Mortars

[eddie413]

To anyone who can give me good advice, or help me to see this in a different way: Mortars in real-life are deadly and effective. To me, mortars in CM & CMBB are lame and sound like little pop-guns goin off(when they hit the ground). They never seem to contribute much to any battle. I've been playing CM since March 2001, and CMBB since it came out. I play alot, and LOVE all aspects of this great war-game....Except...Mortars..Why can't the design team upgrade the blast effect (visually and auditorally)to mirror real life like they did with [some of the ]tanks? Believe me, I WANT To use mortars in my battles, but lately, I just eliminate them when choosing units when I make my own scenarios cause I find them unrealistically lame....

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frankiep

Son of a WW II veteran

[Monty]

hmmm good topic

I would like to have a better soundmod for the mortars yes , but ingame they can be quit effective.

I use onboard mortars a LOT for knocking out guns and for suppressing inf.

Best effect is to pinn down advancing infantery in the open or in scattered trees.

Use multiple mortars ! (3 work ok)

Use offcourse a hq unit for spotting.

Combine this with one or two hmg's and you can hold a whole company.

Do a counter-attack with your infantery and you can mop them up.

Monty

[mattman2000]

I guess you can knock the sound they make, but mortars in CMBB are far from lame. Take a German 41 rifle platoon's three 50mm mortars, attach them to the Company HQ, and you have a nice support element capable of knocking out field guns and AT guns or suppressing entrenched infantry. I use 'em all the time in assaults and they've proven themselves invaluable. Take a pair of onboard 80mms and you have all the perks mentioned above, plus you can lay down smoke in a very pinpoint manner in front of enemy positions.

On the defense, use a couple of light mortars and MGs against enemy infantry caught in the open, and you pin them in place for the heavy tubes represented by your FO.

I just love me them CMBB mortars

If you want to tweak the sounds -- there must be a mod pack or two out there, just like there was for CMBO.

[mattman2000]

oops. of course the platoon comes with one mortar. three per comany.

[flamingknives]

Mortars can be very effective when used to support an infantry attack, especially if the target is in trees.

The light (50mm) mortars aren't tremendously effective at killing people, but they do force them to keep their heads down, and the Soviet model has an enormous ammo load.

The medium mortars (81/82mm) are a little less manueverable but have better ranges, turn guns upside down and are excellent at smashing the morale of infantry in woods.

Heavy mortars (120mm and 160mm) are only available as off-map modules and pack quite a punch, with high rate of fire and a respectable blast value.

[Steppe Butcher]

I find that small 50mm's are slow to pick up their own infantry targets,and even after being manually assigned such a target they soon lose their lock on it if it goes to ground, and fall silent.

So I therefore tend to assign them AREA targets instead,which guarantees they'll keep on plastering a spot on the map until you tell them to stop!

For example target an area of woods where you know the enemy is,even though you can't see him,and the spot will be hammered nicely.

Likewise,drop a barrage in front of a group of running infantry and let them run into it and keep getting stomped after they drop prone!

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Steppe Butcher:

Likewise,drop a barrage in front of a group of running infantry and let them run into it and keep getting stomped after they drop prone!

Good thought. Getting them to drop with MG fire and then targetting with mortars to clean up also can work...and is a tactic the Germans historically employed.

Michael

[Other Means]

i've not been playing long but i'm finding mortars, on & off board, to be more & more useful.

on the attack i like to get keyholed LOS and dominate an area with HE, then move my scout armour into that area. moving radially i expose my armour to pre defined LOS where the enemy has 1 or 2 decent AT gun placement areas. this is all behind my infantry screen which has been able to advance into the dominated area only taking fire from one flank as the area they are going into is suppressed. get your on board mortars to LOS of the AT positions & you can time your off board to hit his AT guns as they uncover to get your scouts. leave your on board unassigned with covered arcs to the areas where his guns could be. you can work your way around the map exposing your scouts for 20 secs at a time.

i guess i'm just re-iterating what everyone else has said. use them for killing guns. or delaying infantry.

with area fire the major problem is that you can go through an awful lot of ammo very quickly. so one trick to overcome that is:

if you want to area fire at the beginning of a turn, give your team is tiny movement order. they'll fire, then get the order to move. you can time it so they're set up the next turn or are still doing it.

if you want to area fire at the end of the turn, give them a rotate order. they will rotate, then rotate back & fire. IIRC with the russian 50mm 90o is about 15 secs delay.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Other Means:

with area fire the major problem is that you can go through an awful lot of ammo very quickly. so one trick to overcome that is:

if you want to area fire at the beginning of a turn, give your team is tiny movement order. they'll fire, then get the order to move. you can time it so they're set up the next turn or are still doing it.

if you want to area fire at the end of the turn, give them a rotate order. they will rotate, then rotate back & fire. IIRC with the russian 50mm 90o is about 15 secs delay.

Very cool. But you know, it's a pity we have to resort to such artificial (I will refrain from saying "gamey") means to achieve a perfectly reasonable effect. It would be much more realistic for the player to specify how many rounds he wants his mortar to fire as that would be within the capability of his real life counterpart. There might even have been standing orders or SOPs covering how much ammo was to be expended, and at what speed, in particular situations.

Michael

[ July 30, 2003, 06:49 AM: Message edited by: Michael Emrys ]

[Steppe Butcher]

Re rates of fire,yes it would be great if mortars (and ALL weapons in fact) had a "slow/normal/fast" rate of fire option.

