[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

<shrug> US Army tank crews have trained to engage helicopters for 40 years. And if 1970s era fire control systems could do it, I find it hard to believe that fire control systems 110 years later couldn't engage a vehicle moving about 60% the speed of a helicopter. Particularly when you start using visually targeted - amd therefore jam-proof - fire and forget weapons (widely available in 2018).

This is all direct fire. That visual targeting requires line of sight should be self evident.

And why does that matter?

Because indirect fire is not inherently very responsive.

Again, so what?

You seem to be ignoring the existing rules for defensive fires.

You apparently are arguing that an AFV fire control system in 2085 can't effectively engage an enemy AFV moving about 70 mph at most.

Contemporary FDC can't effectively engage targets moving with any appreciable speed at all (with the exception of smart munitions).

And curiously, you seem to be arguing that somehow a stationary tank can't engage a GEV, but one that moves can.

No. I don't even know where you are getting this from.

Sorry, but logic suggests that if a GEV can engage a functional, unengaged tank, then that tank should be able to engage the GEV. Assuming comparable weapons, fire control and range. None of the points you've raised rebut this presumption.

Does logic suggest that a functional unengaged mortar section be able to fire immediately on batteries that are firing on them? Because I can tell you from experience, logic would be wrong in that case. You need data from counter-battery radar to shoot back (and you need to get the guns up on that target) You would be doing very well to have rounds down range within an Ogre turn.

This artifact is strictly due to an artificial sequence of play. One that existed in the first popular tactical wargame, Panzerblitz. It wasn't much of a problem in Ogre because of the nature of the engagement and the relatively open ground.

Sure, but your argument for why that is a problem seems to be based around treating indirect fires as responsive as direct fires.

I think it IS an issue in GEV because it compels players to use tactics that would not work in reality (based on the assumptions we've been given about the Ogre universe). As I said, we know how tanks work in the real world. We know the assumptions in Ogre and how they change armored combat (i.e., not much except that everything can use indirect fire and infantry is now as fast as slower AFVs).

We also know how counter-battery fire works, and it isn't anywhere near as fast as you are suggesting.

My response, if I didn't consider it a problem, would be that "it's a game and I can live with this particular abstraction."

My response is that Tac-Air was an excellent game about the kind of warfare you are talking about, at roughly the same scale as Ogre. Go play that.