Air and Artillery by the Map Optional Rule for D85

[Ricky B]

For what it is worth, here is how it used to be, say more than a year ago - it has changed in the past and could be different now, you could set up a fairly simple test to find out if you wish.

When using the optional rule for air and artillery by the map, ALL fire at hexes with no valid spotter for a specific artillery unit, with or without spotted enemy units in them, will occur at 1/4 strength. However, there is one exception. If the dust spotting value is more than 0, thus implementing the use of ? units that are not "spotted", ALL fire occured at full strength, even though by definition there could not be a spotter for this hex. In addition, for a spotted enemy unit, but one that your artillery unit did not have a spotter for, this specific enemy unit could be spotted by the artillery unit formation as a ? unit separately from the actual spotted unit, and thus fired at at full strength using this optional rule.

I do believe this changed so that fire at ? units now always happens at 1/4 strength, but for a long time it was full strength. I am not positive though, but you could test this out by laying out a scenario unit the rule and dialog box results to see what the fire strength is under the different conditions, including dust - it does require moving units to get the dust spotting too.

Rick