realism of mortars

[poesel]

I'm not complaining - I just would like to know how realistic (historic) the current behaviour of on map mortars is.

Deployed on map mortars in direct fire (DF) start to shoot in well under a minute (I have not measured it but my guess is around 20 seconds). The accuracy is well inside an action spot (8x8m). You cannot do pattern (line/circle) in DF mode.

If called through a HQ or FO the mortar needs one or more spotting rounds. Firing starts only after 4-6 minutes no matter how close the HQ is or through which means they communicate (voice/sight/radio/c2). You can use patterns here.

In both modes you cannot fire on a location without LOS except if you have a TRP.

These are my issues with the current situation:

- what I get from the various posts about this issue is that accuracy is not too far off. This, I'm sorry, I cannot believe. If mortars would be that precise and deadly weapons why bother with anything else (against infantry)? WWII armies would have had much more mortar units.

- the difference in 'delay until first round' is understandable if the request goes way up through the battalion but if the caller is just 10m away in sight then that is IMHO not realistic.

- IIRC there is no spotting round in direct fire mode (or I haven't noticed it). Why is that so? The spotting mechanic is the same. In direct fire the report delay is of course zero but thats it.

- no patterns in direct fire - why? The guys at the mortars have to do the calculations and they only can do this when ordered? A longer delay for anything but spot fire is reasonable.

- needing LOS to the target: it has been argued here that this is forbidden because we have birds eye view over the battlefield and it would give mortars even more of an advantage. But then they had maps back then, too, and we don't do game balance, don't we?

- no LOS to TRPs: that may sound a bit silly to complain first about no no-LOS firing and then this. But if I can fire into the (calculated) unknown then there might be a difference in accuracy but not a difference in 'can' and 'cannot'

- TRPs: TRPs are supposed to be precalculated positions and when a mortar is moved the precalculations are worthless. Still they continue to work for all mortars.

I'm pretty sure that BFC knows how mortars worked. So what of this above do you think will be changed/tweaked and what is a deliberate design decision?

[Sublime]

well in reference to one of your points, actually mortars in DF mode DO use spotting rounds. even up to 3-4 occasionally. seems to be less the closer in. But yeah, I almost always see them use spotting rounds, usually one over or under, the other vice versa, the third spot on. I'd say it takes more like about 45 seconds to a minute for the fire to start getting laid on. Again the range makes a difference.

[Mr.X]

Hey

what I get from the various posts about this issue is that accuracy is not too far off. This, I'm sorry, I cannot believe. If mortars would be that precise and deadly weapons why bother with anything else (against infantry)? WWII armies would have had much more mortar units.

Mortars actually have been the most deadly weapons of WWII - the majority of all casualties were caused by them.

One cannot hear the incoming projectile, the fire rate of an experienced crew is extremely high and the fire is accurate.

And even if you lie on the ground, you´ll be hit because the pieces of the exploding projectile fly very low over this ground.

Regards

Frank

[Chainsaw]

And even if you lie on the ground, you´ll be hit because the pieces of the exploding projectile fly very low over this ground.

Regards

Frank

And forests becomes your worst enemy, a grenade hitting a tree don't only shower you with fragments, but tree splinter to, creating even more shrapnel falling from the sky!

[YankeeDog]

It's a complex issue... IRL, light and medium mortars are extremely accurate under the right conditions.

On the other hand, while on the target range a skilled 60mm mortar crew can literally drop a mortar shell into a rain barrel at a distance of several hundred meters after a ranging shot or two, more often than not the weapons were not used with this degree of precision on the WWII battlefield. The reasons for this have as much to do with the degree of precision to which the enemy's position was usually known, as the inherent accuracy of the weapons system.

In CM, it gets complicated because of the "Player as God" perspective. On the one hand, it's not necessarily realistic that the player can see the entire map in detail, fly his camera wherever he pleases, and target an individual mortar tube right down to a single 8m x 8m action spot. But the game needs to make some allowance for pre-registered, pre-arranged firing plans, which could allow mortar crews to lay fire into locations they couldn't see themselves, on a signal such as a flare, smoke grenade, or even a shout or whistle. So we have the TRP system. It's not perfect, but damned if I can come up with better way of doing it that would (a) be more realistic, but ( not be so complex as to be extremely difficult to use, and take huge amounts of development time.

