Why alternative fire/art/assault rules in Normandy'44

[Bushido]

Gents,

anybody who know why one use the alternative fire/art./air and assault rules in the Normandy'44 title. And are they a must for playing this title?

Thanks for Your help guys!

[Ricky B]

Glenn knows the answer to your specific question the best I am sure. But as a general thing, the alt fire/assault rules are used, and created specifically for Normandy IIRC, when the sides might have significantly different sizes and there are numerous small units in play, as the rules' impact are on high strength stacks and small units rather than the in between sizes. It really comes down to design and making things work with history.

As to if the rules are a must, if you play with the normal rather than alt fire rules, you will get different results, as Glenn has said numerous times. If a scenario/oob are tweaked to work with the selected rules rather than the default for the game, then the choice will work, but to take a scenario designed for one set and play with the other, you will get completely different losses. For example, I played a Kharkov campaign where the Soviet player chose the alt rules. We quit within 15-20 turns because the Soviets were destroyed by German artillery pounding their big stacks of infantry, and weren't able to push the Germans back as a result.

Rick

[Bushido]

Rick,

thanks for the fast and excellent answer.

Regards Ola

[Glenn Saunders]

thanks for the fast and excellent answer.

Here is an Example which frames this answer nicely.
Without ALT fire, allied units would be able to fire at stacks of German Units and pick or "cherry pick" the AT guns if they wanted to because with No ALt Fire you pick the specific target unit.

But with the closed terrain in the Bocage of Normandy it was impossible to fire at specific units - rather you fired at where you thought the enemy was and you took whatver hits you could get.

Wheres in Smolensk, which was the only other game when the series started out, the terrain is much more opened and the default non ALT fire best represents the way the fighting took place.

....and yes, we strong recommend you play Normandy with the ALT FIRE ON.

Glenn

[Ricky B]

Excellent point Glenn, I always forget the impact on picking specific units out for pounding unto death.

Rick

[Bushido]

Glenn and Rick,

thanks for Your help!

[Liebchen]

So how does this play out with the Alt scenarios? VM's list of optional rules does not include alt fire or alt arty fire. Should it be used when playing an Alt scenario in Normandy or not?

[Glenn Saunders]

I'd have to leave this for Volcano to comment on this. But ALT fire was added to the Series specifically for Normandy because the orginal fire rules were created with Smolensk in mind. True - the first game came out with both sets of rules but that was because Normandy was well underway and in development before Smolensk mastered.

It really wasn't until Kharkov '42 - the third game of the Series that we began to understand the impact of the different fire rules on the results. I wasn't involved with the Smolensk development but Normandy was tested virtually exclusively with Normandy. We simply never considered NON ALT fre for Normandy.

Glenn

[Volcano Man]

So how does this play out with the Alt scenarios? VM's list of optional rules does not include alt fire or alt arty fire. Should it be used when playing an Alt scenario in Normandy or not?

The Alt Assault Resolution rule is required by N44 stock because the OOB was designed with range 0 hard attack values in mind. As for the other ALT resoultion rules, it was simply that Normandy '44's designer (Wig Graves) felt that they are preferable given the nature of the campaign and the values set in the PDT and OOB files.

As stated in the N44_Alt notes document, many changed have been made to the scenarios, with the primary purpose being to no longer require all the other ALT resolution rules except for the ALT Assault Resolution rule. Changes made here are too numerous to mention, but it just a matter of what you are tailoring the game into. Normandy '44 stock PDT and OOB values were tailored to use those rules, whereas N44_Alt was tailored to not use them. So, if you are playing the stock scenarios then it better to play it with all of the ALT resolution rules on (as per default) so that you get the results that the designer intended.

[Liebchen]

So, VM, are there any other titles where you'd recommend alt-assault for your Alt scenarios?

We're about to start a new round in the Death from Above tourney, an Alt scenario of Market Garden. Should we be using the alt assault rule?