Area Fire Clarification

[Spotless]

After some searching on the forum and re-reading the manual, I cannot find a definitive way to target an area w/o visible/spotted units in it.

The posts from 1999ish cover some Q&A by MajorH on the subject, but I couldn't determine a final answer.

How do I suppress units that I KNOW are in a certain area with direct fire weapons?

It's terribly frustrating to have access to a whole slew of light units with direct fire ability (Read: HMMVWs and an Air Assault Btn) that can't shoot a known target area and instead end up being ground down to nothing. How do we get the bad guys to keep their heads down w/o using arty?

Thanks in advance.

[tar]

You can't directly target open ground, but I hear it is on the wish list.

You can, however, issue a direct-fire TRP as one of the orders. Just tell the units you care about to pay close attention to the area. That should get you a quicker response anytime anything around there gets spotted.

[James Sterrett]

I don't believe you get a quicker response (correct me if I'm wrong, Major H! )

What you get is a preference for firing on targets in that area. When set to "low priority" (yellow), the unit will choose to fire on any unit in the DFTRP before firing on any units outside of it. When set to "high priority" (red), the unit will ONLY fire on targets inside the DFTRP.

The prefer/only distinction for low/high priority also works for the unit type and the target unit settings. If you want to hit only ATGM units, and preferably in a given area, and if possible a given specific BRDM-AT platoon, you'd use a High setting for ATGM and a Low priority on the specific area and a Low priority on the specific BRDM-AT.

I'm not sure how TacOps would react if the BRDM-AT were outside the DFTRP and an ATGM unit was inside it, though.

[MajorH TacOps Developer]

>It's terribly frustrating to have access to a whole slew of light units

>with direct fire ability (Read: HMMVWs and an Air Assault Btn) that can't

>shoot a known target area and instead end up being ground down to nothing.

>How do we get the bad guys to keep their heads down w/o using arty?

Get your infantry units up and moving and assault the objective. Back them up with your crew served weapons. The invisible enemy will expose itself to engage your advancing units and all/most of your guys will fire back. If you have sufficient force then the enemy units will begin to suffer greater suppresson results and greater casualties than you.

Given the scale of TacOps, trying to do area suppresive fire using small arms would not usually accomplish anything except causing you to run out of ammo.

[Spotless]

Thanks for the responses all.

Good point MajorH. I'll try using the DTRPs combined with the infantry push. I know you can keep your eyes in the right area, and by using the right force levels it should be achievable.

It's just so painfully slow out there in the open...just waiting for the plentiful OPFOR arty to fall! The situation is by no means unique, and a light force commander would have to deal with the same challenge in many different situations.

[dhuffjr]

This topic is one of my "pet" wish list items and I have to respectfully disagree with the Major. Of course if/when implemented and I run out of ammo I might change my toon .

Reasons:

Soviet SP arty direct support cannot IMHO be modeled very well as is. Same with a tank/mech force assault across open ground. IMHO the designation of fire zones should have some effect on the defender. Soviet tanks carried a fair amount of HE rounds for this purpose.

Modern scenero of a "Thunder Run" type op or a Mogadishu type scenerio with a running convoy/column. You are approaching a terrain feature that looks like the perfect ambush location. The ability to suppress the potential units located there would be a plus.

Just opinions.

Dennis