Infantry, mortars and MGs: relationship and scaling.

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USF mortar range on AA/Barrage is 75, 5 short of the usual 80 range. Smoke barrage is the same as other factions mortars.

No amount of vet can compete with permanent 0.50 suppression modifier everywhere. And if you ever lose an MG, forget about it doing it's job. Expecting things to simple be fixed with vet doesn't work (see Maxim/Conscript/Penals/Vickers). This is a harder type of change to be added but i've this design issue since the game released more or less.

Which is something i wish COH3 changes (making explosive created yellow cover to be a different type of cover from onmap or player created light cover, in the same vein garrison cover is different from heavy cover although both pass as green cover).

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Same as said before, mortar range is 75 and 80 for the rest.

Concept wise is something that COULD be tried but you have to tackle some other issues.
I THINK, due to animation constraint, the absolute limit on fastest RoF is +4s (wind up + wind down). With minimal ready/aim times your reload component is practically 0 or close to it. It would be close to how smoke barrage looks.

I'm not sure they need the extra range.

What are you doing with barrage mode? Do you leave it as it is now or do you change their profile as well? I think it could work having this 2 different kinds of dmg profiles.

Auto attack (AA) will have to have some sort of target tables because their performance against garrison, vehicles and structures would be affected severely. I don't know how target tables interact with AOE profiles. If they are applied before calculations or after.

Basically:
(Damage of shell + Dmg target table) * AOE dmg modifier
OR
(Damage shell * AoE modif) + Dmg target table

And that's to the extent i can think atm.

Same as said before, mortar range is 75 and 80 for the rest.

I got 65 range from the patch notes. Either way I'd still increase whatever the current range is by at least 15 units in order to reduce the amount of repositioning required.

Concept wise is something that COULD be tried but you have to tackle some other issues.
I THINK, due to animation constraint, the absolute limit on fastest RoF is +4s (wind up + wind down). With minimal ready/aim times your reload component is practically 0 or close to it. It would be close to how smoke barrage looks.

I wasn't aware of animation restrictions. The ROF increase isn't absolutely necessary per se since under this idea ROF can be traded for greater AOE radius. The only reason I've increased the ROF is to keep the AOE radius reasonably smaller than stuff like the leFH. If no one would complain about something like a 10 AOE radius I'd actually prefer keeping the current ROF for sound reasons.

What are you doing with barrage mode? Do you leave it as it is now or do you change their profile as well? I think it could work having this 2 different kinds of dmg profiles.

As long as one mode can actually punish blobs I honestly don't care about the difference between barrage and auto-fire. In my ideal world barrage would be a blob skill-shot that suppresses if there are at least two squads in the radius, but I feel like that's too big of a change. Realistically I'd just keep them the same and buff auto-fire to be the blob punisher since the current barrage mechanic doesn't really do anything extra against moving targets.

Auto attack (AA) will have to have some sort of target tables because their performance against garrison, vehicles and structures would be affected severely. I don't know how target tables interact with AOE profiles. If they are applied before calculations or after.

I'm not entirely sure how AOE and garrisons work, but I don't think the suggested changes would affect that too much. I did my best to preserve the current DPS against single targets, but increase it against grouped targets.

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I don't agree with Viper that MG + Mortar goes hand in hand because they suppress squads and THEN they do dmg on those squads. MGs + mortar work together because they create frontlines and slow down the pacing of the game. A suppressed squad will more than likely retreat before getting hit unless it can achieve any sort of role for been in that position or another unit can bail them out by taking the MG.

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I am not sure even where we disagree, what I have posted and I will posted again to be clear is that the intention of designer was to have mortar and HMG work together.

Being best mortar is like winning special olympics.
Yeah, 120mm might be "best", but its still retarded.

Sadly, in current meta there is hardly any reason to go any other type of mortar then pit and counter response to it.

Mortars were pretty much soft removed from the game under the guise of reducing rng wipes.
The only one that sees some use is soviet one and exclusively because of its flare.

Any other situation, you're almost always better with another MG.

It's not particularly hard to fine tune though. This can all be worked out mathematically. I'd do so exactly if I fully understood how the game calculates AOE damage.

Not entirely sure how the scatter values work, but I'd increase them by about 10% to start. This is to help spread the damage in blobs, and offset extra damage vs single squads.

i'd recommend checking this excellent thread for some in-depth info on how scatter works.

aoe is pretty straightforward as one would expect: damage is dealt depending on the distance of the unit to the center of the explosion and the aoe curve defines the damage drop-off between impact and outermost edge of the aoe circle (a bit more info here).

lastly, with regards to working out mathematically how scatter and aoe interact, this is indeed possible. i've published a spreadsheet a while ago doing exactly that, and hannibal wrote a handy python script that simulates scatter and aoe for estimation of alpha damage.
these might be helpful starting points for your own endeavour...
also, feel free to leave a pm if you'd like to get some more info.

I am not sure even where we disagree, what I have posted and I will posted again to be clear is that the intention of designer was to have mortar and HMG work together.

The point of your message was lost as the discussion drifted. The message was interpreted as you need an MG to shoot at targets and stop them on the spot and then the mortar will hit them.