Mortar (II) too overpowered ?

[seille]

This is a screen from a russia 1941 game vs. Boron showing a attack to Leningrad in turn 3.
As you see Leningrad was well defended. The readiness loss of the first turn(s) was mostly egalized.

I have no idea why my troops defend that bad here.
They are in a city (high autoentrench) and the fins attack only from one direction,
so no concentric bonus.
All the tanks and SMG are no problem for the fins, but the staff officers are
Is it the additional punch of the mortars ?

The problem here is probably that that infantry type is a rear area type
and i was not able to shoot at . Looking at the last game and this attack i think
the mortars could be overpowered considering their costs and their rear area status.
Beeing in defense you can´t defend against that weapon. You simply can´t hit it.
In this case i faced mortar II.

I think that weapon should lose the rear area status !

[xBoroNx]

Wrote that in reply to Seille in the AAR thread:

ORIGINAL: xBoroNx

Hm i have a few boni with the finntrolls. They get full staff bonus, and my stack was always <100. You on the other hand always had more than 100 stackpoints in Leningrad i think.
Finally your troops there had low readiness often. Overall i am surprised that the fins did that well too, but probably its the combo of lvl 2 troops and smgs + mortars.
Edit: Additional boni for me probably:
Smgs get only +50% on attack, not while defending cities.
And at least the starting finn troops have 50 xp, so i might get some nice xp boni too.

Looking further at the screen i think nothing was wrong with this combat. If you look at the power point numbers for the troops that participated (afaik the pp shown are always those that the units had at the start of the battle) and the force composition it is not a too unexpected result.
Seille had relatively few infantry around (expect the staff, but they have low initiative and are thus rather poor in combat). Only good anti-infantry weapons were his ~8 mgs and the light tanks. But if you look at the powerpoints, his mg infantry unit had only 16, that is a clear sign that it probably had low readiness and two of his tank units also have only 36 and 40 pp whereas with full readiness 3 light tanks alone have 60 powerpoints.

[xBoroNx]

Hm Seille might be correct. I think i found the issue why mortars are maybe too powerful. It is not being in rear formation, that is realistic.
But they have too high kill/retreat %-ages.
Artillery has 6% kill and 8% retreat whereas the mortar has 25/25.

The second unrealistic thing with the mortar is that it has high anti-armor values.
Level 1: 300 in attack and 200 while defending whereas the artillery has as artillery value 200 vs. tanks.

But mortars can't kill strong tanks like a king tiger or josef stalin tank afaik.

[seille]

Ok let us continue the discussion here then.
&nbsp;
Overall i think that are no realistic results in that attack and Vic should look at.
Staff support we had both and the stack limit is not such a unit killer.
I had not full readiness that´s true, but enough to fight you back without losing everything in that hex.

That was a pure INFANTRY attack from one direction !&nbsp;No air attack before, no artillery.
The result is a bad joke and i bet the mortars has been the problem firing the whole time on my troops.
Have to find a way to fight the mortars, but i know it´s impossible for the defender as
the screen shows (no mortar losses for the attacker).
&nbsp;
And as far as i know the SMG has no penalty in defense. Both rifle and&nbsp;smg perform better in defense than in offense
with the difference that SMG has advantages in bad terrain (cities, fortification, forrest and so on).
That´s why i used them in Leningrad.
&nbsp;
I still think that the massive use of mortars caused the losses on my side and the fact that i was not able to fight them.

[xBoroNx]

The smg units get a 50% bonus when attacking urban. But no such defense mod. Not sure how combat exactly works though, so it would be very interesting indeed if vic or tom could explain

[seille]

As i said something must be wrong.
After a long time of testing and playing that game i just got a feeling for "wrong" results.
And to lose 6 of 9 tanks + all the artillery in a city against a infantry only attack from one
direction feels very wrong.
&nbsp;
Good to see you see this yourself yet.
It is the mortar II which is the problem í´m sure.

[xBoroNx]

Hm i am not fully convinced. Just somewhat agreeing that the mortar might be a bit too strong, but on the other hand it costs as much as 5 infantry and can be easily overrun by e.g. an armor attack.

Your troops had severe readiness problems. Mine had ~80 readiness whereas yours had 40-50% according to my recon reports and the numbers also confirm that. Only your 105 pp tank unit was at good readiness because you brought that one as a reinforcement. This means it had rather low entrench then though. And your other troops were at terrible readiness because of my attack from turn 2.
Also i wonder why you deployed 3 at guns as reinforcement when you see that i am attacking with only infantry.

[seille]

Ok, it seems to be right that SMG get a bonus of 50% when attacking Urban. At least the SFT detail screen
give that information.
However, they still have the "natural" disadvantage attacking infantry has agains other infantry
SMG vs. SMG here. And i still say i had 9 tanks there for defense which should eat up your attacking
infantry without AT support. But if mortars killed my tanks i don´t have to wonder.
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

[xBoroNx]

Don't forget your large mali for overstacking though. You had at least 200 stackpoints in leningrad i think. So all your units should have had only 50% hp if i understand Vic's post correctly.
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1686797

And all initial finn troops have 50 xp, maybe even more since they waged some successful battles vs. you.
Furthermore in our current game the finns did not build a single mortar and the germans do not build many mortars neither, only about 10% of my production are used for mortars.

Overall i think my main advantage was your huge overstacking.

