DougPhresh

The module comes with far more content then that campaign and many of the already released and upcomming comunity made scenarios and campaigns will most liekly need the module to be able to play....
If the basic subject intrest you...It's a no brainer to buy this module imo 😊

I am still gnawing on this years bone, CMCW!
But any news about the engine 5 upgrade and the CMCW module are welcome

I just wanted to say that this thread is the gold standard of what I am looking for in future scenario and QB maps. The latest batch of large maps for RTV were good, and I think a step in the right direction. I want "huge" maps, sure, but I want them to have what you would reasonably expect to find in an area of 4000m x 4000m.
Black Sea really suffers for this where on one map of a few thousand square meters there is a dam, several large bridges, a prison, an airport, and a "town".
Realistic terrain plays so much better than the Disneyland Main Street USA. I think someone here made the comparison to mini putt courses and they are exactly right.

I exactly why I included the word “theoreticallly” 😂

This takes me back to being the Safety Officer’s assistant and realizing the mortar course we were supervising had one tube on a reverse bearing as was about to drop rounds on Ontario Highway 7, which runs between the training areas. 
 
I was a 22 year old Bombardier and turning “oh **** oh **** oh ****” into “in theory could do the job almost as well” was probably the first time I earned those chevrons. Even then, I was glad Range Control was able to ask me the right questions so I could calm down and do my drills.
 
Just funny to think about when you see your little CM team and think “well, the Corporal should just take over from the FOO in the middle of this situation”. 

Ditto. Surveillance and Target Acquisition and FOOs, plus time instructing. No jump wings, but nobody’s perfect. 
 
I’m by no means a Master Gunner, but I started by linking the relevant doctrine and manuals as well as a well-written website that translated the Commonwealth (and other nations’!) artillery procedure into gameplay!  
 
The Artillery Net is not just something you can hop on. There are callsigns and authorization, and as @Ultradave said, even if we teach other arms the basics, we still have to allow them on the net to process their requests. 
 
Particularly with cancelling a mission, you would need to authenticate yourself and then read back the mission to the CP. If it wasn’t your callsign that issued it, presumably because you weren’t on the artillery net, this is not going to be a quick process. 
 
Remember, our Command Post is connected to all of our assets - Recce and FOOs - as well as the Brigade net, Artillery Regiment net , who knows who else. I understand Americans don’t maintain Artillery staffs as large as ours so they may not also have such an intricate planning staff, but the gist of it is - artillery fire is not spontaneous but part of a larger plan. Yes, we’ll approve calls for fire - if we want to, if we’re able to, if we have time to.
 
That means you can’t call down fires that are busy or under someone else’s control - but you also cant just break into net and cancel someone else’s mission!   
 
Like I said, this may be a Commonwealth thing, because we’re in the business of planning and artillery, and there are of course exceptions to all this (which the CP, Bty Staff, Regt Staff and Artillery Staff attached to Bde will evaluate depending on what’s being asked), but “messing” with someone else’s mission and/or the existing plan is not something someone will let an Infantry Lt do without a second glance.
 

I came here to post this. I was Arty Signals both in FOO and STA. There would be absolutely no way to know if anything had happened to the FOO as Artillery Communications (Fire Discipline) follows a procedure, a script. The procedure is designed, as @Ultradave said, so that data is fed to the CP, developed into firing data and given to the guns. Without "Check Fire", that procedure is not getting interrupted. 
Add to that that in WW2, and often times even today, other arms aren't on the Artillery net. There's no link between say an infantry company and the firing battery, and you're looking at no way to Check fire without the information getting passed up, over and then back down. When we're talking about a time when radios could be few and far between, and relying on telephone links, there's no way to quickly change missions like that.
This, of course, is why pre-planned fires were (and are) central to the Commonwealth way of war. The infantry is briefed on the fireplan, and guns assigned to it have a card that tells the 1IC (gun commander) the data for every single round his gun will fire - sometimes for the next few hours. This means that whatever happens on the sharp end, rounds still fall where they are supposed to reliably. It's not as fluid or dynamic as on-call fires, but it works. There's a nifty explanation putting it into gameplay terms Here. A Fantastic Website Here, and the two books we use to teach at CTC Artillery School Here and Here if you want to go deep. 
 
