Mortars Are Ruining HvH – Here's Why They're a Disaster

After yet another HvH round completely ruined by mortars, I need to say something. It’s one thing to use them in a regular round against Xenos, where the majority of the enemy isn’t going to sit still or bunch up long enough to get wiped out by one well-placed shell. But in HvH, mortars are infinitely more lethal and honestly ruin the entire dynamic of the mode. The way things stand right now, they’re just overpowered and make actual strategic, tactical combat between human factions pointless.

Xenomorphs are agile and difficult to pin down in large groups, making mortars a tool that’s risky but rewarding when used right. But when it’s humans vs. humans, everything changes. We’re talking about groups of Marines or UPP forces hunkering down, setting up defensive positions, and trying to engage each other with actual tactics, and then suddenly—boom—one mortar shell lands and wipes out an entire squad. There’s zero counterplay. You can’t dodge it, you can’t predict it, and once you’re hit, you’re either dead or too injured to fight. And it just keeps happening. Over and over again. Mortar spam ruins any attempt at firefights or strategic positioning because why bother when one shell can end it all?

What’s worse is that mortars in HvH don’t have the same limitations they do against Xenos. Xenos aren’t going to get obliterated by a single shell like a human would, and they can often retreat to heal. But for humans, one shot = instant death. It’s not fun, it’s not balanced, and it turns what should be an intense tactical battle into who can mortar who first. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen entire engagements get obliterated before they even start because someone in the back decided to launch a random shell, and that’s it—the fight’s over before it begins.

And don’t even get me started on how much it slows down the game. People are too afraid to push forward or set up proper defenses because the second they do, they just know a mortar’s going to land and wreck everything they’ve built. It stifles any creativity in playstyle. You can’t strategize when your whole squad gets vaporized in a single, unavoidable hit. Mortars just suck all the depth out of HvH, and it’s beyond frustrating to deal with.

Honestly, HvH would be infinitely more enjoyable if mortars were either completely disabled or heavily nerfed for these rounds. They just don’t fit in a mode where both sides are supposed to have a fair chance at engaging in tactical, skill-based combat. Right now, it just feels like you’re rolling the dice on whether you get to play a real round or whether you’ll be turned into a fine mist from across the map.

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It’s a mortar it’s hole job is to bombard the enemy look at ww1 or ww2 mortar are ment to destroy cades destroy the enemy. Marines and Upp both need mortar but it’s just using in game mechanics

Reposting from discord.

For the next event (Likely next Thursday or the Weekend) I’ll likely change the Mortar for both factions that they only get Camera shells and Frag shells. Frag shells are far less lethal but can be ““decent”” at killing cades. In either case I hope it will be far less disruptive, I can also then spawn in HE shells for the losing faction if they need help

I’ll also try to make the marine LZ’s immune to mortar

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Fun fact, you had to spend more shells then people killed if you wanted to destroy an enemy position in WW1. Because trenches and bunkers are VERY GOOD at providing coverage. That, alongside artillery (and especially mortars) don’t tend to hit precicely, and are more ment to provide suppression fire in an actual war.

For context, 1.75 BILLION shells were fired during WW1, yet it only killed about 3-4 million. And even if you made ALL the injured of thewar artillery related, it would be around 20 million.

Imagine sending out 1000 mortar shells, and you manage to kill 1-2 dudes at best.

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Here’s a fun thought, WW1 and WW2 probably wasnt very much fun to fight in, and video games are kinda reliant on having fun

CM SS13 is not a hyper-realistic MilSim, CM SS13 is a funny space game, CM SS13 is meant to be fun

Mortar is not fun for either side, and people clearly cannot be trusted to use it according to its already relaxed set of rules.

I find this screenshot speaks volumes about the nature of Mortars contributions to HvH, effectively ruining something Steelpoint has worked very hard on, and volunteers his time to host.

Mortar is not fun, Mortar users are ruining an extremely promising gamemode, Mortar should not be welcome in HvH

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Realistic yes, but WW1 was not fun for the people getting shelled.

