Long, long ago in early DOS AW, HT himself figured out a way to do "indirect" fire. In those days, the map was only about 30 miles square, and there was a GV field in the middle of it. In those days, we had a T34 with unrestricted gun elevation so it could shoot over most of the map. HT somehow hacked into AW and developed an interface that allowed him to lay his gun on the exact spawn points of all airfields in range, which was most of them. Then he'd sit there and rain shells on the spawn points and rack up huge numbers of kills.
Kesmai responded, not by fixing the T34, but by adding a randomizer to the shell flightpath
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Every weapon we have in the game currently is direct fire, meaning you see the target and aim at it like you would with a rifle. Even naval battles are this way. Seems to me most of you all are talking about using artillery weapons as another direct fire platform.
Indirect fire, however, is shooting blind at a target you can't see, relying on somebody who can see the target to give you aiming corrections. We already have a weapon designed for this: the 75mm howitzer in the LVT(A)-4. However, it can't be used effectively for indirect fire at present. For that to work, we'd need a map system where people could get their own positions down to a gnat's ass, a way to measure distances and azimuths on the map, a way to shoot azimuths (in mils) to objects in the game, a Commanche board to convert the FO's LOS to the target (and thus his corrections) to the gun's line of fire, and a way to level the gun on sloping terrain (up to a point). Without these essential interface tools, indirect fire in AH is an exercise in futility even with trained gunners and FOs doing it.