I'm not saying all fire planning all the time, but for players commanding Commonwealth troops in BN and FI, and Brits and Canadians in SF2, this is the real solution to delivering reliable fires regardless of contact with the observer. As a rule: Medium guns fire pre-planned, some Field guns do, but some are kept available on-call, and mortars of course, are the Infantry's Artillery, are are most flexible to employ. 
 
I hope I didn't get too bogged down with detail there, but I really enjoy discussing the tools of the trade. 

A call for fire is a request unless it's pre-planned.  The CP won't fire until the FOO completes the warning order. The warning order is the type of mission, size of firing element (troop, battery, X guns), method of target location. If that's not done, there's no mission to process, and no fires.
Remember this data has to be processed at the CP and applied at the guns. If someone drops off the net while adjusting, there's no way to know what adjustments to make, so the mission can't proceed, certainly not to FFE. A "Repeat" call would be the exception, but that just means to repeat the last order, in this case the last adjusting round.
(This is why we tell infantry and cavalry not to say "could you repeat yourself?" or even say the word "Repeat" on our net. It's why Fire D has that formal script.)
If the CP can't raise the FOO, they'd try again before ending the mission. 
The American Pam is here, I can't post the Canadian ones, but if you find one that's publicly available, most NATO stuff is nearly identical. Main difference is terminology ie CP vs FDE. 
tl;dr - If you half-ordered a meal, the kitchen wouldn't send it out, would they? 

Briefly: 
Is answered by:
and
as well as 
 
I cannot stress that enough. In any situation where a FOO might be killed (ie contact with the enemy) obviously a main consideration would be that same radio falling into the enemy's hands! You can't just break into the Artillery Net and say "Uh this is Lt. Bob, the FOO's been killed, please cancel all artillery fire on our the enemy position. Danke, Spasibo, Thank you!"
There is a process for authenticating, but there is absolutely no, none, could never be "emergency calls". Why? Because some people (like say the Russian Federation) are very, very good at Electronic Warfare and could likely break into a NATO Artillery Net, even without capturing the physical radio. There's the callsign, authentication, and more complex steps than that I won't go into under some conditions, but the short hand is - Artillery Communication is it's own system. There are rules and procedures and a script.  There are some emergency procedures - Final Protective Fire etc - but there's no way to skip the steps that authenticate that the call is a legitimate one. 
 
The lesson is "Keep your FOOs alive!" 
and I don't only say that out of self-preservation 😉

Thanks for the replies @DougPhresh, @Ultradave and others. Often amazed by the knowledge in these forums - this time as well. 
The scenario Im playing is in CMCW as the Americans and I have several FO that are able to use the artillery asset in question but with the FO calling the current mission KO the others are no able to call for these guns - and its much easier to understand that to be a plausible outcome now. Would the situation be any different If there was a team with an FO and a radio operator with only the former being out of action? As it stands now I believe the situation would be the same and the mission could not be interrupted.
If Im not mistaken in earlier builds missions could get stuck in the spotting phase forever if the FO was KO. Now I see that after a few - several minutes the mission would end. Which I think is nice at least from a game play perspective.       

From what I gather about the EWar capabilities of both sides, we'll be back to bugles, drums, whistles, pipes and signal flags and flares for battlefield comms if the "balloon goes up" between major combatants. That fire mission request won't even have got through the jamming in the first place to need to be stopped, and the "biomonitor" signals would have fritzed out even sooner, so it probably shouldn't be included in the authentication process, even if voice comms gear has enough oomph to remain heard where PAN tech doesn't.

@Ultradave, I really appreciate your posts. Thanks for the insight. My Old Man and mentors were Cold Warriors, but I joined up after Bosnia and my only NATO time in Europe was in Norway. It’s great hearing from someone who was around for those days.
 
When I got out, we were just starting to practice firing by Regiment again, as opposed to trying to teach the ANA how to … well do much of anything really. Besides OP Medusa, and before my time Anaconda, there was not much need for that skillset, and now in the Baltic everybody is trying to re-learn it. 
 
