ORIGINAL: Edfactor
Just always play with fractional odds, it makes it much easier.
I do always play with this option and will suggest the same to anyone playing WiF. I am always amazed at some of the resistance to it. Once you do it, I doubt you will ever go back. It makes decision-making soooo much simpler for both sides. If a hex is important, you use as many of your assets as you can spare, they all count. Similarly, you don't need to endlessly shuffle your units to get the most out of their combat factors by matching them all to the odds levels of different combats. A huge time saver for everyone, and I strongly advise using it for PBEM.
When and if I ever pick up any of my other games very much again, I will probably try and figure out a way to write a small program to handle this for me on those 1d6 land combat tables. I think this should be possible but far simpler with a little electronic assistance? Maybe I'll just make the extra die a 1d10 like in WiF. But since my other main game uses a whole lot of 2d6 direct-fire rolls (Cross of Iron), I haven't gotten around to this just yet.
But thanks for the reminder Edfactor, I just played the first impulse of a new ftf game and we forgot to discuss this when setting up the optionals. What I want to do is move on up to pure 'straight fractionals'...never round anything, combat factors or pluses (I don't think there are any 2d10 minuses that are ever halved?). But always rounding things off is a hard WiF habit to break after so many years, but I think I can do it, though it might be a bit hard on all those critical Japanese attacks led by Umezu and Yamashita. We did finally learn to move HQs a little bit in inclement weather, though that took a while. (And now it is hard to use the HQ movement optional, though I like that one a lot).
Anyway so if you are new the game, you are wondering about now just what are we talking about? Fractional Odds is an optional rule in WiF that adds an extra die to the roll for combat resolution. I'll explain it for the 2d10 table; it's been so long since I played 1d10 I doubt I would get that right any more.
Let's say you are attempting to break the center of the French line in May, 1940. You summon up all of your most powerful corps and artillery and the best you can get is a 49:10 attack no matter how you arrange your pieces. So close to 5:1, but not quite. Eureka, I'll send in an Me-109 with a point of Ground Support! Then the French have the same thought to use their last fighter-bomber too, to make it 50:11, bye-bye 5:1, back to 4:1. The original attack would have been 4.9:1, or a 4:1 on the regular table and thus a +8 on the 2d10 table. With Fractionals, you resolve it as a +9.8 attack with the 2d10. The sum of the two attack dice would have 9 added to them, and a special third die (best to use two matching dice for the main roll and a third one of a different color) is also rolled, on a 1-8 on that dice a further pip is added to the grand total to determine the result. If the attackers were at 41:10, that would be a +8.2 attack, and you would get an extra plus if you rolled a 1 or 2 on the third die.
So using this system, anything the attacker or defender can commit to combat is included and of some value. All that annoying factor counting is banished for good as you commit forces to different attacks based on their overall priorities. The game is greatly speeded up as a result, leaving your mind free to constantly revise your strategy and tactics rather than your mathematics.
And if you are wondering how the 2d10 table works, I hope there is some material on that around here somewhere else, cuz that is a bit of an explanation for anyone new as well.
