Some mortars suggestion

[Lugi]

Finally it's open.

1. Remove the stupid firemissions. Its nothing but a waste of 1 player who needs to be in mortar squad and make new firemissions in the random points of the map all the time so the mortars can shoot at the location given by some guy on teamchat.
2. Allow mortars to resupply from nearby crates. That's gonna save 2 more men who have to pick up ammobag from supply crate and throw it into the mortar pit.

And that's it for now. I've got more ideas to post here but I need to rethink them.

[PatrickLA_CA]

I'm more like limit mortars to not be able to fire very far away from fire missions and make the squad leader that built the mortars unavailable to request fire missions because it is so hardcore just mortaring where ever the mortar guys want.

EDIT: And reduce the amount of ammo and rearming speed the mortars have.

[Lugi]

[irony]Yeah very great idea.[/irony]
A clever guy would make a second squad called "mortar spotter" and do everything he would do now.
People are smart enough to avoid some stupid restrictions like those firemissions.

[Spec]

I suggest this change:

Firemissions do not count when:
The request came from within the same squad
The request came from another squad with less than 4 players (unless that squad has a sniper in it - then it can be assumed it is a two man sniper/spotter squad)

Then only other infantry squads could request mortars, making it less spammy. (Or one would have to create two half-full squads just for mortars - or request the sniper kit for them, making it easy for the administration to see the rule violation).

Also: Hitting too far away from an active request marker will result in a warning given to the user of the mortar. Repeating fire more than two more times after the warning will result in the mortar deactivating for 10 minutes for this player.

Please, try to find away around it. I think it's important to find a solution for this, as mortars are indeed pretty annoying in their current form.

[Johncro]

So what your saying is, istaspam Nice,

Oh and try to be a little be more polite.

This suggestion won't work because it will lead to spam, FM are essential
the ammo from Crates will reload faster....
but hey if you want another 2 man locked squad be my guest.

[Redamare]

yeah i vote ... Limit morters range , only allow morter missions once per 15 so minutes and only allow morters to be shot in the general direction of the mortermission to avoid Off target spamming ( main bases and non morter mission requested zones.

[Bluedrake42]

yeah i vote ... Limit morters range , only allow morter missions once per 15 so minutes and only allow morters to be shot in the general direction of the mortermission to avoid Off target spamming ( main bases and non morter mission requested zones.

nope I don't like that, whats the point of having a player fired mortar if you're just gonna limit where they can fire anyways. I also agree with removing the requirement of firemissions, keep them there so players can still request it, but mortars should be able to fire without them. (especially since a lot of the firemissions are called in through the chat box by referencing grids)

I do agree with limiting the mortar range, maybe as far down to 1000 to 800 Meters. That will make them more vulnerable since they'll have to deploy closer to the front lines.

There is another suggestion though, we could always make it so we bring back the old system, where mortars are called in by the commander, and the only way to get a mortar strike is to have the mortars actually constructed, but they wouldn't be manned by players.

[mat552]

I suggest this change:

Firemissions do not count when:
The request came from within the same squad
The request came from another squad with less than 4 players (unless that squad has a sniper in it - then it can be assumed it is a two man sniper/spotter squad)

The "solution" to this will be Mortar1 and Mortar2 squads. The actual mortarmen will be in one squad, probably alone, while the ammomen and officer and whatever other lonewolves are around join the second one.

Mumble means that any attempt to curtail mortar spam based on who's in what squad will fail, simple as that.

[BrandenburgKommando]

I think mortars should be constructed but once they are they become automated and squad leads call in fire missions and the commander can answer them with HE, PRX, or Smoke every 3 minutes or so they recharge so it takes away the mortar squad providing more infantry and gives more incentive to have a commander.

[Kain888]

Mortars are fine (and fun to play! :> ) I would just like to see more mechanics that support spotter in action.

There should be done something to disallow building them in DoD as well.

EDIT:

Only thing I would like to see is some protections for FOBs against mortars. Like making foxholes protect you from them, etc. Otherwise there is hardly any point to defends FOBs now.

[Swado95]

It would be nice to limit the fire rate mabey 3 shot per morter every 7 mins to prevent morter spaming. Also they have to be set up atleast 200m away from there main to make it so they can be taken out. Considering they can shoot basicly anywhere I think this is pretty fair.

[doop-de-doo]

No mortar squad fire-missions? Limit range? What is this? It's hard enough to get ppl to target for you.

Geez, try doing CAS under the same circumstances, or tank warfare...