If you have as much time to read in your retirement I do, and you’re curious about how and why the Commonwealth developed our approach, you might like reading
On Commonwealth Military Culture:
Military Identities: The Regimental System
Monty’s Men: The British Army and the Liberation of Europe,
Monty and the Canadian Army,
Crerar’s Lietenants: Inventing the Canadian Junior Officer,
The Madman and the Butcher: Sam Hughes and Arthur Currie,
Politics of Command: McNaughton and the Canadian Army,

On Commonwealth Artillery:
British Artillery on the Western Front: The infantry cannot do with a gun less,  
Gunfire: British Artillery in WW2,
Battle Tactics on the Western Front: British Army Art of Attack, 
British Artillery Between World Wars,
Field Artillery and Firepower

The Best Overall Book, Which Puts It All Together:
Fire-Power: The British Army Weapons and Theories of War
If I could summarize what sets us apart, and I’m curious about your input, it's this:  

Commonwealth soldiers serve in (traditionally locally recruited) Regiments for life. This is an incredibly close bond. It’s also an elite and prestigious social club for officers, who are expected to have a paternalistic attitude towards their men due to how rigid class was in English-Speaking countries besides America until very, very recently. Networks of officers from the same Regiment have an informal “Regimental Mafia”, identical with the “Old Boys Network” of elite British schools c. 1900 (down to being identified by striped ties). They are expected to advance the interests of their Regiment, and the careers of their chums, even when they are senior policy makers.
 
When there was still a British Empire, over half of the Army, in fact one battalion of every Regiment would be serving overseas at any given time (mostly in India). This meant that the field army available for continental war was small, much smaller than other major nations. Canada, Australia and New Zealand had (and have) small armies by virtue of small populations. South Africa had a small Army because it excluded black people, and Boers did not want to join after being enemies in the Boer War. Similarly, in Canada French Canadians were discriminated against, the Army was entirely English, the Militia (much more  posh culture than National Guard, hard to explain) even in Quebec was English, and the French were not eager to serve the British Empire either.
 
Right so, in the Great War, I can’t really explain to Americans how deeply it shaped all of our countries. Much more than yours. These small armies went through the grinder at the Somme and Gallipoli, I don’t think Americans have had anything like it in their history. Almost the entire peacetime establishment of professional soldiers who started the war in August 1914 was killed or wounded by the following summer - and the war went on for 3 more years!
 
In 1916-17, a Way of War was developed that traded time (planning), firepower (sheer size of the artillery arm) and logistics (shells) for lives. This was required because when those locally recruited regiments went into action on the Western Front, whole communities lost their military age men in an afternoon. There were Pals Battalions, where people would be encouraged to enlist together, so you can imagine how devastating this was.  In Britain imposing Conscription caused a crisis, but in Canada it almost caused civil war. French Canada saw themselves getting sent to their doom for a cause and country that didn’t care about them. 
 
Using Firepower to preserve Manpower, using staffwork and cautious planning to reduce casualties, you can see how important this became. These societies, and of course armies, could not endure a war of attrition. Morale was shot, civil society was splintering. The closest I can think is maybe what I’ve heard the US Army was like in the 1970’s, and how it also had to change the way it did things and service culture.
 
After the war, all of those conditions remained true: Britain still had to maintain a global empire, Canada, AUS, NZ, ZA, still had tiny recruiting pools, only on top of that there were fewer men to recruit after those devastating losses, and  civil society was not going to support anything like it again. Again, it’s hard to explain how much the Great War shaped our culture and politics.
 
When the Second World War started not only was the public memory dead set against heavy losses, the institutional memory remembered them and the Firepower and Planning focus, but also the personal memory of every notable senior officer in the Commonwealth. They had all seen their companies wiped out in an afternoon as subalterns. Monty in particular was, what we would say today, deeply traumatized by this experience. 
 
So - all effort went into keeping losses low. Even then, in late 44-45 manpower ran low again, there was another Conscription Crisis in Canada. Monty kept 21st Army Group in the war by all of the things Americans criticize him for: being cautious, premeditated, waiting for support and logistics to build up, executing a detailed plan. We could not have stomached the Hurtgen Forest. 
 
I hope this wasn’t too digressive, only Americans sometimes wonder why our militaries are so different. The short version is because of The Somme.

I’m on my phone right now so I’ll respond with a bit more detail later but, yes, I’m aware of the regimental system and have read quite a bit on WW1. We have not had anything similar since the Civil War, really. Thanks for the references. Those look interesting and yes, I’m enjoying plenty of time to read. 
 