[IRONCROM]

HMMM... Mortars are pretty expensive. I'm not sure they should be taken off rear area status.
&nbsp;
Those losses were huge... I've seen some bad rolls of the dice before in this game, and that had to be a really massive overstack.
&nbsp;Like 3 or 4 times the limit. Sounds like there could be a lot of factors at work here: EXP, rediness, Major overstack. I am open to the idea that mortars&nbsp;could be over powered but I would have to see some better examples... Like a situation where you couldn't point to other possible causes. (EXP, rediness, Major overstack)
&nbsp;
I see seille's frustration here, but I'm not entirely convinced that mortars are overpowered.
&nbsp;
IMHO... Just giving an outside perspective.

[seille]

After sleeping one night over this i still think the mortars are too powerful,
but it´s true i had several disadvantages on my side
like lack of readiness and XP, overstacking and my mistake with SMG instead of Rifle.
What i had was the firepower of the tanks and entrenchment. Mortars should not be
such a threat for tanks. Such a 60 or 80mm mortar shell would rarely destroy a tank.
That´s no armor penetrating stuff.
&nbsp;
Not to forget the fact that the mini-artillery (mortar) are really bad due to their rear area status and the fact that
defending forces can´t reach them effective. Lol, how to break enemy lines when i fight for my life in my own lines ?
Would be nice if Vic could review the mortar stats and also their upgrade costs.

[IRONCROM]

On that point I may be inclined to agree. Although I havn't really tested just how well mortars do against armor I have looked at that mortars attack and defence stats versus armor and wondered if it should really be that high. Iv'e always been under the impression that mortars were primarily an infantry killer.

And I did take note of the fact that you had a lot of Armor there that doesn't suffer a penalty when defending an urban location, only attacking an urban location.

[IRONCROM]

Ok Seille. You still havn't sold me on the Idea that mortars are the primary cause of all those losses.
&nbsp;
I did however take a look at the stats again and noticed that Mortars have a higher attack value versus armor than bazookas.
That just doesn't sound right.

[Iron Knight]

I won't say I'm a pro at this, but it seems that mortar's cost is the balancer. Those things are expensive and have to be protected by other SF's.

[seille]

ORIGINAL: Iron Knight

I won't say I'm a pro at this, but it seems that mortar's cost is the balancer. Those things are expensive and have to be protected by other SF's.

Sorry, but their rear area status is more than enough protection.
All they need is some infantry to protect the frontline.
The offensive player has not to fear to lose his mortars mainly
as long as he´s attacking in his turns and the enemy has no bigger numbers of divebombers or
artillery.

In a game against twber i bought some mortars for my russian winter offensive, but i had the problem that Tom still did successful attacks on my
russians. That way he killed a lot of mortars. But he was strong enough and he broke my lines.
A thing you often can´t do when you´re in full defense.

[Vic]

Mortars are basicly just Infantry * 5 in combat stats and production cost.
&nbsp;
yes they are rear area, but also they are very vulnerable versus breakthrough, air attack and artillery strikes.
&nbsp;
A good full defense should at least hold some artillery guns.

[seille]

Vic,
&nbsp;
The problem is their rear area status and the fact they can fire and fire and fire without any hits by counterfire.
You know the russia scenario very good and you know that the russian player can´t break through and placing
bigger amounts of artillery in his frontline is expensive and will result in air strikes.
In addition the mortars are often supported by infantry and tanks, so the artillery fire would be spreaded a lot.
&nbsp;
Ok, you don´t want to change it, but how about this ?
&nbsp;
1. Increase the stack value of the mortars to 3
2. Reduce their value against tanks by 30%
&nbsp;
However i´ll start to use mortars myself now more often when i attack.
&nbsp;
PS. I´m still waiting for my turn [;)]

[JAMiAM]

In my WaW mod, I've changed their production cost to 800, and quadrupled their supply costs.

[GrumpyMel]

Just my opinion - The rear area status for morters should stay and they should remain pretty deadly against infantry... but they should loose thier ability to damage armor significantly.
&nbsp;
That would be in-line both with historical accuracy and with the rock-paper-scissors effect of the game.
&nbsp;
I'm assuming (in theory) that infantry ability to damage armor comes from thier close assualt ability (i.e. things like sticky bombs, magnetic AT mines, satchel charges, etc).
&nbsp;
Artillery in defence (or offense) could easly be assumed to be operating in a direct&nbsp;fire mode....and&nbsp;have sufficient calliber to either penetrate armor....or at least knock out treads,&nbsp;etc (I've even seen some pictures of AFV's knocked over on thier sides!) .... but a mortar is&nbsp;totaly an indirect fire weapon... not sure how they could knock out armor that was buttoned up.
&nbsp;
From a game balance standpoint it&nbsp;sounds like it would be good&nbsp;too. If a morter has the same combat value as a bazooka (haven't checked out the numbers&nbsp;myself) does against armor....but is really good vs infantry too and has rear area protection and both have the same mobility....why would you choose to&nbsp;build bazookas instead?
&nbsp;

[seille]

Imho increasing the stack value is also important since a player on the attack could tend to use masses of mortars
beside it´s normal infantry. Because of the rear area status and their high effectivity i think it´s better to increase the
stack value, so players have to choose more careful how much mortars they add to their units without penalties.
&nbsp;
Not to forget reducing their AT capability.
I agree totally with Mel here. Must be a very lucky shot when a mortar shell destroys a tank.
&nbsp;
Beside that i think a look a the first screenshot could be interesting.
Watch the strange kill/retreat ratio.
75% kills ? Caused by the low readiness or by the attacking/killing weapons ?