Do we have too much control over fire in PzC, what’s your opinion?

[Mr Grumpy]

In PzC we have two different sets of rules covering the fire of direct weapons, indirect artillery and air strikes, for the purposes of this post I am referring to the titles that don’t use the alternate fire rules as default (so all the titles apart from F40, T41 & N44), I have long wondered if the rules covering direct fire, arty & airstrikes give us to much control over which unit can be targeted in a stack of multiple units and if the alternate fire rules actually represent a more realistic representation of WW2 combat?

So what is the issue with the default rules?
Well in most cases you have to disrupt all your opponents units before launching an assault and to achieve this we all use direct fire, arty fire & air strikes, the issue I have is that when a 1km hex contains multiple units we have the “god like” ability to seek out the undisrupted units and concentrate all our direct/arty/airstrike fire on just those units until we achieve the perfect situation, does this represent the abilities of troops in WW2 with the weapon technology available or do the Alternate Fire rules represent a more accurate depiction where the fire effects is spread amongst a random number of the units in the hex and in the case of the Alternate arty/airstrike rule you cannot target a particular unit and the proportional size of the units in the target hex is also taken into account when allocating losses?
Of course this can work the other way round and a defender cannot direct all his arty/airstrike fire against undisrupted attacking units also.

There is another case for using the alternate fire rules, it is accepted by most players that the defender is at a disadvantage in PzC, one of the reasons for this is that an attacker can stack a huge amount of units in an adjacent hex providing additional direct fire and assault troops without any penalty for the stacking density, when using the Alternate arty & airstrike rule the more troops/vehicles/guns stacked in a hex the greater the losses to arty & airstrikes which also seems to me to be logical.

So what do we think, do we need to lose some control or do the default fire rules work OK for you?

Having got used to total control of our fire can we now do without it and not get frustrated with the random nature of the results?

And of course would the use of these different rules unbalance scenarios designed with the default fire rules (check this recent thread by Strela Alt arty thread )

As an aside I would like to say that I think the Alternate direct fire rule (that still allows you to target a particular unit and does not take the proportional size of units into account when allocating losses) would work better if its effects were the same as the Alternate arty/airstrike rule, however in its present form it still may represent more accurately the effects of WW2 weapon systems.

Any views out there…………..:chin: