Realistic Artillery Management - FOO Rule

[Narwan]

Actually the price is just fine. It makes the FOO a special unit that must be protected, but it also prevents players from migrating from only buying 1 FOO as in games without the rule, to companies of them.

I have found that the average number of FOOs in a medium game is about 3. Smaller games will see 2 and larger 5 or 6. A very nice change from 1 FOO shooting up the map. I have also noticed that when a player under buys FOOs (only buys 1 lets say) that he quickly realizes how restricting this is and does not show up to the fight again without a few more (right Vesku?).

So no changes to value required.

That's just a matter of opinion. Under the FO rule all a FO unit does is allow a single hex to be under fire. And not even one hex per turn as it take several turns for a new mission to be plotted. The units actually firing have their ammo reflected in their costs so theirs no need to have that attributed to the FO. So 70+ is a justified cost for this very limited ability? I think not.
I doubt a player will buy companies of them if the cost will be brought down.

What I've also noticed in the thread is the tendency to come up with examples to justify and not examples to test. Let's test the alleged 'realism' of the FO rule with an example shall we?
It's 1938 in central China. You're the commander of a chinese infantry battallion. Your artillery assets are limited to 6 tubes of light/medium mortars and 4 tubes of light howitzers. What's worse is that you've got only two set's of radio's in your command. One you keep, the other goes to the commander of you (company size) scratch force of tankettes and (armed) trucks. Each of the three infantry companies gets two tubes of mortars attached to them and the light howtzers are under your direct control. FO's? You've never even heard of the term let alone have any.
So now you have three companies of infantry each advancing on their own. If they run into trouble they can use the two mortars to deal with it. If it's big trouble they can send back a runner and request fire from the howitzer battery.
Sounds to me like a pretty 'realistic' picture. But how would it work with the FO rule? For one, the company commanders can't use their attached mortars when they need them as they are not allowed to call missions under the FO rule. The A0 has to do that. That's the guy they have to send a runner to to inform him what's happening. He than has to send back a runner to give the go ahead to fire. But wait, not one runner shows up at HQ but three! Each of the three companies want's permission to fire their mortars! And the A0 is allowed only one mission, which oh which runner to choose to send back?!
At this point it's getting pretty silly, too silly for my taste. Any rule where a formation commander can't call for missions for units under his command is a broken rule in my book. That goes for company commanders with arty assets attached but also for platoon commander if they have a arty unit attached to them (certain german platoons have a mortar attached to the platoon for example).

Let's continue with the example I pictured above; one of the companies runs into serious opposition and needs the howitzers to chase away the enemy from their positions. A runner gets send to HQ, HQ gets in touch with the battery commander (let's say there's a landline between HQ and battery), they discuss the fire mission, the mission gets plotted, a runner send back to the company commander to tell him what to expect, now the cie commander wants to coordinate with the battary so he can attack as soon as they end their fire, the runner goes back, HQ decides a green flare will go up when the last volley is about to be fired, the cie commander is happy with that (it's a clear day) and off they go.
Now how much time would that take to arrange? Let's say the runner has to go 2 km each trip. Ten turns? twenty turns? thirty turns? What player would want to wait for that? What the game does is condense the realworld coordination into a reasonable time for the game to keep it playable. And not just for artillery. Limit artillery effectiveness and the other elements get relatively more powerful. Artillery is already more limited and this would unbalance it further. I think Seabolt made the remark that it becomes a real effort to plot a barrage but it is real easy for the receiver to get his units out from under it (much easier than in reality). It don't think that's a way we should want to go.

Narwan