Does a little bit of terrain block shooting

Final question from today's game. Needs a picture to explain and the best I can do is this:



Imagine the light cavalry unit 6 cm to the rear and that it wants to fire on the foot directly to its front. There will be a little bit of wood in the way. Will this block the shot?

The LOS rules and the related firing issues is something that I hope is better explained in Impetus 2.  In simple terms, LOS itself is determined by "measuring from the middle of the sighting Unit's front to the middle of one of the sides of the Unit that must be spotted." (3.1.3) The CL, if I understand your explanation is, should be able to meet that condition.

In 6.3.2 you next determine Visibility. The firing unit traces two straight and uninterrupted lines to two corners of the enemy unit. These lines may not cross each other. If there is no obstacle obstructing these lines then the target unit is visible to the firing unit. A friendly unit or even an enemy unit might obstruct direct fire. Does terrain obstruct visibility? (It definitely obstructs LOS.) Here the rules seem vague.

This is how we have interpreted the visibility rule. If a unit is firing through terrain that could impair LOS then we allow the unit to fire up to 5U with respect to visibility. So a unit having one of its tracing lines firing through a bit of woods would have a maximum range of 5U firing distance.

I am curious to see how others have worked this out.

As GC says,

3.1.3 and 6.3.2 refer to LOS and something called Visibility and Measurement

LOS and measurement (range) are essentially the same - centre of shooting edge to centre of nearest target edge.

"Visibility" (6.3.2) is to do with arc, defining a fire zone and that zone being blocked by "obstacles" - principally friendly units, hence the reference to indirect fire.

Reading further into 3.1.3 however we discover (amongst other things) that woods reduces the LOS to 5u, it only blocks it beyond this distance.

I think in the situation illustrated the CL would be partly in the woods, but within 5u of the edge thus eligible to shoot - 3.1.3 is categorical on this.

So as you can shoot through woods if within 5u of the edge it seems logical that woods therefore do not block visibility (6.3.2) within that distance, otherwise the rules wouldn't be vague they'd be contradictory.

Essentially I agree with GC - it would be nice if 6.3.2 didn't introduce the term 'obstacles' without definition but I think we can safely define it as something that blocks LOS and all units.