With regard to mortars firing "direct lay" specifically (i.e., the mortar team has LOS to the target, firing with a direct target order), I think how enemy infantry teams react to mortar teams in their LOS should be examined and perhaps tweaked. Right now, infantry teams do not seem to react to spotted enemy mortars particularly strongly -- given a choice between shooting at an enemy a mortar team and an enemy MG team, infantry seems about equally likely to shoot at either one. Given how deadly mortars are in direct lay, IMHO spotted mortars should be high priority targets, much as AT teams are high priority targets for tanks. This would at least increase the risk factor for using mortars in direct lay.

[Battlefront.com]

Yeah, I would love the TacAI to have more situational based responses. Such as figuring out "oh-oh, I've been bracketed" and getting the Hell out of there instead of the current "could just be a random shot. I'd better sit tight".

Unfortunately this gets us into a really, really tricky area in terms of gameplay. Which is... who is playing the game? The TacAI or the player? The "smarter" we make individual units, the less control the player has. Realistically the player should have about zero control, but that hardly makes for a fun game

It's always a tough balance, but I think a few specialized reactions to specific circumstances would be nice to see worked into the game.

Steve

[sburke]

I'll have to see if I have a save, but I could swear I saw one guy wet himself when a mortar spotting round struck nearby.

[RockinHarry]

Yeah, I would love the TacAI to have more situational based responses. Such as figuring out "oh-oh, I've been bracketed" and getting the Hell out of there instead of the current "could just be a random shot. I'd better sit tight".

Unfortunately this gets us into a really, really tricky area in terms of gameplay. Which is... who is playing the game? The TacAI or the player? The "smarter" we make individual units, the less control the player has. Realistically the player should have about zero control, but that hardly makes for a fun game

It's always a tough balance, but I think a few specialized reactions to specific circumstances would be nice to see worked into the game.

Steve

Any chance to get rid of the "incoming" sounds for mortars (as well as the soldiers anouncement calls)? It has been stated that too many sounds playing in the game would be a burden, so here is a chance to get rid of a redundant one.

[poesel]

Ok, so accuracy and deadliness is right as is. But what about the rest? Are we just assuming that BFC will fix this later or will it stay as is?

...

But the game needs to make some allowance for pre-registered, pre-arranged firing plans, which could allow mortar crews to lay fire into locations they couldn't see themselves, on a signal such as a flare, smoke grenade, or even a shout or whistle. So we have the TRP system. It's not perfect, but damned if I can come up with better way of doing it that would (a) be more realistic, but ( not be so complex as to be extremely difficult to use, and take huge amounts of development time.

One solution would be to allow TRPs only for off-map artillery and allow all artillery to fire on every point on the map. However this non-LOS missions would only get the circular pattern with size proportional to caliber and with high margin for error.

This may be gamed by the player as he sees where the bombs drop and he could call off the attack. Not a big thing IMHO since the ammo has been wasted already.

UI wise this would just add a fourth option in the artillery menu.

...

I think how enemy infantry teams react to mortar teams in their LOS should be examined and perhaps tweaked...

Yes, that would be nice.

[Wreck]

I think mortars are dramatically more powerful in CM than they should be. The reason is the LOS model. It's not borg anymore, but from the realism POV the problem of the player knowing all is still there. Call it semiborg. Your units are taking fire. You see a ? -- what can it be but a team, at least 4-5 juicy bugs including a MG42 bug -- worth eating. So, without the mortar or its HQ or indeed any unit except one having seen anything, the mortar opens fire on the exact action spot containing the enemy unit. 1-2 minutes later -- no enemy unit.

There's two ways to fix I can see.

The simpler is to disallow direct firing any mortar on any spot unless the mortar itself at least knows of a ? there. The player can still mortar such a spot, but only via the indirect fire interface, including minutes of delay, spotting, etc. This is a step in the right direction, but of course it would be still be eminently abusable vs the AI unless the AI were smartened up some to displace a little when it sees spotting rounds near. Still, introducing several minutes of delay into the loop would at least prevent the human steamrolling across the map until the mortars run dry.

