Mortar ammo from HT not transferring to mortar team?

[Lt Bull]

Hi,

 

I am playing a CMFI PBEM and I have a US halftrack that has rounds of HE and WP 81mm mortar rounds.  I also have the mortar team that is in need of that ammo. Now I thought all I had to do was park the ammo truck nearby and the mortar team will eventually have the ammo "appear" in their ammo stock.  Instead of waiting around for this to happen, I instead loaded up the mortar team in to the truck and used the ACQUIRE command to try and directly equip the mortar team with the 81mm ammo.  However much to my surprise, when I did this, the quantity of ammo I tried to ACQUIRE was correctly deducted from the trucks stores but never was transferred to the mortar team.  Essentially the ammo vanished.

 

Is this a bug?

 

How should I be getting the ammo from the truck to my mortar team?

[womble]

Is the truck part of the same organisational unit as the mortar team? If it is, it will highlight when you click on the mortar team, and it should ammo share with the mortar. If it's not, you will need to use Acquire as you tried. I have a vague tickling at the back of my brain that is trying to tell me that there was a bug once that was stopping some sorts of Acquire or sharing involving either mortar bombs or MANPAT rounds. Are you patched up-to-date? Has the mortar team got ammo bearers? Try mounting them in the truck and seeing if they can successfully Acquire (assuming you can go back to try again).

[Baneman]

re. vanishing ammo - it's possible that you accidently selected the vehicle and not the mortar team, thus loading the driver with all the Acquired ammo.

Might be worth checking - may have to dismount him to be sure.

[Lt Bull]

In that particular case, no the mortar team is not part of that organisational unit.  I didn't think it should matter.

 

Regardless, I went ahead and reloaded the scenario and did some tests.

 

Wow, so crazy stuff going on here with ammo load outs even with the mortar team belonging to the same org init as the halftrack.

 

In this video you will see the start of a movie where all I did was give a move command to the mortar unit in the halftrack.  This unit had, the turn before, moved in to the halftrack because I wanted to test if it could take ammo from the halftrack (it actually had 16 HE and 4 WP rounds left itself).  I never at any stage issued it the ACQUIRE command.  This mortar unit is mounted in its organisational halftrack that has 66 rounds of HE and 8 rounds of WP mortar ammo listed as being carried.

 

Strangely, the mortar unit at the start of the turn shows itself carrying 82 HE ammo and 12 WP ammo when loaded in the halftrack, and not the 16 HE and 4 WP rounds it had before entering the halftrack the turn before.

 

Anyway here is what happens when I give the order to that mounted mortar team to exit the halftrack and move elsewhere:

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i1vn38oumyz73uw/HT%20mortar%20ammo.mp4?dl=0

 

The 82 HE ammo and 12 WP ammo it seemed to have at the start of the turn suddenly drops back to the original level it had before it entered the halftrack the turn before (16 HE, 4 WP) soon after it moves some distance from the halftrack.

Whats going on here?

 

I wonder if this has anything to do with the other oddity I picked up in CMFI with trucks not wanting to move when infantry are loaded in them.

 

[Lt Bull]

re. vanishing ammo - it's possible that you accidently selected the vehicle and not the mortar team, thus loading the driver with all the Acquired ammo.

Might be worth checking - may have to dismount him to be sure.

 

No that is not the case.  Attempting to ACQUIRE actually deducts it from the vehicle and doesn't get added anywhere.  The ammo is essentially lost.  I can not proceed with my PBEM as I critically need this ammo from the halftracks.

[womble]

In that particular case, no the mortar team is not part of that organisational unit.  I didn't think it should matter.

Well it does. Ammo sharing only takes place within an organisational unit ("platoon", is often used as shorthand, but "whatever highlights when you click that unit" is a more practical definition, given the proliferation of sections and other such subunits)

 

Regardless, I went ahead and reloaded the scenario and did some tests.

Good for you.

 

Wow, so crazy stuff going on here with ammo load outs even with the mortar team belonging to the same org init as the halftrack.

