newb questions - mortars/command

[pzr_leader]

Greetings war mongers;

i have been a longtime fan of this franchise, and my god, i am loving this new one! its been a couple of days i guess, but i am having some trouble and i hope some of you vicious bastards can help me kill more of the enemy, and less of my own dudez.

mortars: how close do i need to keep the ammo bearer? why do i see wildly fluctuating levels of ammo before any firing occurs?

Command structure: who the hell is in charge? what do i do with some of his support staff?

i am playing the allied campaign, i forget the name, the first one. the first mission is a doodle, just mopping up some random elements, they seemed to have one AT gun. the second one though...capture the bridge, and small town...i don't know how many AT guns, seems like a wholoe german company. A lot of AT guns, bunkers, massive mortar support. i have 5 tanks, and good mortar support. im sure you know the one...i am not making much ground. his AT guns are very hard to take out at range.

anyway, any tips or help would be appreciated.

thanks

[Wreck]

You need to keep ammo bearers within about 16m or so -- 2 action spots. This is done on a per man basis, so if you are near the edge of range only some of the bearers' ammo gets shown with the main unit. Of course they don't need to be anywhere near until the main unit has used up its ammo.

You see wildly fluctuating levels of ammo because each unit which can share is sharing with others, and each is showing the total ammo it has available to it. So, for example, if you are American with a weapons platoon, and you move the 3 60mm together, you'll see levels from 32 to 96 for each mortar. If the three mortars are really close, you'll see each one reporting the 96 rounds they have collectively.

HQ units are in charge. The support staff is basically useless, although if the HQ unit is completely eliminated it can take over as HQ.

[Pak40]

I think the mortar bearers need to be within 8m to share the ammo that they carry. It probably wont actually transfer until the mortar runs out of it's initial ammo.

The levels of ammo for mortars can fluctuate depending on how many units are near it. You'll notice two ammo counts: one count shows the actual number of rounds that the mortar team is carrying and the other shows all available rounds from nearby units(including itself) that carry the same ammo type. For instance, a 60mm mortar platoon that has 3 mortars with 30 rounds each; when you click one of the mortar teams one ammo count should say 30, the other should say 90 so long as the other two mortars are nearby.

The support staff can be used to protect your HQ, give buddy aid to fallen soldiers, or if you need an extra unit to plug a whole somewhere. The XO unit I think will take over C2 duties if the original HQ is eliminated.