The more complicated fix would be to allow direct area fire anywhere, but to degrade its accuracy proportionate to the contact level in the target area. Even if you tell a crew, "mortar that treeline", there's no reason why they should pour all fire into one tiny area. So: instead of firing at one action spot, spread fire among, say, each of the 21 closest action spots (a fat cross like in Civ4), or even further out. In the absence of any contacts, weight all such spots equally. When there is a ? in any of them (? from the POV of the mortar), weight it more heavily according to how recent it is. When there is a known unit, weight it very heavily.

[Michael Emrys]

The simpler is to disallow direct firing any mortar on any spot unless the mortar itself at least knows of a ? there. The player can still mortar such a spot, but only via the indirect fire interface, including minutes of delay, spotting, etc. This is a step in the right direction, but of course it would be still be eminently abusable vs the AI unless the AI were smartened up some to displace a little when it sees spotting rounds near. Still, introducing several minutes of delay into the loop would at least prevent the human steamrolling across the map until the mortars run dry.

That sounds sensible to me, but at the moment I cannot guess if it would conflict with something else going on under the hood.

Michael

[Mord]

Any chance to get rid of the "incoming" sounds for mortars (as well as the soldiers anouncement calls)? It has been stated that too many sounds playing in the game would be a burden, so here is a chance to get rid of a redundant one.

C'mon brother...we don't need less we need more! Sounds in CM are almost as important as visuals when it comes to immersion. I was disappointed that they never implemented the rpg spotting wavs and the sounds of the rocket when it flew past.

Not to mention the game still won't use targeting orders in WEGO (sound only plays during the orders phase and only when it's player issued targeting never when the AI decides to shoot at something and never during the view phase.)

Mord.

[Pak40]

I think mortars are dramatically more powerful in CM than they should be. The reason is the LOS model. It's not borg anymore, but from the realism POV the problem of the player knowing all is still there. Call it semiborg. Your units are taking fire. You see a ? -- what can it be but a team, at least 4-5 juicy bugs including a MG42 bug -- worth eating. So, without the mortar or its HQ or indeed any unit except one having seen anything, the mortar opens fire on the exact action spot containing the enemy unit. 1-2 minutes later -- no enemy unit.

There's two ways to fix I can see.

I don't think this is an issue. If the unit(s) that see the ? don't have radio contact with the mortar team, then a runner is typically sent to them which wouldn't take long if they mortar team in on the same hedgerow. Since the game doesn't model runners then this is really a wash.

[LongLeftFlank]

As I've said several times in similar threads, I don't think the spotting, timing or accuracy of the mortars are the problem (although I think their blast effects on hard targets like buildings and bunkers are way overmodeled relative to conventional HE shells), it's the unrealistic lack of reaction of the human targets to the "Incoming!!!" before the impact. Even taking into account the relative quiet of falling mortars, giving men, especially Veteran and up, a split second to lie down flat and stay there would help a LOT with the lethality in all but the most coverless terrain. This is well documented in veteran accounts; hitting the dirt when Sarge does was Lesson One in battlefield survival for most replacements.

The primary WWII tactical purpose of mortars (tactical unit control, deployed near the the front, short range, high ROF, rounds and fuzing designed to trade blast effect for wide fragmentation) was to force large numbers of attackers to ground, bloodying, demoralizing, pinning and delaying them long enough to allow defenders to react and reinforce. And then to compel the pinned forces to withdraw to less exposed cover or be progressively peppered to death. The other purpose was "stonks"; harassing fire aimed at disrupting enemy activity such as resupply or entrenching.

In neither case was the expectation to annihilate entire enemy formations -- even entrenched ones --within minutes through intensive barrages, as happens in the game with depressing regularity leaving sad heaps of huddled corpses. Mortars were rarely in a position to create that kind of concentrated carnage unless the enemy was either somehow hemmed in (e.g. a gully) with lousy cover or blindly insisted on continuing to advance (banzai charge / human wave).

