Mortars fire from buildings

[foamy]

I can't get my on-map mortar guy to fire at a target that he can see and is well within range. He is in a building - does being in a building prevent him from firing ? The marker line locks, but it is a red/brown color.

A second question - do anti-tank mines have an infinite number of charges?? I can hardly believe it, but I stupidly ran two tanks over the same mines and lost both of them

[Moon]

Hi foamy.

Mortars cannot fire from within buildings, indeed. They also cannot fire at targets not within their LOS, unless they are in contact (by brown line) to a HQ unit, in which case they can additionally fire at what the HQ is able to see.

Yes, mines have an indefinite number of charges.

[GenSplatton]

I don't suppose it was intentional, and I don't mean to be mean, but that was one of the funniest posts I have ever read. You do realize that a building has a roof right? How do you think the mortar round would get through the roof if the thing is inside the building? Remember, this game is designed to be REALISTIC. Would you expect a mortar round to warp through your roof if you launched one inside your home? Probably not, hence it won't work in CM either. But seriously, thanks for the laff!

[Yaphank]

The first round would blow a hole in the roof, then subsequent rounds could make it through.

[GenSplatton]

Yes, but subsequent rounds would have to be fired by the now dead mortar team. Not bloody likely!

[PiggDogg]

Splatty & Yaphank

However, at the instant of firing the first round & with long, long arms, the mortar crew runs to cover & out of the blast radius as that round blows a hole in the roof. :eek: :eek:

So, you see, mortars can be fired from inside of buildings. Ha.

Cheers, Richard

[foamy]

OK,OK, now the obvious has been pointed out I can see the funny side to my question. In defence I, like many others have never seen any kind of real weapon like a mortar let alone know its limitations.

Want an even bigger laugh, I actually thought it possible that mortars could fire through windows !! in fact, why not ?? just because a weapon isn't designed to do something doesn't mean that some bright spark in desperation will make it do something the designers did not imagine.

Anyway now I know - thanks.

[Snarker]

That's ok, Foamy. US personnel in the Pacific Theatre WWII tried firing Japanese 'knee mortars' and broke their legs in the process. See, the mortar really wasn't designed to be fired from one's thigh, even though the base plate looked like it...

These were professionals, and they didn't know how to use a mortar either!

[coe]

you could fire mortars from a window though it might be risky....in the industrial buildings with the flat roofs it makes sense you could put a mortar up there.

[Marlow]

In foamy's defense, I believe that the 2" mortar could be fired as a direct fire weapon, and probably could have been fired out of a door or somefink(at least at close ranges). Don't think this is modeled in CM though.

[CMplayer]

Also, in CM mortars can be set up directly behind a tall building and then fire over it, with no regard payed to the angle they'd need to fire out at. This is a nice way to make an onboard mortar park, since they can go into the building to shelter from artillery.

[ 01-25-2002: Message edited by: CMplayer ]</p>

[Viceroy]

Foamy,

don't feel bad. When I first started playing I had set the graphic options to not display roofs. Of course, I then forgot about that and assumed that the roofs had been blown off the buildings. I then spent half a dozen turns trying to get my mortars to fire from the upper floor of one building

[Kanonier Reichmann]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by GenSplatton:

You do realize that a building has a roof right? How do you think the mortar round would get through the roof if the thing is inside the building? Remember, this game is designed to be REALISTIC. Would you expect a mortar round to warp through your roof if you launched one inside your home? Probably not, hence it won't work in CM either. But seriously, thanks for the laff!<hr></blockquote>

Whaddya mean? There's always the stove pipe through the roof you could use to fire your mortar bombs through!

Regards

Jim R.

[willbell]

I think anyone who tries to fire a mortar from inside a building should loose the entire team. Let them work it out for themselves.

I will admit to trying this myself. My logic was that if you were close to a window with the motar at the proper angle it would sail out the window and past the eves. Needless to say it didn't work. (scratch one mortar team)

As for direct fire, I was under the impression that the projectile had to be dropped down the tube to fire. This is just from observation though, I have no idea how the firing mechanism works.

William

[sturner]

If I remember correctly some mortars have a firing mechanism. I think that the U.S. 4.2-inch mortar can be fired in this manner. Most are fired by dropping the round down the barrel, the round's propellent being ignited on contact with the firing pin in the base of the mortar tube.

[wes hays]

Just for your info....

I was in a mortar platoon from 1990 - 1994. I was stationed in Ft. Ord CA then. We had 4 81mm as the Battalion Mortars. Each line Co had 4 60mm mortars. Each squad in our platoon had 5 members. Squad leader, driver (Humvee), gunner, asst gunner and ammo bearer. The way to fire a mortar is drop a round down the tube. This is true about the 4.2, the 81 and the 60. Only the 60 can be LOS fired, because the round doesn't have the range that the bigger ones do.

I have to admit that seeing this post was pretty funny, but then I read the post that said most people hadn't ever seen one, much less one fired.

If anyone does have more questions, please e-mail me. See my profile for that.

[Stacheldraht]

Here are some pictures of current mortars. Generally speaking, they're indirect-fire support weapons with high firing angles, so you don't want a structure over your head when you use one.