Siege Mortars in the defense?

[uw06670]

I'm in July 41 and as the Soviets I'm the proud owner of a number of these 280mm BR-5 Mortar siege guns. I'm wondering if they are effective at all in defense or are they, as the name implies, only good for busting up forts.

thanks,

[Disgruntled Veteran]

ORIGINAL: uw06670

I'm in July 41 and as the Soviets I'm the proud owner of a number of these 280mm BR-5 Mortar siege guns. I'm wondering if they are effective at all in defense or are they, as the name implies, only good for busting up forts.

thanks,

Your supposed to be doing your turn..not playing around on the forums

In all seriousness, I'm sure they fire in defense. I think the name siege gun is just used for historical flavor. They are still a gun and fire. Now whether they are worth the armament cost is another matter.

[uw06670]

You should be telling me to drive them into the river I wouldn't buy them, but already have quite a few sitting around HQs and Fronts. Based on the device table looks like a powerful weapon, but not sure how it plays out in the game behind the scenes.

Unfortunately, its hard for me to work on my turn at work, but I can sneak into the forums for a minute or two...

[No idea]

They should not be good for much in defence because all those huge mortars had very limited range and low rate of fire (the huge, 80 cm "Dora", used against Sevastopol, had an effective range of 3-4 kms and could fire once every few minutes, for example). In short, nobody would place them in a position where enemy offsensives are expected, because the mortar would be quickly overrun, and there was no quick way to transport it to safety. On top of that their cost didnt justify to risk them in the defensive, unless totally desperate. Big mortars were only useful on sieges.

[Pilsator]

You are talking about Karl(which was the 60cm Mortar) with the 3-4kms range, Dora had a Range of 30 to 50 kms.

[No idea]

Yes, you are right. I changed their names

[sillyflower]

ORIGINAL: uw06670

I'm in July 41 and as the Soviets I'm the proud owner of a number of these 280mm BR-5 Mortar siege guns. I'm wondering if they are effective at all in defense or are they, as the name implies, only good for busting up forts.

thanks,

If you really want to know what they do when you attack, watch the combat on level 5 or something. However, you can't see what they do on defence. Nothing of value I suspect.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: uw06670

I'm in July 41 and as the Soviets I'm the proud owner of a number of these 280mm BR-5 Mortar siege guns. I'm wondering if they are effective at all in defense or are they, as the name implies, only good for busting up forts.

thanks,

I tend to get all those really heavy guns back into Stavka as early as possible There are also some 200mm(-ish) mortars knocking around and again I'd get them out of the way at the start. They will cost a lot of arms pts to replace so even if they were useful on the defense any losses will cost you. I then tend to give them to my main shock armies for winter offensive with them nice and fresh.

[uw06670]

Thanks for the input guys.

FYI based on the device table, the range of this gun is 17,900 (meters?) which seems pretty respectable.