Myth of Invincibility spotters? (spoiler)

[Malm]

For the duty of seeking out those three German AT guns, I decided to chose only one of my three spotters. Not knowing their exact locations I also only selected onetube leaving two of my mortars for backup duty. My mortar was then ordered to use maximum duration of fire. After the bombardment I was very surprised learning that not only has the mortar crew spend all of their own HE but they have also spend the two other mortars ammunition leaving my two other spotters worthless! Can that really be correct - isn't that a glitch?

How should I've setup my bombardment in order to ensure that all three spotters were left some goodies?

[Baneman]

On map mortars will share ammo from adjacent mortars in their platoon. I think it's within 3 or 4 AS's.

Looking at the UI, you will notice on the left, their ammo loadout ( white text ) - the ammo shown on the right ( yellow text ) is ALL available ammo - this will include ammo from other shareable assets - generally ammo-bearer teams, but can include other mortars.

Basically you have to make sure that the mortars are located sufficiently far apart for the ammo on the right to be the same as the ammo shown on the left - then you can be sure they wont use anybody else's ammo.

[Fizou]

Its working as intended. Use the long insteadof maximum durration if you dont want to expend all their avvailable ammo.

[76mm]

I'm not in front of the game right now but aren't those off-map mortars?

I think you have one battery of off-map mortars and three spotters. I guess if one mortar fires long enough it will fire the whole battery's ammo load.

[womble]

76mm raises a good point. Artillery assets are all available to all your spotters (subject to the need for being an FO to call in the heavy stuff). Having three spotters gives you flexibility, not more artillery. If your spotter only had one "card" of arty to select, then that's all the arty you've got, and it acts as a battery. Firing one tube of a 3-tube battery just means it takes three times as long to fire it all off as all 3 tubes firing would. On missions that are not "Maximum", it means a third of the HE gets delivered, over the same period of time.

RT introduced a limitation that a spotter can only call in one mission at a time, but that doesn't mean that a spotter can only call from one battery ever, or that every spotter's batteries are theirs for their exclusive use.

[Malm]

Roger my mistake.

It's clear after you explained it in such detail

[womble]

It's good to learn!

I quite like "Maximum" length missions, but only on the "lighter" settings. Set up that way, you can have the observer walk them around, and even heavy stuff can be usefully responsive. A 150mm battery can often be fired at half-tubes and Light for 50 minutes or more, allowing you to usefully address maybe half a dozen targets. You can always Cease Fire the mission if the battle outruns the observer you have the battery assigned to, and TRPs make the approach doubly useful. Of course you'd need a dedicated observer in RT, and they wouldn't be able to add any more tactical support to their fires.