Mortar needs to be heavily adjusted for HVH, and honestly I think removing it from UPP might work. It would at least let marines push towards the caves, like with xenos. As someone playing as UPP last HVH round, it wasn’t that fun even as UPP because marines couldn’t even put up a proper fight when we could just shell their landing zone (also realistic, but not fun).

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Promising? What is the promise here? The promise is torture. Why are you complaining about mortars torturing marines?

The only real value of HvH is RP which is currently non-existent in these events. It’s a waste.

This line of thinking is extremely unproductive

We are trying to figure out how to improve HvH for others, and coming into this thread just to argue that theres “no point discussing this, because HvH sucks, and I hate it” is really not helpful to anyone

You are not forced to play the game if you dont like it, just as you are not forced to comment here if you have nothing to say

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destroy cades destroy the enemy

I remember both world wars being fought in trenches (the whole point of which was to provide protection against artillery) instead of behind steel barricades, could be my memory though

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“The widespread use of machine guns and rapid-firing artillery pieces on the Western Front meant that any exposed soldier was vulnerable . Protection from enemy fire could only be achieved by digging into the earth. Assaults were carried out across “No Man’s Land” between the opposing trenches.” - Britannica

One of the main point of trenches were protection against artillery, and even then it sometimes didn’t work. Both sides used extensive amounts of artillery.

I don’t think we’re trying to recreate WW1 here guys. Just some plain ol’ fun and mortars are just not the way to go.

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Well, basically this is what real life war is also like.

If you have artillery in range, and spotters, you just obliterate enemy formations that come in range. The counterplay is to neutralize the spotting elements, and counter-battery fire the enemy artillery (which is fairly trivial with radar and acoustic triangulation) or deter/destroy airstrikes with AA.

The only time you see major infantry vs infantry firefights are in major defensive positions and assaults - trenches that protect against nearby artillery hits, concrete structures in cities that do the same.

It’s not so much that the mortar needs to go, as it is the maps and HvH fights in general aren’t designed with any respect for the actual tactical situation - the USCM has air/space superiority and the terrain doesn’t protect against mortar fire, OB, or CAS strikes.

Short of a suicidal assault on a bunker complex you somehow can’t dig out with an OB cannon or nukes, there’s no reason for USCM and UPP to even fire their small arms at each other.

BUT

It’s easy to think of a reason and design maps that would make HvH plausible.

If you cannot just wantonly level the place (maybe it’s a research center and must be captured intact), or the structures are all strong enough to absorb repeated mortar hits and are relatively safe on the inside, or if there’s an underground level where none of these things can reach - then infantry vs infantry engagements become possible.

For our current maps I would suggest that GM’s provide a reasonable roleplay/mechanical justification for why artillery can’t be used.

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Yeah, artilery often deices battles. Always has been, and always will be.

Best way to fix this isnt to remove it, thats the lazy mans option.
Artilery can be fun, but you are rigth with one point. Its not made for XvH.
EVERYTHING marines have is balanced for XvH. Thats why lots of dmg and armor values are changed for HvH.
If you played HvH from when Warfan ran them, you migth remember the old problems.
Mortar dmg cant be well adjusted for HvH, so it would need to be changed in supply and “ease of use” one being far easier to adjust. So you can guess what will be adjusted.

Please do that. I really want to see more of our main HvH explosives used in HvH.
Btw, maybe also give mortars Smoke shells. In XvH they are kinda useless, but in HvH they could open up very fun tactical posebilitys.

I know this isn’t fully related but the fact that both sides can accurately hit each other a screen and a half away means that the mini-version of Mortar is to binocular in then spam fire down a hallway of people with AP on both sides.

The same reason why Mortar is shit is the same reason HvH is shit due to this one tactic; you cannot really do much in a gamemode where whoever sees you first and AP’s first wins, and if they have a bincoular, they basically win because of that.

