Cheating

[low_bidder]

Cross, I consider a tank an AT gun on tracks. In part. A tank is more then that of course. However, the biggest part of an MBT's job is anti-tank work. Another difference between WW2 and MBT.
Or so it seems to me. In WW2 tanks were used a lot for direct fire support. A lot of modern MBT's don't even carry HE. In part because it was claimed that the HEAT round could do the job. Combat in the ME proved those claims to be spurious.
AFAIK, the current trend is to load a few HE rounds in the mix, but it is seldom more then 10%, which means 90% of the targets envisioned for the main gun will not be soft.
WW2 tanks had about a 50/50 mix, except for the dedicated Tank Destroyers or the dedicated infantry support tanks.
That might be why I'm having problems thinking in WW2 terms.

Back in the day, the chance to get an Op fire shot was pretty good. more then 90% as a guess. Now days it is about 40%, once more as a guess. That is from stationary shooters, in cover with good suppression and morale. My issue with that is ambush is an essential part of modern combat. While armored phalanxes did happen, they were the exception, not the rule. Most tank charges were in the desert. Some across the Steppes. You need open terrain to do a tank charge. As weapons improved in range and lethality, tank charges became suicide. A waste of valuable tanks and even more valuable crewmen.
So overwatch, combined arms and hunter killer tactics became the way to get the job done while preserving assets.
SP did an excellent job or modeling that aspect of mechanized warfare.
That is a major reason why a hex based IGO-UGO game is still hanging in there after 15 years.
So I was wondering if Cammo had decided to make a change to the formula used to calculate OP fire chances, or if somebody had found a way to control it outside the system ( AKA Cheating).
Or it is a ......bug (gasp).
I noticed that the OP fire 'problems' started at about the same time as the Op fire filter was added to the game. I love the Op fire filter and used it when my opponent has access to it also. I just wonder if the overwatch range is global and affecting the range gates throughout the program? I set my over watch range from 1 to 20 and now I seem to not have any problems with Op fir. I have only played a few turns with the new overwatch range, so I don't really have enough cycles to think about building an experiment. But I'm pretty sure the reason why a dozen tanks did not take an op fire shot was the overwatch range was set to 1 and the program saw that RRJeep as being beyond 1 hex away.
I had the tanks set to max range, no filter. so IF I'm correct about what happened, there is a bug.