Infantry, mortars and MGs: relationship and scaling.

You realise that four machine guns is a greater number than one, right? What exactly does the M16 have to do with this argument? And what does the M16 being the best AA unit in CoH2 have to do with real life machine gun performance?

Americans cared so little for your primitive water-cooling that even though they were slapping together 4 machine guns on a whole truck with a complicated electrical mount, they didn't care enough to run a single coolant line on the already existing radiator.


I've now had my fill of your trolling.

Back to the original point:

Fixing crew weapons requires one thing, and one thing only: mortars need to do serious amounts of AOE damage to blobs. They need to be the early game equivalent of rocket artillery.

This requires a faster shell speed to respond to blobs, and a much greater AOE to punish blobs while not doing a serious amount of damage to a single squad.

MGs are not the counter to blobs. Not in real-life, nor in game. MGs are an effective defensive weapon, but can easily be overcome by mass assaults, or abused sightlines.

The proper counter to blobbing ought to be AOE indirect fire as it is in real life. We can see this in rocket artillery, however, for some reason at the smaller scale people think mortars should serve no purpose other than a waste of manpower that can occasionally clear out a house.

Without an early game counter to blobbing build orders will never change much beyond 4x infantry and maybe an MG. Why would they? MGs and mortars are slow, finicky, and can't capture as much territory as an infantry squad.

....

Fixing crew weapons requires one thing, and one thing only: mortars need to do serious amounts of AOE damage to blobs. They need to be the early game equivalent of rocket artillery.

This requires a faster shell speed to respond to blobs, and a much greater AOE to punish blobs while not doing a serious amount of damage to a single squad.

MGs are not the counter to blobs. Not in real-life, nor in game. MGs are an effective defensive weapon, but can easily be overcome by mass assaults, or abused sightlines.

The proper counter to blobbing ought to be AOE indirect fire as it is in real life. We can see this in rocket artillery, however, for some reason at the smaller scale people think mortars should serve no purpose other than a waste of manpower that can occasionally clear out a house.

Without an early game counter to blobbing build orders will never change much beyond 4x infantry and maybe an MG. Why would they? MGs and mortars are slow, finicky, and can't capture as much territory as an infantry squad.

In game Hmg and mortars are meant to work together. Hmg slow down advancing infantry while mortar inflict the damage.

The problem is that infatry brute force has been power creeping while the mortar have been toned down and now it easier to build infatry than to a combination of infatry/HMG/mortars.

In game Hmg and mortars are meant to work together. Hmg slow down advancing infantry while mortar inflict the damage.

The problem is that infatry brute force has been power creeping while the mortar have been toned down and now it easier to build infatry than to a combination of infatry/HMG/mortars.

Having them *need* to work together is a flawed design ultimately. Both are defensive weapons, but rely on completely different tactics that function independently.

A machine gun, since it is a direct fire weapon, defends by spraying as many rounds as possible in as short as time as possible.

A mortar, since it is an indirect fire weapon, fires as far away as possible so it has as much time as possible to do damage.

A mortar is worthless if it has to rely on units being close enough to be suppressed by a machine gun. Just get a second machine gun if that's the scenario.

Having them *need* to work together is a flawed design ultimately. Both are defensive weapons, but rely on completely different tactics that function independently.

A machine gun, since it is a direct fire weapon, defends by spraying as many rounds as possible in as short as time as possible.

A mortar, since it is an indirect fire weapon, fires as far away as possible so it has as much time as possible to do damage.

A mortar is worthless if it has to rely on units being close enough to be suppressed by a machine gun. Just get a second machine gun if that's the scenario.

Nope that is not how thing work.

Units that are pinned or suppressed take less damage from small arm fire for the duration (once pinned the turn at some point red and then the get extra damage).

So here where the mortar kicks in. Its damage in not effect it can cause causalities. 1HMG +1 mortars will cause more casualties than 2 HMG (at leas that is the original design).

Nope that is not how thing work.

Units that are pinned or suppressed take less damage from small arm fire for the duration (once pinned the turn at some point red and then the get extra damage).

So here where the mortar kicks in. Its damage in not effect it can cause causalities. 1HMG +1 mortars will cause more casualties than 2 HMG (at leas that is the original design).