This option is available in the old Harpoon naval game series,where you can set the SAM rate of fire to engage incoming airborne threats.

[YankeeDog]

At least in the US Army the way Real Life light mortar teams receive firing orders is by number and type of rounds (in addition to targeting info, of course).

IOW, once the mortar team has received target coordinates and layed in the mortar, they get an order like, "fire for effect, 4 rounds HE", at which point the mortar teams launches off 4 rounds of HE and waits for further orders. Very rarely do I hear of mortars getting orders to the effect of "keep firing until I issue a cease fire order", which is what you seen in CM.

This makes me think that it would NOT be too much micromanagement to allow the player to, at the very least, specify how many rounds a mortar should fire in a given firing order given that this is exactly what a Real Life commander would do.

It is also worth noting that very rarely do I read of light mortar teams initiating fire on targets of their own volition - they usually wait for orders from at least a platoon, and usually a company commander. As such, I do not find it unrealistic that light mortars are generally reluctant to open fire of their own accord in CMBB.

I agree that some sort of Rate of Fire SOP order would be good for *all* units. I've never read anything about mortar crews being ordered to fire more slowly (or quickly), but I find it hard to believe that mortar crews did not sometimes vary their rate of fire depending on the tactical situation.

Cheers,

YD

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

IOW, once the mortar team has received target coordinates and layed in the mortar, they get an order like, "fire for effect, 4 rounds HE", at which point the mortar teams launches off 4 rounds of HE and waits for further orders. Very rarely do I hear of mortars getting orders to the effect of "keep firing until I issue a cease fire order", which is what you seen in CM.

This makes me think that it would NOT be too much micromanagement to allow the player to, at the very least, specify how many rounds a mortar should fire in a given firing order given that this is exactly what a Real Life commander would do.

That's exactly what I was thinking as well.

Michael

[Noiseman]

I've had a real rennaissance with mortars recently. I ignored them for years, but now they're one of my 'must have' purchases for a battle.

They are invaluable against AT guns. You can spray ATGs with all the rifle and MG fire you want, all the bullets will do is bounce off the gun shield. Lob a few mortar shells in and the tanks are rolling forward again...

[Biff]

I agree with YD that the managment of mortars and similar units is awkward. While B.S. has tried to limit micomanagment, the player must keep an eye on mortars and other gun crews to make sure they don't continue to expend ammo needlessly. It would be great to have some input to tell the unit either the number of rounds or to continue to fire until the cease fire order comes in.

[Steppe Butcher]

In a recent game,my Russian opponent had 2 Armoured cars sitting behind a small clump of heavy woods,and although my 81 mortar had no LOS to them, I ordered it to lay down an area barrage into the woods,hoping that some shells would scatter onto them,which is exactly what happened! Scatter plus shrapnel spraying down onto them from treebursts killed them both inside 1 turn!

The moral is-Scatter can be GOOD!

[Schoerner]

Originally posted by eddie413:

To me, mortars in CM & CMBB are lame and sound like little pop-guns goin off(when they hit the ground). They never seem to contribute much to any battle.

To me mortars are one of the most important weapons on the field.

They are extremely useful for all the tactically difficult situations:

Mechanized advance over open terrain against strong AT gun positions -> MORTARS!

Infantry advance against MG-positions -> MORTARS!

Lightweight recon with high suppressive firepower -> HQs with wide C&C range and a high stealth bonus followed by one mortar.

Only to mention a few of the excellent possibilities of mortars.

As a general idea how to use mortars effectively, try to imagine, they can ONLY be used by HQ-spotters.

You've got a weapon that usually can't be hit by the enemy but that can hit almost everything.

What else would you call useful, if not such a weapon?

[Lars]

How many rounds does your average mortar pop off in a minute anyway?

Is it worth the bother to code in a query screen to set the number?

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by Lars:

How many rounds does your average mortar pop off in a minute anyway?

Is it worth the bother to code in a query screen to set the number?

Depends on the specific mortar type and the experience level of the team.

German 50mm mortars can easily pop off half their ammo load (15 bombs) in one turn.

German 81mm mortars have a somehwhat lower ROF (about 12 or so bombs/min), but they also carry less HE shells than the 50mms, so they too can quite easily end up burning completely through their ammo load in two turns.

You're better off with the Soviet mortar crews - their larger number of men translates to higher ammo loads. The ROF is about the same for equivalent calibres, though.

It's mostly an issue when you're trying to suppress a point target. For example, a dozen 81mm shells is generally overkill if all you're trying to do is make a single HMG go 'heads down' so you can gain fire ascendancy and take it out by close assault with an infantry platoon. So long as the bombs are well placed, Half that many shells will usually give you enough freedom of maneuver to move in on the MG unless it is in especially good cover from mortar fire (like a heavy building).

Cheers,

YD

[Lars]

Thanks YankeeDog.

I think I'd rather have a convoy command instead...

[Soddball]

I do agree that sometimes the mortars do seem ineffective against infantry, but try using green and conscript troops instead of the GI Joe vets.

The biggest effect seems to be panicking and routing, which I suppose makes sense.

I think mortars (particularly the light mortars) are fab. I loved the British 2" mortar in CM:BO and I love the 50mm mortars in CM:BB. I never enter battle without onboard mortar support.