[edit] back on the laptop.  
During the American Civil War, there were a LOT of regiments that were raised locally, and tended to have a fair number of people who even knew each other in civilian life. During WW1, I think there were units, even some whole divisions, that came at least from a specific state, but many did not. In fact the 82d is nicknamed the "All Americans" (the AA in the logo) because when it was formed as the 82d Infantry Div in WW1 it was found there were soldiers in it from every state. We've lost that "neighborhood" cohesion, but we still keep the old regimental designations for each battalion, even though we don't use regiments any more. WW2 it was regiments. In the Cold War era, we had brigades. Today it's Brigade Combat Team (BCT), which is more permanently integrated support arms, rather than attached, although in practice previously, we always attached to the same units, to promote cohesion. But the battalions still have their regimental designations, and some even show up right in CM - the TF 3-69 is a great example.  3-69 is 3rd Bn, 69th Armored Regiment. A TF is cross attached armor and infantry, and TF-3-69 would be commanded by the armor Bn commander. You can tell that from the name.
Artillery too, has its regimental designations. Today, the 82d has the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 319th FA Regiment. But each of those battalions is attached to one of the BCTs. When I was there it was 1st Bn/320th FA, 1st Bn/319th FA, and 2d Bn/321st FA (not too confusing eh?) The sister battalions were at the 101st Abn - Airmobile, and the two independent Airborne Brigades. Thing is, the names are there for history, but in reality, they don't mean that much. Soldiers identify with their battalion. Although there is some esprit about some of the famous infantry regiments in the 82d like the 508th, for example.  Other units are the same, it's just that the 82d ones I actually know the designations without having to look it up. It's really very different from the UK regimental system.
The 82d is in one way the oddball here though, because enlisted soldiers sometimes DO spend many years, sometimes even careers there, working their way up. Officers however, are rotated, but unlike a lot of US Army units, they tend to keep coming back. A lot of training and unique expertise gets invested in paratroopers, both enlisted and officers, so bringing back officers who were LTs, then come back as CPTs or Majors, then again as LtCol Bn commanders, tends to happen quite a bit. And an infantry Bn Commander may get promoted to COL and command one of the Brigades, then return as commanding general (two star Major General) or one of the two assistant division commanders (Brigadiers).
Canada would be different from the UK too, I think. The Parachute Regiment was THE airborne regiment, and therefore had soldiers from all over. The whole Canadian army was about the size of the 82d Airborne when I went there. We had more artillery officers in the 82d than they had in their army. So I believe there units are much more like ours that way, being more taken from across the country, and not locally. Very British in how they operate though. And who can argue with tea on the drop zone after a jump (non-tactical jump to get our Canadian jump wings)
Hope this isn't all too much.
Dave 

@Ultradave, I really appreciate your posts. Thanks for the insight. My Old Man and mentors were Cold Warriors, but I joined up after Bosnia and my only NATO time in Europe was in Norway. It’s great hearing from someone who was around for those days.
 
When I got out, we were just starting to practice firing by Regiment again, as opposed to trying to teach the ANA how to … well do much of anything really. Besides OP Medusa, and before my time Anaconda, there was not much need for that skillset, and now in the Baltic everybody is trying to re-learn it. 
 
If you have as much time to read in your retirement I do, and you’re curious about how and why the Commonwealth developed our approach, you might like reading
On Commonwealth Military Culture:
Military Identities: The Regimental System
Monty’s Men: The British Army and the Liberation of Europe,
Monty and the Canadian Army,
Crerar’s Lietenants: Inventing the Canadian Junior Officer,
The Madman and the Butcher: Sam Hughes and Arthur Currie,
Politics of Command: McNaughton and the Canadian Army,

On Commonwealth Artillery:
British Artillery on the Western Front: The infantry cannot do with a gun less,  
Gunfire: British Artillery in WW2,
Battle Tactics on the Western Front: British Army Art of Attack, 
British Artillery Between World Wars,
Field Artillery and Firepower

The Best Overall Book, Which Puts It All Together:
Fire-Power: The British Army Weapons and Theories of War
If I could summarize what sets us apart, and I’m curious about your input, it's this:  

Commonwealth soldiers serve in (traditionally locally recruited) Regiments for life. This is an incredibly close bond. It’s also an elite and prestigious social club for officers, who are expected to have a paternalistic attitude towards their men due to how rigid class was in English-Speaking countries besides America until very, very recently. Networks of officers from the same Regiment have an informal “Regimental Mafia”, identical with the “Old Boys Network” of elite British schools c. 1900 (down to being identified by striped ties). They are expected to advance the interests of their Regiment, and the careers of their chums, even when they are senior policy makers.
 
