Artillery plotting.

[chuckfourth]

Hi All
There is the artillery "cheat" in the game which is;
For an unseen target hex get the FO to plot the artillery to land in 0.5 turns (the 0 can be any number). This means that in the turn following the landing of you first shells (which will in all likelyhood have landed a hex or two away from the plotted target hex) you can now adjust 'back' onto your original target hex. Because of using a .5 rather than a .0 in the bombardment screen the remaining shells will now fall directly onto the target in the next move.

Now the problem with this is that if the target in unseen, behind a hill, deep in a forest, etc there is really no real life mechanism by which you can adjust your fall of shot in this way. ie unrealistic Dont forget that in game you have a map view in reality you see from ground level and as well is not being able to see the fall of shot you also cant see the 'hex' you want to hit.

I realise that the artillery has listening devices to give some idea of the direction of other batteries, but I doubt these can give you a 50m hex. And these are used for I believe counter battery. The "cheat" of course operates for every indirect fire weapon in the game from knee mortars up and against any type of target. Also though you may see some smoke under some circumstances this will only tell you direction not distance and so isnt very helpful.

The solution as I see it would be to only allow the shift fire mission button in the bombardmant screen to be active if the weapons particular allocation of shells for that turn have been fired ie you can no longer keep shells 'hanging' in the air for a later turn by incrementing the shift fire mission button. Thus to hit the unseen hex you would have to keep replotting onto the unseen target hex until by 'chance' the shells land on the targeted hex. You still wouldnt really know that they had landed where you wanted them too but you cant have everything. This change I think would allow for genuine (in field of view) bombardments to be adjusted as required but reduce the ability of the artillery to hit targets that are in fact unseen.

Also relevant the enemies unseen artillery pieces often appear to you for some reason, this seems to be a bit of unneccessary free information. And smoke signatures that appear in unseen hexes could I think safely be removed. On a big map, most of them appear behind a hill, a long way away etc where in fact you wouldnt he able to see them. A lot of the smaller guns/mortars have such a tiny smoke signature anyway putting it on the screen is I think a bit generous.
Best Regards Chuck.