question about mortars

[dalem]

I abase myself before the searchonauts, but I fear the amount of posts I will have to bull through if I type in "mortars" as the keyword, so I admit that I have not searched. Go easy on the 'cool points' stripping...

My question is about ROF of mortars... At least, I think that's what it's about.

Let's say I have a mortar with about 25 rounds of ammo or so. I see one good target. It's only one squad (that I know of) but it looks like it needs some HE. I give the target order. First off the mortar shells start arcing on over. If my mortar crew is hopping, they can loose quite a substantial part of their ammo load in just sixty seconds, and if the target is suppressed or killed before the end of the turn, that might equal 'wasted' shells, especially key if said mortar is my sole heavy weapon.

I gues that, in game terms, what I'm looking for is some sort of imperfect control over how many rounds a mortar team uses during a turn. In terms of real doctrine though, I have no idea how silly my desire is - once a mortar crew got their targeting orders (or saw a good one on their own), how much discretion was there? Was it always 'fire until the target is neutralized' or was it 'drop half then see what they're doing'?

One thing I like about the situation I've described above is that it forces decisions on me - "is that really the best target for my few shells?", so it's not like I'm sobbing for a change. But how did support fire doctrine for weapons like this really work in the field? I'm curious.

thanks!

-dale

[Peterk]

A while back someone referred to mortars as basically being "three minute roadblocks" to the enemy and that's a pretty good way to think of them in the game - they'll go through their ammo in about that amount of time so you have to choose targets wisely. Try to nail a bunch of the enemy with your 1-minute salvo instead of trying to surgically attack one unit.

[MH]

If you are lucky enough to have heavy mortars you can do some serious damage by getting them on-target, but with most of the "knee poppers" you are best going to get some covering fire. Use them to keep the enemy head's down while you maneuver something else to get more fire power on target. Short of this, if they can lay smoke it can be used for the same purpose.

[Bullethead]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>One thing I like about the situation I've described above is that it forces decisions on me - "is that really the best target for my few shells?", so it's not like I'm sobbing for a change. But how did support fire doctrine for weapons like this really work in the field? I'm curious.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

As others have noted, mortars are supposed to shoot fast. In the search for "best" targets, I like to shoot a grunts in trees. The treebursts really multiply the effectiveness . And single squads and teams hardly go anywhere alone, so when you see 1 squad at the edge of a patch of woods, you can be pretty sure there's a whole platoon there somewhere. Thus, hosing the forest often does wonders even on targets you can't see.

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-Bullethead

It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

[Guest Michael emrys]

I suppose it may cost me some grognard points, but I have to say I agree with dalem. I too would like to be able to specify how many rounds they are going to fire. This especially applies to smoke. They will usually fire off their entire supply of smoke in one shoot, when only a round or two would suffice.

Michael