British mortar pit

In the upcoming balance patch the mortar gets 50 Mp cheaper, in my opinion this is still 350 Mp wasted, but brits need a reliable indirect fire support.

What i would like to see is a buildable mortar squad in T2 with poor fire rate for ~150 Mp and a pit build by sappers that can be abandoned for ~100 Mp. The pit will increase the fire rate to a normal level.
So that you can leave the pit with the mortar and retreat, in case of an assault.

UKF simply need a redesign. That can be achieved via the hammer/anvil probably.

TBH i think the old pit would have been fine if brace required a garrisoned unit.

Incendiary grenade will take the garrisoned unit apart in seconds, this wont change anything.

the howizter pit needs its barrage range increased. It should be a "mini-howitzer". The auto fire should only be used in dire situations.

increase the range of the barrage ability

and allow the mortar pit to aid tommies' artillery call.

Incendiary grenade will take the garrisoned unit apart in seconds, this wont change anything.

Why shouldnt it? If the enemy brings counters you should get countered. An incendiary wont kill the pit by itself but brace (old brace anyways) could halt all the momentum of an assault ans save your unit/vet. While unsupported long enough to counter attack. I mean even now the mortar pit has enough health to survive a sturmtiger rocket WITHOUT brace.

If the vickers could garrison emplacments again i would see no reason not to be able to make brace better but require a garrison. YES thinga would still kill the garrison but much like anything else in combat that would bleed (which is ESSENTIAL to counterplay)

That's the whole problem, this counter is way to easy.
Either you force the pit with indirect fire in Brace and sneak with a Vlokssquad to the pit and kill it with one incendiary nade,
or you do it the reverse way by forcing it with a incendiary nade in to brace and kill it then with indirect fire. --> 400 Mp wasted

Check my signature.

This is exactly what a want to see, ofc we have to test out the details that is this thing neither going op or up

Simply put the Mortar Pit was the victim of the patented Relic triple nerf (Brace, Range, incoming repairs while braced) and now it's not survivable enough while being forced to be built closer to the front lines. I think it needs more than just a cost reduction in the SBP. I think partially reverting the Brace nerf wouldn't be the worst thing ever because now I find the issue is you don't have enough time to mount a counter-attack if forced to brace in the first place and if you're forced to retreat it's good as dead.

I think the main issue with the mortar pit right now is that it can munch on wehrmacht weapon teams all day unless they really spam mortars at you (which is easy to deal with because it normally means they have no other units, or you build a second mortar pit) or mortar half tracks but utterly useless against OKW because it is hard countered by almost everything in their roster (stock incendiary nades, Infantry support guns and Stuka Zu Fuss) So in order to balance it, you need to allow UKF to counter Infantry support guns etc and then you can nerf it against Wehrmacht. It seems atm the mortar pit is either useless or it single handedly wins you the game if they can't kill it.

This basically means if you want/need indirect fire, you are forced to go royal artillery reg to counter the inevitable spam of infantry support guns to cover your mortar pit, which kind of defeats the point of it as royal artillery gives you indirect fire anyway.

I made a thread a while ago about the lack of useful/mobile indirect fire as UKF. UKF are the only faction without mobile indirect fire (land mattress is defo not 'mobile' and isn't precise enough) either a regimental mortar half track/Universal carrier upgrade? a revamp of the infantry arty flares (maybe make the 25 pdrs respond more rapidly or get rid of the flare throwing and make it a call in like the usf major arty barrage and give it a useful range.

I like the idea of 2 mortar teams garrisoning the mortar pit though, to allow them to relocate at the cost of firerate, fits really well with the theme of British infantry of being much better in cover/garrisoned. Could just be the same but the squad gain an extra mortar when garrisoned in a pit.

I think the main issue with the mortar pit right now is that it can munch on wehrmacht weapon teams all day unless they really spam mortars at you (which is easy to deal with because it normally means they have no other units, or you build a second mortar pit) or mortar half tracks but utterly useless against OKW because it is hard countered by almost everything in their roster (stock incendiary nades, Infantry support guns and Stuka Zu Fuss) So in order to balance it, you need to allow UKF to counter Infantry support guns etc and then you can nerf it against Wehrmacht. It seems atm the mortar pit is either useless or it single handedly wins you the game if they can't kill it.

This basically means if you want/need indirect fire, you are forced to go royal artillery reg to counter the inevitable spam of infantry support guns to cover your mortar pit, which kind of defeats the point of it as royal artillery gives you indirect fire anyway.