It doesn't matter that a mortar and HMG do damage faster than 2 HMG. Once MG suppression kicks in it's either instant retreat or lose the squad. Who cares if it takes 5 seconds or 10 seconds to wipe the squad? A good player is going to instant retreat before the mortar lands a hit.

If it's a big blob they'll just insta-wipe the MG, and then insta-wipe the mortar.

If you want a forced synergy why bother with separate units? Just streamline everything and make the mortar a 240 manpower upgrade for the machine gun squad. It might actually get used then!

It doesn't matter that a mortar and HMG do damage faster than 2 HMG. Once MG suppression kicks in it's either instant retreat or lose the squad. Who cares if it takes 5 seconds or 10 seconds to wipe the squad? A good player is going to instant retreat before the mortar lands a hit.

If it's a big blob they'll just insta-wipe the MG, and then insta-wipe the mortar.

If you want a forced synergy why bother with separate units? Just streamline everything and make the mortar a 240 manpower upgrade for the machine gun squad. It might actually get used then!

Let me try to explain to you this once more time.

HMG do not do a lot of damage once the squad is suppressed, a squad can stay suppressed under for minutes and not be wiped. In order for an HMG do significant damage it needs to pin and then turn red the enemy squad. Then it start doing damage.

Let me try to explain to you this once more time.

HMG do not do a lot of damage once the squad is suppressed, a squad can stay suppressed under for minutes and not be wiped. In order for an HMG do significant damage it needs to pin and then turn red the enemy squad. Then it start doing damage.

Just fired up test mod.

HMG42s and the OST mortar vs a conscript squad at 15 range:

1x mortar time to kill: 2:22
1x machine gun time to kill: 40 seconds and 46 seconds
2x Machine guns time to kill: 25 seconds
Machine gun and mortar time to kill: 43 seconds

I had to run the 1x machine gun experiment twice just to make sure that the mortar wasn't actually slowing it down lol. Adding a mortar doesn't seem to have any affect whatsoever to the machine gun time to kill.



I don't expect that people on these forums know everything, but it's really getting disappointing that almost every post I make gets contradicted by someone with absolutely no clue what they're talking about.

Now run the same test at range 30

Now run the same test at range 30

There's not much point. Whatever damage is lost from the MG is gonna be on par with the damage lost from the weapons crew lol.

The OST mortar has damage on par with an out of cover ostruppen squad.

I've realized the mortar probably does slow down the MG thanks to the yellow cover it creates.

Literally a negative synergy.

Now I wonder if this test was done using Autofire, or using Barrages.

mortars imo should be damage dealers, but not game changers without barrage.

what id like to see is a slower ROF and a widened AOE with lowered damage. basicly so on autofire they will sway fights, but not instantly win them (we all remeber those days...)
for sake of numbers, lets say 20 damage across the AOE (which would be wider) for auto fire
this means on the defensive the mortar could slowly, but reliably take a chunk of health off masses of infantry

barrage, on the other hand would be much more important. increased damage at the centre and maybe suppression (with vet?), as well as an increased rof means leading your enemy can be brutal and targeting dug in infantry will also be punishing.

Now I wonder if this test was done using Autofire, or using Barrages.

In the interest of giving every advantage I could to the mortar:

2x maxims vs 1x conscript at 35 range = 33 seconds

1x maxim 1x 120mm mortar barraging = 36 seconds

Interestingly 2x 120mm mortars barraging were able to kill a conscript squad in about 25 seconds, so the good news is a 340 manpower doctrinal mortar in ideal conditions is roughly equal to a 260 manpower t0 MG in non-ideal conditions.



FWIW I consider the 120mm a mostly balanced unit.

In the interest of giving every advantage I could to the mortar:

2x maxims vs 1x conscript at 35 range = 33 seconds

1x maxim 1x 120mm mortar barraging = 36 seconds

Interestingly 2x 120mm mortars barraging were able to kill a conscript squad in about 25 seconds, so the good news is a 340 manpower doctrinal mortar in ideal conditions is roughly equal to a 260 manpower t0 MG in non-ideal conditions.



FWIW I consider the 120mm a mostly balanced unit.

The 120 is considered worse than other mortars.