direct fire vs area fire

[Narwan]

I don't have hard figures but the actual suppression numbers seem to be higher for z-fire. Whether that off-sets the bigger chance to hit with direct fire I'm not sure.
What I do know is that weapons with no HEP value sometimes do very little or no suppression to armor targets with direct fire (the higher exp the target the less they are bothered by these 'pings' on the armor). They can button them without causing any suppression at all.

Then there's the question of what sort of mg's you're using. If they're mmg's or hmg's with a splash effect what I tend to do is aim at a unit adjacent to the one I want to pin or button. The suppression by the splash effect in adjacent hexes is determined by the same routine that artillery uses. It uses HEK and warhead size for determining suppression numbers. The artillery routine will give slightly higher numbers than the direct fire routine will inflict on the target unit for weapons with low warhead sizes.

You can check it by setting up a cluster of squads and then fire at the center unit with an mmg from very long range (to minimise chances of actually inflicting casualties). As long as the target unit isn't actually taking damage you'll see that the squads around it will usually get pinned before the target unit does.
The difference's aren't that great as it usually takes just a couple more volleys to get the target unit pinned too. It's a minor quirk resulting from using the direct fire routine for one event and the artillery (indirect fire) routine for the splash effect.

If you use Z-fire then all the events are run by the indirect fire routine. So while there's no target unit, units in the target hex will tend to get more suppression from the Z-fire in their hex than they would have from the direct fire had they been the target unit for that.

So when in line of sight and firing from up to medium range Z-fire will tend to land in the target hex and is often preferable if you want to cause max suppression, especially if using weapons that can't damage the enemy units and if there are no adjacent units to aim at.

I use both direct fire and Z-fire for these sort of events but which I use when is very situation specific.

Narwan