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[Brian61]

The German army used recon by fire in some instances. Rommel was a big proponent of it, encouraging it during his command of the 'Ghost' division in France '40. From other accounts though it wasn't a generally encouraged tactic, especially as the war wore on and ammo supply became more of an issue.

German armored recon troops also used a variation of the tactic, approaching a suspect position slowly, then reversing, firing off a few shots and speeding up as if they'd actually spotted something. The idea was to draw enemy fire, thus exposing otherwise hidden enemy presence rather than actually have much real effect.

Machine guns were sometimes used as a substitute for or in support of light artillery in this manner. In the game, a dozen or so well placed MGs using 'Z' fire for a few turns are pretty effective at suppressing isolated enemy positions.

Some steel panthers versions have a bit of a bug in regards to suppression with direct fire vs 'Z' fire. I've never run enough tests with this particular version to determine if it exists in this game or not but the bug was that you could do more suppression with 'Z' fire than you could with direct fire in many cases. Also against a stack of units in the same hex, the targeted unit in direct fire would get less suppression than the other stacked units. But again, I've never done exhaustive enough tests to actually figure out if that bug exists in this game or not.