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First off, let me say Paul came up with a great workaround for a thorny engine limitation in respect to mortars for v7.0. Depending upon how you employ light and other mortars, his solution in the v7.0 OOBs may be the best you're going to get.

The basic problem with mortars prior to v7.0 was the use of the non-functional x2 or x3 unit multiplier carried over from SP3. Many mortar units, prior to v7 fired only at 1/3 to 1/2 the rate of fire they should have had. Also direct fire with light mortars was at a reduced rate under the pre v7 system.

Some people modified the earlier OOBs to use single unit mortars only ie one tube per unit. There's a couple problems with that approach though; you have more units representing the same thing (and imo much more vulnerable units), and the cost in Command Points to plot the fires of a battery is increased by 2 or 3 times. For those of us using C&C this is a major problem.

Paul's solution addresses two parts of the problem: first, light mortars now fire the correct number of rounds in direct fire usage; and second, medium mortars now fire the correct number of rounds in indirect fire usage. His solution does not increase the number of units necessary to represent a mortar section or battery and hence does not cause the problems found with the 'single tube per unit' solution.

There are still two problems remaining though: while Paul's solution fixes direct fire for light mortars, they still only fire at 1/3 to 1/2 the correct rate in indirect fire; the second problem is that for medium and heavy mortars, while the ROF is now correct, the tube in the second weapon slot has horrible accuracy. It hits the designated hex about as often as the tube in the first weapon slot misses. I don't know enough about the inner workings of the engine to have a clue as to why this is.

There is another possible fix. It requires a slightly different approach for light mortars than for medium and heavy mortars. For medium and heavy mortars it is simple; merely go back to a single tube, and multiply the ROF and ammo for that single tube by the number of tubes in the unit. For light mortars, it's a bit trickier because of direct fire issues. My initial thought for light mortars, is to keep the multiple tubes, multiply the ROF and ammo for the primary tube by the number of tubes, and decrease the amount of ammo for the secondary tubes by 50% or so.

While the increased ROF solution works and solves all problems above in a realistic manner, it does have its own problem: weapons breakdown. For medium and heavy mortars with two tubes, the chance for a breakdown is doubled and a single breakdown takes out both tubes (since the game thinks there's only one). For light mortars with three tubes it's not quite so bad, while the first tube is 3x as likely to breakdown as the equivalent three seperate single tube units, the loss of the first tube eliminates indirect fire capability but still allows 2/3's effectiveness in direct fire.

In my v6.1 tests of the increased ROF and ammo solution, I didn't find weapons breakdown to be a huge problem but my tests were not exhaustive. Most of the time I ran out of ammo before encountering a breakdown. Ideally their would be a way to increase a weapon's reliability thru the OOBs but I'm unaware of anyway to do it.

Any thoughts? Comments? Ideas? Is anyone else interested in this issue?

Thanks,
Brian

[ December 12, 2001: Message edited by: Brian Price ]</p>

Just an update - I have a complete set of modified version 7 OOBs completed. Other than the modified mortars as described above, the only other mod was to bring the Japanese Knee Mortar setup in line with the other countries. I also ran across a wierd thing in the Spanish National OOB, a light mortar squad with a SMG but zero ammo - I gave them 20 - I *think* they should have some - if anyone knows different please let me know.

The modifications are *only* to unit data, no new units were added, nor was anything done to the formations or weapons. It should be 100% compatible with all v7.0 compliant scenarios and campaigns. (Paul had already done the hard part, I merely modified his modifications).

The modified OOBs are in a 316KB zip file, I don't have a site at present so just leave a note here and/or send me a private message or email if you want it.

By the looks of things, the Russian mortars may come off the worst as far as breakdown as they tend to have quite a few tubes per unit. Frankly though, if it came down to a choice between having both realistic rof and accuracy with workable C&C or having realistic breakdowns, well I'd much rather disable breakdowns.

Thanks,
Brian

[ December 12, 2001: Message edited by: Brian Price ]</p>

I could use your OOB for sure.

If you´d be so kind as to send it to me, I´d be pleased. Of course if it takes some time I might just go and try to do it myself.... <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

Hey Brian,

Thanks, I'll take your revised OOB if you're offering.

"GO GO GO , If that man's a Major, he's Col now"

EXCELLENT work - this is the sort of thing I'm talking about with the OOBs, if you have an idea, try it out and let people know - if your idea works great, send me the OOBS (I got these).

Well done! Keep it up!

...and keep the damn ionosphere offa my radio <img src="wink.gif" border="0">

[ December 12, 2001: Message edited by: Paul Vebber ]</p>

Really good work. So many times people complain about things that aren't the norm. Here Brian has done research and tested it. This is something that I can trust.

Great work Brian, keep contributing.

