Mortar direct fire without the rifles?

[Bulletpoint]

I have been trying to set up a mortar in a hedgerow, to directly engage a target at about 250 metres distance. I found that I could set up the mortar and keep it hidden, but when I ordered the strike, the support crew opened up with their rifles, immediately giving away their position, leading to retalitory fire, casualities, suppression of the team and negating the fire order..

Any way to avoid this problem?

[womble]

Nope. Not beyond opening the range beyond that at which the rifles will elect to fire (>300m ish). You might (depending on circumstances) find that the mortar team would be able to fire from one AS further back than a rifle team would; that positioning would stop the small arms from engaging, I think.

[bisu]

I don't think there is a way to avoid riflemen firing when giving target or even target light order to mortars. This is a major limitation to the use of especially light 60mm US mortars in the bocage setting where distances are relatively small and thus units get suppressed quickly by response small arma fire. Light mortars could be a valuable suppressing tool (as they were in RL) but their use in game is tricky because of these riflemen firing giving away position within seconds. If you don't give any orders and rely on the TACAI then you can't use the mortar effectively for indirect suppresion. I'am curious what tactics you guys are using with 60mm mortars in bocage?

[A Canadian Cat]

I'am curious what tactics you guys are using with 60mm mortars in bocage?

Firing from as far away as possible (as @womble says out past 300m the rifle men stop firing). If that is not possible I find that they do not get too much return fire if there are other infantry, of yours, in front of them. If that is not possible I just let them go.

[womble]

First, give them a short target arc (a segment pointing through the cover, to get them set up right) so that they don't open fire til you tell 'em to. And Slow them into position so they don't get spotted immediately.

Second, make sure that you've got some help to put at least some suppression on the opposing hedgerow. Ideally, you want to use the rifle squads to keep Jerry's head down, and then use a succession of Target Light minutes walking the 60 along the back of the hedgerow. Generally defenders won't break til they take casualties, and inflicting casualties on Landser hiding behind Bocage berms is difficult with direct fire small arms; that's what the baby mortars are good for. Against a human player, you might find that the entire hedgerow gets evacuated much sooner than with an AI opponent.

If you're wanting suppression out of your 60s, you might as well plot an indirect linear mission on Harrass or Light RoF.

[Bil Hardenberger]

I have been trying to set up a mortar in a hedgerow, to directly engage a target at about 250 metres distance. I found that I could set up the mortar and keep it hidden, but when I ordered the strike, the support crew opened up with their rifles, immediately giving away their position, leading to retalitory fire, casualities, suppression of the team and negating the fire order..

Any way to avoid this problem?

Don't use just your mortar team... use whatever other assets you have on hand to try to suppress the enemy unit(s) until the mortar tube can engage. You want the enemy hugging the ground, not in a position to be able to withdraw. And engaging direct fire with your mortar opens it to being spotted.. unless you are overwhelming the target with multiple units it can thus be very vulnerable.

Other than that as already stated, either use them farther back (rarely possible in hedgerow country) or in an indirect mode using an in view HQ unit (preferably that unit's immediate HQ) as the FO calling for fire. I like my platoon mortars to be in direct fire mode though as they are faster to fire and more accurate.

[YankeeDog]

Yeah... I've brought this up before. All the work-arounds suggested are helpful to a degree, but still don't really fix the issue, IMHO.

It's especially annoying on defense, where you can use in well-concealed light mortars to drop shells advancing enemy. Does wonders to disrupt an attacker's timetable. But this trick only really works well at distances over 300m, because sub-300m, the mortar will reveal itself with small arms fire before it gets the first mortar shot off.

And depending on terrain and visibility conditions, a light mortar can definitely stay unspotted when firing just the mortar tube at sub-300m. But small arms fire will definitely get it spotted. Not sure if this is technically correct, but this is how the game models it.

[Pak40]

I agree with others. If you're mortar team is the only unit engaging on that hedgerow, then it will receive ALL of the return fire. Placing at least two other engaging units on that hedgerow helping to suppress enemy fire and absorb the fire that does come in.

[womble]

And depending on terrain and visibility conditions, a light mortar can definitely stay unspotted when firing just the mortar tube at sub-300m. But small arms fire will definitely get it spotted. Not sure if this is technically correct, but this is how the game models it.

