Firing orders for mortars

[gravy]

Hello, I am recently addicted to CMBB and CMAK. I have a question about firing orders for mortar teams.

Why can't you give more specific orders such as fire one or two rounds of smoke or HE? I find that many mortar teams have only 10 or 20 rounds which will only last a few turns. I usually add a pause to try to get them to delay firing at the beginning of a turn to save ammo.

To answer my own question I guess you can't do this because that was the way the game was designed. However, in a real combat situation wouldn't a mortar team leader be able to give more specific commands to the mortar team.

The same issue applies to other units such as tanks, field guns, etc.

Thanks,

Gravy

[Conscript Bagger]

I don't think adding pauses will delay firing, just movement. For the small mortars at least, it takes several rounds to have any effect, so single shots aren't too useful, especially since the first few usually fall short or long. Same for smoke.

Bigger guns tend to have bigger ammo loads, and the Area Fire order (IIRC) slows the rate of fire a bit so you don't blow through HE as quickly. Still, I agree that you can run out distressingly quickly with a Stug or whatever... you really have to pick your targets sometimes.

[YankeeDog]

Ultimately, I think fire orders by # and type of round would be good for on-board mortars and guns. That's how it's done in IRL, so I don't see how having it that way in the game would be a bad thing.

For now, at least with there are a couple of ways to fudge this.

(1) you can give the mortar crew a 'rotate' order somewhere away from the fire order. The crew will then rotate, and after they're done rotating to the assigned facing, rotate back to the direction of the fire order and begin firing. By varying the angle difference between the two, you can actually get pretty good control over when a mortar crew starts firing in a turn, and by extension, how many shells they fire.

(2) If you'd rather have the mortar start firing right away, and then stop part way through the turn, give the team a movement order, with additional pauses if necessary. The mortar team will stop firing once it starts to move. Since mortar teams generally have a setup time of at least 20 sec., you can usually make this movement order very short - even 1m is usually fine. Remember to cancel the firing order at the beginning of the next turn, though -- otherwise the mortar will begin firing again once it's moved and set up (assuming it has LOS and/or is connected to an HQ that has LOS, of course).

Note that these tricks can also work to a degree with area fire orders for other units like tanks and guns. Turretless AFVs, for example, can be made to stop firing with a movement or rotate order that faces them away from the target area.

Not ideal solutions, but they work pretty well for now.

Cheers,

YD

[Paco QNS]

There are two alternatives:

a) Give the mortar a "Turn to" order (along with the firing order), up to 180º from the target. The more degrees, the more delay.

Give the mortar a very short "Move to" order. This will delay it -along with the mounting time- for an amount of seconds.

Both have the same problem: they only fire at the end of turn.

If I have understood you correctly, you use a Pause and a "Move" order, so the mortar fire a few shots and then stops fire and move.

Regards,

[junk2drive]

better two answers than none lol

i think the more you learn the game, the easier it is to deal with the "not haves" and use the "what you do have". i would love to have more smoke. but i deal with it the way it is.

[gravy]

Thanks to everyone who replied. Some excellent suggestions. I'll give them a try.

Gravy

[Kingfish]

One thing to keep in mind is that mortars that had pre-registered a TRP during setup will no longer be able to target it if they move.