A new way to set arty limits

[Narwan]

As I consider the FO unit to represent a small detachment of arty specialists added to the HQ I would indeed consider it an unnecessary rule. Especially as they'll have no eyes on the target themselves and suffer all the consequences which are considerable, particularly in v3.5. Many units represent more than just the number of men they have in the game so why not FO's?
Would help explain the cost too. As I stated previously, artillery already gives you the lowest value for points in the game (IMO at least). Forcing players to buy an FO for every battery (or whatever the ratio would be) would greatly add to the cost and reduce the value for points ratio even more. Some of you may scoff at the cost perspective but my prediction is that both this rule and the earlier FO rule will lead not to significantly more FO's but to far less artillery being bougth. It's an assumption that these arty rules would lead to more FO's; the opposite could just as easily happen.

There's another very simple rule one could consider to regulate arty use and that is to make off-board arty mandatory for certain types of arty. Think along the lines that anything with a range of 200 or more needs to be off-board (which would be a lot more realistic anyway). If you'd really want to you could allow an X number of on-board (light) arty batteries.
Advantage of off-board is that all the tubes fire at the same target and while abstracted counterbattery fire is actually much more realistic.

Narwan