Question: Switching spotters for artillery bombardment

[Mobhack]

Whichever unit you use will be the spotter from now on, if you make an adjustment. Swapping spotters has no penalty, unless you go to say a non-observer type from a proper FOO, in which case shifting costs more.

BUT SP allows you to plot with an experienced FOO for faster call of fires, and then later use another unit with better LOS if you want precision. There is no complex "oh mission was being called by Bill, but now its George, was 1.2 should now be 2.4 to arrive" stuff.

Who the original observer was is only valid in fires for determining any larger scatters arising for "has no spotter" (he died, or is retreating / routing)OR Shot falls out of LOS of original spotter "spotter has no LOS", which is the same code, arrived at for slightly different reasons. (GPS arty mitigates that somewhat by reducing out-of LOS/no spotter scattering. )

[jivemi]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

Whichever unit you use will be the spotter from now on, if you make an adjustment. Swapping spotters has no penalty, unless you go to say a non-observer type from a proper FOO, in which case shifting costs more.

OK, so apparently you can't switch spotters UNLESS you make an adjustment with the new one. In which case my advice for 3) was wrong. Thanks.

[Aeraaa]

Originally Posted by jivemi

OK, so apparently you can't switch spotters UNLESS you make an adjustment with the new one. In which case my advice for 3) was wrong. Thanks.

It's a common trick, I do it the whole time. Say, you have an infantry lieutentant with crappy artillery rating, being the only spotter in the area. Because of that, his call time is 2.0. But you really need arty now. So what you do is use your A0, or a dedicated FOO, who have a call time of 1.0 (I assume post 1980 situation here), and call the barrage. When the first rounds land, adjust with your infantry unit and use him for any subsequent poundings you want to make.

[jivemi]

Originally Posted by Aeraaa

It's a common trick, I do it the whole time. Say, you have an infantry lieutentant with crappy artillery rating, being the only spotter in the area. Because of that, his call time is 2.0. But you really need arty now. So what you do is use your A0, or a dedicated FOO, who have a call time of 1.0 (I assume post 1980 situation here), and call the barrage. When the first rounds land, adjust with your infantry unit and use him for any subsequent poundings you want to make.

Yeah, doing that more often now. AFAIK there's no penalty even if you DON'T make an adjustment; IIRC all that happens is the original spotter is maintained. So to fine-tune it, switch to the low-grade combat leader with LOS just before the rounds fall and make a slight one-hex adjustment to get greater accuracy from eyes-on. (That's what I'm thinking anyway.)