Renaud Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 I had a 4th platoon weapons platoon leader at a hedgerow with the 4th platoon 60mm mortar 8m away on the same side of the hedgerow. The 4th platoon leader called indirect fire from the adjacent mortar, 60meter linear target. The delay was 4 minutes. I later adjusted to a point target on the 3rd or 4th minute, which added 1 minute adjustment time (to clobber an AT gun spotted in the intervening time). 4 minutes delay seems rather long when the spotting and firing units are 8m apart in eye and voice contact. 1 minute seems more reasonable. This was road to berlin by the way - regular units. The spotting platoon leader was taking some desultory rifle fire from 250 meters or so, but not pinned. The mortar team of course was unsuppressed and out of LOS, well behind the hedgerow. Thoughts? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LarsS Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 I had a 4th platoon weapons platoon leader at a hedgerow with the 4th platoon 60mm mortar 8m away on the same side of the hedgerow. The 4th platoon leader called indirect fire from the adjacent mortar, 60meter linear target. The delay was 4 minutes. I later adjusted to a point target on the 3rd or 4th minute, which added 1 minute adjustment time (to clobber an AT gun spotted in the intervening time). 4 minutes delay seems rather long when the spotting and firing units are 8m apart in eye and voice contact. 1 minute seems more reasonable. This was road to berlin by the way - regular units. The spotting platoon leader was taking some desultory rifle fire from 250 meters or so, but not pinned. The mortar team of course was unsuppressed and out of LOS, well behind the hedgerow. Thoughts? Which difficulty setting did you play at? My feeling is that the difference between firing off the first round in direct firing mode and getting off the first spotting round for indirect fire is a tad to great for mortars. If permitted i'll semi-hijack this thread to ask my own questions regarding mortars. 1) Is the time delay purely cosmetic, i.e. could I order a fire mission then pack up my mortars, move and deploy them somewhere else, without any penalties in accuracy or delay, as long as the mortars are deployed BEFORE they go into spotting mode and providing they never lose radio contact with the spotter? Or will the time delay reset and start counting from the moment the mortars have been redeployed? (I don't have the demo on my home machine so I can't test it myself) 2) I know that the difficulty setting determines the delay for the different stages of the fire mission for the player, but do the same delays also apply to the AI? I would imagine that they do, but just making sure. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 4 minutes does seem a bit long for a voice-communicated indirect fire call like the one you describe. Especially since full-out wirelessly communicated fire requests of on-map assets only take 4 minutes to get to fire for effect. There should be at least some advantage to not having to transmit all the information via wireless, especially 1940s era wireless. But I wouldn't go all the way down to one minute. Keep in mind that the 4 minutes represents time to Fire For Effect, not time to first spotting round. And the spotting rounds take time to fire and adjust. So the section leader shouts the bearing and range back to the mortar. Mortar crew dials this in, adjust the tube, sets the charge, and fires a spotting round. Then 8-20 seconds of flight time. Spotter observes impact, shouts corrections to mortar. Adjustments. Another spotting round. Then, if the round is more or less on target, Fire for Effect. How long? I dunno. I'll buy less than 4 minutes for a trained team. But I don't think one minute. Maybe 2-3 minutes for voice-directed, vs. 4 minutes for wireless. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dadekster88 Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 4 minutes does seem a bit long for a voice-communicated indirect fire call like the one you describe. Especially since full-out wirelessly communicated fire requests of on-map assets only take 4 minutes to get to fire for effect. There should be at least some advantage to not having to transmit all the information via wireless, especially 1940s era wireless. But I wouldn't go all the way down to one minute. Keep in mind that the 4 minutes represents time to Fire For Effect, not time to first spotting round. And the spotting rounds take time to fire and adjust. So the section leader shouts the bearing and range back to the mortar. Mortar crew dials this in, adjust the tube, sets the charge, and fires a spotting round. Then 8-20 seconds of flight time. Spotter observes impact, shouts corrections to mortar. Adjustments. Another spotting round. Then, if the round is more or less on target, Fire for Effect. How long? I dunno. I'll buy less than 4 minutes for a trained team. But I don't think one minute. Maybe 2-3 minutes for voice-directed, vs. 4 minutes for wireless. I'd agree as I have been thinking 4 minutes is a bit long for direct coms. Assuming everything is set up etc and they are under no pressure and they are experienced I'd think from sighting a target to dropping some effective rounds would take about 2 minutes maybe 3 at max. Maybe fng's would be 4 minutes I don't know but a well dialed in crew should be quicker imo with effective eyes on target. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanzfeld Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 We talked about this in testing and I agree it is way too long. In fact there is a guy here that had a family member who was a 60mm mortar guy back from that era and HE said with direct voice comms (no radio) the spotting rounds would be out in less than 30 seconds with FFE in 1 minute. He said any longer and there was no point in having the mortar up that close. Makes sense to me. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moneymaxx Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 I was suprised too to see that mortars with voice contact have such a long delay. I understand that off-board assets take some time because 1) The spotter hat to determine map references 2) Send them 3) The arty has to receive them 4) Convert them into firing orders and 5) Then start to fire beginning with spotting rounds 6) More delay is added because off the quality of the communications channel due to e.g. technical problems, bad sound quality etc. (it even takes time for the sender of information to realize that it has not arrived at its destination). For on-board assets more or less the same applies if orders are transmitted by wireless. But one can argue that it should be quicker than off-board because the arty is an attached unit. E.g. they could have taken part in the pre-battle planning, therefore knowing about possible targets and their location (map study) which would help with point 3/4. Knowing the people that you are fighting with also can help during communication problems, point 5. Voice order should be much quicker though since there is really no need for point 1/2/3 and the communications channel is much better, even better if there is eye contact as well. IMHO it should not take much longer than direct mortar fire to at least get the first spotting round, FFE should take a little bit longer though because of the need to report where the spotting round landed (but still faster than wireless/off-board). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akd Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 The game currently does not distinguish between mortars in voice contact with a spotter 10 feet away, and mortars in radio contact with a spotter 1km away. I believe delivery times can only be shortened by the following: TRPs (no spotting cycle), mortar skill, spotter skill, spotter type (FOs are better than HQs) and luck (if the first spotting round is on target, you will save much time). The number of HQs the spotter must go through to get to the mortar may also affect delivery times, but not 100% sure on that point. Please remember that delivery times are estimates. The actual time until fire for effect can be shorter than the estimate. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renaud Posted May 17, 2011 Author Share Posted May 17, 2011 I was playing elite if that matters. Now that I know I would have simply put the mortar crew into the hedge so they could direct fire. More risky though. Also I like the options of area and linear fire...really useful. Would be nice if these were available when direct firing as well. Since I'm engaged in wishful thinking, a cool option would be land lines...wire has some unique advantages over wireless of the time. Possibly wire could be an available 'fortification' for purchase by defenders and placed like a trp...any defender hq in that action spot would get a time reduction when calling fire. To simulate vulnerability of wire, it could be destroyed by a lucky HE round. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Barleyman Posted May 22, 2011 Share Posted May 22, 2011 Hopefully this will get sorted out in a patch. 5min delivery time for 81mm on map mortars incidentally with HQ giving directions from a small hill and tubes in a defilade little bit back. You lose linear targeting with direct fire but I think much faster fire delivery trumps that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanonier Reichmann Posted May 23, 2011 Share Posted May 23, 2011 I couldn't agree more. CMx1 had it better represented in this regard with on map mortars commencing their firing pretty much within about 10 seconds or so when firing indirectly using an HQ as its spotter. Perhaps 10 seconds was a bit quick but it's certainly more realistic than 4 minutes when all the spotter has to do is simply shout back and signal his instructions to the nearby mortar team. Regards KR 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fetchez la Vache Posted May 23, 2011 Share Posted May 23, 2011 Also in the same vein, shouldn't direct fire (no spotter) on-map mortars have the linear/area/point fire type options? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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