Yes, they were the most lethal weapon of WWII. No, they weren't capable of wiping out entire non-moving units to the last man within minutes. Didn't happen except in bizarre circumstances.

[Hister]

Not solely related to the moratrs but to the whole artillery arsenal:

Change the color of the dirt that is blown out of the soil when bomb hits the ground. Soil should have been dark brown and not at all what we have now.

Any modders out there who can change this?

[Squatdog]

The primary WWII tactical purpose of mortars (tactical unit control, deployed near the the front, short range, high ROF, rounds and fuzing designed to trade blast effect for wide fragmentation) was to force large numbers of attackers to ground, bloodying, demoralizing, pinning and delaying them long enough to allow defenders to react and reinforce. And then to compel the pinned forces to withdraw to less exposed cover or be progressively peppered to death. The other purpose was "stonks"; harassing fire aimed at disrupting enemy activity such as resupply or entrenching.

In neither case was the expectation to annihilate entire enemy formations -- even entrenched ones --within minutes through intensive barrages, as happens in the game with depressing regularity leaving sad heaps of huddled corpses. Mortars were rarely in a position to create that kind of concentrated carnage unless the enemy was either somehow hemmed in (e.g. a gully) with lousy cover or blindly insisted on continuing to advance (banzai charge / human wave).

Yes, they were the most lethal weapon of WWII. No, they weren't capable of wiping out entire non-moving units to the last man within minutes. Didn't happen except in bizarre circumstances.

Exactly.

Mortars are ludicrously imbalanced at the moment, especially the AI's Orbital Death Bombardment (81mm mortars, heavy, short) which annihilates every living thing in a 20m radius.

[Steiner14]

Excellent discussion and i'm glad, that the extremely deadlyness of mortars is also seen by others as problem.

Right now, every battle against ATGs is just a question, if a 8cm mortar is available, then the gun is toast - do this a few times and every defense is stripped off it's ATGs, bring in the tanks and win without problems.

How incapable was the Wehrmacht at Kursk, to break ATG-defenses with tanks, if they could have used only a few mortars before bringing in the cats for a promenade?

The 50mm mortar was abandoned by the Wehrmacht, because it proved ineffective.

The 8 cm was effective, but i have my doubts, that it was that Wunderwaffe we see in the game. For example the Gr.W. 34 had a spreading of 65 m @max. distance @perfect weather conditions (i guess the data will be similar for the US mortar).

If we assume a deviation proportionally with distance, that would give @600m already a 16,25 m spreading. At 1200m aready a circle with over 30 meters radius.

Entrenched units should be quite well protected against shrapnel. Direct hits are what threatens them.

If i take into account the target area of reality (equals to a spot fire command in the game!) then i have the impression, that mortars are too precise - but also the effects are too deadly against dug in units.

Since fully dug in ATGs are not simulated yet, they are presented like on a tablet.

HMGs in foxholes IMO are also not good enough protected against smaller mortar fire. Therefore the backbone of every defense against combined attacks, ATGs + HMGs, can be taken out much too easily with mortars. Spot them, bring up the mortar unit, fire, problem solved.

What makes it even worse, is that we have no possibility of the standard procedure of Stellungswechsel (change of position). Normal for HMGs but also for ATGs, before it became too hot.

Putting also the AIs unit behaviour into this context and it becomes clear for me why mortars are the Wunderwaffe they are now.

IMO mortars should be more effective to force the heads down and not be like a Terminator against dug in units.

Only if an attack rolls, then the defenders need to raise their heads and shoot despite of incoming mortar fire - especially if tanks are rolling against ATG positions - and in that sceonds they become vulnerable.

For me it would feel about right, if i could waste the whole ammo of a Gr.W. 34 unit against an ATG and still wouldn't really know, if it was knocked out or if they are keeping their heads down.

[Hister]

For me it would feel about right, if i could waste the whole ammo of a Gr.W. 34 unit against an ATG and still wouldn't really know, if it was knocked out or if they are keeping their heads down.

