Profile of Planet Smasher

I completely agree that a single-trench mortar would be a more elegant solution. However UKF has already slipped off that slope, and it will be difficult to get them back to that.

Also, the question I have to answer for me is the following: Why would anybody ever garrison 2 mortars on the same 2x2 plot of land (unless you want them to be wiped). This part, I will probably have to work out with proper, yet reasonable, buffs.

If we remove Brace, Improved Fortifications and the like, literally the only thing the mortar pit has and the trench hasn't is the ability to hold two mortars. Building two mortars is often a questionable decision, putting them both into one garrison even more so. I don't know anything about game design, but keeping the mortar pit just for the sake of not making any drastic changes doesn't seem like a good idea to me. (That doesn't mean I'm not willing to help you, though.)

1. Now, the question that remains to be answered is, could we make the mortar pit directly access the barrage/smoke/etc abilities of each mortar? (also considering that we can have two kinds of mortars garrisoned at the same time).

It is possible with one mortar, and it should be possible with two. At the very least, you would be able to click on each mortar's symbol and then access their abilities individually.

2. (preventing abuse) Assuming we can access the barrage ability of the mortar from within the pit, does this trigger a cooldown on all garrisoned mortars (so that we can't double barrage).

It is possible to share ability cooldowns between units, but only globally. That means if you fire a barrage with any mortar, all of your mortars will have to wait for it to recharge, no matter if they're in the same garrison or not. It is possible to do that for explosive/smoke/special barrages separately, though.

Removing the crew should be possible, I just forgot to do it. I'll see what else I can do!

Thus.. creating garrisonable buildings is something that only Relic can do? My ears have picked up a longstanding demand for Relic to "release modding tools". Is this a piece of functionality that is currently missing due to the lack of tools?

You can make anything a garrison, you just can't change if/where units can fire out. We can put 200 mortar teams into a Panzer IV, but none of them will be able to fire while in there. It is known in which files these combat slots are stored, but the values seem somewhat cryptic and it's not possible to replace these files with a mod, as far as I know.

I see. In this case (if I go with the one-mortar-per-Trench implementation), I would have to give the same conditional modifier for all mortars that can be constructed or captured by the Brits.

It's even easier: You create one passive ability ("mortar_garrison_bonus" or something like that) which increases a mortar's range/rate of fire/whatever while garrisoned and give that ability to every mortar. This is one of the most basic forms of modding in the game.

That's an interesting alternative implementation; make mortar pits kind of like USF vehicles. Each garrisoned mortar activates a mortar weapon on the pit.

If I go down this route, will it be possible to implement the following, though:
- Small arms/grenades should damage the garrisoned mortars directly (without having to destroy the pit entity first).

It seemed promising, but I don't think it's possible after all, because it looks like you can't put restrictions on recrewing: A mortar team would be able to crew anything, and any squad would be able to crew a mortar pit.

Garrisoning a building or halftrack and crewing a vehicle are two fundamentally different things. A unit that is garrisoned can fire (if the hold has combat slots) and be fired at (if set in the hold - this can be changed). When crewing a vehicle, however, a squad completely disappears and can not perform or be the target of any action at all until it abandons that vehicle. Even if the driver or pintle gunner uses the crew's model, it is not a 'unit' in any sense, just an animator attached to the vehicle.

My suggestion would look like this:

1. Brits as well as Ostheer and OKW (if only doctrinally) get the same trench. This trench is owned and cannot be garrisoned by other players. It will be somewhat more expensive than it is now, but also a little more durable.
2. Every mortar from every faction can garrison a trench owned by the player while retaining full functionality and receiving a moderate bonus to its rate of fire.
3. Brits get a mobile 3-inch mortar team in T2. It uses the model for the USF M1 81mm mortar and gets the stats from the Soviet PM-41.

This is both easy to implement and easy to use. It would make Brit play a lot different and leave the mortar pit model unused, but it seems like the most elegant and sensible solution to me. I would be willing to turn this, or a variation of it, into a mod, if you're interested.

Actually, I just thought the following.

On release, the Mortar Pits (allong with all other emplacements) were garrisonable by MG teams. Could the MG weapon slots be interchangeable with Mortar weapon slots. Would that also make all garrisoned mortars able to fire on whichever direction ordered (without relocating)

I didn't know that! I'll have to have a look - it is possible, but not certain.

No problem!

Maybe there's another aspect of the ability that clashes? Like it doesn't work for toggle abilities?

That might actually be possible, because the current state of the ability (on or off) would have to be 'tracked' for each unit. You could try it out by changing the ability type (even if that makes the ability useless) and then checking whether it shows up.

Union and intersection are set operations. Here's a quick example:

A = {1,2,3}
B = {2,3,4}
A ∪ B = {1,2,3,4} (union)
A ∩ B = {2,3} (intersection)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_(set_theory)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersection_(set_theory)

In this case, it should mean that an ability shows up if at least one of the selected squads has it!

Initially I thought:
- We have a decrewed animation for the mortar pit (there used to be an abandoned critical)
- Would it be possible to create a half-crewed animation (only one mortar operating)

I'll have to take a closer look at the animations again, but I think this would be possible.

However, now that I have read your reply and I have been thinking about it some more, it will look completely awkward for the following reasons:
- It is not going to be possible to make the mortar pit crews consistent with the crews actually manning the mortars.
- The attackers will probably be attacking the mortar pit itself, and there's not going to be any animation playing when a mortar crew dies.

That is indeed true, but the second would be the case for trenches as well! Although it might look slightly less awkward.

Do you have a link to your commander mod? I never had the opportunity to use garrisoned mortars. I only figured out that the possibility existed when I read the patch notes that this was getting removed.

Sure, here you go: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635567216
It's in the German Defensive and Infantry doctrines. There might be a lot of bugs, because I haven't worked on it for about a month and Relic made some alterations to the Attribute Editor in the meantime, but the last time I checked, mortars in trenches worked fine: You could garrison them while retaining full functionality. Currently, that includes only the Ostheer GrW34, however!