PLASTIC RULES

F&M has for me the virtue of plasticity. I can change anything whenever I like and see how it works without any expense or need to square it with anyone else. Sometimes it might be nice to have another pair of eyes to proofread and another point of view, but on balance the ability to go my own way is a bigger positive.

So - lately I've been reading a lot about SUPPRESSION and how hard it is to cause casualties on troops in COVER who keep their heads down. Even troops in open ground who lie down are hard to spot let alone hit.

As such I've altered all my TEM [TARGET EFFECTS MODIFIERS] to better reflect these ideas.

Biggest change is a +4 for PRONE/HEADS DOWN targets that is cumulative with all other TEM for terrain. I used to have it at +2. Each +2 halves the FP and roughly halves the effects of the fire. This means troops lying flat in open ground are 8X harder to effect than troops standing up.

I've got a quirk in that linear features such as walls and bocage have only +3 TEM and if firing the troops behind them cannot be heads down. You are therefore better off lying down on the other side of the wall! Except - if you do go heads down behind the wall you can have +7 which is practically invulnerable to enemy fire and you can still pop up and shoot if you have an opportunity.


Current TEM

STONE BUILDING             +4
WOODEN BUILDING        +2
WALLS                                 +3
BOCAGE                              +3
LIGHT BOCAGE                 +2
FOXHOLES/TRENCHES    +4

I have a lot more. I used to have a lot of variation in TEM for HE fire, but have dropped this. It's fiddly and seldom matters. If anything the concussive effect of HE and tendency to pick up debris and turn it into shrapnel offsets any disadvantage because the fire is not 'aimed'. Aimed fire is rather exaggerated for small arms and even MGs anyway. I just have special HE drm for AIRBURSTS and in soft ground or stony ground.

I embarked on this because it had been too easy for Germans on the defence to pin down advancing infantry (OK with THAT effect) but then kill them off with sMG fire which I think was quite difficult. The MGs PIN and mortars or HE broke the attacks (when this did happen).