"Kelly's Heroes" nice quotes Paul.
A classic

Originally posted by Brian Price:
[QB]The modified OOBs are in a 316KB zip file, I don't have a site at present so just leave a note here and/or send me a private message or email if you want it.[QB]

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I tried to send an email requesting the new Oob's, but Hotmail kicked it back. You exceeded your storage allotment. Hotmail is notorious for that, and I hate them - Hotmail sucks. I suggest you open a free web email account at mail.com. In the meantime, I'd like those Oob's.

Oops - sorry 'bout the hotmail overflow - I use it both for hobby use and for a spam dump - it gets filled up awfully quick these days.

If anyone else had that problem, please try again, I'll keep it cut down to size for the next few days.

Thanks,
Brian

Brian, if you would be so kind, might you check to see if I screwed up teh quantity and price of the light mortars? I don;t have time to look into it right now but if you could check it out, that would be a big help!

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
Brian, if you would be so kind, might you check to see if I screwed up teh quantity and price of the light mortars? I don;t have time to look into it right now but if you could check it out, that would be a big help!

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Sure thing, are the v7.0 light mortar prices and quantities supposed to be identical to v6.1?

If so anyone have a zipped copy of the original v6.1 OOBs or even better an excel dump of them?

Brian

Zipped v6.1 Oob's on the way. Now the question - will Hotmail take them???

No the prices have changed, what I need is a check on consistency - I may have forgotten to multiply some of them when I moved the xN mortars into slots...

Thanks!

Currently the infantry mortars are 3 per platoon .. used to be 3 per company in 6.1 .. thats more a unit issue .. did you mean to group the infantry mortars at company level ? or did you mean to triple the mortars per platoon .. You have the same structure, 1 mortar section per platoon that 6.1 had, only now a section has 3 mortars instead of 1 .
The German 3 50mm mortar section costs 32
The Japanese 3 knee mortar section costs 67
The Russian 3 50mm mortar section costs 78
The Poles have a weird thing, the 46mm GL/Mortar section costs 30 for both the section with 1 and the section with 2 mortars.
I suspect that the German and Poles didn't get multiplied .

Ok, whew - man staring at OOBs long enough makes you dizzy hehe. On the German and Poland OOBs I agree with AmmoSergeant, both seem to need their costs multiplied.

I also ran across some things with the medium mortars as well in certain OOBs. Here's the list of what I found:

Nationalist China OOB
023 - 81mm mortar squad x2 has crew of 1 should be 10
088 - 82mm mortar squad x2 has cost of 38 while 023 has a cost of 80 and 087 (81mm x2) has a cost of 76. Looks like it needs to be cost 76.

Communist China OOB
All the mortars seem cheap to one degree or another, the light mortar units (x2s) are basically about 25% under comparable units in the Nationalist China OOB while the medium mortar x2 units are only about 50% of the cost of similar units in the Nationalist OOB. The crew sizes for the medium mortar x2 units are also a bit odd (8 instead of the normal 10).

Free France OOB
090 - 81mm Mtr Sqd x2 costs 42 while the 018 81mm Mtr Sqd x1 costs 37 - granted they have different underlying mortar weapon types but the 090 unit seems to need its cost multiplied by 2.

Hungary OOB
018 - 81mm Mortar Sqd x2 cost 39 while 017 - 81mm Mortar Sqd x2 costs 86. Looks like the 018 unit needs to be multiplied by 2.

German OOB
As noted by AmmoSergeant, the 50mm Mortar Squad x3 at cost 32 looks like it needs to be increased in cost.

Italy OOB
115 - 3" mortar section x2 cost 37 - seems too cheap compared to 020 - 81mm x 3 at cost 112. I suspect its cost needs doubled.

Poland OOB
142 - 46mm GL sqd x2 costs the same as the 091 46mm GL sqd x1 - pretty sure its cost should be doubled.

Nationalist Spain OOB
031 - 50mm Mtr Sqd - weapon 3 is an MP38/40 SMG and has 0 ammo - looks like it should have some. (Note - unsure as I may have accidently erased it.)

Republic Spain OOB
089 81mm mortar squad x2 at cost 40 looks too cheap.
091 82mm mortar squad x2 at cost 41 looks too cheap.
Compared to the 086 50mm mortar x2 at cost 56 I'm pretty sure both 089 and 091 need doubled in cost.

That's all I could find that looked incorrect or questionable cost or crew size. However I did note something else that seemed a bit odd although I'm completely unsure and haven't done a thorough check - just noticed in passing that some light and medium mortar units are of size 0 while others, with smaller crew sizes in some cases, are of size 1. The Nationalist China OOB was where it first caught my eye but again I'm unsure what the values should be and the ones given could well be 100% correct.

I also found while going through that I'd missed a couple mortar units in the first version of the mortar mod OOBs. Those have been fixed and I've 'corrected' all cost/crew values noted above (except for the Communist China OOB's light mortars which I have *no* idea what to do with). I'll distribute the Mortar Mod v1.1 OOBs to those who requested the original Mortar Mod and to future requestors of same.

