Deadly 50mm mortar.

[Pud]

I now that arty has been increased in effectiveness , but....

Im playing a game with a friend. I had a soviet platoon in some trees. He opened up with 3 50mm motars and within 30 seconds (what was left in the round) %50 of my whole platoon was killed. Ok airbursts etc but thats a bit excessive isnt it? I could be wrong but it looks like arty are overpowered given this result?

[Silvio Manuel]

Charlie don't ever see 'em or hear 'em

[YankeeDog]

Hmmm. In my experience thus far, your result sounds like a bit of bad luck. At least in my experiences with the 50mm mortar thus far (which granted are only a few - so many scenarios to play, so little time!!) haven't been able to get such great results from them, even under ideal conditions such as the ones you mention.

From what I've seen the increased effectiveness of light arty in CMBB is mostly in suppressing/rattling infantry, not so much in causing actual casualties.

As I said, though, I'm not basing my opinion on a heck of a lot of data. If your results turn out to be more the norm, than I would say the 50mm is definitely overpowered - your opponent achieved something like 1 casualty per mortar round, as a conservative estimate. If 50mm mortars were that effective on a regular basis, you can be sure the Germans would have kept using them, rather than ditching them for the 81mm mortar. . .

Cheers,

YD

[miller41]

I have done damage similer to that against a players with 50mm mortors. In the game targeted 3 of them on an advancing german group in woods and knocked out a HT and about 1/2 a company of infantry so it is possible to do, just have to be right on target and have some luck. He was walking over a TRP at the time!

[Abbott]

3 50mm mortars grouped firing gives good bang for the buck. The large Russian ammo load outs especially so. If you are fortunate enough to get direct hits you will score some KIA’s, grouping 3 will give great suppressive fire benefits however. Sounds like you were unlucky

[Michael Emrys]

Pud, I'd say that your casualties were on the high end of the scale of likely expected results, but not really unreasonable. If your opponent was using three of them, they can drop a lot of fire in half a minute. Just yesterday, I chased a squad out of a foxhole with just one in that same time. I used regularly to have good luck with the American 60mm in CMBO as well.

It's true that the 50mm mortar bomb does not pack a lot of explosive (roughly comparable to a hand grenade, I guess), but having one go off close by offers a definite opportunity to pick up some splinters. Having a bunch of them go off in your vicinity will definitely inspire thoughts of seeking another venue!

Michael

[ November 12, 2002, 05:38 AM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[ParaBellum]

In a scenario I played I had 5 50mm mortars. I targeted them on some suspected enemy posistions and watched what happened.

Woah! :eek:

The 50mm mortars have a very high ROF. Mortar shells were literally raining down...

Within 2 minutes they killed a 75mm Pak, an 88mm Flak, 2 HMG teams and routed a platoon of infantry.

Especially when firing into wooded areas they're deadly. They don't pack too much punch but since many rounds will detonate as airbursts they still do a lot of damage.

Those 5 mortars each had about 60-70 rounds. That means they could fire more than 300 50mm grenades (each one equivalent to a handgrenade) in a very short time at their target.

[Soddball]

I like the 50mm mortar - it's as effective as the British 2" mortar in CM:BO. That was adequate for routing or killing a unit such as a dug-in machine gun or squad, and also had a high rate of fire.

[tabpub]

Try an infantry battalion's(9 total) grouped together and firing on a TRP....what firing delay??... :cool:

[Bruno Weiss]

Well my experience is the 50mm can keep the target's heads down, maybe get lucky and cause a crew to abandon a gun or some such, but mostly they just make noise.