AI and Mortars?

[Apocalypse 31]

The last time I tried putting AI mortar teams on the map, the AI didn't use them. 

 

Is this still the case?

[DarkAngel]

yes.

[Maj.Hans]

I understand why the AI was instructed not to use mortar teams, and I agree with leaving them up to the player to use.

It guarantees that while the AI has taken over your artillery batteries, you can still get some quick smoke where you need it.

 

The one thing that I would like changed is to allow the mortar teams, particularly the infantry mortar teams, to shoot their mortar at targets that they themselves have a direct visual line of sight to, and for them to do so without the player calling a fire mission.  I understand that infantry mortars are quite often employed to shoot at targets that the team can actually see.

 

In fact the 60mm mortar used by the US can be used as a traditional mortar, supported by bipod and baseplate and fired by dropping the shells in, or used only with a lightweight baseplate, angle controlled by hand, and fired by a trigger.  Essentially it becomes a big grenade launcher, and moves up with the infantry as they attack.

[Ssnake]

The problem is that mortars are one of the biggest hammers that infantry can wield at the low formation level. Computer-controlled units that fire the mortars on their own would need some contextual knowledge about which target is important, and where does it only waste ammo so that there is none left when you really need it.

 

Computer-controlled units have little sense for ammo conservation. That may be one of the things that we should address first. Contextual knowledge about the environment, considerations of collateral damage etc. are also important. For all these reasons we thought that it'd be best to make both mortars and rocket artillery "player exclusive" assets - acknowledging that this drives up scenario complexity and therefore tends to overburden the human player. But that's a fundamental problem. You want more features and less abstraction, but whenever we deliver that it also increases the human player's workload (particularly if you put everything into one scenario - which is understandable because it makes for more varied gameplay).

[Maj.Hans]

I'm not suggesting that they should call their own fire missions, just that when a mortar team is in direct contact with the enemy, it should use it's mortar as a direct fire weapon in the same way that a tank would use it's main gun as a direct fire weapon.

 

The assumption to be made at that point is that the mortar team is in danger of being eliminated by the enemy unit it is in direct contact with.

 

Perhaps you could alter the behavior of infantry mortar teams to allow them to fire directly upon targets they see with their own eyes.  They tend to be less mobile, after all, where a vehicle mounted mortar can run away...

[Captain_Colossus]

wouldn't it also be a practical compromise to script targets in the planning phase for the computer the same way artillery can be scripted with set bombardment if context sensitive boxes? as far as i can tell, even though there is the option to select available mortars, the computer ignores pre-selected targets as well with on map mortar teams. with off-board mortars, it drops something of large caliber artillery shells, though.

[Ssnake]

The biggest advantage of mortar fire support is that they are quickly and readily available against dynamic targets. Shifting the mortar fire support to the planning phase would negate this advantage. Of coruse you would argue that it's still better than nothing (=the current solution), but I'd rather do it right, even if that means waiting longer for a feature improvement.