New opportunity rules

[chris h]

First, what is overwatch or more precisely, why?

How many people actually set the various ranges?

[scorpio_rocks]

Overwatch / Opportunity fire is a comon abstract used in most IGOUGO style games.

It allows you to control how (against what targets and at what ranges) your units will engage the enemy during your opponent's turn.

I believe most people will set some kind of Op Fire restrictions on at least some units in almost every game. Examples include: when not wanting to "spring" a trap / ambush early, to avoid troops giving away their position (esp scouts, FO, HQ, etc), To avoid units firing ineffectivley and wasting ammo (an AAA asset, for instance, armed only with HE will be wasting its time shooting at tanks) or to ensure a kill shot.

There are many uses for the system, and it is considered "essential" by the PBEM community (some of whom said the game was almost "unplayable" without it, when it was bugged).

I usually have it set for at least my "speciallist" troops - scouts, FO, ATGM(in MBT), Flak, etc. in almost every game.

[chris h]

Originally Posted by scorpio_rocks

Overwatch / Opportunity fire is a comon abstract used in most IGOUGO style games.

It allows you to control how (against what targets and at what ranges) your units will engage the enemy during your opponent's turn.

I believe most people will set some kind of Op Fire restrictions on at least some units in almost every game. Examples include: when not wanting to "spring" a trap / ambush early, to avoid troops giving away their position (esp scouts, FO, HQ, etc), To avoid units firing ineffectivley and wasting ammo (an AAA asset, for instance, armed only with HE will be wasting its time shooting at tanks) or to ensure a kill shot.

There are many uses for the system, and it is considered "essential" by the PBEM community (some of whom said the game was almost "unplayable" without it, when it was bugged).

I usually have it set for at least my "speciallist" troops - scouts, FO, ATGM(in MBT), Flak, etc. in almost every game.

I understand opportunity fire range I use it all the time.

If I'm interpreting what you said here correctly you can set overwatch to a specific area, say a pass or open ground, then if a unit enters this area it will fire. The unit will not fire elsewhere unless an enemy unit enters within its opportunity range.

Also when you go into the Op fire filter 'ranges from current unit are all set to 000 but the units fire? I'm obviously missing something important here but I've no idea what.

[scorpio_rocks]

(Darn edit button!)

The "Overwatch" button allows you to control where the point at which all Op. fire is calculated from for each unit - allowing units to "watch" a particular point (a gap in hills, crossroad, etc)

[Wiking]

I find that things are a lot better than they used to be. If my memory is not entirely faulty, or if I'm not confusing the game with SP:WAW, for a long time infantry would pop off reaction shots to tanks even if they had nothing that could hurt them. This considerably slowed action down to the point that I always hated advancing.

The op-fire filter is not essential against the A.I. but it does make things quite a bit easier. Against a thinking human player you will absolutely want to make use of it to prevent giving away a unit's presence until you are prepared to spring the trap!

[scorpio_rocks]

Just for clarity - full functionality of overwatch / filtered Op. fire is limited to the CD version.

Yes the overwatch facility allows you to set the unit to only op fire at units within a radius you set of the overwatch hex. (The unit has 2 sets of radii one from it's self and one from the overwatch hex).

The default set up is filtering off (all set to 0) - ie unit fires at everything in range.

[Mobhack]

And my standard opfire filter is to set all ATGM to a number that's above the APCS and light tanks, so only MBT trip opfires. That is for MBT - where missiles are rather limited ammo items.

In WW2, I may do the same with heavy ATG or big gun tanks if I see a swarm of light tin cans coming my way, with big tanks lumbering along in the background. Let the 37mms (towed or on lesser tanks) deal with the tin-plated stuff.

In PBEM, you may find that a human opponent likes to recce with tin cans to draw fires. So perhaps, set a filter for your decent stuff to ignore them, maybe with one or 2 little 45mm guns set to close range fires in case an armoured car gets a wee bit closer than you would like. If he likes "recce with jeeps" - that is what your MMG sections are for..

The "interest circle" is rather good for focussing fires on things you may know are coming - say at a gap in the trees on your flank, or on the exit from a village. In this case your recce troops have seen suspicious activity, or you just have a hunch that a bunch of juicy targets will be appearing there!.

Of course - if the opfire does not trip, and he leaves a vast herd of tin can armoured cars or (especially) loaded APC out in full view in "shooting-range" conditions, by all means, blaze away when it is your turn!