When there was still a British Empire, over half of the Army, in fact one battalion of every Regiment would be serving overseas at any given time (mostly in India). This meant that the field army available for continental war was small, much smaller than other major nations. Canada, Australia and New Zealand had (and have) small armies by virtue of small populations. South Africa had a small Army because it excluded black people, and Boers did not want to join after being enemies in the Boer War. Similarly, in Canada French Canadians were discriminated against, the Army was entirely English, the Militia (much more  posh culture than National Guard, hard to explain) even in Quebec was English, and the French were not eager to serve the British Empire either.
 
Right so, in the Great War, I can’t really explain to Americans how deeply it shaped all of our countries. Much more than yours. These small armies went through the grinder at the Somme and Gallipoli, I don’t think Americans have had anything like it in their history. Almost the entire peacetime establishment of professional soldiers who started the war in August 1914 was killed or wounded by the following summer - and the war went on for 3 more years!
 
In 1916-17, a Way of War was developed that traded time (planning), firepower (sheer size of the artillery arm) and logistics (shells) for lives. This was required because when those locally recruited regiments went into action on the Western Front, whole communities lost their military age men in an afternoon. There were Pals Battalions, where people would be encouraged to enlist together, so you can imagine how devastating this was.  In Britain imposing Conscription caused a crisis, but in Canada it almost caused civil war. French Canada saw themselves getting sent to their doom for a cause and country that didn’t care about them. 
 
Using Firepower to preserve Manpower, using staffwork and cautious planning to reduce casualties, you can see how important this became. These societies, and of course armies, could not endure a war of attrition. Morale was shot, civil society was splintering. The closest I can think is maybe what I’ve heard the US Army was like in the 1970’s, and how it also had to change the way it did things and service culture.
 
After the war, all of those conditions remained true: Britain still had to maintain a global empire, Canada, AUS, NZ, ZA, still had tiny recruiting pools, only on top of that there were fewer men to recruit after those devastating losses, and  civil society was not going to support anything like it again. Again, it’s hard to explain how much the Great War shaped our culture and politics.
 
When the Second World War started not only was the public memory dead set against heavy losses, the institutional memory remembered them and the Firepower and Planning focus, but also the personal memory of every notable senior officer in the Commonwealth. They had all seen their companies wiped out in an afternoon as subalterns. Monty in particular was, what we would say today, deeply traumatized by this experience. 
 
So - all effort went into keeping losses low. Even then, in late 44-45 manpower ran low again, there was another Conscription Crisis in Canada. Monty kept 21st Army Group in the war by all of the things Americans criticize him for: being cautious, premeditated, waiting for support and logistics to build up, executing a detailed plan. We could not have stomached the Hurtgen Forest. 
 
I hope this wasn’t too digressive, only Americans sometimes wonder why our militaries are so different. The short version is because of The Somme.

@Ultradave, I really appreciate your posts. Thanks for the insight. My Old Man and mentors were Cold Warriors, but I joined up after Bosnia and my only NATO time in Europe was in Norway. It’s great hearing from someone who was around for those days.
 
When I got out, we were just starting to practice firing by Regiment again, as opposed to trying to teach the ANA how to … well do much of anything really. Besides OP Medusa, and before my time Anaconda, there was not much need for that skillset, and now in the Baltic everybody is trying to re-learn it. 
 
If you have as much time to read in your retirement I do, and you’re curious about how and why the Commonwealth developed our approach, you might like reading
On Commonwealth Military Culture:
Military Identities: The Regimental System
Monty’s Men: The British Army and the Liberation of Europe,
Monty and the Canadian Army,
Crerar’s Lietenants: Inventing the Canadian Junior Officer,
The Madman and the Butcher: Sam Hughes and Arthur Currie,
Politics of Command: McNaughton and the Canadian Army,

On Commonwealth Artillery:
British Artillery on the Western Front: The infantry cannot do with a gun less,  
Gunfire: British Artillery in WW2,
Battle Tactics on the Western Front: British Army Art of Attack, 
British Artillery Between World Wars,
Field Artillery and Firepower

The Best Overall Book, Which Puts It All Together:
Fire-Power: The British Army Weapons and Theories of War
If I could summarize what sets us apart, and I’m curious about your input, it's this:  

Commonwealth soldiers serve in (traditionally locally recruited) Regiments for life. This is an incredibly close bond. It’s also an elite and prestigious social club for officers, who are expected to have a paternalistic attitude towards their men due to how rigid class was in English-Speaking countries besides America until very, very recently. Networks of officers from the same Regiment have an informal “Regimental Mafia”, identical with the “Old Boys Network” of elite British schools c. 1900 (down to being identified by striped ties). They are expected to advance the interests of their Regiment, and the careers of their chums, even when they are senior policy makers.
 