Haven't been playing the German side but with the allies this is exactly the kind of results I get. I'm never quite sure if I managed to knock out the team behind the gun or not if I don't have direct visual on them (aka just the question mark) and the enemy AT gun is far away.

But I do agree that some adjustments should be made for the casualty rate of entrenched units but nothing radical - for me the devs got it almost right.

[slysniper]

As I've said several times in similar threads, I don't think the spotting, timing or accuracy of the mortars are the problem (although I think their blast effects on hard targets like buildings and bunkers are way overmodeled relative to conventional HE shells), it's the unrealistic lack of reaction of the human targets to the "Incoming!!!" before the impact.

I agree with this 100%, the weapon itself is modeled pretty well. it is the inability of the enemy to do the right thing against it.

Maybe the first round would catch your troops, but in general the defenders would be scattering as fast as possible once targeted unless dug in well, no matter what their moral level was. I hate seeing them lay down and wait for the next 8 rounds to come in to finish them off, plus they are forced to stay so close to each other, one good placed round nails them all.

Now the AT gun is a little different. Once a mortar has it sighted, it would be in trouble as to fighting much from that point on in real life unless the mortar is eliminated. The problem in the game is, the crew is unable to leave the gun and then return. At least the infantry might run away if you get them moving before shells strike too close, but a gun is going no where fast and you can abandon it to try and save the crew, but what is the point, without being able to re-man a gun they are worthless anyway. Real life, many a crew, runs find cover, wait , re-mans the gun once the chance is available and back in action. That is the true injustice in this part of the game.

And because of programming, will not be corrected any time soon.

[LongLeftFlank]

I'd actually LIKE to see them lay down ("hit the dirt!") proactively, as prone units in the game as it is now are noticeably less vulnerable, especially when entrenched. Even the "whisper" of mortars should give a split second of warning, especially to veterans already Alerted. Problem is, entrenchments and many other terrain types have units not Hiding or Cowering "take a knee" to get better LOS. Same with gun crews. That's fine, except that they just quintuple their vulnerability to shrapnel, then sit there stoically through the stonk like Graebner in his track until they're prompted to Cower or become casualties.

This "take a knee in cover" reflex, btw, is also why you see Spandau LMGs being fired from the shoulder in foxholes, or tripod-mounted MGs have the gunner oddly bolt upright behind it, instead of with the bipod resting on the parapet and the firer prone behind. Some tweaks to unit positioning and cover-seeking are clearly required, although I recognize that the new animations needed will not be a simple matter.

[akd]

I agree with this 100%, the weapon itself is modeled pretty well. it is the inability of the enemy to do the right thing against it.

This. It is a particular problem for the AI as they have no ability to "hide" troops in cover when under indirect fire. The AI does not achieve the full benefit of the cover until the whole unit is "cowering," which often doesn't occur until they've suffered several casualties. And if they are under a slow rate of indirect fire, their morale can recover while they are still under incoming fire, so they pop back up, take another casualty, cower, pop back up, etc.

And I think that even "hiding" the unit does not confer the full benefit of cover it should against indirect fire, as all the soldiers will periodically switch from "hiding" to "spotting", at which time they are vulnerable to ground bursts. Need to test this again, however.

Then you have the increased likelihood versus real life of a direct hit on fortifications due to their larger footprint.

And none of that has anything to do with the mortars themselves.

[YankeeDog]

I agree with LLF and other posters' comments that the current behavior of infantry under the barrage is probably the single most important factor contributing to the high lethality of mortars in the game.

I do have some issues with the dispersion pattern of mortar/artillery fire in CMBN, but mostly with the larger/longer range calibers. IMHO, large naval gunfire is far too precise, for example. But in general, the CEP for point shoots of light and medium mortar fire seems close to right in the game.

However, as a secondary issue to the behavior of infantry under mortar/artillery fire, I think the fact that there is zero Mean Point of Impact (MPI) deviation modeled in the the game may also be a contributing factor in making light and medium mortars a little overly lethal.