I suspect it's pretty accurate. The mortar hasn't got its baseplate on the top of the bocage berm (for example); it's just the crew chief managing fire from up front, on his belly with just his field glasses showing to the enemy.

[YankeeDog]

I suspect it's pretty accurate. The mortar hasn't got its baseplate on the top of the bocage berm (for example); it's just the crew chief managing fire from up front, on his belly with just his field glasses showing to the enemy.

Quite possibly; I don't really know but it makes sense. But if this is true, then we should definitely have the ability to order our mortar teams to fire the tube in direct lay without firing their small arms.

I have read a lot of accounts of how frustrating light & medium mortars were for infantrymen to deal with in the bocage -- from what I've read, mortars were often positioned close enough to the line of contact that it was easy to hear them firing, but they were still virtually impossible to spot. Apparently, every time the "thunk" of a mortar being fired was heard, everyone and their mother took cover, because no one knew for sure where the round was going to come down.

[Baneman]

Yes, it would be nice if the default mortar team behaviour would be to NOT fire their small-arms. They could fire them if the mortar is not deployed or the enemy are within the minimum range.

Sure, there may be a few occasions where you would have wanted them to shoot, but those are not going to be nearly as common as those when you DON'T want them to shoot. And would be more realistic ( and useful ! )

[Erwin]

I thought that the default with guns/support weapons is TARGET LIGHT for small arms and TARGET fires the main weapon.

So just to clarify, TARGET LIGHT fires the mortar but with less intensity, but both TARGET and TARGET LIGHT enable the mortar crew to fire their small arms(?). Is this only for mortars or ditto for guns and MG's?

[YankeeDog]

I thought that the default with guns/support weapons is TARGET LIGHT for small arms and TARGET fires the main weapon.

So just to clarify, TARGET LIGHT fires the mortar but with less intensity, but both TARGET and TARGET LIGHT enable the mortar crew to fire their small arms(?). Is this only for mortars or ditto for guns and MG's?

To the best of my knowledge:

ON-MAP MORTAR TEAMs:

All on-map mortar teams will use small arms *and* the mortar on any direct-lay target, as long as the mortar is "deployed", and the range is within the capability of the weapon(s). This is true regardless of whether it's a TARGET or a TARGET LIGHT order. The difference is that on TARGET LIGHT, they'll fire small arms at a normal ROF and only fire the mortar tube at a very slow ROF -- about 25% normal ROF, IME.

MACHINE GUNS:

MG teams fire at about the same ROF on TARGET and TARGET LIGHT, and all members of the team will fire if the target point is in range (i.e., soldiers not manning the MG will fire on the target as well using their personal weapon, if in range). AFAICT, the only difference between the two target orders for MG teams is that on TARGET LIGHT, the MG team won't fire any "special" weapons such as rifle grenades, bazookas/shrecks, Panzerfausts, etc. You usually have to ACQUIRE for an MG to have one of these weapons, but note that U.S. MG teams specifically often carry rifle grenades as part of their default loadout, so TARGET LIGHT can be useful if you want them to conserve these.

ON-MAP GUNS:

Not completely sure about these. I'm fairly certain that gun team members not actively servicing the gun will use their small arms when executing a TARGET or TARGET LIGHT order (if range is appropriate, of course), but I'm not completely certain whether they'll fire the main gun on a TARGET LIGHT order. I don't think so -- I think TARGET LIGHT for guns only uses small arms -- but maybe someone else can verify...

[YankeeDog]

NOTE:

One exception I just thought of wrt the above: Since on-map mortar teams have the ability to target points just beyond their own LOS, such as just over a crest or wall, it *is* therefore sometimes possible to fire the mortar only with TARGET/TARGET LIGHT orders at shorter ranges -- if you're firing at such a "short indirect" target point, the soldiers with small arms in the mortar team will not be able to gain LOF, and will not fire.

[bisu]

Well, there seems to be a uniform opinion on these mortars in the community. Shouldn't be an extensive coding effort either to fix that. Come on BTF, good suggestion for the next patch .

