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I doubt there’s a coding solution, and besides the current situation is fine; in fact we have the best artillery routine in any game I’ve come across.
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Actually the SP artillery model is one of the poorest I have ever come across in a wargame...
Most tabletop wargames rules have had far better artillery models since the 1970s, in fact.
In real life,
one observer fires
one fire mission (which may involve multiple batteries) at
one target point at
one time. With multiple battery shoots, he may ask for all to fire Time On Target, or let the batteries start firing when ready.
Part of the call for fire is the target location and the observer's angle of sight on the target (so calls for adjustments left 150, right 50 etc makes sense to the firing party). An observer does not move while controlling the shoot, obviously!. (Those in little airy planes make special cases).
Normal fire is preceded by a single guide weapon in the battery firing ranging shots for observed shoots. Fire for effect is not called until the ranging piece is "on" in order to conserve valuable ammo. Then the observer calls for N rounds at rate Y, and each tube in the battery expends that number of rounds at that rate then stops. He may then call for a repeat - which would fall where the last lot went, since the guns are still lined on that point. That was the WW2 case, and even today with fire control computers is much of a muchness. With GPS and laser range finders, the ranging component can be skipped and the battery can go straight to Fire For Effect in theory, but if own troops are "Danger Close" then single round ranging would likely still be used!.
So the observer should only be able to control
one fire mission on
one observed target at
one time. (There are exceptions that most train-spotter wargamers would jump on and use as the norm, as is the usual case with wargamers).
At the gun end, each troop likely has only one artillery plotting board and the guys to do the arithmetic (the 25pdr had a sort of slide rule as part of that for charge calculations). Each mortar section in our battalion had the one, for each 2 mortars. Individual guns are
not the independent fire units as is the case in SP. Troops, Batteries, or Sections might be. The real limit apart from these calculators is the number of frequencies available - SP does not model radio networks very well either, everyone with a radio has a virtual "mobile phone". Voice radio networks just don't work that way at all!. If you have used CB or ham radio, you will have an idea.
All SP artillery is "Under Command" artillery - you have the exclusive use of these things. Real arty might be under Command, but is more likely to be "Direct Support" - Highly likely to fire your missions but not 100% guaranteed since it is in D/S to several units, or "General Support" where it is shared out between more users.
SP weaknesses
- An observer can engage multiple targets
- Observers can move while directing fire
- An Observer can call for fire (speed) and then any old radio 0 unit can take over directing fires for accuracy as it has LOS without generating an entirely new fire sequence
- The individual gun element is the fire direction unit (One reason I prefer mortars to be in section type elements and not as individual mortars in the OOBs - stops silly people firing #1 at X,Y, #2 at A,B and #3 at W,P all 200 degrees apart... ). There is no fire computation centre at the battery.
- The comms network is oversimplified (any old 0 element can request the arty directly, rather than pass up the chain of command. He is on the arty network, as if he had a mobile phone and not netted voice radio)
- No ranging, or rather ranging by Fire For Effect
- Apart from the turn 0 fire, no programmed fires. No barrages etc.
- Simplistic counter battery
- Over easy detection of on-map arty
- Instant set-up of batteries, just plonk the guns down in any old random way. No paralleling of the sights, no site survey. Before GPS there was a
reason that arty lined up in relatively close order in nice straight lines, like having LOS between the gun sight mirrors to get set up with all the the weapons sights in parallel. Otherwise #2's 1200 mils will be rather different from #1's which is not good
- No programmed fires, like creeping barrages for the assault
Yes - as part of 1/51 Highland, we did do a joint shoot with both mortar balloons (1/51 was unique in having 2x4 platoons of mortars when most inf bns had 1x6, we also had 2x4 platoons of 120mm MOBAT/WOMBAT) on the same baseplate, with 2 MOPs each engaging a
different target on
one frequency with one FDC running 2 mortar boards simultaneously. Oh joy!
. The "White Hats" of the directing staff were running round like blue-arsed flies ensuring range safety, but the FDC still managed to take corrections from MOP A and apply to Platoon B...
A pretty poor arty model, overall. It would need a completely new game engine to rectify it.
This site is good for artillery:
http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/maindoc.htm
Cheers
Andy