[Artur]

narwan said:
You make the same mistake in your posts above that I pointed out above. For one, tanks will want to take care of APC's BEFORE they unload their infantry. The statement of 'machine guns will take care of unloading infantry' is gaming the system (or trying to) not to mention the fact that mg's will often fail to do any damage to unloading infantry.

Yes, that is true. You have to try to destroy the infantry while they are in APCs. Now if they get close they are destroyed by the M136s. If they uload the infantry they are pinned by the MGs to an extrent that they will not move.
Setting to fire on a specific unit always depends on the situation. You have to have good recon anyway. If the majority of the force is APCs with infantry then you allow your tanks to fire at everything while you give your ATGMs to fire at the tanks if you have a few. If the big majority is tanks you set them to attack tanks etc.

narwan said:
Secondly your assumption that infantry can't hurt tanks at 2000m range is also 'gaming the system'. In the game you can see the difference between a squad and an atgm team. In real life the tankers would just see soldiers in the woods line. They can't know, or at least can't be sure, that they don't carry atgm's. If they're wrong that could be a very costly mistake. Suppressing them with (gun)fire untill the arty arrives would be the prudent thing, which the game mimics. And there are of course squads who actually do have atgm's with a 2000m range as part of their weapons load.

Well you have a point here, the game works like this you know who is on the other side. Of course the commandes have some effective googles . You have a point here if we stick to realism .

narwan said:
How will you differentiate between those and others (code wise)? Or between a dragon team (range 1000m) and a TOW team (range over 3000m)? Will tanks use OP fire against only the second at 2000m range? Or neither? Or both?
How about a TOW II team in overwatch and a Ferret approaches. Using the TOW will be a huge overkill, but if the Ferret is allowed to close, it could be deadly to the TOW team. How will you deal with that (code wise)?

Very good question.
They can use the unit classes grouped into a few groups like: Heavy/medium armor, Light armor&APCs and armoured cars, infantry like normal infantyr squads + AT squads, light vehicles, guns, air, AND all types is still an option. Maybe AT inf would be a different group.

Regarding the ferret it is advised tio have an inf squad near the ATGM, or an RPG squad. They have some short range AT weapons to deal with the Ferret. And if only the Ferret approaches the ATGM squad will not give away it's position for a cheap armoured car .

narwan said:

You suggest a certain ideal situation in which your suggestions would work and seem like an improvement. But turn it around, make it much less suitable and see if it still works. Delete the mg's or M136's. How will your suggestions effect the outcome then? What additional work would it entail to get an optimal solution then? Now delete both, what would be needed then. Now delete the tanks and replace them with heavy SP-ATGM's. How would it work then, etc, etc.

You get the point here. This improvement will help those who apply combined arms. If one a capability of a force is gone (like you proposed delete the MGs or the M386s ) then of course you have to shoot with the remaining forces at everything. This feature is not to be used in every situation of course. But it really gives an edge to a player who applies combined arms and his force has every different capability needed for the mission. That is what it is all about!!! Of course there are many cases when the current way of operating is the best solution. But IMO there are also a lot of cases where this improvement could help a LOT and could disable a lot of gamey tactics.

narwan said:
So between the assumption of unrealistic knowledge on the part of the units in overwatch and the complications your suggestions bring along (with all the possibilities of players finding ways to exploit those) I don't see them being a significant improvement, at least not yet. And since I don't consider the OP fire draining issue broken I'd prefer it as is.

I accept your opinion, it looks like we can't convince each other. Such is life .

For the rest I suggest to try the scenarios above. I'm just like that .

Artur.