[Andy[EEF]]

I suggest this change:

Firemissions do not count when:
The request came from within the same squad
The request came from another squad with less than 4 players (unless that squad has a sniper in it - then it can be assumed it is a two man sniper/spotter squad)

Then only other infantry squads could request mortars, making it less spammy. (Or one would have to create two half-full squads just for mortars - or request the sniper kit for them, making it easy for the administration to see the rule violation).

Also: Hitting too far away from an active request marker will result in a warning given to the user of the mortar. Repeating fire more than two more times after the warning will result in the mortar deactivating for 10 minutes for this player.

Please, try to find away around it. I think it's important to find a solution for this, as mortars are indeed pretty annoying in their current form.

I'm sure the PR dev team had already had lots of discussions about this topic and how best to implement mortars in game without it being too "spammy", like you say it is. Besides, some of the suggestions you made are probably hardcoded anyway.

I think mortars are fine as they are now because of one simple reason:
Mortars are useless without people calling out targets/adjustments!

What I mean by this is the common situation where squad leaders spam fire mission requests so his mortar gunners can speculatively drop rounds around a flag area. Sure, it might get them a few kills if they're lucky, but soon enough the other team would just get in cover or avoid where the rounds are hitting, as there is usually no-one calling out adjustments for them to fire on if there is no teamwork on that team.

Honestly, If you find it difficult to avoid being hit by such mortar tactics, perhaps stay away from obvious areas that a mortar team would hit. E.g. a recently captured flag . It would make the probability of you being hit a lot less and it would waste their ammo.

[Himalde]

The only problem with mortars are that on some maps they can be built inside DOD.

As said they are useless without spotters/fire-missions from other squads. And they are really easy to find and kill when you follow the sound.

PS Mortar tips
If your SL calls in a fire-mission using the distance given to him on the squad screen. If he is standing on the mortar when he does, you can see where the fire-mission-marker is compared to your real target. Indicating if you should increase or decrease the distance used to calculate your firing-angle. This also tells your team where you are firing the mortars.

[Spec]

Besides, some of the suggestions you made are probably hardcoded anyway.

Such as?

[Cassius]

I think mortars are fine the way they are. I did not see any games where the mortar squad racked up an insane ammount of kills. I saw a game where an apache squad got 40 kills though. Just remove the requierment to have to call in a firemission. If the mortar squad wants to waste ammo with no spotter let them.

[boilerrat]

This talk of automated commander mortar stuff is just a waste of time.
DEVs created PLAYER CONTROLLED mortars for a reason.

I see nothing really wrong with the system right now, if the mortar team is able to organize to keep all the mortars stocked with ammo then they are doing their job. Now if you want to kill those mortars, how about you do your job?

The range is just fine, 1500m means you have to relocate constantly on 4km maps.

[Andy[EEF]]

Such as?

This:

Hitting too far away from an active request marker will result in a warning given to the user of the mortar. Repeating fire more than two more times after the warning will result in the mortar deactivating for 10 minutes for this player.

Functions that would be needed to calculate if a player is aiming at a marker or not such as in ArmA like "getDir [object]" don't exist in the BF2 engine IIRC.

Besides, even if it were possible, what would the motar team do if the marker was off and a person spotting says "Good hits, they're moving. Aim 50m east of the marker"?

Would you punish the mortar team for aiming away from the initial firing solution to adjust onto a taget provided by said spotter? What if the height difference of the map makes the round fall short and the mortar team already fired twice? Would you still "block" the player from using the mortar because of that?

Having to make a squad leader constantly re adjust a marker so it is dead accurate on the target he wants when he could just instead tell the mortar team adjustments on mumble/teamspeak/VOIP instead is just silly if you ask me.

Like Killgore said;

I think mortars are fine the way they are. I did not see any games where the mortar squad racked up an insane ammount of kills. If the mortar squad wants to waste ammo with no spotter let them.

Leave the mortars alone, they're fine the way they are. They can never be truley game changing assets without proper teamwork and coordination in the first place, for all the reasons I said in my last post.

[Bluedrake42]

I think mortars should be constructed but once they are they become automated and squad leads call in fire missions and the commander can answer them with HE, PRX, or Smoke every 3 minutes or so they recharge so it takes away the mortar squad providing more infantry and gives more incentive to have a commander.

I like this +1

[Lugi]

And what do you think about making mortars less accurate but allow them to fire constantly (if the supply crates are close) and without firemissions?