When there was still a British Empire, over half of the Army, in fact one battalion of every Regiment would be serving overseas at any given time (mostly in India). This meant that the field army available for continental war was small, much smaller than other major nations. Canada, Australia and New Zealand had (and have) small armies by virtue of small populations. South Africa had a small Army because it excluded black people, and Boers did not want to join after being enemies in the Boer War. Similarly, in Canada French Canadians were discriminated against, the Army was entirely English, the Militia (much more  posh culture than National Guard, hard to explain) even in Quebec was English, and the French were not eager to serve the British Empire either.
 
Right so, in the Great War, I can’t really explain to Americans how deeply it shaped all of our countries. Much more than yours. These small armies went through the grinder at the Somme and Gallipoli, I don’t think Americans have had anything like it in their history. Almost the entire peacetime establishment of professional soldiers who started the war in August 1914 was killed or wounded by the following summer - and the war went on for 3 more years!
 
In 1916-17, a Way of War was developed that traded time (planning), firepower (sheer size of the artillery arm) and logistics (shells) for lives. This was required because when those locally recruited regiments went into action on the Western Front, whole communities lost their military age men in an afternoon. There were Pals Battalions, where people would be encouraged to enlist together, so you can imagine how devastating this was.  In Britain imposing Conscription caused a crisis, but in Canada it almost caused civil war. French Canada saw themselves getting sent to their doom for a cause and country that didn’t care about them. 
 
Using Firepower to preserve Manpower, using staffwork and cautious planning to reduce casualties, you can see how important this became. These societies, and of course armies, could not endure a war of attrition. Morale was shot, civil society was splintering. The closest I can think is maybe what I’ve heard the US Army was like in the 1970’s, and how it also had to change the way it did things and service culture.
 
After the war, all of those conditions remained true: Britain still had to maintain a global empire, Canada, AUS, NZ, ZA, still had tiny recruiting pools, only on top of that there were fewer men to recruit after those devastating losses, and  civil society was not going to support anything like it again. Again, it’s hard to explain how much the Great War shaped our culture and politics.
 
When the Second World War started not only was the public memory dead set against heavy losses, the institutional memory remembered them and the Firepower and Planning focus, but also the personal memory of every notable senior officer in the Commonwealth. They had all seen their companies wiped out in an afternoon as subalterns. Monty in particular was, what we would say today, deeply traumatized by this experience. 
 
So - all effort went into keeping losses low. Even then, in late 44-45 manpower ran low again, there was another Conscription Crisis in Canada. Monty kept 21st Army Group in the war by all of the things Americans criticize him for: being cautious, premeditated, waiting for support and logistics to build up, executing a detailed plan. We could not have stomached the Hurtgen Forest. 
 
I hope this wasn’t too digressive, only Americans sometimes wonder why our militaries are so different. The short version is because of The Somme.

That's what I've been doing, you realize?
There are authentication tables. Impossible to spoof unless the enemy has captured a copy of one somehow. Even then it would take work. It's a call and response but MUCH more secure than "today's challenge is 'bullfight' and the response is 'olé'  "
There *are* procedures for processing a call for fire from an untrained observer, HOWEVER, that assumes that the untrained observer can correctly contact the firing battery and can authenticate. THEN, he'll be talked through an adjust fire mission by the Fire Direction Center. We used to train on this by having infantry soldiers get on the radio and make a call for fire with no help from the FO, just in case.
Without a proper authentication, though, you're not getting any rounds.
And the "keep your FOs alive".   Also near to hand. When I was a FIST Chief, the infantry company commander told me that if he spun around quickly and didn't knock me over in the process, I was too far away. And taught his platoon leaders the same thing for their FOs assigned to them. Reach out and touch 🙂
Dave

Sometimes it's like beating your head against a brick wall mate. 
Ask @Combatintman. 

