z fire

[Narwan]

Z-fire is extremely realistic. I'll contend that the vast majority of fire by direct fire weapons in ww2 was what in game terms is z-fire and not aimed at a specific unit. It's my opinion that there is far too little use of area fire in most games (compared to 'in reality').

And you can indeed aim through a single building hex. But you've got to remember that this is 50m wide and NOT packed full with buildings, there's streets, alleyways, gardens, yard, wooden fences, sheds and off courses windows to fire through with z-fire. Not being able to z-fire through a building hex would be more unrealistic imo.

The basic US tactic of dealing with enemy positions, either actual or suspected, was by pouring in vast amounts of area fire. I've read a quote recently (not sure where it was though) about a US sergeant during the Normandy campaign who commented on received replacements; his words were to the effect that before they could be send into action they had to be retrained in particular with regard to their tendency to fire only at sighted enemies and taking careful aim (as learned in boot camp). They weren't much use that way as they weren't likely to hit anything anyway and their volume of fire was so low that it's suppressing effect was minimal.

There's also an anecdote from ww1 that stuck to my mind with regards to area fire; a british unit was marching towards the trenches in an area behind the front that was considere clear and not in view of the enemy when suddenly men started dropping in rows. Turned out to be machinegun fire aimed up as if it was artillery; gravity brought the rounds back down and as (bad) luck would have it many landed on the road where the brits were marching. The spot was out of 'normal' aimed mg fire but the high angle and freak conditions (wind perhaps) brought the rounds much further than usual.

Personally I think z-fire is one of the best features of the whole game.