July 1943--the Russian 5cm Mortar Crisis!

[John Kettler]

This may well be a known bug, but my pair of mortars (one regular, one green), in command, and generally not under fire, husbanded ammo on a scale I've never seen, firing at an ROF of ~1 round a minute--when they fired at all. Had clean LOS and red target lines to various panzers (II,III,IV) and a StuG, but my mortar crews couldn't be bothered to drop rounds down the tube, even when said panzers were attacking them. In all my years of playing CM, I've never had the experience of mortars hanging onto ammo with such dogged determination. To the contrary, generally light mortars go through their ammo in only a couple of turns. Can anyone explain to me the basis of such bizarre, militarily useless behavior?

Regards,

John Kettler

[Fußball]

Well the problem sounds to me is you targeted armor with a 5cm mortar. And the A.I. realizing that its 5cm HE shell is no match for any sort of armor it was targetting, did not fire but that once. However, if you were aiming for knocking the tank commander out or at least getting the armor buttoned-up then you probably should have targetted the area around the armor. Thats the only thing I can think of. You must also remember mortars were not designed to destroy any kind of armor. Hope that helps some.

Tschüß!

Erich

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

This may well be a known bug, but my pair of mortars (one regular, one green), in command, and generally not under fire, husbanded ammo on a scale I've never seen, firing at an ROF of ~1 round a minute--when they fired at all. Had clean LOS and red target lines to various panzers (II,III,IV) and a StuG, but my mortar crews couldn't be bothered to drop rounds down the tube, even when said panzers were attacking them. In all my years of playing CM, I've never had the experience of mortars hanging onto ammo with such dogged determination. To the contrary, generally light mortars go through their ammo in only a couple of turns. Can anyone explain to me the basis of such bizarre, militarily useless behavior?

I have the vague impression that mortars aimed at hard targets shoot until the target is buttoned-up, or one shot if you order them to until they think better of it.

That doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me, since the military usefulness of aiming a 50mm light mortar (with no smoke available) at a closed-down tank seems approximately equal whether you put rounds down the range or not.

All the best,

John.

[JasonC]

Right. The Tac AI breaks off all targeting orders rapidly if its assessment is that its weapon cannot possibly hurt the target. If you want the mortar to fire as fast as they can drop the rounds, use area fire (including HQ spotted fire). It won't track the target as it moves, however.

[John Kettler]

Troops,

Thanks for that! Here's hoping the Tac AI is more openminded when firing on open top vehicles. FWIW,

in my QB the target panzers were mostly static.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Vixen]

On the other hand, they'll fire thier whole load out at open topped vehicles becuase they absolutly can kill those!

[walpurgis nacht]

For absolute precision, first target the enemy tank directly (red line), then remove vehicles (shift + v)and area-target precisely over the tip of the red line.

Also make sure your mortar teams don't have cover arcs on . . . that leads them to do strange things regardless of the command they're given.

[ October 28, 2005, 05:35 AM: Message edited by: walpurgis nacht ]

[John Kettler]

walpurgis nacht,

Superb instructions! They remind me, though, of the story of the gun armed Quaker who encounters a burglar at night in the Quaker's home. "I would not harm thee, friend, for all the world, but thee art standing where I am about to shoot."

Regards,

John Kettler