fire value for mortars

[wololoh]

But still the question why this affects mortars remains unanswered. Do you have the overall impression that "density" is also applied to all direct fire? (In Squad Battles, it is!) Does it take more direct firepower to achieve casualties against small units than against large ones?

I tested infantry as well, their fire values are not affected by the unit density in the target hex (i.e. they work as you would expect based on rules).

I agree that this does not seem to be documented but if it works along the lines that I suggested then it appears logical. Not everything is documented and this may have been deliberately omitted to reduce the complexity of what is already an extremely detailed manual. Or perhaps it was overlooked. Either way, to me, it appears to be a feature rather than a bug.

Well, I personally find this questionable. The mortar fire just becomes so ineffective, even against a full strength German platoon on open ground the fire value becomes almost negligible (namely 2 for my example, which is by the way with a 60mm mortar unit from 327th glider inf).
This linear dependency on the target hex stacking just makes them seem very weak, to the point where they seem to become almost useless in many practical situations.


I would personally prefer something like the rule below (from the manual), which would also make the unit density have an impact, but without becoming extremely ineffective in many normal situations. 

Stack Fire – a modifier applies to Direct fire and Indirect fire from half
the stacking limit (1.0) up to maximum stacking limit (2.0). This
represents the higher casualties due to the increased density in a hex.

But at least by finding out how everything actually works, we can all plan accordingly .