Mortars in poor visibility - cant shoot

[General Bolt]

I can't tell you how many times I've had on-board mortar teams finish the game with full ammo loads due to poor visibility. :mad: Night, fog, or sand storm. Even extreme tree cover can screw it up. They cant see beyond the tubes minimum range. Even with ossifiers spotting the combined range (tube to leader to target) is still too short for the minimun range. Any solutions?

[JasonC]

If LOS plus command line are shorter than the minimum range, the only way they can fire is at a TRP, if they haven't moved.

You can often get a small allowed range window by combining LOS with the command radius of a +2 command rating HQ, when otherwise only TRP fire would be possible. LOS can be maximized by using forms of cover that are not LOS hindrances - e.g. behind a wall, or at the very edge of a building. Much better than 10m deep in full woods, if it is dark or foggy.

The length of the command line can also be kept long by putting the mortar in the open, rather than e.g. in trees (which shorten LOS and thereby command lines). If you are deeply out of a short LOS of the attackers, you don't really need other cover, at least against infantry fire.

You can area fire at the edge of your spotters LOS in the above manner, even if the actual target is farther. Roughly a third of the rounds will be "overs", which can be effective even if they land beyond LOS.

That's about it. Not a deep bag of tricks. Often they will be relatively useless in such conditions.

[Slappy]

I agree. Not many solutions to this problem. Mortars were historically pretty useless in these sorts of situations. Personally, I'd like to see some more options though.

I think there's a disconnect between on and off map artillery options in these situations. If you have off map 3" mortars, you can still call fire out of LOS. It will take longer and be less accurate, but you can still call fire. With on map, you have no options at all unless you have TRPs. Why not allow unobserved on map fire with big time and accuracy penalties?

Example. You're defending at night. Your OP/MLR gets hit by some infantry. You figure that it's probably not a lone platoon and that there is a follow on force somewhere behind it. You want to lob some shells from mortars 150m behind your MLR to 150 to 200m in front of your MLR in order to cause a little confusion and maybe an injury or two to the attackers possibly second wave or to further panic repulsed attackers. Now, this seems like a doable military order. The fire will be unobserved, but there's no reason a mortar team couldn't throw some shells "350m East" and see what happens. Will you kill your own men once in a while? Probably, but you should at least have the choice. Hell, you can buy conscript rocket spotters if you want.

My concern, which I'll admit that I haven't fully thought through is what gamey actions this might open up, either at night or in the daytime that would make this idea silly.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Slappy:

I agree. Not many solutions to this problem. Mortars were historically pretty useless in these sorts of situations. Personally, I'd like to see some more options though.

I think there's a disconnect between on and off map artillery options in these situations. If you have off map 3" mortars, you can still call fire out of LOS. It will take longer and be less accurate, but you can still call fire. With on map, you have no options at all unless you have TRPs. Why not allow unobserved on map fire with big time and accuracy penalties?

Example. You're defending at night. Your OP/MLR gets hit by some infantry. You figure that it's probably not a lone platoon and that there is a follow on force somewhere behind it. You want to lob some shells from mortars 150m behind your MLR to 150 to 200m in front of your MLR in order to cause a little confusion and maybe an injury or two to the attackers possibly second wave or to further panic repulsed attackers. Now, this seems like a doable military order. The fire will be unobserved, but there's no reason a mortar team couldn't throw some shells "350m East" and see what happens. Will you kill your own men once in a while? Probably, but you should at least have the choice. Hell, you can buy conscript rocket spotters if you want.

My concern, which I'll admit that I haven't fully thought through is what gamey actions this might open up, either at night or in the daytime that would make this idea silly.

I think not having unobserved fire is one of the trade-offs BFC made. With the Borg available the potential for misuse is too high.

I agree though it'd be vey useful.