Add Mortars to PG/AG

Fix Soviet artillery

The WWII Red Army fielded a massive, layered array of artillery that is missing from PG/AG. The 76mm field gun became AG’s direct-fire anti-tank gun so the early Soviets unrealistically lack affordable light artillery. In reality, the Soviets made great use of mortars, Red Army doctrine authorized massing mortars from many units under a central command, and the Soviet 120mm mortar was so good that the Germans copied it.

A mortar unit would have:

• “Artillery” classification (for support fire)
• 1-hex ranged attack (like the StuG IIIb)
• Infantry ground defense numbers (so it can survive next to the enemy if used offensively)
• 2 “leg” movement points (2MP like Heavy Weapons (HW) infantry)

I’ve experimented with the mortar unit and the results are interesting :

• It works like a hybrid infantry-StuG
• Its movement is like motorized infantry/artillery with 8MP in trucks and a dismount—but dismounted it’s like HW infantry so it can be tactically more mobile/flexible than a howitzer
• It does not get an infantry-class bonus in woods and cannot capture a city but its infantry-type ground defense numbers make it tougher to uproot than a howitzer battery
• You can keep it behind your units where (like the StuG) it cannot be used offensively but a good mortar unit can break up many an attack
• You also can put it in the frontline where (like the StuG or other artillery) it cannot fire after moving but it can fire offensively at an adjacent enemy with the benefit of a ranged attack and still provide defensive fire support to adjacent friendly units

The Red Army’s potent but affordable 2MP 120mm mortar certainly would add a new dimension to the Ostfront.

Add 80-82mm Mortars to Most Nations

The HW infantry seem like another in a long list of small-arms infantry but a HW unit’s 80-82mm mortars provided its main punch and greatest range (to over 3,000yds). The medium mortars could be made similar to the 120mm to give supporting artillery fire but then the artillery-class mortar HW unit should be supplementary to the standard infantry-class machine-gun HW so that you have enough city-capturing infantry.The other option to represent HW’s mortars would be to leave all HW as infantry-class (which means woods bonus and capturing cities but no support fire for other units) but give all HW infantry a 1-hex ranged attack to indicate the indirect fire of the HW units' mortars.

I gave mortars an infantry-type 2-hex spot range for now but that and other numbers (attack, ammunition, cost, etc.) are provisional.

Vote on these ideas