New Fire Mission

[choppinlt]

Going through this scenario, I have my first real game tweak to propose. With the way TO works, there is a subtle yet significant difference between opportunity fire and defensive fire missions. As it stands now, artillery with Op Fire missions may fire at anything that is spotted moving or attacking. Defensive fire is a type of Op Fire, but it would restrict artillery to only fire in response to an enemy attack. It would NOT attempt to fire on anything that was spotted moving, unless it were attacking your ground troops. This would allow artillery to avoid possible counterbattery fire (preventing its use if/when a ground attack occurred), and/or conserve ammo until a threat to friendly ground troops actually occurred. What are your thoughts?

[Christian Knudsen]

With the caveat that I can't see under the engine, as it were, I like the idea.  Preserves your arty and enemy intel about it, as well as allowing more options to a side that may have to worry about ammunition conservation.  Plus, if the engine can handle it, it would allow for attacking forces to do probing attacks to try and get the defender to commit arty assets in a less important sector, exposing it to counterbattery, etc.

It would have to have a slider of some sort to indicate the level of weapons free that the defender wanted, just to avoid wasting arty on probes that the ground troops could handle fairly easily.

Just my $0.02. 

[choppinlt]

Good, and yes you get it exactly.  I didn't fully realize the subtlety in needing to differentiate between the 2 mission types till now. Hopefully people can see why properly categorizing fire missions is important with the way the TO is designed.

I hadn't specifically thought about the probing aspect of it, but you are exactly correct. Coincidentally, I already have algorithms in place to help prevent the committment of arty fire too quickly. In other words if you are attacked by a vastly inferior force chances are good that you won't receive artillery support, which conserves ammo and makes it available for someone who REALLY needs it.

That is interesting about the slider, and I can give that further consideration later. As it stands now arty priority is determined primarily by the combat power ratio and the persistence level of the requesting unit (Stubborn, Determined, or Cautious). So a unit with Stubborn persistence getting attacked by a unit that is significantly stronger after all modifiers (terrain, etc.) have been applied is likely to receive more arty support than units in lesser situations. Hopefully that explanation make sense... So I am hoping an additional slider (or similar) is not necessary.