Guys, I know I've been away from this project for a while, but after coming back and reading through this thread, I have to admit I'm a little *against* mortars in the official game.
Much like proposals for air strikes, air-to-ground bombs, and other really heavy stuff, please remember that in the setting of the official game Phalanx troops are supposed to go into an area and more surgically remove a threat withOUT causing a huge disruption by blasting things to the Christian hell, withOUT drawing a lot of attention to what should be a secret or low-profile organization so aliens don't target them, and withOUT causing massive damage to a populated area of a nation that is expected to support the organization.
Yes, I realize that in video games it can indeed be fun to simply chuck a big A-bomb at a group of bad guys and just nuke the f***ers, but it kills the realism we fought so hard for in making this game - much like how this game tries to go for *hard* sci-fi stuff and not the soft fantasy-ish like material.
I'd also like to point out that real-life military veterans and experts that I've known and talked to (including one in my family, who fought in two world wars) who really know the practical consequences of blasting large areas with powerful weapons to root out enemy units often run into this type of mentality with inexperienced people who don't realize the problems with such an approach. Many "arm-chair" idea givers who have never been in the military favor this thing with blasting large areas like that, but the real experts are against it.
Yes, in the history of wars and fighting they have indeed tried that type of thing - It doesn't work as expected. I don't claim to be such an expert myself so I can't list all the reasons why, but the real experts who have really *been there* know that it is a BAD idea in many cases. Most actually prefer to go into an area and remove JUST the threat withOUT causing massive damage to the area while doing it.
All that being said, I think this would be better as a MOD, and should go in that section of the forum, and not show up in the official version of the game.
