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Hank, there is nothing to forgive. Always good to hear opinions

The idea of artillery or air or naval attacking individual units is generally a good idea. Ultimately there would need to be a limit of one step loss in any one turn – otherwise you get the gamey act of massing your artillery and destroying a full stack in a single turn!

Another variation is that an attack by air / naval / artillery could use up a maximum of one bullet one turn. And then a ground attack could use up a second bullet.

Your “stacking” idea has merit but I have a refinement “A maximum of 12 steps and or a maximum of 4 counters”. Otherwise you could stack 12 one step units in a hex.

thanks Joe.

I agree about limiting the arty destruction to some reasonable level to prevent exactly what you said about massing artillery on one spot. And the "die roll" aspect should also curb massing artillery on one hex. Sometimes I have to pound a strong point 4 or 5 times before I get a hit ... that sure keeps me from massing too much arty or naval fire on one strongpoint or one unit in this case.

... and I have a lot of wiggle room on the stacking issue. I just think there is room for improvement in the DB/KP/BiN/BiI method for stacking units in a hex. Having the number of units or steps adjustable in the scenario designer is good. Some logical method to determine the number of steps allowed in a hex is needed. Limiting the stack to 3 or 4 units irregardless of each units number of steps needs looked at.

(... on a side note: I used to (and still do) play Panzer CAmpaigns (PzC). In the Modern Battles Fulda Gap you could stack many armored units in one hex and create one hell of a strike force assaulting out of one hex. IMHO, it was set too high in some of the stock scenarios. I actually drew up a 1 mile hex and set in the number of tanks allowed by the scenario. I did this with AutoCAD and it was very accurate. But it turned out you would have to have something like one tank every 1/2 acre to accomodate the stacking limits in the hex ... way too high imho)

hank

I know a perfect way to solve the Artillery problem,
It CAN make step losses on enemy units (1 shift Art 25%, 2 shift 50% etc.) but it can't destroy a 4 step unit outright. Another way round the problem is that after each step loss, the chance of the ARTY causing damage is decreased by 25% so 1 shift art = 0% chance, 2 shift makes 25% etc. This means that for definite, 3 shift ART can't just pound a unit to death. Perhaps every step loss ALL Artillery has a percentage taken so you can't just gather a whole load of 25% 1 shift-ers and pound a Lehr PzGr regt to pieces : This would only occur for that certain unit. ANY unit should be able to be "Political" so for example, the Lehr and it could have an attack/defence bonus and increase the chance of surrendering a unit by 20% (but this would mean substandard italian regt's would have a 90% chance of surrender though[:(]) This Political feature should only be done on the most well known and lethal units like ISS Panzer Division, IISS Panzer Division, IIISS Panzer Division, XIISS Panzer Division (HJ), 352. ID, II Panzer, LXXX Panzer Div. (Lehr), Gebirgs-Division "Nord", 2nd Armored Division, 4th Armored Division, Kampfgruppe Schmaltz etc.
With political ARTY (USS Savannah) maybe it could have 1+ shots on units and start off with 100% chance of step loss (50% for 2 step losses) and then 75% for Step loss (25% for 2 steps). It could also have 1+ Arty shift.