Briefly: 
Is answered by:
and
as well as 
 
I cannot stress that enough. In any situation where a FOO might be killed (ie contact with the enemy) obviously a main consideration would be that same radio falling into the enemy's hands! You can't just break into the Artillery Net and say "Uh this is Lt. Bob, the FOO's been killed, please cancel all artillery fire on our the enemy position. Danke, Spasibo, Thank you!"
There is a process for authenticating, but there is absolutely no, none, could never be "emergency calls". Why? Because some people (like say the Russian Federation) are very, very good at Electronic Warfare and could likely break into a NATO Artillery Net, even without capturing the physical radio. There's the callsign, authentication, and more complex steps than that I won't go into under some conditions, but the short hand is - Artillery Communication is it's own system. There are rules and procedures and a script.  There are some emergency procedures - Final Protective Fire etc - but there's no way to skip the steps that authenticate that the call is a legitimate one. 
 
The lesson is "Keep your FOOs alive!" 
and I don't only say that out of self-preservation 😉

Briefly: 
Is answered by:
and
as well as 
 
I cannot stress that enough. In any situation where a FOO might be killed (ie contact with the enemy) obviously a main consideration would be that same radio falling into the enemy's hands! You can't just break into the Artillery Net and say "Uh this is Lt. Bob, the FOO's been killed, please cancel all artillery fire on our the enemy position. Danke, Spasibo, Thank you!"
There is a process for authenticating, but there is absolutely no, none, could never be "emergency calls". Why? Because some people (like say the Russian Federation) are very, very good at Electronic Warfare and could likely break into a NATO Artillery Net, even without capturing the physical radio. There's the callsign, authentication, and more complex steps than that I won't go into under some conditions, but the short hand is - Artillery Communication is it's own system. There are rules and procedures and a script.  There are some emergency procedures - Final Protective Fire etc - but there's no way to skip the steps that authenticate that the call is a legitimate one. 
 
The lesson is "Keep your FOOs alive!" 
and I don't only say that out of self-preservation 😉

I can at least speak to the Canadian Cold War era procedures. I've mentioned before but since we're discussing, I did an exchange program with the Cdn Parachute Regt. Their procedures were VERY similar to ours, and so I assumed (obviously correctly) the British are also very similar since the Canadians were very British Army oriented. 
My background - FIST Chief A/1-320FA(Abn), with C Co, 1-325 Inf(Abn), Fire Direction Officer B/2-321FA(Abn), Fire Support Officer, 3d Brigade, 82d Airborne Division, and Assistant S-3 and Battalion Fire Direction Officer, 2-321FA(Abn).
I think when I was editing that previous post, I left out the part where for the Infantry CO or Plt Ldr to call the artillery, they would pretty much have to grab the dead FOs radio and call the battery using his own callsign, not knowing the battery callsign. The battery would force him to authenticate, which his own RTO would be able to do. All this is going to take some time, ASSUMING the FOs radio even works after he is killed. Somehow in reformatting I ended up deleting that part.
As @DougPhresh says, anything else requires the radio request to go up-over-down to get to the battery Fire Direction Center.
Dave 

A call for fire is a request unless it's pre-planned.  The CP won't fire until the FOO completes the warning order. The warning order is the type of mission, size of firing element (troop, battery, X guns), method of target location. If that's not done, there's no mission to process, and no fires.
Remember this data has to be processed at the CP and applied at the guns. If someone drops off the net while adjusting, there's no way to know what adjustments to make, so the mission can't proceed, certainly not to FFE. A "Repeat" call would be the exception, but that just means to repeat the last order, in this case the last adjusting round.
(This is why we tell infantry and cavalry not to say "could you repeat yourself?" or even say the word "Repeat" on our net. It's why Fire D has that formal script.)
If the CP can't raise the FOO, they'd try again before ending the mission. 
The American Pam is here, I can't post the Canadian ones, but if you find one that's publicly available, most NATO stuff is nearly identical. Main difference is terminology ie CP vs FDE. 
tl;dr - If you half-ordered a meal, the kitchen wouldn't send it out, would they? 

