Post some feedbacks and horror stories! Or videos.
First time playing mortar for me, which I decided to do after self-teaching myself using the mortar training.
It was great fun! But I also learned some things.
I think we fired 15-18 volleys based on the total ammo we used, of which 12-15 were on target and 3 were off-target.
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My first shot was off-target because I forgot to change the charge of the shot from 0 to 1, so it was way short. Fortunately It didn’t hit anyone.
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My second shot was off because my map markers were bad. Everything on there was correct, but it was too much information, and I read the wrong number as the number of mils I had to aim at, causing the shots to be way north-west of the target.
Both of those mistakes were because in the little training I did from the guide, all my focus really was on getting the elevation of the mortar right, especially with height differences between me and the target. This translated to my first two shots here as well. Setting charge and pointing in the right direction is much easier to do, but with little experience also easy to forget to check, and I won’t forget in the future.
After those first two shots, as far as I knew all other shots were on target (or at least where the target was marked). This was sometimes difficult to check, since me and [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/7699206/avatar/small.1568124075.jpeg” name=“Mathusse”]7699206[/user] never had direct line-of-sight on our targets. This meant we had to rely on callbacks from the forward elements to know if we had actually hit our target, or if we had to adjust for future shots. Towards the end of the op these got much better, so that was nice to see.
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The last shot I did was also wrong. It was an easy-to-make mistake of placing the ruler on another nearby dot from our actual position (see #event-footage), but the big implication that we undershot the target by 150m and hit our own elements. I say easy-to-make not as an excuse, but as a warning to future mortar players. I’d caught myself several times during the op getting confused about our own position on the map because it was so cluttered with markers (mostly our own fault), but also because we moved around a lot. Mortars changed position 6 times, and this was one of the first target markers we placed after moving back to the 4th position we had (from the 5th). So it seems I used the location from the 5th position to determine the range to the target
Try to not make my mistakes in the future! -
Another bad shot (but not badly aimed) was FF’ing Alpha squad after comms broke down when alpha lead was unconscious. I think the only way to prevent this type of thing is making sure that element leaders read back orders to PLT, so PLT knows for sure nobody is moving in when ordering a fire mission. I can’t comment on how long-range comms were other than that, since I wasn’t on them.
Learning experiences out of the way, I in general liked how mortars were used by PLT. As mentioned we fired around 16 fire missions, and while we had ammo for more, there was almost always something to do for us. I was a bit worried when we started we’d just be forgotten by [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/8061610/avatar/small.1616680218.jpeg” name=“Henrik”]8061610[/user] , but he used us on pretty much every objective to fire on it before elements moved in. Also, towards the end of the op I think we were getting direct calls from Alpha to fire on long-range targets in the woods, which was very nice.
I don’t think it’s possible to say mortars will never miss their targets, since we’re still humans doing measurements and calculations. However, when (not if) I play mortars in future ops, I’m certain I’ll be able to execute fire missions much faster than today, as well as with much less chance of missing a shot. By the end my map markers were better (showing only the info I needed to make the final shot) and I was able to place them comfortably within 30 seconds (compared to over 150 seconds for the early marks I set). This means that the time between a call for mortars (on a location not at all pre-ranged) when mortars are already set-up, and the time between mortars landing can be less than 70 seconds (including a 30 seconds flight-time for medium range targets!). I think on pre-calculated shots that time can be as low as 35-40 seconds.
I’m really looking forward to seeing mortars used more in future ops.
I enjoyed the op, playing as FTL in Alpha was great (with a great SL and co-FTL), though I’m not sure if the rest of yellow enjoyed it that much; we didn’t get to use LAT and were mostly just getting shot at and killed, rather than having a good base of fire to shoot from. And when we had trenches, enemies were shooting at us from beyond 200-300m from inside the (fake, snow storm script?) fog.
Before we got shelled in the barn by enemy mortars, [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/3602631/avatar/small.1411590107.jpeg” name=“Shiny”]3602631[/user] mentioned the AI fired some warning shots, but I honestly don’t remember any - we were under heavy fire in the barn, trying to stay alive and get bandaged, and - as we were preparing to move - mortars hit us hard. It’s possible there were some warning shots, but they got lost in the chaos. Wooden barns provide zero protection against bullets.
Like I mentioned on debrief, this kind of mission where we’re getting constantly showered with bullets (through concealment) could be made more interesting by giving players some LAVs like humvees, to provide at least some mobile hard cover in a forest full of soft tree leaves.
