experimental rules in MBT

[Weasel]

Not sure how this thread got spun off into a tangent, but it seems to have. This rule was not created to deal with artillery effectiveness and is not meant too. What it is being tested for is to prevent the player that buys one FOO and uses him to target twenty different shoots all over the map. Yeah you can argue "let him, his arty barrage will be weak" etc etc. If that is the way you like to play then go for it.

But for those of us who find the one FOO purchase just to get a quick response is irritating then the FOO rule helps out big time. It prioritizes targets and forces more tubes to be laid on a target for a real barrage instead of a FOO assigning one tube to shoot at a troublesome MG, and another tube to shoot at an ATGM, and another at a hidden tank that you know is there etc etc.

Never before I have purchased as many FOOs as I am now. I normally purchased one or two, and the second was just in case the first got clobbered. In my most recent setup I purchased four on the attack with a setup point of 6000, and three on the defence with a point of 4000. And even with that I still think I could use more FOOs.

Artillery limits are controlled with the 10% rule and has nothing to do with the FOO rule.

[retired from gaming]

I got your point now. Makes some sense - in game terms one FO can assign 5 or even 20 different calls at a same time and still have the advantage of shorter delay. Am I getting this right now ?
If so, in a game against you, Vesku or anyone else I know and trust I would just say - one FO can target only one shot in a turn. The rest of shots has to be dealed by other 0 units with longer delays. With players I dont know well enough your rule is just about fine.

[Grumbler]

That is one advantage the C&C rules of W@W has. It takes command points to call arty, IIRC, and a normal zero unit needs those CP's to control their platoon. I'm not very good at C&C on, I remember not being able to call my arty because I was out of CP's. I also remember not being very happy about that.

[Weasel]

I got your point now. Makes some sense - in game terms one FO can assign 5 or even 20 different calls at a same time and still have the advantage of shorter delay. Am I getting this right now ?
If so, in a game against you, Vesku or anyone else I know and trust I would just say - one FO can target only one shot in a turn. The rest of shots has to be dealed by other 0 units with longer delays. With players I dont know well enough your rule is just about fine.

Yes you have it right now. However, even with doing the delay thing (see a few notes above) you can still have a FOO call in a ton of different shoots all with a plus .1 delay if he shifts them off a target marker. That is why 1 FOO = 1 SHOOT. Simple and to the point. As said, not realistic, but effective. No way there can be confusion with that one.

[Weasel]

That is one advantage the C&C rules of W@W has. It takes command points to call arty, IIRC, and a normal zero unit needs those CP's to control their platoon. I'm not very good at C&C on, I remember not being able to call my arty because I was out of CP's. I also remember not being very happy about that.

I don't play WAW but H2H (before I switched to winWW2) and all I know is my arty was mostly always out of contact, even when stacked on top of the A0!! Damn gun crews, probably drunk on cheap French wine!

[Vesku]

That is one advantage the C&C rules of W@W has. It takes command points to call arty, IIRC, and a normal zero unit needs those CP's to control their platoon. I'm not very good at C&C on, I remember not being able to call my arty because I was out of CP's. I also remember not being very happy about that.

You are right and this is the one thing that makes WaW superior to MBT, you have so much more realism with CC than any other combined. Just my exaggerated opinion :)

[Grumbler]

Tanks that fire off their entire magazine in 2 minutes? Infantry that is shot to ribbons and just gets braver? I hated the Italian tank crews. I stopped killing the M13/40's because the crews were more dangerous after they bailed out. And I won't even start on the 'spidey sense'.

[klanx171]

I dont plan to biff spanners into the works but I do know that in real life many units do not have FOOs, FOOS are obviously specialist units and I spent a lotta time in the bush and i never saw one, we called it in ourselves as many infantry units do and did, FOOs were useally assigned at battalion level and only lower if the arty boys had them to spare or felt that there would be a need for pin point fire. Also as a point One battery would have one FOO, lesser concentraions of guns would be run upstairs to battalion (not common) or useally assigned to a company comander.

The point Im making here is that the average soldier (at least in NZ) can do fire orders, or at least relayed the fire orders back to base where the FOO sat with aheap o radios and switched channels to route calls, much like a switchboard, I assume soldiers in other parts of the world can do the same and so while I use FOOs ingame as they are faster and seem to be more accurate they are not a requirement for artillery in real life

This is even more so in cities or close quarters where a FOO has little or no more use than any one else calling in the shots as it will be guess work.

Again Im makin point to reality here, not to any particular rules you guys are making, I can definately appreciate rule changes but this seems to me to be a bit of an add on, also in games why shouldnt we plaster different parts of the board at random with arty, In the game we are GOD so to speak, we are not the grunts or the company commander but the gnereal at least, should we not be able to call in fire where we want (the ruskies in WW2 often did, sometimes overrding those on the ground)???

I think that as with grumbler talking about CnC this is for when its CnC on, as the realism is a need to mamage forces in a realistci way is required but non CnC games there are hordes of other aspect which are bending if not breaking reqality, such as tanks more than there useally were, often more arty than there were, the super heavy stuff like 150mm and above was rare yet we use it a lot, always the best tanks coz if you take less your nailed by your opp etc etc.

[Thexder]

If I understood all of those opinions correctly arty is too deadly in MBT/WW2, right ? How much "too deadly" it is ? Twice ?
There is no need to create any rules, complicated or not, to overcome this problem.
You can lower arty effectiveness to 50% in the preference menu and off you go. Job done. Thats why it is there. Why anyone would want to count FOs instead ?

Well, I used the wrong word. I should have used "too cheap" instead of "too deadly". The effect on enemy is fine but it comes too cheap for the user. I guess this is why many people have the 10% rule. I like arty to be deadly. I like to fear for the arty barrage the enemy has in store for me - IIRC arty is the biggest killer of all. But one should have to PAY for this luxury.

Good thing in this FO rule is that besides making the game more realistic, it also makes the arty de facto more expensive as one must also buy more FO-teams than before. I think this could also be enough to make the 10% rule history and thus open more possibilities for the players. What I've done to finish this rules is I've made a rule that says there can be only one arty unit per one FO-team who can call arty only on one hex. This is - for most parts - to make the 10% rule history.

Cheers,
Jukka

[Vesku]

Tanks that fire off their entire magazine in 2 minutes? Infantry that is shot to ribbons and just gets braver? I hated the Italian tank crews. I stopped killing the M13/40's because the crews were more dangerous after they bailed out. And I won't even start on the 'spidey sense'.

We're already starting MBT battles with Chris where infantry is only 70% effective to get rid of MBT supersoldiers. MBT crews are just as deadly as WaW, hope that the 70% will cure that too. I don't play WaW, I play H2H so no sixth sense. Still WaW beats MBT in realism when you switch CC on.