Hope this helps,
Brian

Brian Have you given any thought to whether it is correct to have 9 infantry mortars in a company? It previous Versions there were only 3 mortars in a company, 1 per platoon. I believe the 1 per platoon is the more correct number in most cases. If you group the 3 platoon mortars at company level then there would only be 1 formation of 3 mortars organic at company level. However what appears to have happened is a miscommunication between folks fixing the mortar issue at the unit level and the folks maintaining the structure at the formation level.
I guess basically my question is , is the Intent to group the infantry mortars at Company level , thus striping them from platoon level ( and removing them from Platoon HQ control)? .. or was the intent to fix a problem with the Mortar Batteries at Higher echelon levels and it just ran away and spilled over and started fixing a problem that didn't exist with the single tube Infantry mortars at platoon level ? ..Or was there a plan to triple the mortars at company level because of some new found TO&E info ?

Agree w/ AmmoSgt on this issue. Let's determine if we think mortars at company level should be assigned individually to platoons -or- grouped in a platoon as three units. Maybe that changes per national doctrine - I don't know. I am quite fine with the extra units as we can have so many anyways. Maybe that's an issue for guys who want to control Army Group South, but not me and probably not a lot of people.

Many thanks to Brian and Paul et al for their work on this. I am very interested in solving this problem to the best of our abilities.

Brian, please throw some files my way when you get the chance. Add me to any update email list you have (hint). Thanks for your efforts!

I'm more familiar with the US Army OOB than any other since that's what I use for most campaigns at the moment. In it, I think you always have the option of buying a single mortar (for AI it's an armed mortar squad) with platoons - not entirely sure that holds true under all dates. As far as I know there should only be 1 light mortar tube per platoon (more or less) for the US OOBs or alternatively three at the company level (US Ranger Company being a special case).

I'm going to start checking the OOBs for this case, but if you know of particular instances, please post the OOB's nation and the dates. AFAIK if it is impossible to purchase a single tube mortar at the platoon level for a formation that should have just a single tube mortar the only way to rectify it would be to add a new unit. However you should be aware that it is quite possible to 'cheat' and buy non-historical mixes - the purchase screen will be quite happy to sell you a triple tube mortar unit for a platoon instead of the single tube unit that should be used. I think this is a direct and unavoidable side effect of going away from the unit multiplier.

Hopefully Paul can shed some light on this.

Thanks,
Brian

Oops - just noticed that the Poland OOB's two 46mm GL squads both have the same number of men (4) even though one has two tubes. I think 091 (46mm GL Sqd x2) needs to have 8 men, cost 80. But then again - the 46mm GL Sqd x2 has a rarity of 2 while the x1 has a rarity of 1 - I'm a bit confused as to what exactly is correct here.

There does seem to be a problem with the German OOB in regards to the 50mm Mortar Squad - I think the cost is actually correct (cost 32) - problem may be that it has two too many mortar tubes... (and 3x the number of men). From what I see the German 50mm mortar squad is only associated with platoons and maybe should only be one tube per platoon?

UPDATE:
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Just checked the v6.1 OOBs and here's the thing - the German OOB had both a light mortar x3 section available from the arty purchase screen and a light mortar x1 section attached to some platoons. The kicker is - the German OOB unit section is stuffed to overflowing (literally) - and how much do you want to bet that one or more scenarios and/or MC's have either or both versions of the mortar...

If no scenarios or MC's use the x3 section version, I'd suggest going back to the single tube version. In fact, that's probably the best fix in any case, since the older versions used the non-functional x3 - in the rare case where a scenario designer actually used the light mortar x3 section - a single tube version would do no worse than the old non functional x3 - hence likely no balance issues.

The Polish mortar situation is somewhat similar - in the v6.1 OOB there were two 46mm GLs (one using the wz.36 GL and kb wz.98 rifle rarity 1 the other using the wz.30 GL and kbk wz.29 rifle rarity 2) - both were available as single units for platoons and as a x2 unit section via the artillery purchase screen. The two mortar weapons had substantially different statistics.

However, the 36mm GL is only available very early on and it would probably be best/easiest just to forget about the rarity 2 version and provide single tube and dual tube versions of the 46mm wz.36GL with the kb wz.98 rifle. Rarity should be minimal since the two seperate versions no longer exist.

Hope this helps,
Brian

[ December 14, 2001: Message edited by: Brian Price ]</p>

In response to german 50 morter. I started my long campaign in 1939 sep. Morter and mg fit on half track. Now in 1940 morter team has 12 men and hmg has 4. Will not fit on the 1/2 track any more too dern many men in morter squad. This is platoon 3squads of men 1 morter 1hmg 4 tracks. Why the change in 1940 now im stuck with leaving either morter or mg behind. Or can keep running back and gettin 1 left behind. Also i thought we were supposed to be able and upgrade with equipment from the month the battle is in. Not have to wait for the new armor that shows up with supplement armor. But not able to buy for core for next battle.