Alternate Artillery Rule

[Volcano Man]

One of the things about why Alt Arty is and is not preferred is the whole two 1/2 power shots on a specific target vs. one 1/1 shot on a hex. Some seem to feel that the former is a better way to disrupt targets in PzC since you can choose specific targets to concentrate on and, essentially, those that you want to fire on multiple time. The latter (1/1 single shot on hex) approach can however provide more disruptions if it means firing on a densely packed hex.

At TC3, Rick and I were discussing Normandy and how I have apparently (in the _Alt notes?) said that Alt Arty Resolution rule should NOT be used. He is right, I said this on page 16 of those Alt notes. What comes to mind here is that people were demanding that those rules no longer be required because although it was helping the Germans in regards to the invasion hexes, it actually turned out to hurt them following the post invasion when the allies get their heaps of artillery units ashore as they move inland. The Alt Arty Resolution rule therefore turned out to hurt the Germans more at this stage because they could not band together units in stacks to hold off the allied horde since the allies would keep pounding them with tons of artillery (the British and US artillery units are quite large at this stage), constantly fatiguing EVERY unit in a stack. So there is your answer Rick as to why it was changed. ;)

The other thing I can say in regards to the German's artillery in N44_Alt is that Stockpiled was placed into effect there to help them be a little more effective (maybe the Germans need a higher stockpile probability there though -- I am open to suggestions!) and the beaches place the allies in greater vulnerability so that the Germans should be singling out their engineers to keep them there as long as possible (on the beach). However, alternate artillery resolution does make sense on the East Front, however having played the Russians in Kursk I can say that this is something you probably don't want there because it ends up hurting the Russian's ability to solidify and hold ground.

So, in the end (IMO) now that all of this is coming back, I think the Alt Arty Resolution rules are not a bad thing, but I think they tend to hurt the defender more in the cases where the defender is hanging on by their toe nails and having to form stacks to keep from being overrun. I think that the whole mass fatigue accumulation for the stack is another thing that can hurt the defender's ability to hold ground in a series where we have to give more breaks to the defender as it is. That is just my opinion though.