First 2 games

Hi Kyle!

Thank you for your question, well spotted "grey areas" we have missed, will add clarifications for both of these in the rulebook!

Answers:

1) Yes. We considered the option to force players to guess distances early on but in practice we have seen it just slows the game down without giving any real benefit in terms of added fun or realism, so it was ditched. Measure at will!

2) No. SF without extra help is only allowed to Characters equipped with a MG which have the “SUPPRESSION FIRE” (SF) symbol on their card. In other words except for a Character who carries a MG alone (BAR, MG34 or 42, FG42, Bren, DP-28, etc.) normally a minimum of two Characters firing is required to initiate and maintain SF. When a character is allowed to do SF alone this is shown on his card (the SF symbol is of a different color) and it has a limited range (typically 2 or 3u). Light, medium or heavy MGs firing from a fixed mount with extra crew are able to lay a more effective SF and accordingly they have a more extended SF range (4 or even 5u). Note that this is based on the practical effectiveness of the weapon used in that particular role and not on the theoretical performance tested in lab conditions, so the same weapon doesn't necessarily always have the same value... classic example: MG42 carried and fired by a single soldier has a SF range of 2-3, the same weapon on a biped or tripod mount with a single operator has a base SF range of 3 that goes up to 4 with a loader, and again the same MG on an tripod or fixed mount with a gunner, a loader and a spotter goes up to 5.
Specific details about weapons are built in their own stat cards, so for example a Bren which had a much lower rate of fire but was considerably more precise has a SF of only 2, but it's always allowed to spend an extra AT to aim accurately when shooting at an individual target (not doing SF).

We have also recently started experimenting with a variation of this in which every additional character participating in a SF always extends the range by 1u, regardless. This give additional scope for adding extra infantry fire in a SF area once established (currently the only benefit is an extra dice roll for random ricochet hits at the beginning of the turn), it's realistic and also balance things out for infantry, making forces composed of lots of grunts without support weapons more viable, plus it streamlines the rules as it basically becomes all the same for everything (2 characters or 1 mg = 3u, 3 characters or 1Mg + 1crew = 4u, 4 characters or 1Mg + 2 crew = 5u, etc.). Needs further testing but it looks promising... I'll add it to the experimental rules section in the forum!

Cheers!

Claudio