fire value for mortars

[Strela]

I have played a lot of these games and tested a lot of them also if the mortar is smaller the 120mm I don't bother firing them any more because 90 percent no effect and mortars and artillery were main casualty producers in the war it would be different if you at least got some fatigue out of firing them.

Dennis,

There are a couple of different issues here. Mortars of lower caliber have lower hard and soft factors so matched with the scaling bug they were as you point out, useless. The second issue was that in the earlier titles we had much smaller base units as we built everything up at a company/battalion level. In Normandy for example, the US 60 mm mortars were in 3 gun sections with 3 sections per battalion. They should have been setup as 9 gun platoons to stop players breaking them down. These and other lessons have been learned over time.

So low attack values combined with too low a level formation makes these units useless unless a player combines them immediately.

As far as results from indirect fire, I want to see how this change goes before looking at the next level of changes. I would love to see indirect fire have 'more impact' so to speak, but I want to be careful we don't break things as well. Players have a lot more flexibility with artillery than their actual counterparts.

Some ideas that I thought was things such as;

• An optional one turn plotting delay for artillery, but with a doubled fire effect (essentially barrage fire)
  
• Artillery spotters (dedicated to various batteries) that would give the doubled effect mentioned, but without a plotting delay. Alternatively, a one turn delay for each level above the formation spotting unless the appropriate spotter is present. So a battalion calling in Divisional guns would have a one turn delay, Corps - two turns, Army - three turns etc.
  
• Pre-game plotting within the editor for barrages so they can occur on the first turn.
  
• Mortars having a significantly higher fatigue impact
  
• Changing mortars completely in that they could do two things; fire smoke indirectly or add their hard/soft attack values directly to any direct fire attack or assault on the target hex. They would essentially provide additional strength to all attacks into that hex for the players turn. Think of it as a modifier to all combats a little like using engineers etc
  
• Look at the impact of artillery vs fortifications and decide whether that needs any tweaking - particularly to the chance to disrupt while within the fortification.
  

That was all in a five minute brain dump, but anything that helps players feel like they have the ability to play a combined arms game is better overall.

David