Time of flight limitations for artillery

[quo fas et gloria decunt]

Hi Major,

Have recently obtained a copy of TacOps and am thrilled with the game. You've done a fantastic job pulling everything together.

Are there any plans to introduce some limitations to ones ability to move the point of impact of an barrage seconds prior to its arrival? Whilst this feature currently makes it easier to hit moving armour, the ability to influence the trajectory of rounds in flight is a little unrealistic, even with laser guidance.

Would the following suggestions be feasible?

1. build time of flight into the artillery model.

2. Do not allow the point of impact to be moved if the rounds are in the air, eg if time to impact is less than the time of flight.

3. If the point of impact is changed before the barrage has been fired, reset time to impact to ToF + approximately 30s, or more. This should simulate chain of command plus the generation of firing data.

Of course, I'd be the first to admit that this is just cake icing,... but hey, I've got a sweet tooth.

Regards,

Andrew

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

It is abstractions like this that allow a TacOps player to have hundreds of unit markers in play without burning out his mouse or his patience.

If I made the changes that you suggest, most players would simply work harder so as to achieve the same result as the current simplified abstraction. I have taken a number of user polls on this over the years and the majority of users have always preferred to keep the arty abstraction smple.

It is intentional that the artillery abstraction appears to allow arty rounds to be moved in flight. In the real world there are a lot of people working very hard in the background to get arty on target and they usually succeed. Also, in the real world arty fire for effect doesn't usually arrive every thirty seconds in a three boom animation. Unless the batteries are only firing one round per tube for the fire for effect, the beaten zone is going to be active with more or less continuous explosions for several minutes. If the target is moving then at some point in the fire mission the real world spotters and batteries are going to change firing data to keep pace with the target. As long as the TacOps combat results are plausible over the span of several minutes of fire then it doesn't matter that TacOps abstracts the continous nature of real world arty fire into discrete pulses of destructive effect and it doesn't matter if rounds can be magically retargeted in mid air.

The current TacOps arty concept was never intended to replicate the detailed, real world procedures involved in getting arty rounds on target. The TacOps arty constructs are meant to replicate effect on target - not call for fire procedures that would in effect become a game in themselves and that would bore anyone but an arty officer to tears. I know that arty rounds travel through the air for many dozens of seconds. I know that one can't magically change a round in a tube, let alone one in flight, from HE to ICM in 15 or 60 seconds. I know that arty salvos can not be instantly shifted 1000 meters while in flight. I consider such details to be largely irrelevant to the arty paradigm presently used in TacOps. What I want TacOps to convey is that modern arty is flexible, is timely, and that it kills a lot of things. TacOps arty fire missions are meant to be an easy to use quantifier of the levels of destruction that are reasonably achievable by arty support over several turns. I don't think it is relevant to the current paradigm for technical procedures and physics realities to be calculated every single time the animation seems to indicate that a "salvo" is landing.

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

You used the phrase "obtained TacOps" rather than "bought TacOps". Does that indicate that you have TacOps ANZAC?

If so, which version and how is it being received by your peers?