Rules Tweak: Small Arms Group Fire Rule

With an ever increasing number of foot units (although it is unlikely I will ever have enough compared to my total AFV strength) I decided to devise a method of resolving infantry combat en masse.

I had come across this sort of thing many years ago at the wargaming club in Cornwall when I had a go with a 15mm English Civil War game. I have no idea what rules they were using & I am sure it is a fairly common game mechanic where one has a block of troops attacking another block of troops at essentially the same range throughout.

HMGs are excluded from the method (which I originally called 'Volley Fire') because of their difference in effectiveness both in terms of range & hitting power. Rifle Groups & LMGs (Bren, Hotchkiss, MG34) differ only very slightly in my rules against unarmoured targets so these were all made identical at very little cost to any unique characteristics of the weapons, besides, rifles & LMGs are the standard weapons common to all infantrymen. (AP capability of weapons involved was preserved for use using individual Direct Fire.)

Average probabilities of destroying and suppressing targets for small arms at each range bracket were calculated in an Excel table for ease of calculating the multiples of firing elements and a table of adjustments to these figures was devised for use with the usual percentile dice roll.

Integration with the main rules was complete when I realised that my existing rather unsatisfactory 'Suppressing Fire' rules (which used different mental arithmetic compared to other types of fire) could be replaced with very little adaption by the 'Volley Fire' method.

'Volley Fire' was renamed 'Suppressing Fire' and the whole concept tidied up quite nicely.