Mortars

[ZonexNL]

I've always been wondering why mortars have to be dug out and placed in mortar pits? I mean in real life you can just practically pick that thing up and walk away with it. Why do we have to spend so much time in this game setting up mortars and why aren't they portable?

I do understand they might have done it because else it'd be unfair having mortars up anywhere you want but I mean hey, leaving out the digging time wouldn't make much of a difference, I suppose.

[lucky.BOY]

These madium mortars we have now (i believe) are quite heavy, M 252 81 mm mortar weigths 41 kg fully assembled, not something you want to run around with, add to the rest of your gear. Seems legit to me that you have to make some team effort to get them online.

on the other hand, including light, 60mm mortars looks quite interesting , as these are one man portable and most can also be fired in handheld mode, meaning you only rest the base plate on ground, angle the tube with your hand and fire off



M224 60mm Light Mortar

Oh and sorry for going a bit suggestion-ish

[ZonexNL]

These madium mortars we have now (i believe) are quite heavy, M 252 81 mm mortar weigths 41 kg fully assembled, not something you want to run around with, add to the rest of your gear. Seems legit to me that you have to make some team effort to get them online.

on the other hand, including light, 60mm mortars looks quite interesting , as these are one man portable and most can also be fired in handheld mode, meaning you only rest the base plate on ground, angle the tube with your hand and fire off



M224 60mm Light Mortar

Oh and sorry for going a bit suggestion-ish

Yeah that's what I'm talking about. Those light mortars would be pretty cool to have, but I think that would be kind'a like the grenadier kit.

[SGT.Ice]

For one it's to keep them stationary & get a bit of teamwork involved

The other reason that comes to mind is the FOB is the only system in place which makes sense for deploying them otherwise they'd of gone the route BF3 did.

[MrTomRobs]

For one it's to keep them stationary & get a bit of teamwork involved

The other reason that comes to mind is the FOB is the only system in place which makes sense for deploying them otherwise they'd of gone the route BF3 did.

This basically, and also like OP said, it'd be too similar to the grenadier kit, the only really feasible rounds you could use for a 60mm mortar would be HE and smoke, both of which the grenadier kit has. If we were going to go down an illumination round route (which could be very useful on night maps like the falklands one), then yes, it could be an option, but i'm sure we could give a paralume to the much talked about spotter kit or to an officer, and if we were going to use a 60mm for target identification, well we already have smoke rounds for that.

As far as i can tell, the only difference between a UGL and a 60mm mortar would be a slightly bigger blast radius and maybe proximity fuzes, but i'm not even sure about the latter!

Good idea, but too much work for very little gain in my eyes. And i'm also not sure whether or not this counts as a suggestion, but i'll leave that to the mods because i've already had an infraction for that

[Delta1292]

I think having a restricted light mortar kit (maybe 2 or 3 per team) would be quite useful, grenadiers can reach out to ~400m whereas a 60mm Mortar can hit targets up to ~3.5km away IRL, but say ~1-1.5km in game. A great use for this would be on the bigger maps, allowing a normal infantry squad (maybe defending a position or just before an attack) to provide quick smoke/HE for a short period of time (limit kit to 3-5 rounds?) and rearmable from generic ammo bags/boxes (with long rearm time?), also maybe a long set up time (30s-1min?). Anyway, this is all rather pointless without capturing a dev's imagination but it would be great.

[Rudd]

welcome to the forum Delta.

Iirc from the mortarman who is one of our military advisors, mortars of the size we use ingame require level terrain to be used correctly, a mortar isn't manned by one person, but by a crew who carry shovels to create a suitable position in combat. This to my mind indicates our deployable system is actually therefore not a bad recreation of reality, with the firebase creating a nice limitation to help prevent OPness.

The smaller mortars are less troublesome iirc from Dan Mill's book 'sniper one' where he used the one his company had to defend a compound in Iraq to great effect. (the rounds fell on shale being used at a constuction site, creating thousands of pieces of shrapnel) However as others have noted, it wouldn't be much different than the grenadier, given the numbers of players ingame and in squads I don't feel gameplay would benefit from having a man in such a stationary and vulnerable position inside your own squad when hopefully you have a team mortar squad anyway.

[Delta1292]

Cheers Rudd, been around for sometime (and I'm sure I've posted before, although apparently not).