I don't think it's crazy, as I'm going to try and explain, but a misunderstanding of what you're seeing.

First to check that you know the two mortars not mounted and not part of the halfie's orgunit are 60mm not 81mm, and there are no mortar round for them in the M4A1. The only 60mm rounds are HEAT for the bazooka.

In this video you will see the start of a movie where all I did was give a move command to the mortar unit in the halftrack.  This unit had, the turn before, moved in to the halftrack because I wanted to test if it could take ammo from the halftrack (it actually had 16 HE and 4 WP rounds left itself).  I never at any stage issued it the ACQUIRE command.  This mortar unit is mounted in its organisational halftrack that has 66 rounds of HE and 8 rounds of WP mortar ammo listed as being carried.

 

Strangely, the mortar unit at the start of the turn shows itself carrying 82 HE ammo and 12 WP ammo when loaded in the halftrack, and not the 16 HE and 4 WP rounds it had before entering the halftrack the turn before.

This is where you're misinterpreting the numbers. The green unit info pane shows the number of rounds available to the mortar, not the number of rounds being carried. If you'd used "Acquire" to grab any 81mm HE, the number in white-on-black where the small arms ammo count is registered would have increased. While they're in the M4, that still shows 16. But since the M4 will share with them, the mortar could expend 88 rounds of HE.

 

Anyway here is what happens when I give the order to that mounted mortar team to exit the halftrack and move elsewhere:

 

The 82 HE ammo and 12 WP ammo it seemed to have at the start of the turn suddenly drops back to the original level it had before it entered the halftrack the turn before (16 HE, 4 WP) soon after it moves some distance from the halftrack.

That's because sharing only works over about 16m or so, so once the mortar tube (or the icon which represents the 'centre of gravity of the team', or whatever the game engine measures the relevant distance from) moves a couple of AS away, as seen in the video, the ammo from the half track is no longer available.

Whats going on here?

I hope I've answered that question.

For my next trick, I'll have a go at answering the question of the disappearing ammo. Shakier ground here, but I'm basing it on the fact that you've highlighted the non-mortar-platoon 60mm mortars in the video to show something about them, and postulating that those are the ones you loaded on and Acquired mortar bombs from that disappeared. I am guessing that you grabbed 81mm shells for them. These wouldn't appear in the green "unit info" pane, where it shows "available ammo", because the unit can't ever use them, not having and never being able to get, an 81mm mortar. They aren't visible in the white-on-black unit ammo count area, because they are already carrying as many different types of ammo as can be displayed in that small, un-scroll-barred-because-scroll-bars-are-not-useful-in-the-interface-honest (yes this is a hobby horse of mine) display area, in the same way as you might not be able to see the white-on-black count for WP for the 81mm, even though you know they've got 'em because they're there in their "available ammo" count on the green info pane.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the other oddity I picked up in CMFI with trucks not wanting to move when infantry are loaded in them.

I don't think so, since this is all, as far as I can tell, working as intended, though obviously not intuitively to the new guy.

[Lt Bull]

Aghh! This thread has pretty much  been a waste of time. I've now realised two crtitical things.

 

1. Yes, the freakn original mortar crew(s) that was trying to get the 81mm ammo were actually a 60mm mortar crew (for some reason I though all my was mortars were 81mm).  Still, making the mistake of using a unit to ACQUIRE incomparable ammo seems to irreversibly remove the acquired quantity of ammo from the game.  I don't recommend falling for this.

 

2. That 81mm mortar crew and the halftrack it belongs to together form an actual mortar HT unit, as opposed to a mortar team being transported in a "regular" halftrack carrying mortar ammo, which Is what I thought for some reason. Seems I have never used this unit in CMx2 before and thinking that any unit like that in CMx2 would be an individual inseparable vehicle unit is probably hold over from playing CMx1 where this was the case.

 

All makes sense now (except losing ammo if you ACQUIRE using an incompatible unit).

 

This thread can be deleted.

[womble]

Aghh! This thread has pretty much  been a waste of time. I've now realised two crtitical things.

