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

[BasilHerb (Samson Jack)]

Comparing WW1 artillery to CM is kind of iffy because fire support in CM is extremely simplified to the point where it’s just much, much more effective than real life. If you presented the USCM mortar to the modern US military they’d splurge a bajillion dollars on mass producing your godlike implement immediately.

Let’s imagine WW1 using CM’s magic.
Jean the fr*nch observer has the bright idea to write down every coordinate for every building in Belgium in 1910. Everyone forgets about it for 4 years, until the Germans decide to execute the funny Schlieffen plan.

Magically, the coordinates Jean obtained are STILL 100% usable in 1914, and artillery doesn’t even need to change angles or orientation to attack based off where they are- They just feed the coordinates and any artillery piece within range can fire purely based off the LONG/LAT.
Anyone who wants a position gone only needs to identify the corresponding LONG/LAT before they get extremely responsive & accurate fire support.

Due to the CM-tech making every artillery piece have at most, 2-3 metres of error compared to the ridiculously inaccurate WW-1 artillery (which relied more on saturation to actually hit things), Jean’s master plan results in every German in Belgium becoming an involuntary Paralympian within the span of several months. The war ends before anyone has a chance to dig in, and every building in Belgium becomes a UXO hazard. Good job, Jean!

In CM, the defending team just pre-lases likely FOB spots / chokepoints, and then empties a bunch of shells on them. Shells are extremely accurate and fast, while requiring at most a dozen seconds to get coordinates and fire for an experienced JTAC operator. Whilst it’s relatively O.K. against xenos since they are fast and much beefier than humans, in HvH it’s just so much more devastating.
Even one mortar is currently too much, imagine if we went full WW1 and started spamming multiple of them.

Ultimately I think we should wait and see what happens next HvH. Steel is actively adjusting mortar balance, and already stated his intentions to do so even before this thread existed. It’s only been 2 rounds anyways, if mortars are still fucked in HvH then I suppose we’ll just have to actively change stats for HvH specifically like we did with armour.

[Steelpoint]

As noted, I’ve done some testing with the Frag shells for the mortar. I think they should be far less devastating (as you can go prone to avoid the frag) but they still give both sides teh ability to suppress an area and blow-up cades.

I may also see about dropping several crates of Frag grenades into both factions’ requisitions.

[Wintermote]

This wasn’t a major problem in the HvH events warfan ran; I think one reason was that both sides had proper starting positions and could push and pull from them.

The way all the HvH events I’ve seen since go, there’s often a huge numbers mis-match, no communications, medics, intel, or logistics for opfor and no clearly or even roughly defined frontline. So there’s no opportunity to actually do anything but instantly die and game over.

Whereas the warfan events - well I remember there was a frontline bunker and we had a back and forth fight over it for about 20 minutes with each side using smoke or other grenades and suppressive fire so to get in and recover their guys until the bunker was basically just completely trashed and full of bodies. Eventually USCM won that fight and pushed us out, but people were genuinely getting revived and back into things.

When we fell back we started doing ambushes in the town, which included killing the tank crew while they were repairing the tank, and then getting pushed off from the nearby chokepoint by a CAS run (someone on UPP managed to steal the tank)

I died at some point around then, but the fight continued onwards into the main UPP bunker and I think ended with a UPP minor victory (setting some bacterial goop into the oil or something like that).

It overall played out fine, there were some balance issues but it felt more like the HvX fights and less like what most HvH has been run as by every admin since - mass ERT spam and people dying without any real coordination or anything.

UPP in warfan’s events had medics, a quartermaster, doctors, 4 squads, (can’t remember if there were also SL’s), their own comms, and a CO, though I don’t remember if there was a map or staff officers and overwatch.

Comms in particular was a big deal, because you could communicate that west/east/etc bunker needed more manpower and people would actually shift over.

[Steelpoint]

I don’t know if you have been able to play one of my HvH events, but I subscribe to a similar thought process when planning it out.

Respawns are rare and limited, there is no mass ERT spam. Full faction comms is online and guaranteed for both factions

The map is set to low-light conditions, no full darkness.

The UPP get a dedicated home base, with a fully staffed medical bay with doctors, a requisitions department with Cargo Techs, and a fully staffed command staff alongside military police, and even a political commissar who is usually boasting propaganda. Furthermore, the defenders are given a guaranteed minimum amount of time (~30 mins) to fortify the colony in preparation for the assault.

I’ve also experimented with giving both factions a huge supply of nano-splints for injuries. Plus I’ve buffed Marine armour to be stronger.

CAS and the OB are disabled by the game mode by default. This entire thread was started because I’ve begun experimenting with giving both factions access to a mortar and ammo.

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Mapping wise. I first started off with Solaris Ridge. I found that this map, while somewhat open, did generally have a consistent frontline at all times, typically centered around medical before being pushed to the bar and then the lambda base.

I’ve been trying out Sorokyne, and this map is even more consistent with a narrow frontline due to the map forcing both factions into a the colony entrance. Though, in both of these maps the USCM never got past Engineering before being routed.

I hope that the changes to the mortar next time will give the USCM more of a fighting chance to push the UPP past the inital barricades.

[ondrej008]

@AnCopper

You can’t dodge it

There’s a several second long delay between when the sound, text warnings pop up and when the mortar actually hits, during which a healthy marine can travel about 2x the radius of the mortar (if not more) and a splinted marine can dodge it completely as well.

Mortar and OB were completely fine and dodge-able in Warfan’s events, how come suddenly it’s not dodgeable and needs to be nerfed?

[kooarbiter]

getting hit by mortar should give you guaranteed shell shocked, but let comtechs make trenches to protect against getting shelled. Also if we’re fighting humans, and this is the same UA that will gladly gas their own landing zone, why don’t our OTs make nerve gas shells?