex range is less than useless, even in the defence, with likely 3 move delay to bring down indirect fire

I guess that as you seem to think these weapons are contemptable then you probably dont use them. They are in fact very useful on indirect mode (and of course their range is 13 hexes not 10) If you buy a FO the delay is 2 or so, if you use z fire or preregister the delay is 0. Actually these weapons should get a delay of 0 in the bombardment screen not 3 which is obviously too long. They are very useful in the defence, If you have any sort of barrier to make the advancing enemy pause like the other 3 sections in the platoon, mines, wire or dragons teeth, a stream, rough terrain, built up area etc then they can be used to great effect, as the ememy bunches up in order to swarm you. They are also very handy for forcing tank riders to dismount all of which can be done from behind cover without taking any casualties.

Mobhack said: You have been told before that tiddly mortars are sometimes available in the artillery page for some armies (e.g. a 2 inch section)

Ok for gamey players that arnt concerned with historically accurate formations, not so good for everyone else. If you buy the indirect fire "light mortars" to give a platoon indirect fire you end up with a platoon with 3 GL sections instead of 1 and an unwanted scout team your platoon has grown from 4 to basically 7 sections. In a 4 platoon coy you end up with 4 extra sections and 2 unwanted scout "sections" and so on, large infantry formations soon become grossly inflated, unwieldly and way too expensive.

Mobhack said: or you can Mobhack your own for human-only use (the AI has fits with them).

I can indeed but I am posting to point out an 'easily fixed' error in your OOB's. ie you have an indirect fire weapon incorrectly modeled as a direct fire weapon. As I already said the AI neednt use indirect fire mortars.

Mobhack said: There will be no rifle platoons with silly little tiddly-mortars inside of the rifle platoons. Tiddly mortars and grenade dischargers are DF weapons in the rifle sections in the SP series games.

Well I dont know what you mean by grenades dischargers but knee mortars are mortars, knee mortars were usually operated by a three man crew
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knee_mortar
they were employed as mortars and have several times the range of rifle grenades, there is no comparison.
Just because something was modeled wrong in the past doesnt mean it has to be modeled wrong in the present. There are plenty of other OOB errors that have been picked up and fixed.

Mobhack said: I have used the 2 inch mortar as well, so I know how useless the things are in reality.

Please read the references to knee mortars in this article
http://www.history.army.mil/books/ww...a/chapter9.htm
they are far from useless. Perhaps the uselessness of the 2 inch has something to do with the operator? The knee mortar is held at 45 degrees and a screw adjusted to change range, not whats done with the 2 inch. the knee mortar fires a bomb about the same as a grenade so I guess grenades are also silly little tiddly- explosive then? bet a lot of dead marines would disagree with you anyway.
also of interest
http://members.shaw.ca/nambuworld/t89pix.htm
Anyway just because they are silly little tiddly-mortars is no excuse to model them incorrectly. They are mortars, removing their ability to hit a target from behind cover and removing there ability to search out the enemy in dead ground is simply wrong.
Bottom line is it makes a big difference to jap OOB to have the mortars modeled indirect simply because there are so many of them. There indirect capability is extremely useful in the low vis jungle and in the various Island defences the Japs undertook.
As a playbalance issue Japanese platoons could take out LVTs with this weapon, A very good reason to leave them on the beach, in game LVTs are happy to roam about everywhere becaust the Knee mortar hasnt got its indirect fire capability.
Best regards Chuck.