60mm Mortars:Dominant or no?

[Vixen]

Dominant? Does that mean it carries around a riding crop and dresses in black latex?

[jwatts]

John, will do, I beleive mine can run OS9, but yeah the tech support will at some point see an enlightening point from me. Vixen, yes, that's the idea, though I have a mod for my 60mm mortars that give them gimp suits. I don't think gimp suits are dominant, not being very well versed in S&M culture, so I defer to your vast knowledge on the subject, but my guys look way cooler that way. By the way, I have my section HQs in latex and assless chaps, then they can boss around the gimps. All sexual activity is of course done after the mortars expend their ammo load. What else did you think crews/out of ammo mortars do when you send em behind the lines.

[[hirr]Leto]

Originally posted by McIvan:

And that was against a pretty good opponent too.

I dunno about "dominant", but I would certainly put them in the category of "bloody useful".

The 2/3 inch combo is ok, but the 2 inch mortars don't have enough HE ammo, and their smoke ammo, which might with different smoke modelling be very very useful...easy to see why they liked it in "real life", isn't useful in CM at all really.

A US infantry coy is often a good pick, specially in 1945 with the 2xBAR per squad.

I agree with your sentiments about the opponent, he is indeed one of the best players in the game... but at the time, the opponent was in a transition phase with his strategies, and wanted to prove a point about the efficacies of "peasant power", being of direct slavic heritage himself.

That point was blunted severely, along with his ego.

Now returned to the domain of sound tactics, the opponent of Dave from above would most likely emphasis the importance of combined arms teams, and that the US infantry company is an outstanding kit purchase for many reasons, but especially due to the effectiveness and utility of the 60mm mortars.

I read above that at times, they are used to take out guns, but only in desperate measures. Truly, the most effective strategy for the 60mm is to be used in concert with infantry assaults to pin and disrupt the enemy in "boxed" positions.

Against another opponent, I realized the true value of the 60mm mortar when I threw 3 Companies of Folgore SMG paratroopers into the woods against a company of US riflemen well positioned and supported by 3 60mm mortars (within 50m of the firefight behind the Yank lines).

The accuracy and impact of those mortars silenced the meatballers with deadly efficiency, causing for disruptions, panicks and breaks that decimated my advance.

It took a full 8 turns before I could throw my Italian SMG's against this defence again, and eventually it capitulated. From that point on, I never bought infantry without a good compliment of mortars, denying myself full battalion bonuses in some cases, just to get my hands on more onboard HE.

The point is thus boiled down to this: infantry will hold you ground, but arty will allow them to take it.

Cheers!

Leto

[jwatts]

Leto, I love your posts on the Fragment forums, are you a new member here? I was thinking about joining them, in fact, because they seem much more fun and there are far fewer math grogs and more tactics discussions. Ah, but I digress. Apparently I am in the wrong with how I use my 60mm mortars, as I should keep them with the infantry platoons? This makes sense with smaller mortars, such as 2in or 50mm, as they are assigned to a particular platoon, but for the US they are in the weapons platoon. That is I think what threw me off with tactics. Next time I get a game going, next Sunday unfortunately, I'll try out these new mortar tactics.

[[hirr]Leto]

Originally posted by jwatts:

Leto, I love your posts on the Fragment forums, are you a new member here? I was thinking about joining them, in fact, because they seem much more fun and there are far fewer math grogs and more tactics discussions. Ah, but I digress. Apparently I am in the wrong with how I use my 60mm mortars, as I should keep them with the infantry platoons? This makes sense with smaller mortars, such as 2in or 50mm, as they are assigned to a particular platoon, but for the US they are in the weapons platoon. That is I think what threw me off with tactics. Next time I get a game going, next Sunday unfortunately, I'll try out these new mortar tactics.

Well, there is really no "wrong" way to use your 60mm mortars if you can use your intuition and get results. I've knocked out 150mm INF guns at over 700m with a 60mm mortar, as it was purely the most necessary item of business at the time...

Just remember, that it takes about 8-10 60mm rounds to break an infantry squad, 6-8 81mm rounds and 4-6 75mm rounds (this is not empirically proven, just anecdotal from experience... I'm not a mathematician)

: )

Leto

[John Kettler]

Ah! But only one round which hits directly to destroy an OT AFV other than an unbuttoned tank.

Have personally killed a 251 and several Marders this way. If the Force is really with you, you may get a round down an open hatch on an otherwise unkillable tank.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

On the ammo question, no it does not reflect resupply issues. It reflects the fact that more of the firepower is coming slowly from aimed rifle fire, rather than rapidly from automatics.

Men can carry the same number of rounds whatever their nationality. If you send most of them through a very high ROF squad MG, you can generate the firepower more rapidly - but you can't make bullets materialize out of the ether. So if you fire faster, you will also run out sooner.

You can have fp rating or you can have ammo points. Both combined (product higher I mean) comes only from greater accuracy per round, not from throwing them faster.

Thus, the ammo point per squad basically track the inverse of the portion of automatics used to generate the firepower. Pure semi auto or bolt means high ammo point, pure automatics means the lowest. Pistol ammo (used by SMGs) is somewhat lighter than rifle (or MG, which uses rifle-sized ammo), so LMG firepower detracts more from ammo points per squad than SMGs do.

What would really happen is the MG would run dry while the bolt actions still have ammo left. If the engagements to date were at long range, the SMGs would also still be full. But the game can't track ammo by weapon, only by squad, so it has to average them assuming a typical mix of shots at range n and range m, etc.

The US 30 cals are somewhat shortchanged in this respect, the 5 man team especially. It gets the fp for slower firing, correctly. Then it gets low ammo too, despite being the lightest of the MGs in a tripod configuration. In return it gets medium speed. In reality, you could as readily take maxed ammo and slow speed, using the same gun. A semblance of that choice exists through the water cooled 30s option.