Artillery in WW2 game

[MikeyD]

Well, Steve or Charles have repeatedly vowed to get properly working on-map mortars in by the WWII title. But lets remember, the reason why they're not in now is due to vexing targeting issues peculiar to mortars and no other weapon in the game. All Charles has to do is budget enough time in his busy schedule to solve that problem with some genius coding brilliance. Oh, and someone has to make the mortar crew animations, and the models and the skins and probably a dozen other things. Sounds simple enough

[SgtMuhammed]

Of course knowing Charles the wait could be the WWII title or he might surprise us with something in the next build, the guy is a freaking god.

[SlapHappy]

Well, the specific mortar they refer to in the "briefing" is otherwise known as a commando mortar and there are videos on youtube of British troops firing it in Afghanistan.

I guess it is similar to what the Japanese employed when they called it a "knee" mortar.

[SlapHappy]

Look for the 51 mm near the end of this video

[John Kettler]

MikeyD,

I thought there was a major issue with the time to do the specialized mortar crew animations? Could've sworn Steve posted something to that effect.

Regards,

John Kettler

[flamingknives]

Weren't there early screenshots of mortar teams?

[ChrisND]

Weren't there early screenshots of mortar teams?

Even the texture file for the M224 is still in the game's files.

[Dietrich]

Will on-map mortars in CMx2 (whether in a future CM:SF patch or module or in CM:WW2) be useable as mortars have pretty much always been, without the need for LOS to the target (though with some sort of accuracy penalty, I suppose)? From what I understand, that's much of the value of a mortar: you can bombard a target or an area which you perhaps can't reach with line-of-sight weapons or can't even directly see.

[Michael Emrys]

Whenever possible, the mortars themselves were set up behind some kind of LOS-blocking terrain, but someone—usually the crew captain—would take a position where he could observe the target and transmit corrections to the weapon. In CMx1 this was somewhat modeled by having an officer fulfill that role. In real life though it was normally a sergeant or corporal who was integral to the crew. Perhaps with 1:1 representation we might see a more historically valid mechanism for this tactic.

Michael

[Apocal]

Whenever possible, the mortars themselves were set up behind some kind of LOS-blocking terrain, but someone—usually the crew captain—would take a position where he could observe the target and transmit corrections to the weapon. In CMx1 this was somewhat modeled by having an officer fulfill that role. In real life though it was normally a sergeant or corporal who was integral to the crew. Perhaps with 1:1 representation we might see a more historically valid mechanism for this tactic.

Michael

Admittedly, this is not entirely applicable (being the USMC in Korea, not the US Army in Europe), but from reading Colder than Hell by Joseph Owen, a mortar officer in a rifle company, he describes targets as usually being transmitted by runner on the attack or by field telephone on the defense, with himself (a second lieutant) doing the forward observation.

[Dietrich]

Whenever possible, the mortars themselves were set up behind some kind of LOS-blocking terrain, but someone—usually the crew captain—would take a position where he could observe the target and transmit corrections to the weapon.

One way to implement this would be to have a mortar crew — two or three men including the corporal or sergeant commanding — in two teams: the men handling the mortar directly; the crew chief. Set the mortar in an out-of-LOS position, then use the "Split Teams" command to 'detach' the crew chief and move him to a good observation position.

I suppose that in CM:SF this would make the most sense with 60mm mortars (and the like), since, if I recall correctly, 60mm mortars are attached to companies (or is it platoons?) in groups of three. In CM:WW2, this would apply to 50mm, 2in, 60mm, and even 3in and 81mm mortars. (By the time of the Battle of Normandy, many German units used 120mm mortars for battalion-level fire support and detached individual 81mm mortars to companies.)