I made a thread a while ago about the lack of useful/mobile indirect fire as UKF. UKF are the only faction without mobile indirect fire (land mattress is defo not 'mobile' and isn't precise enough) either a regimental mortar half track/Universal carrier upgrade? a revamp of the infantry arty flares (maybe make the 25 pdrs respond more rapidly or get rid of the flare throwing and make it a call in like the usf major arty barrage and give it a useful range.

I like the idea of 2 mortar teams garrisoning the mortar pit though, to allow them to relocate at the cost of firerate, fits really well with the theme of British infantry of being much better in cover/garrisoned. Could just be the same but the squad gain an extra mortar when garrisoned in a pit.

I agree with everything else but the UC Mortar upgrade, I am not both sure if it's possible or if it would not bug the fuck out if implemented because you wouldn't be able to change the UC model, meaning that the mortar would glitch in between the the transport compartment which would just look plain weird.

In reality there was a specially modified Australian UC/Bren Carrier which had a longer chassis but then again, that's not in CoH2...

IRL the British UC had a 2 inch mortar in the front gunner side primarily I believe for support smoke, no idea how they'd sort that out with the in game model though.

Not yet it isn't... Although there's the idea for a new regiment sorted, Commonwealth regiment with the aussie mortar Universal carrier. Canadian sections and Ghurkhas anyone?

Jokes aside, I think new regiments are unlikely though with relic working on AoE4 and the game finally being relatively nicely balanced. I'm not sure about totally redesigning UKF, I think what's there works well, I just think the roster has a few holes in it.

IRL the British UC had a 2 inch mortar in the front gunner side primarily I believe for support smoke, no idea how they'd sort that out with the in game model though.

Not yet it isn't... Although there's the idea for a new regiment sorted, Commonwealth regiment with the aussie mortar Universal carrier. Canadian sections and Ghurkhas anyone?

Jokes aside, I think new regiments are unlikely though with relic working on AoE4 and the game finally being relatively nicely balanced. I'm not sure about totally redesigning UKF, I think what's there works well, I just think the roster has a few holes in it.

I agree with you but I wanted to ask, what do you think are the other "holes" in the UKF roster of units?

For me it's just the mortar pit that needs a redesign and the lack of even doctrinal Tank Traps since basically all other Armies have them.

Tank traps are a good point. For me it would be the lack of mobile indirect fire, so yeah the mortar pit, but also a few others, the lack of appropriate rocket artillery: I think the land mattress could do with a rework as it’s not very punishing or useful right now, katyusha, panzerwerfer, Stuka and calliope are all reliable blob and fortification counters, land mattress basically just kills 1-2 men from every squad on the battlefield, costly I guess but not particularly combat effective compared to a panzerwerfer wiping 2 mortars and a machine gun in one volley. I might be wrong now but originally the more accurate phosphorous rockets which had potential couldn’t even kill units I don’t think, Just hurt them. Land mattress used to have a niche in that it actually dealt a lot of damage to vehicles and was pretty difficult to escape from, but it got nerf batted pretty hard and now doesn’t really do much. I think if they made the phosphorous rockets more like the flame mortar attack or just made it an accurate barrage, that could work, or just decreasing the minimum range to allow for More accurate closer barrages.

. UKF are also the only faction without a mortar half track or equivalent (OKW don’t but they can get a StuKa out very quickly anyway and Russia have equivalents) mortar half tracks are in my opinion a pretty essential countering unit to turtling play styles which is the reason everyone gets one... except UKF. I see a lot of newer players really struggle to counter machine gun and mortar spam from Wehrmacht without armour for example as the AEC has been hugely nerfed against infantry. The counters being Vickers UC, snipers or artillery reg. They are high skill, high risk counters needed to defeat the oldest and easiest strat in the book. (Artillery reg isn’t high skill but also isn’t stock)

Because of all this as well, British lack any stock counter to infantry support guns which out range the mortar pit, basically requiring me to take royal artillery nearly every game. I feel like royal artillery is a better emplacements regiment than advanced emplacements or royal engineers as it’s the only one equipped with a counter to the artillery that they will use against you.

Oh and snares, brits really need a stock snare now, I said in another thead that it was fine before, because Brit AT was really good, but there’s been a power creep, Comets got nerfed hard, used to just be a better panther, firefly rockets don’t deal the damage they used to and don’t temp snare anymore, 6 Pdr is getting nerfed as well. Basically every German infantry has a snare or pSchrek except for obers and assault grens so you can’t go anywhere near them with a tank whereas axis armour does as it pleases. Basically due to nerfs Brits are on par AT wise with every other faction, except have no snares. Either give sappers at snares (Number 74s maybe?) or make gammon bombs sticky I think.