I came here to post this. I was Arty Signals both in FOO and STA. There would be absolutely no way to know if anything had happened to the FOO as Artillery Communications (Fire Discipline) follows a procedure, a script. The procedure is designed, as @Ultradave said, so that data is fed to the CP, developed into firing data and given to the guns. Without "Check Fire", that procedure is not getting interrupted. 
Add to that that in WW2, and often times even today, other arms aren't on the Artillery net. There's no link between say an infantry company and the firing battery, and you're looking at no way to Check fire without the information getting passed up, over and then back down. When we're talking about a time when radios could be few and far between, and relying on telephone links, there's no way to quickly change missions like that.
This, of course, is why pre-planned fires were (and are) central to the Commonwealth way of war. The infantry is briefed on the fireplan, and guns assigned to it have a card that tells the 1IC (gun commander) the data for every single round his gun will fire - sometimes for the next few hours. This means that whatever happens on the sharp end, rounds still fall where they are supposed to reliably. It's not as fluid or dynamic as on-call fires, but it works. There's a nifty explanation putting it into gameplay terms Here. A Fantastic Website Here, and the two books we use to teach at CTC Artillery School Here and Here if you want to go deep. 
 
I'm not saying all fire planning all the time, but for players commanding Commonwealth troops in BN and FI, and Brits and Canadians in SF2, this is the real solution to delivering reliable fires regardless of contact with the observer. As a rule: Medium guns fire pre-planned, some Field guns do, but some are kept available on-call, and mortars of course, are the Infantry's Artillery, are are most flexible to employ. 
 
I hope I didn't get too bogged down with detail there, but I really enjoy discussing the tools of the trade. 

A call for fire is a request unless it's pre-planned.  The CP won't fire until the FOO completes the warning order. The warning order is the type of mission, size of firing element (troop, battery, X guns), method of target location. If that's not done, there's no mission to process, and no fires.
Remember this data has to be processed at the CP and applied at the guns. If someone drops off the net while adjusting, there's no way to know what adjustments to make, so the mission can't proceed, certainly not to FFE. A "Repeat" call would be the exception, but that just means to repeat the last order, in this case the last adjusting round.
(This is why we tell infantry and cavalry not to say "could you repeat yourself?" or even say the word "Repeat" on our net. It's why Fire D has that formal script.)
If the CP can't raise the FOO, they'd try again before ending the mission. 
The American Pam is here, I can't post the Canadian ones, but if you find one that's publicly available, most NATO stuff is nearly identical. Main difference is terminology ie CP vs FDE. 
tl;dr - If you half-ordered a meal, the kitchen wouldn't send it out, would they? 

I came here to post this. I was Arty Signals both in FOO and STA. There would be absolutely no way to know if anything had happened to the FOO as Artillery Communications (Fire Discipline) follows a procedure, a script. The procedure is designed, as @Ultradave said, so that data is fed to the CP, developed into firing data and given to the guns. Without "Check Fire", that procedure is not getting interrupted. 
Add to that that in WW2, and often times even today, other arms aren't on the Artillery net. There's no link between say an infantry company and the firing battery, and you're looking at no way to Check fire without the information getting passed up, over and then back down. When we're talking about a time when radios could be few and far between, and relying on telephone links, there's no way to quickly change missions like that.
This, of course, is why pre-planned fires were (and are) central to the Commonwealth way of war. The infantry is briefed on the fireplan, and guns assigned to it have a card that tells the 1IC (gun commander) the data for every single round his gun will fire - sometimes for the next few hours. This means that whatever happens on the sharp end, rounds still fall where they are supposed to reliably. It's not as fluid or dynamic as on-call fires, but it works. There's a nifty explanation putting it into gameplay terms Here. A Fantastic Website Here, and the two books we use to teach at CTC Artillery School Here and Here if you want to go deep. 
 
I'm not saying all fire planning all the time, but for players commanding Commonwealth troops in BN and FI, and Brits and Canadians in SF2, this is the real solution to delivering reliable fires regardless of contact with the observer. As a rule: Medium guns fire pre-planned, some Field guns do, but some are kept available on-call, and mortars of course, are the Infantry's Artillery, are are most flexible to employ. 
 
I hope I didn't get too bogged down with detail there, but I really enjoy discussing the tools of the trade. 

Totally agree with you there @DougPhresh, I would in addition love to see the Finns represented. And there are quite a few interesting units like the Naval Infantry Brigades (the 12th Naval Infantry Brigade was almost entirely equipped with SVT-40s), Assault Engineer-Sappers and Aerosani (google it 🙂). 
Pål