As far as I can tell, in the game the MPI for indirect fire missions is always spot-on unless it's an emergency mission or the spotter fails to see the spotting rounds -- in these cases it can be off by hundreds of meters. But if the mission is spotted correctly, as far as I can tell there is no deviation in MPI at all. Bear in mind I'm talking about the theoretical "true" MPI here -- obviously, for a short mission of only a few shells, random dispersion will result in some variance of the measured MPI. But as far as I can tell, in CMBN, if there are enough shell impacts to average out the statistical noise, on a point target the MPI does not vary.

In real life, it's almost impossible to achieve *perfect* MPI in any reasonable time frame -- it will usually be off by at least a few meters one way or the other. The spotting/correction routine for unguided "dumb" indirect fire simply isn't precise enough to dial in this kind of accuracy without the firing of many, many spotting rounds (far more than the 2-3 spotting rounds the game represents).

In the case of larger calibers, I think this probably has little effect on gameplay -- if the MPI for a 105mm point strike is off by 25 meters, the reduction of effect on the intended target is negligible since the lethal area of the shell is larger than the deviation. But in the case of smaller ordnance like 60mm and 81mm mortars, it does matter because the lethal area is very small.

Test: Target an AT gun with a 60mm mortar point strike. Do a few runs to get an idea of how many shells it takes, on average, to knock out the gun. Now, test the same situation but for each run shift the target point 1-2 action spots off the gun in a random direction, representing MPI deviation. Note the effect this has on how may shells it takes, on average, to take out the gun. And this is actually a quite a small MPI deviation by historical standards.

As far as I can see, in game there would be two ways to handle this:

(1) the MPI could be kept "perfect", but the CEP of light and medium mortar point shoots could be increased somewhat to abstractly represent MPI deviation. This has the advantage of being easy to handle and easy to plan for by the player, especially beginning players.

(2) MPI could be explicitly modeled, which would mean artillery and mortar point strikes would be at least a little bit off, excepting the occasional lucky "perfect strike". This might be confusing to beginning players, but this would probably be a more realistic way of doing things, and would probably also encourage players to use somewhat longer duration, small circular missions on single targets like AT guns rather than point missions in order to guarantee that the intended target was within the actual area of effect. This would be entirely realistic, IMHO.

[Sgt Schultz]

+1 to Everything Yankee wrote.

Increase deviation and leave everything else alone on the mortar side.

-

I agree on the troop side that the boys should hit the dirt and start a Slow/crawl movement AWAY from light mortar point of impact unless inside a fortification/building. No spotting, no taking a knee, just crawling away from strikes, and towards structural cover if possible, until told otherwise by the great commander in the sky.

I would rather lose men doing something proactive and sensible than just waiting for the other shoe to drop... within the same action spot.

-

[LongLeftFlank]

I agree on the troop side that the boys should hit the dirt and start a Slow/crawl movement AWAY from light mortar point of impact unless inside a fortification/building. No spotting, no taking a knee, just crawling away from strikes, and towards structural cover if possible, until told otherwise by the great commander in the sky.

I would rather lose men doing something proactive and sensible than just waiting for the other shoe to drop... within the same action spot.

Interesting thought, but it seems like that kind of TacAI judgment call would be hard to implement well:

1. the TacAI doesn't presently seem to recognize fortifications as "cover terrain" (they're more like some kind of vehicle). So you might get men leaving their entrenchments to crawl to buildings or forests when the most sensible thing would be to keep your head down.

2. that aside, you could also easily get unintended consequences where troops are crawling into the grazing fire of MGs in their overriding routine that says get out from under the stonk. The calculus of survival is a complex one.

My gut feeling says that it would be better for PixelPBI to get down and stay put under shellfire until they either Panic / Rout or are explicitly ordered to move elsewhere.

In another thread I suggested Charles might induce a simple Hit the Dirt reaction to incoming by modeling each plunging shell (not flat trajectory rounds) as having "2 bursts" instead of one. The first one would be undetectable to the player (you'd still hear the incoming whoosh!) and inflict no actual damage, but induce the TacAI's existing Take Cover reflex in the troops a moment before the "real" burst occurs.

[Killkess]

Commtest, commtest.... Battlefront, some official statement?