Ok, so I love mortars, Airplane bombing, and artillery use. I also love throwing my body towards a cap point into a MG, or tank, and being slaughtered.
People like to moan and complain about each of the above. After wrecking teams with mortars I do think there is a piece missing from using a mortar, the threat of being detected and counter batteried.
Airplanes can run into each other, tanks fear each other and infantry roaming packs, assaulting infantry fear a MG or even a sniper bot.
Mortars, really fear nothing. No one on the other side knows where you are located.
2 mortars and 2 engineers, gg 0 squads lost, and huge kill streak games.
What if mortars and radio use put a momentary marker on the map that other radio men and mortar crews could see? This could easily cause a lot of cat and mouse and strategy beyond just dropping endless rounds on a point.
I see you call artillery, i call in artillery in that area, you see me call in artillery, you start mortaring my area, my mortar team see’s your shots being fired and fires back. Mortars then adjust to fight each other, or get blown up.
It would add a huge dynamic to the systems in place.
Reminds me of Battlefield 3, when you’d put down the mortar it’d show up on the map for everyone on both teams, so you’d have to shoot and scoot after a bit to keep from being countered.
I like the idea, but instead of just a marker, put a red shaded area something like what metal gear solid 5 has when the enemy is looking for your last known location.After a few starting rounds, it’ll get darker and more accurate with the more rounds you throw downrange or calls you make. Kinda like zeroing in on the location. Over time more and more people should notice it faster on the map, or mini-map if close enough.
Counter fire is not that easy, usually takes time for artillery positions to be found. Maybe visual cues would be better than a marker on a map because that would just be too easy.
there are visual cues for mortars but they’re very easy to hide and don’t do you much good if you’re the mortarman yourself. You need a second player to hunt and pin the mortar, which isn’t unheard of but still requires exponentially more skill and work than using the mortar does.
Also a huge problem is that on many maps the mortarmen can fire from inside their own uncap zone, meaning that its even more difficult to locate the mortar crew with limited visibility and a time limit before you die…
The concept of counter battery is not some magical wand you wave to make the bad things go away. There is already a great deal of abstraction in game to even make arty or mortars available and able to be used in the manner that they are.
Now as a long time WT player, I would like to offer the opinion that Gaijin historically takes the view that players need to take responsibility for certain things themselves. This is not helped by the friction of randoms getting piled together in teams via MM, but that is what we have.
Now, in WT it took them a few years to grasp the concept of implementing a half useful comms system that allowed players to communicate intent / targets etc… across the barrier of languages.
The basics of this already exist in Enlisted, all be it, its very rudimentary. The system allows you to use “v” to mark enemy squads and vehicles. At the moment you can indicate a general threat location or mark an infantry squad (same marker- which doesn’t help) or a vehicle - has a specific marker, which is a step in the right direction.
IF you are looking for a counter battery effect in game then you simply need to mark the mortar team and if anyone on your team has mortars or an available arty they can target the enemy squad accordingly - you can even type a qualifying remark into chat. When mortars fire the animation reflects a kneeling figure so they’re vulnerable to direct fire as well as indirect.
Consequently, the concept of CBF will be enabled through implementing a better or more granular spotting system, players understanding and applying spotting as part of their regular pew pews and then having the game support the indication of different squads with appropriate icons. Ultimately, if you have a player with the available mortars or arty they will naturally fire at the opposing equivalent as soon as they can, and therfore by default providing you with the ingame equivalent of CBF.
mortar boys most of the time are just on their main spawn yes there is spotting, visual and audio cues and we want to use that but there are only limited ways to counter them, either by planes which most of the time will be better on dealing people on obj or what I usually do just pretty much run all the way to their spawn and try to kill them before I die to out of bounds, even arty can’t reach it since they are in the grey area from which they can’t really call it in there, so either go with the CBF route or have mortar crews be force out of the gray area so the opposite team can have a chance dealing or atleast slowing the support it provides
so you mean when im in a game and get 75 kills and 0 squad losses, in fact lose ZERO troops, that someone knew where I was at any point?
sorry your mixing apples and oranges.
they didn’t see me, they didn’t find me, and even if they had marked, i would have moved if fired upon and repeated the whole issue for them.
I’m 99% sure we had similar suggestion during CBT and it wasn’t popular whatsoever. It seems that people change their minds when they are massacred by indirect fire weapons in almost every match.
Don’t forget that bot mode is not the only one in Enlisted.
Artillery can only get bot squads from time to time, that’s about it. At the same time it’s a good tool for area denial and suppression (in the absence of proper gun suppression). Perhaps it needs to be adjusted, but revealing the radioman won’t do anything other than force them to ALWAY stay somewhere behind hard cover in an inaccessible (to the enemy) part of the map.
Mortars also tend to do nothing to players - most of the time. Except that when they do land a kill it is always super cheap and cheesy. The one behind that mortar didn’t see you - he just fired blindly, you didn’t get a warning of any kind, and subsequently had no chance to either evade or counter. Mortars also don’t offer any area denial because they are completely stealthy.
I don’t play squads mode anymore so I don’t have experience with mortars being a big nuisance. However, from just looking at how they work, I’d say the main problem is that 1) they are very stealthy, 2) there is no warning when they strike so you can’t avoid them despite them being able to completely avoid your retaliation. It makes sense to do something about that if they are to stay at all. Personally I don’t have a stake in this argument as they don’t have an impact (or even a noticeable presence) in solo mode.
What about if they give recon/scout/pathfinder squads ability to wonder enemy dark zone? OFC they are not allowed to build anything there but can counter mortars and spot them for your team mortars. Hm, but they would sometimes have to stop them from spawn camping then. Tough topic
I like the idea of when you start to Mortar, after say 10 shots, you would great a very large area marker around where you could be, which gets smaller incrementally the more you fire the mortar, or at least smoke trails coming up from the point of launch so its easier for planes to see where they are.
TBH I dont think Artillery needs fixing, its not for certain fatel, its marked on the map, there is a pretty large cooldown unless its a Art unit.
Yeah, I already know where he is, the map doesn’t need to tell me. He is sitting about 150 meters behind their spawn, behind a building, in a bush, with 3 ammo crates and no way for any of us to actually get to him.
yeah ill mark it, just let me completely abandon my objective, run through their spawn, dodge all incoming fire from constantly spawning enemies, be lucky enough not to die to the gray zone, and I’m marking it alright.
You can hear mortars from a long distance, especially if its a more spread out map. I’ve chased plenty of mortarmen into their uncap area to murder them. I’ve also had games where i got 168 kills as a mortar without losing a guy. Mortars are OP, currently, and they need multiple fixes to help that, locating them is one part, making it so you can chase into uncap is a second.