Hmmm there are others but I can’t think of at 8am perhaps blob counters can Be fiddly early on, as vickers doesn’t suppress enough, bofors is easily countered without artillery reg and centaur/croc/avre/sexton come too late half the time. Wasp only works if they stand still. Other than that you’re left with Brens which are expensive and about to get nerfed. (We’ll see how they are after the update as cheaper brens means more brens) Churchill is pretty good and is my choice cos it scales better than a centaur, but again late if you don’t have fuel. In comparison, US have Stuarts, Scots, BARs, fighting positions, 50 cals, rangers, AA halftracks, later on Sherman’s can fire HE, calliopes and priests demolish blobs and the pershing fires tactical nukes. Brit’s have half of that to begin with and nothing early on after the vickers UC suppression got nerfed and AEC shells became useless.

Other than that I think commandos are a bit meh right now, bleed to badly against panzergrens unless you have stupid amounts of muni. Sappers seem just as good and half the price and can give them armour and a vickers k.

P.S.- If I could suggest one thing to fix the faction it would probably be to add something like the staghound or Stuart from CoH1, making British tier 2 like OKW tier 2 with the panzer 2 and puma, facing mortar half tracks or a Stuka? Take an AEC, facing mortar spam or blobs? Grab a staghound.

Mortar pit is such a limiting units, i personally would like to see it changed like this (unlikely): Mortars of brits are like any other factions mortars, can be moved, bought from second hq building. Sappers are able to build empty mortar pit for 200 mp. So people have choice. They can use mortars like any other faction, but they can put them in mortar pit in case if they want sustained mortarfire on certain area. Brits would get better indirect fire option without being too same with other factions.

Sounds good. Honestly though, I think if the mortar pit worked like that it could be free/100mp max, you're already paying 300mp or so for the mortar team anyway. It would essentially be a trench (which are free) for mortars. I think the best way to go about it is give Brits a 4 man mortar crew like US/Wehr that can garrison a buildable, empty mortar pit for access to an extra mortar and increased range, thus keeping the mortar pit basically the same in order to protect emplacements etc, but allowing Brits access to a portable mortar as well.

Sounds good. Honestly though, I think if the mortar pit worked like that it could be free/100mp max, you're already paying 300mp or so for the mortar team anyway. It would essentially be a trench (which are free) for mortars. I think the best way to go about it is give Brits a 4 man mortar crew like US/Wehr that can garrison a buildable, empty mortar pit for access to an extra mortar and increased range, thus keeping the mortar pit basically the same in order to protect emplacements etc, but allowing Brits access to a portable mortar as well.

If we're going in to specifics, I believe PlanetSmasher made each mortar team 240 man power. So combined 2 mortars and the Artillery pit cost around 580 man power.

So you're basically paying 180 manpower on top of the current mortar pit in order to be able to get the mortars out and relocate them if needed which, to me at least, is justified because I have always believed that mobility is what won in CoH, even if you dug in if you could tear down everything and relocate that still counted as mobility to me, that's also the reason why I enjoyed the British in CoH so much.

You hit a good spot which you could defend, you dug in hard with trenches and emplacements but as soon as you started pushing you could tear down (delete emplacements, leave trenches) everything and simply move up the line before digging in again.

That is not possible in CoH2 because of 3 reasons:

No mobile HQ trucks and the lack of the ability to make them.

You cannot delete emplacements anymore as easily.

And lastly they chose the new trench model for some dumb reason which sticks like a sore thumb on the battlefield and looks like a half dug trench with dirt around it, not an actual proper trench like in CoH.

That's a good point and definitely an issue, is once Brits get a mobile mortar team, it's possible that most people just won't bother building a pit so if relic want to keep the pit, which I like the idea of but don't think it works well at the moment, It's gonna need to do something special or people will just build regular mortar teams. Cos as A. Soldier said, mobility is key, if it can be mobile, people WILL prefer it that way.

That's a good point and definitely an issue, is once Brits get a mobile mortar team, it's possible that most people just won't bother building a pit so if relic want to keep the pit, which I like the idea of but don't think it works well at the moment, It's gonna need to do something special or people will just build regular mortar teams. Cos as A. Soldier said, mobility is key, if it can be mobile, people WILL prefer it that way.

PlanetSmasher also accounted for that by having the Artillery pit give some sort of bonus to the garrisoned mortars, I think it was a range boost but I am not 100% sure.

So basically a system of something basic which doesn't need a bonus to work was created with the Artillery Pit.

Need mobile indirect fire? Sure.

Want to invest in it's protection and boost it a bit at the same time? Sure.

Want to keep it unique? Check.

This is why I believe the idea is so brilliant and also the reason I have pushed for it at least for testing in the many recent balance patches but to no avail.

The only 2 answers I got were "Relic's Scope doesn't allow it" and "It makes the Armies too similar to each other".