Realistic Artillery Management - FOO Rule

[Weasel]

The current FOO rule forces you to have about four FOOs if you want to pound a front of 500m, say a tree line. Which is just too far from realistic.

You are mistaken here. A FOO targets a hex, which is indeed realistic. He would pick an 8 figure grid (1234 5678 which should put him within 10 meters of the target) and calls arty onto those cooridinates and then adjusts from there. Now yes there are box barrages etc in real life, but SP can no more model that then they can Over Watch.

So to get back to your point: Once the rounds land the FOO has two options:

1. adjust the fire - if he does this he must adjust ALL targeted guns into the new hex.

No FOO in any army can determine from a shoot which individual gun is firing errant. Indeed in real life if a gun is way off target like what happens in SP (I just had two 3" mortars firing at the same hex land about 500 yards apart, shoot the mortar commander on that one) the entire battery is taken off line until they can work out which gun is errant and correct it. They do this by having each individual gun fire onto the target one at a time, observing fall of shot. It is too dangerous for the grunts on the ground to have a gun firing short or wide

2. leave the rounds land as they are and continue with FIRE FOR EFFECT. This would simulate your 500 yard barrage. However, if an adjustment is later made, then #1 comes into effect.

The key is to KEEP IT SIMPLE. The FOO RULE as it stands is a very dumbed down version from when it started, yet players still get confused. If you add in fire patterns and multiple targets per FOO then it becomes a monster again.

But thanks for bringing this up, it at least gets more players interested in it.