Realistic Artillery Management - FOO Rule

[Cross]

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.

Hi Chris,

I'm a big fan of the KISS approach (Keep It Simple Stupid).
In fact I think the FOO Rule should be simplified even more; but still allow for barrages in a line.

What is the primary purpose of the FOO rule? It sounds like it is to keep players from plotting individual guns all over the map.

Perhaps the most complicated – and superfluous - part of the current FOO rule, is the correction procedure. This addresses a separate issue that I agree may be slightly gamey, but in the grand context of the game it’s not nearly as big a deal as targeting individual guns all over the map.

A simplified FOO rule, that allowed for barrage lines, might look like this:

1. One target ‘sheaf’ per FOO

2. FOO may plot a sheaf by targeting guns within 2 hexes of any other gun.
FOO can cluster his guns, plot them in a line, a circle and even a curve. As long as they are plotted with no space greater than a single hex.

3. Whenever a FOO chooses to correct or adjust fire, he must plot his guns according to rule number 2.

KISS :whis: (where's the big lip-smacking smiley when you want it? Our smilies are just way too war oriented ;) )

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I won't pretend to be an expert on artillery procedure, but I believe FOOs used a ‘pivot gun’ (UK) or ‘Base gun’ (US) which was the point from which other guns ranged their guns.

If a FOO wanted to hit all along a north/south tree line, and his pivot gun hit the southern edge, the rest of the battery (each knowing their relative positions from the base line and each other) would aim accordingly, knowing there first shots are targeted along the tree line.

Here are a couple of quotes I found that give you sense of the level of control observers actually had:

In WW2 a correction to range in yards given to each gun so that its fall of shot would be roughly in a straight line with the pivot gun at right angles to the line of fire, or in a barrage along the barrage line or with concentrations to converge guns onto the pivot gun's aimpoint.

When ranging was complete and Gunfire ordered then the link procedure (using rapporteur or window methods) was carried out between the two TCPs. The controlling CP passed their range and switch to the other troop CP, which adjusted it and ordered it to their guns. This conversion was to the nearest 30 minutes and 50 yards. Both troops used position corrections to ensure that their guns were aimed in a roughly straight line at right angles to the line of fire, the rounding gave the combined fire of the two troops greater spread. There were procedures to reduce or increase the spread of a troop's fire. Normally the observer adjusted the Gunfire to ensure it was covering the target.

For large targets the fire of troops, batteries or regiments could be moved individually so that the full target area was covered, although in multi-battery concentration this was quite large in any case. The alternative was sweep and/or search by which the guns varied their aim-point in line and/or range every round or few rounds. The observer (or fire planner) ordered the size and pattern of these variations.

A troop normally fired with its gun barrels parallel.
Gun lines of fire could be converged or diverged to concentrate or distribute the fire of a troop.

The observer could also order concentrations (which meant the guns did not fire parallel but 'converged' their fire) and distributions (which 'undid' concentrations or increased the troop frontage. Both were usually relative to the pivot gun, and for simplicity in the CP the observer could order the range at which the concentration angle was to apply.

British practice was to fire with each troop aiming its guns roughly in a straight line at right angles to its line of fire. This was achieved by 'position corrections', ordered to the nearest 25 yards in range and added to the ordered range by each gun. If the guns were deployed in a fairly straight line then these corrections would start for the gun furthest from the pivot gun when the switch was about 20° or more from the zero line. The distances were tabulated in Range Tables Part 2. The GPO ordered them "Position corrections No 4 plus 25" - No 4 gun added 25 yards to all subsequent elevations order during the engagement.