Mortars are OP
Mortars are UP
Everyone seems to have a conflicted opinions on mortars and how they should be balanced.
On one hand, the positives:
- You can shell targets in a kind of safety that’s more secure than bombing the point with planes- You can’t be easily spotted, only heard, moreso if you’re in the backlines.
- You can deny a point without warning, unlike planes, tanks and artillery, and you do so almost-instantly, unlike planes who have to line up their run and artillery, which needs time to fire.
- Relatively simple to use. Just point the mortar at a target, adjust the range, and fire.
On the other, the negatives:
- You only have a limited amount of shots, and with a recent update, refills. One refill will take up the entire ammo crate, and remaking the ammo crate is both time-consuming, and limited.
- Efficient usage of the mortar necessitates engineers in the squad to build ammo crates, in the first place, meaning mortars require either an initial investment, or a painful early grind.
- If the mortar squad wants to keep its position fixed, it needs to retain its squad members, most importantly, engineers, nearby, meaning it is not an active participant in battle.
- While simple to use, it cannot be used on targets with hard overhead cover, moreover, while it is easy to aim, it is very difficult to land hits with, as it is reliant on player knowledge of enemy movements, markers and terrain.
- It is unlocked at 2-digit campaign levels, meaning that attempting to level it up is lengthier than regular combat squads, which is compounded by its limited strength as a squad that’s essentially a group of riflemen, with no unique merits or unlocks for its dedicated mortarman.
- As a specialist squad, mortarmen, unlike radiomen, cannot be used outside its designated squad.
- Against maps with a lot of overhead cover, like urban terrain, it is of marginal use, and the rapid playstyle of conquest means it is impractical to field in those game modes, limiting its optimum use to invasion and assault game modes- In squads. In lone fighter, it is almost irrelevant without foreknowledge of an enemy location, and only has very limited effect considering how spaced players are in LF.
People have proposed:
- Smoke shells - Which would heavily skew balance in invasion/assault game modes in favor of attackers.
- Mortarmen in regular squads - Which would make the mortar squad obsolete, and propagate its negative reputation as being instant-artillery, but unlike radiomen, it doesn’t have a cooldown attached, nor a warning circle to indicate its hits.
My idea is a bit drastic, but hear me out. Considering that the implementation of light mortars in a relatively fast-paced game that requires a lot of prepation, and knowledge to properly use, why don’t we simply replace the class in a way that:
- Doesn’t require much preparation to use, meaning no obligatory engineer to stay half-relevant in a match.
- Can be introduced to other squads, similar to bombers and radiomen.
- Doesn’t promote a passive playstyle that involves hanging back in the map.
- Doesn’t require the introduction of new strange mechanics.
- Doesn’t require a map rebalance, unlike suggested smoke shells.
- Is fairer to counter, as it promotes the class moving forward, instead of being safely hidden away until hit by stray gunfire, or ordnance.
- But retains anti-infantry power against groups and fortifications, in an organic way, which were a mortar’s intended role.
Grenadiers.
There’s a myriad of grenade-launching weapons in-game, however, they’re currently locked to troopers, and, are usually unlocked in the middle of a campaign at a price of 2 silvers a weapon, where they are in looming danger of being phased out by soon-to-be-unlocked 3-silver weaponry.
So why not simply give it its own class? There are many grenade-launching weapons in history- Not just “your standard faction bolt-action rifle + launcher” combo.
Historically, we have grenade launcher devices that can be adapted to not just fit the standard rifle, but multiple weapons. We have the Gewehrgranatengerät, which is usually seen on K98s, but also on FG 42s and early StG 44 variants had the ability to get these mounted, even if they were eventually cancelled or rendered obsolecent, like the in-game dyakonov grenade launcher.
Grenadier variant springfield rifles, M1 carbines, M1 garands- Enough to fill a progression/unlock tree similar to regular combat troops. Even strange prototypes like the Kulakov grenade launcher by the soviets:
Now, how would this work when implementing it as an in-game class?
- The grenadier’s weapon unlocks should be further down the progression tree than regular trooper weapon unlocks, so grenadiers aren’t a Trooper+1 unit
- Similar to present rifle grenades and mortarmen, only the player can use rifle grenades, and they cannot be refilled at ammo crates, nor have their capacity be increased with backpack slots.
- For cases where grenadiers need a dedicated weapon like the pictured Kulakov grenade launcher above, they will have a level-appropriate weapon in their primary slot, and their secondary slot will be the grenade launcher
- For cases where the grenade-launcher tool is an already-existing weapon that fires a different warhead from its bomber version (Like having an HE instead of HEAT warhead, for weapons like the sturmpistole/grb 39), the HE variant is exclusive to the grenadier class, while the HEAT/AT weapons is exclusive to the bomber class.
In my opinion, there’s really no place for light mortars in the game. It’s campy, unfair, niche and boring to use. Replacing it with this is my best idea for reworking them, because indirect fire Is better off dropped by planes, which are at least self-sufficient and radio strikes, which are more widespread, and more balanced at area denial.
Thoughts?
