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

[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