 

1. Yes, the freakn original mortar crew(s) that was trying to get the 81mm ammo were actually a 60mm mortar crew (for some reason I though all my was mortars were 81mm).  Still, making the mistake of using a unit to ACQUIRE incomparable ammo seems to irreversibly remove the acquired quantity of ammo from the game.  I don't recommend falling for this.

The ammo isn't "technically" lost, since it's "theoretically" still there on the 60mm units, probably slowing them down, to boot... But it has been rendered "beyond use" for you, which is effectively the same thing. It would definitely be good if the Acquire menu could ban the snagging of stuff you can't use, but that would need some checks on what other portions of the Acquiring element's Orgunit can use (you could, for example, have attached a "Specialist team" 81mm mortar to that company mortar section, so the 60s, while not being able to use the ammo themselves could be acting as bearers for their medium buddy). An improvement in the inventory system so that consumables can be transferred both ways would be most welcome. Any improvement in the inventory system would be good, from being able to specify how many rounds you want, to a scrollable unit ammo count pane would make what's an obvious afterthought/red-headed-stepchild feature significantly less frustrating. It's almost worse when you grab the wrong thing (SMG-less squads grabbing SMG ammo) by misclick.

2. That 81mm mortar crew and the halftrack it belongs to together form an actual mortar HT unit, as opposed to a mortar team being transported in a "regular" halftrack carrying mortar ammo, which Is what I thought for some reason. Seems I have never used this unit in CMx2 before and thinking that any unit like that in CMx2 would be an individual inseparable vehicle unit is probably hold over from playing CMx1 where this was the case.

Yeah, those mortar half tracks (the Germans have mortar trucks too) are a bit like the ammo bearer team in non-mechanised mortar teams.

This thread can be deleted.

I don't think the thread should be deleted (they don't do that very often), because it is an example of how this mechanic works (a counter-example, perhaps) which, in the case of someone searching for it, might help someone else.

[A Canadian Cat]

Agreed this could be very helpful thread to the next person - assuming they search for an answer to their problem

 

Yeah the acquire system needs some love at some point.  Loosing access to ammo like this is defiantly annoying but even more normal type activities can lead to unfix-able problems too.  Now that troops are slowed down and tire more with heavy loads there is no way to drop / return stuff.  If you accidentally grab a whole bunch of bazooka rounds for a small team suddenly they become slow and tire and there is nothing you can do to unburden them.  So, you really have to be careful not to make acquire mistakes.

[womble]

Agreed this could be very helpful thread to the next person - assuming they search for an answer to their problem

 

Yeah the acquire system needs some love at some point.  Loosing access to ammo like this is defiantly annoying but even more normal type activities can lead to unfix-able problems too.  Now that troops are slowed down and tire more with heavy loads there is no way to drop / return stuff.  If you accidentally grab a whole bunch of bazooka rounds for a small team suddenly they become slow and tire and there is nothing you can do to unburden them.  So, you really have to be careful not to make acquire mistakes.

It'd be nice to be able to ditch equipment too. Maybe not if it was part of an element's initial issued gear, but when a team Buddy Aids a PIAT and one (lousy stinkin') bomb for it (from the designated, deceased AT team), shoots the bomb and misses, I don't think they'd lug a useless hunk of metal around with them for the rest of the fight. Especially if their squad sergeant was also of the ventilated persuasion. Even if they did know there's 30-plus bombs available on trucks a metric mile away, though perhaps since those trucks are way off in the back field I should have roleplayed that team "doing the right thing" and going back to the trucks to rearm their new PIAT... Probably safer even than skulking in a church tower not giving your presence away too much...

[A Canadian Cat]

I'm not sure if they would throw away a squad anti tank weapon just cause it was bulky.  Heck I believe that in the Commonwealth forces PIATs were traditionally company level assets which means they would have to answer to the company Sargent major as to why they did not bring back the launcher.   I was thinking more that if the rookie private unloading the truck (aka us with a crappy mouse) hands the guys boxes of 81mm mortar rounds instead of the boxes of .303 cal they would make him put them back instead of carrying them around with them for the rest of the fight