Several Moscow 42 Questions

[Dog Soldier]

A couple of questions about two alternate rules:
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Alternative Direct Fire Resolution
Direct Fire and Indirect Fire of mortar or heavy weapon units is conducted under different rules. Although a target may be selected, under this rule, if the target unit is not a Hard Target, then the resulting fire is dispersed and affects the other units in the target hex, so the more soft units you have stacked in a hex the greater your losses will be, the fact you cannot target an individual soft units could be seen as more realistic.
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While this rules says that a target MAY be selected, in my experience you MUST select a target. If the fire actually affects all the units in the hex, why do we need to bother to select a target? Alternative Indirect Fire works in the same way, but we don't have to select a target unit. Am I missing something?

Yes, you are missing the difference between firing on hard targets versus soft targets in the stack.

Do the following to see the reason.
Set the OR in a game where it is not the default.
Move up a mixed stack of soft and hard targets next to an enemy ATG position with an infantry unit. I used a tank stacked with a foot infantry unit for this illustration.
Turn off the menu item for 'On Map Results'.
Advance the turn and fire with the ATG unit on the tank unit. Notice that you had to select the tank unit to fire on it. The results only show the ATG firing on the tank unit. The infantry unit stacked with the tank is not affected at all.
Now, fire on the infantry unit with the ATG unit. Notice that both the infantry and tank unit are effected. However the effect on the tank unit is less than when it was the targeted unit as in the first case. This is why one has to select a target.

It matters whether you fire on a hard target or a soft target in a mixed stack. The game engine does not check to see what is in your stack, so it always asks you to select a target unit. Simple programming, nothing more.

Dog Soldier