Units firing together or separately?

[Theodotus]

Having read the manual more than once and played a few games, I am wondering about one point of tactics:

Under what circumstances should a stack of units fire together, and under what circumstances should each unit fire separately?

It seems that squads with a 0 firepower should fire separately, as according to the manual they don't appear to add anything to the FP calculation if they fire in conjunction with other units. But I don't know if I'm understanding this correctly. And I can't get my head around when units with an FP greater that 0 should fire separately, as opposed to firing as a stack.

Can anyone with more knowledge of the game system enlighten me?

[Barthheart]

"It depends". [;)]

The calculation for fire power(FP) goes like this, the fire power for the first squad is at full power,
each squad after that only adds 1/2 it's fire power, then MG's are added in, the other factors.

So if you have three 1 FP squads in a hex and that's it, you would get 1 FP + 1/2 FP + 1/2 FP = 2 FP if you used them all.
If you use only 2 of the squads you get 1FP + 1/2 FP = 1.5 FP which is rounded up to 2 FP.
If you use only 1 squad you get 1 FP.

So it makes sense to use only 2 squads, then later move or shoot the last squad.

For 0 FP units it makes sense to fire each separately as each additional one adds 1/2 * 0 = 0 to the attack.

[mh1066]

"For 0 FP units it makes sense to fire each separately as each additional one adds 1/2 * 0 = 0 to the attack."

...unless the 0 units are using a SW such as a MG. In this case it might be preferable for them to fire since the SW value is counted in full.

[Barthheart]

ORIGINAL: mh1066

"For 0 FP units it makes sense to fire each separately as each additional one adds 1/2 * 0 = 0 to the attack."

...unless the 0 units are using a SW such as a MG. In this case it might be preferable for them to fire since the SW value is counted in full.

Yes that is correct.