[solved] Mortar RoF modifiers

[Wiedrock]

Mortar RoF modifiers are not beeing applied as it seems.
Their reduction of RoF (-3 for both 80mm Mortars) does not seem to take effect on their RoF, same for German 105mm Mortar (heavy mortar type) with its -1RoF modifier.
...or I am missing something.

[Joel Billings]

I don't have info on all that impacts shots taken once in combat. I suppose you'd have to have a controlled test of the same ground element/device, with and without a ground element modifier, and then run that multiple times to see if you can see a pattern of the impact, or lack thereof, on the number of shots per element (FPE). As far as I know, the ROF mod gets added to the device ROF to get a net ROF. Since there is a long range artillery fire phase before the closer normal fire, and they are two different routines, it's theoretically possible for one to have the ROF adjustment and the other not to have it.

[Joel Billings]

Pavel looked at the code and found that the FPE numbers for the artillery weapons are not very meaningful due to the two different kinds of fire (normal fire as in WitE1/WitW and artillery bombardment fire new in WitE2). Pavel confirmed that the artillery bombardment fire phase does account for the ROF modifier of the ground element weapon in the actual shots taken, but the FPE display never got properly adjusted to account for how the artillery bombardment phase acts differently than the standard fire phase. In the example you gave, the mortars are possibly getting shots off in the normal fire phase in addition to artillery bombardment phase, thus muddying up the FPE further. Bottom line is that the actual fire is WAD, but you can only really look at the HPE numbers to get a comparison of how much each weapon did. For artillery and mortars, the FPE's are not going to be as meaningful or useful.

[Wiedrock]

Comming back to this.

Pavel looked at the code and found that the FPE numbers for the artillery weapons are not very meaningful due to the two different kinds of fire (normal fire as in WitE1/WitW and artillery bombardment fire new in WitE2).

I guess since as you mentioned Mortars fire during Artillery Bombardement Phase AND Ground Phase their numbers are "messed up" and can not easily be "reproduced". I guess there is the possibility that the Shots during Artillery Phase and during Ground Phase for the same Mortar may "actually shoot differently" ("burst" vs single shots), got you.
I think that I am right in the assumption that the negative "RoF" modifiers are not being applied during the Artillery Bombardement Phase and therefore they shoot with their full RoF the actual Device has. So how I see the numbers/tested it all makes sense from that perspective. This I also can reproduce using my old test about Ammo Consumption and that therefore got clarified with this finding and Mortars are not using only 80% or Artillery Ammo.

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Further note (not important, just for context):
I remembered the weirdness towards 80mm+ Mortars I encountered back then when I was testing the Ammo Consumption per Shot I found back then that Mortars would only consume 80% Ammo of what an Artillery with same metrics would use and additionally their Shot numbers were off between actual and theoretical shots. I think back then I only tested "normal Battles" without testing Urban areas (high intensity and so on).
Now knowing my observation/claim made in this Thread I can simply change the RoF values for those 3 old tests with German mortars from
81mm: 12=(15-3)
120mm: 4=(5-1)
into
81mm: 15
120mm: 5

Mortar RoF and Ammo Consumption.png (78.52 KiB) Viewed 94 times

...and suddenly the Mortars perform exactly as Artillery and their Hits reported and their theoretical Hits (using Ammo consumed and their RoF) add up 100%.
So. As aforementioned. Everythign works fine, just the negative RoF Modifiers are not being applied during the Artillery Phase but probably during Ground fire Phase (at least in high intentity Combat and close engagements).

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Idea to fix (if it needs to be fixed):
From how far I can see, all Ground Elements with Mortars (no matter if HT-Mortar or Ground Based) are using the exact same negative modifiers (for the same Mortar device). So all that needs to be done to fix it is to remove the "-3", "-1"...and so on and simply reduce the RoF of the actual "Device" by that negative amount (e.g. 15→12, 5→4 ...and so on).
Mortars (Ground Type 5: "Mortar") are all "-3" RoF in WITE2.
Heavy Mortars (Ground Type 58: "Heavy Mortar") have varying modifiers but stay the same for the same Device.

This way Mortars woudl apply the same RoF in both, Artillery & Ground fire phases (if that's wanted in the first place - maybe it was intentional to not have them at reduced RoF in Artillery Phase, I don't know about implications from reality on this topic of Mortar RoF at different ranges so it may all be intended).