shooting across rivers

[raizer]

Noticed that shooting across river hexes involves no modification. Should there be something-I mean the Meuse's width is well over the range of effective small arms fire, yet an infantry unit can park on the other side of it and fire for full effect. I noticed the same in other pdt files. Wondering if there should be a negative effect for this

[Philippe]

This is an interesting point. There are rivers in the two and a half (?) series besides the Meuse, some of them very small. But small arms fire, light mortars, and grenade tossing isn't as effective beyond two hundred yards, and not being able to cross keeps you from closing to that range.

Could some of the designers comment on this?

[Mr Grumpy]

Well of course we have two types of rivers "full hex" and "hex side", you can only fire across a "full hex" with a weapon with a two hex or more range, but any weapon can fire across a "hex side" river.

So this all depends on who creates the map and the choice of river hex they use, how that decision is reached i am not sure, in some titles there are both types of river hex's and so a decision of which type of river to use must have been based on some criteria?

[Philippe]

And I suppose one could always wonder how wide the Meuse actually is and what game raizer was talking about.

Given that the river hexside covers a multitude of sins (and widths), the penalty, if there were one, probably shouldn't be too extreme, and not a lot (if any) more than what happens from firing across a stream hexside.

The assumption that seems to be going on here is that the actual position of a unit in a hex is fluid, sometimes at the middle, sometimes at the edges. I guess I was brought up with the concept that a unit occupties the exact dead center of a hex. Makes it easier for laying down a piece of string to figure out what blocks the line of sight, but both approaches are conventions.

And I can also see the argument for not having any change at all (small arms fire only really occurs in an assault, and you don't assault across an unbridged river -- the one hex fire range represents the damage done by machine guns and small mortars rather than rifles and side arms, so it's already factored in).

Whenever something like this comes up I mentally translate what's being discussed in terms of what happens in Combat Mission. An assault in Panzer Campaigns is essentially a battle scenario in Combat Mission where the opposing forces get within a couple of hundred yards at each other. When I play Combat Mission I usually restrict my fields of fire to about a hundred yards on most of my squads because ammo is limited and fire doesn't do a lot of damage at two hundred yards. If I have plenty of ammunition I'll sometimes let my medium and heavy machine guns (but not my 50 calibers) fire out to two hundred and fifty. So the long range plunking if there happens to be a river in the way will be about the same, the difference being that without a river I can stage what Panzer Campaigns would consider an assault, whereas with a river I cannot.

But either way there won't be much small arms fire to worry about.

[Liebchen]

small arms fire only really occurs in an assault, and you don't assault across an unbridged river -- the one hex fire range represents the damage done by machine guns and small mortars rather than rifles and side arms, so it's already factored in.

I think that this is the answer.