This is the point of the 60mm mortar, it can be used by one man (albeit less accurately), and if you look at the 60mm mortar that the british army is currently using (M6-895 - aka M6-640) and look at the manufacturer's page it shows it being deployed and fired in what appears to be quite an undulating piece of ground (link - Hirtenberger 60mm commando mortar. - Image - Army Technology). I believe that the current mortars modeled in game are 80mm mortars in which case your summerisations involving a crew is correct.

Also the ingmae grenadier is largely useless for longer engagement distances, once again referring to the brit kit max range is 300m on most maps compared with the 3.5km range of a 60mm mortar (although I presume that is in a "deployed" sense, but I would expect the range to be less for handheld deployed fire). Luckily I have (a very well thumbed) copy of Dan Mill's book to hand, if you look at the first set of pictures it shows the 60mm mortar being fired by a single man.

For gameplay, there are 2 points, firstly deployed mortars are largely unused in 50-75% of the time and when they are used people are reasonably inept at using them so more often than not I end up getting mortared myself, despite giving a grid in text and over mumble SL (when available). My second point is that it is not a stationary kit, ie not meant for a guy to be designated mortar guy who sits behind and puts smoke/HE out, more of a slightly longer range grenadier who can give a good pre-attack barrage then join in with everyone else. A quick aside to this is that as far as i am aware you have implemented GPMG gunners into 1.0 - this is a weapon that is platoon level and a 2 man weapons system (even in a non-static role).

ps sorry for the wall of text just had a lot to write lol

EDIT: even the official british army vehicles and equipment pdf shows a 60mm mortar being fired from rough, rocky terrain by a single man.

[Rudd]

Cheers Rudd, been around for sometime (and I'm sure I've posted before, although apparently not).

lurkers!

EDIT: even the official british army vehicles and equipment pdf shows a 60mm mortar being fired from rough, rocky terrain by a single man.

yeah that's my point the ones ingame are 81mm iirc, bit bigger

so I'm against 81mm becoming mobile for realism reasons, but I'm against the 60mm for gameplay reasons

[Delta1292]

haha, well most of the clan stuff is handled by the others and I very rarely have ideas worth posting about lol

Yeah, mobile 81mm is completely unrealistic, ref 60mm fair enough. Personally I think with small mag, long reload, longish deploy time, nerfed range (somewhere between 500m-1km?) and bad sighting system (something similar to grenadier would model the guesstimation of the irl version), it wouldn't be too OP on the medium to large maps - shija, kashan, silent eagle, burning sands, etc where a grenadier just doesn't cut it due to the long view/draw distances involved.

[40mmrain]

the portable mortar would be pretty battle relevant on larger, more open maps. Also on bigger servers.

Further still, on the smallest of maps the larger entrenched mortars would be made irrelevant, as they should be, when youre using them at like 500m or less every time, theyre impossible to use properly as you face being overrun and found way too easily. This is really apparent on tad sae, fallujah, etc.

Adding this as a new kit is a good idea to me. Do all conventional have man portable mortars? I'd probably bet so. Pretty sure insurgents love their mortars, too.

[Rabbit]

welcome to the forum Delta.

Iirc from the mortarman who is one of our military advisors, mortars of the size we use ingame require level terrain to be used correctly, a mortar isn't manned by one person, but by a crew who carry shovels to create a suitable position in combat.

We used a 60 on a hill with no BII, just the tube and a M8 baseplate, granted because we didn't have the BII he broke both his hands firing it. Still, point is its possible to use one without a shovel and on a hill, its far from optimal, but he needed LOS and made it work.

Worse comes to worse stick it at the main base as pretty much everything should be in range for it. I mean a 60 can fire something like 3.5 km

[DDS]

I'd like to see mobile mortar kit as well. The mortar pit system works well only on a large map as it gets over run easily. Unless we got to 8 man squads giving a proper defense. In a mobile kit system perhaps if it was deployable on a timer, much like the squad leaders rally is timed before use. Or restricted by ammo.

[tankninja1]

Be useful if mortars could damage people inside buildings, especially the tin roofed ones.

Also what would the possibility of larger or smaller artillery, especially on large 4k maps where normal mortars can only cover a fraction of the map and can be somewhat useless like on kashan

[Xavo|xXx]

Bordering on a suggestion but could be somehow set up to the SL's rallypoint in the same way that the 81mm is setup near a FOB... That is if thought was given to get the smaller one ingame.