light mortrars

[Mario_Fr]

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

[Ts4EVER]

These small mortars are better used in direct fire.

[gila]

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.

[Mario_Fr]

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

[DRG]

"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

[Mario_Fr]

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

[DRG]

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

[Mario_Fr]

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

[DRG]

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...)

[Mobhack]

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.