81mm Mortar Only 1 WP Direct Fire and Losing Ammo

[haroldeh]

Two issues - may be related.

1) Direct an 81mm mortar to fire smoke on a point it can see. Mortar starts w 90 HE and 9 WP. It fires 1 WP and will not fire any more smoke. The command button to fire smoke is disabled even after many turns.

2) With no other commands to the mortar, its ammo reads 80 HE and 7 WP. Mortars seem to lose ammo.

WRT to Mortars and smoke, was able to have an observer schedule a smoke mission for the mortar and it did fire the correct # of WP.

[gunnergoz]

Were you watching the mortar fire each round or only counting the rounds that you could see land? I've seen a lot of rounds go astray and ammo count goes with them.

OTOH, You could have a point about smoke missions. Give the mortar a point target and since one round may suffice to obscure that point, the mortar calls off the rest of the fire mission itself. Why it would ignore that it still has WP round remaining is a puzzle but perhaps the game restricts artillery assets to only one shoot of smoke and assumes all are used up in that shoot. If I shoot a smoke mission, I generally make a linear target and tell the firing unit to fire "heavy" so it uses up all the smoke. I do that because, as I mentioned, I suspect the game only allows one smoke mission per artillery unit.

I'm sure more will be revealed as time goes by and we learn more about the game and its underlying mechanics and assumptions.