Maybe we could have brought in more Hiluxes (Hiluxi?) with the first reinforcements.
Operation was a grinding world war 1 experience most of the time for me. It did have a good setting, atmosphere, but casualty rates were high and again was a combat medic simulator. Most of us would be dead with more realistic medical system. AI kept shooting at us through the bushes, trees with unreal precision, while we were very efficient at dispensing trees and leaves shooting at ghosts and shadows. Looking at CNTR, OPFOR was at least four times the size of us, while we were meant to be attacking without armored or air support.
It was definitely a good experience to have Mortar team. As Koffer mentioned in the final paragraph, the time between calling in the fire mission and the shells landing was the lowest I’ve ever witnessed for friendly mortars. I do think it was super useful to have you and I definitely hope we can use it more in the future. It’s as much of a game changer as having a drone in the AO in my opinion: infantry elements have better chances of succeding. The only negative note (perhaps due to not being used to using mortars) is that at times I was reluctant on calling a fire mission because the infantry was a bit eager to breach an objective.
[user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/13688253/avatar/small.1433248519.jpeg” name=“Highway”]13688253[/user] we did have artillery support and CAS in addition to our own Mortar team, I wasn’t on the frontline although I acknowledge the mission was difficult but I don’t think it was outright impossible to achieve.
Feedback from PLT perspective is mostly on my end. It’s hard to judge whether elements should stay closer one another or can spread further apart, and it was definitely the first case for this mission considering the amount of enemy forces we were fighting and, most importantly, the open terrain towards the Northern objective. As usual I hope the pace wasn’t too boring for anyone, it’s always hard to balance fun for players and tactics that make actual sense.
A big note I would like to point out is: wait for elements to read back when told to not assault a position that is about to get shelled with HEs 
*with air support.
Read the OPORD. Platoon never called it in.
You also had 155mm cannons from the ships which were called in twice.
5 salvos to be precise before they fired on the barn. Platoon reported it twice over the radio.
It took out the Hiluxes you had with you, causing a big explosion just behind alpha and smoke (your third point in your post, you had them but they were not used).
What surprises me even more is that people still did not leave positions that were mortarted or people still did not spread out after the mass cass on the first objective (even though it was friendly mortars) or on the second.
[quote user_id=“3602631” avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/3602631/avatar/medium.1411590107.jpeg” name=“Shiny”][quote user_id=“13633351” avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/13633351/avatar/medium.1434890353.jpeg” name=“Freghar”]
Before we got shelled in the barn by enemy mortars, [user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/3602631/avatar/small.1411590107.jpeg” name=“Shiny”]3602631[/user] mentioned the AI fired some warning shots, but I honestly don’t remember any - we were under heavy fire in the barn, trying to stay alive and get bandaged, and - as we were preparing to move - mortars hit us hard. It’s possible there were some warning shots, but they got lost in the chaos. Wooden barns provide zero protection against bullets.
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5 salvos to be precise before they fired on the barn. Platoon reported it twice over the radio.
It took out the Hiluxes you had with you, causing a big explosion just behind alpha and smoke (your third point in your post, you had them but they were not used).
What surprises me even more is that people still did not leave positions that were mortarted or people still did not spread out after the mass cass on the first objective (even though it was friendly mortars) or on the second.[/quote]
1st mortar hit was friendly hence we maintained the position, we were requested buy Plt to do so. Both fireteams were spread out.
2nd mortar hit and was a mass cas situation this meant myself and yellow could not actually move. Yellow team and myself still crawled about 50-70m away from the barn, so we tried. Everyone that could move did so, hence red team moving to a new position.
It’s very easy to say move and I was requesting the same thing over and over on Sqd Net but when people are down and legs are damaged we just ain’t going anywhere.
Point is valid though if your in a position to move your FT’s or elements then you must do so. Sometimes however, your in a bind and can’t and/or won’t because you don’t want to sacrifice members of the Squad.
All in all both yellow and red team performed brilliantly considering the very hard situations we found ourself in.
Edit: Henrik did a good job considering all the chaos going on.
[user avatar=“https://assets-cloud.enjin.com/users/8061610/avatar/small.1616680218.jpeg” name=“Henrik”]8061610[/user] why no you call our bombers and let brothers die in pain and sorrow?
War. You level up the enemy completely, let him rot and die.
So I kinda forgot about it Although I was skeptical in calling in 155mm too because I didn’t want to ruin the experience for Mortar