[womble]

Target Light fires (approximately) a new round each time the previous one hits. This generates a RoF of (approximately) 3.5 RPM. I pretty much never use direct lay mortars at full RoF, so don't have a handle on how many rounds they get through, but I think it's more like 16-18RPM (depending, I think, on crew experience and leadership). They fire bursts of 4-6 rounds and the number of rounds per burst seems to be higher with high experience troops, as the gap between bursts also seems shorter.

[Michael Emrys]

...use a succession of Target Light minutes walking the 60 along the back of the hedgerow.

Uh, will mortar units fire their main armament using Target Light? I thought Target Light meant that the main armament was not to be used.

Michael

[womble]

Uh, will mortar units fire their main armament using Target Light? I thought Target Light meant that the main armament was not to be used.

Michael

Yes. They will. I'm not even lying.

[score me some points for east london streetspeak. Or not.]

Target Light for mortars in direct lay gets 3-4 RPM of mortar fire. Go try it if you don't believe me.

[Michael Emrys]

Yes. They will. I'm not even lying.

Okay. I will trust you until I discover otherwise. Where I was coming from was the experience that tanks and other units with mixed armament do not fire their main guns under Target Light, a fact that I demonstrated once again just last night. However, it does not exceed the bounds of possibility that BFC can program an exception for light mortars or anything else they please.

Michael

[Battlefront.com]

Heavy Weapons Teams are a special sub-group of units within the game. Each such subgroups (basically Infantry, Weapons, Vehicles, and off-map Support) have their own behaviors tailored to their basic functions. This also sometimes means they interact with the game code in inherently different ways. Obviously we have further refinement within each of the broad groupings, but it's good to remember the fundamental differences between units.

Target Light is designed to effectively engage the enemy in a way that doesn't blow through your ammo. For Infantry and Weapons it is "slow down your RoF", for Vehicles it is "slow down your RoF and avoid using your big gun if you have one".

The main difference between a tank and a mortar team is that a tank has multiple weapons each designed to affect harm on the enemy, depending on what the enemy is. Using MGs only on infantry is very effective and it doesn't waste valuable primary gun ammo. The crews of tanks do not open their hatches and use their personal defense weapons and let the MGs stay silent.

A mortar team, by contrast, is really only effective when it's firing the mortar. The crew's personal weapons are, in a sense, much like the tank crews' when it comes to causing harm on the enemy. So the mortar is used for Target Light because without it there'd be little point engaging the enemy at all.

About the small arms of a weapons team being used for anything but self defense... yeah, you won't find anybody who disagrees with you. I don't even think Charles would However, our collective requests to have this behavior fundamentally changed (instead of tweaked, which it has been) hasn't yielded results yet. I suspect because significant recoding is needed because certain assumptions were made during the original coding and to undo them is problematic. But that's just a guess because I've not directly talked to Charles about this for a long time. Hmmm... maybe it's time to do it again

Steve

[Juri_JS]

In Steel Panthers it was possible to disable the different weapons a squad or tank was carrying, so they were not used in combat. Could something similar work in CM? I think it could solve a number of problems, for example it could be used to stop the second man in a sniper team from using his MP.

[bisu]

Hmmm... maybe it's time to do it again

Good to hear that. Thx Steve.

[womble]

For Infantry...it is "slow down your RoF", for Vehicles it is "slow down your RoF and avoid using your big gun if you have one".

IME, Infantry also don't fire their "big guns" (Rifle Grenades and Tubes) when ordered to Target Light. I say "also", but I have no good handle on whether troops with RG and zook/shreck/faust actually slow their rate of bullet output on Light.

[jhmorneau]

+1 for Juri JS' proposition.

I know Steel Panthers and CM are two different beasts, but if the player could manually select a unit and disable some of its weapons with a simple click, maybe this would do the trick, wouldn't it ?

Imagine a sniper team where only the guy carrying the scoped rifle could open up ;-)

(AI could could always override this limitation if said unit was engaged by the enemy)

(and the more experienced the unit, the more likely it would obey the limitation set by the player).

I know, it's easier said than done, but let me just dream on a little bit :-)

I trust Battlefront will eventually find a solution. See how CM is getting better with every patch...

[Erwin]

Just to confirm, firing an HMG on TARGET LIGHT does decrease the ROF and save ammo.

And Zooks? That is their main weapon but there's not much point in using their rifles just as with mortars.

Snipers?