Fall off past your screen should be HUGE, with only a select few having working scopes like USCM specs and UPP commands / CLF specs, etc., not everyone and their mother that grabs binocs and spams down a corridor, or takes a MD and the moment they see a ping they shoot in that direction and wipe out anyone they are shooting before they can even react.

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I was thinking if we wanted to keep the mortar we just reduce it’s effectiveness, I have some ideas for this:

  1. Change the shells to be less effective (Like making them just frags, also reducing the radius maybe?)
  2. Restrict the places the mortar can shoot, something where people know the mortar can and can’t hit them in some places. It would be easy to implement it where it cannot hit indoors (Even weak ceilings!)
  3. In addition to 2, give marines and UPP something that gives a roof, like a pylon. This allows for maps that have less mortar safe areas to be used as well (I don’t know how to implement this with a good IC reason though)

Marine mains who say “just dodge” to xenos complaining about the mortar when they have to taste their own medicine. Irony.

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I don’t think the mortar can fire directly into your hive lmao.

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Mortars and CAS will always be broken in HvH because they’re designed to heavily punish marines for messing up. If you’re being hit by either and you’re a human, you’re supposed to die. Does anyone else remember one of the last few oil wars round where the normandy did most of the killing because 4 x lasers vs UPP in semi closed in spaces is impossible to counter and kills humans very very fast?

tbh that’s also pretty much how actual firefights go. You just sort of spray in the hopefully accurate direction of troops you can barely see or only sort of know are there.

The absolute basics of infantry vs infantry engagement tactics is element A engages and pins the enemy infantry down with suppressive fire (meaning if you get out of cover you probably die - suppressive fire isn’t suppressive if it doesn’t kill), then element B flanks (preferably with a machinegun) gets accurate enfilade fire and kills them all.

I notice in HvH that players simply don’t have any gamesense for the change of tactics it requires - they run out in the open all the time, act like they’re fighting xenos, and try to rush into firefights at short range where you can actually see the other guy, and then die in a tenth of a second.

This is not how you should be playing HvH - you should be sticking to corners and cover constantly, so you can duck behind something when you get shot at. You should not be trying to get in visual range of someone. Your prone button should be on a hotkey. If you’re in a firefight you need to be at a corner or behind 2 cades or running away. If you want to fight at close range you need GRENADES, which you toss into rooms (you can toss from corners) without directly shooting or getting shot.

If you’re in visual range shooting and being shot, you are basically guaranteed to die. Also, there are not nearly enough frag grenades in HvH compared to what it should be - pretty much everyone should have 1-2 HEFA on them.

Half of the problems I see in HvH stem entirely from people playing stupidly, and blaming the game for it.

One thing I think does need an adjustment in HvH, though the exact opposite of what you argued, is giving everyone binoc-like vision on a hotkey. Something that lets you “look ahead” easily that’s available to every player, while still not allowing accurate fire. It’s very critical because if engagements start when each side sees the other side, its too lethal and everyone dies almost immediately - but if it starts with inaccurate ranged fire you only suffer light casualties, you have time/space to shoot back and heal people, and players start implementing actual tactics like flanking, or using grenades, smoke, building cades, etc.

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You basically summed up my main gripe with the HvH gamemode.

Even if you play correctly, you can still get shot from offscreen and be instantly crti with fractures and/or IB from a SINGLE fight. The gamemode is built around HvX where fracs and such as common but you have breathing room (such as cades) to recover, but with how much DPS there is in HvH, there is basically no breathing room so any engagement ends in 1-2 mins if your unlucky, and/or 5 mins if your lucky, and the game is basically decided then and there since its nearly impossible to get any ground back that you lost since you do not have the man power to outDPS the other guy, since you need equal or greater numbers.

There’s a reason why admins resort to ERT spam for both sides only 10-20 mins into a HvH round; people die too fast and are unrecoverable since if they died, they usually died in a position where if you even PEAK your head for a second, you go into critical from a off screen AP burst.

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instantly crti with fractures and/or IB

there is actually a PR up that makes HvH splints unbreakable

IB is IB, but maybe someone will code semi-sane quik-clot in the future lol

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