No Vehicle Defensive Fire??

Yes!

Its that same as if an adjacent soldiers trys to enter your soldiers hex.  You can take your DF shpt at him in his starting hex or his dest hex.  Same is true of a tank…

Dismounting into the same hex as the vehicles will not trigger DF, and you covered why in your descussion very well.

@Audacity:

The scenario.  An infantry soldier is in a town hex and a vehicle crosses the open ground and enters the same hex.  The soldier is entitled to defensive fire.

The rule states the defensive fire effects (ie which hex it occurs)  is determined by the defender.  In this case that means the defender says if the effect take place in the open ground hex or if it happens in the town hex.

Question.  If the defender awaits until the vehicle has entered the town hex, can he use his abilities to attack vehicles in his own hex with the far superior dice rolls or is Defensive fire only about direct fire

Yes. You get to chose where the defencive-fire occurs, and if you have any special abilities such as flamethrower or close assault you can use them. Only a few abilities are worded such that they can’t be used for defencive-fire (eg the Goliath’s ). So if your unit is, for example, simply a regular infantry it will probably be best to make the defencive-fire attack in the same hex where it can use its close assault.

Mmm…Daisy Duke.  Sorry, that’s really all Hazzard means to me.  Sounds like he left an impression though.

It would appear the Jeep unit is a “squadron” of 2 or 3 vehicles, if it has the capacity to transport a rifle squad. The presence of a .50 caliber MG, would give it some offensive combat value.

True, it would be a “soft-skinned” vehicle, but its real value was demonstrated by the Long Range Desert Group, in North Africa. It was a cheap and surprisingly effective weapon.

In my opinion, there is nothing to change.  :-D

Here are the d-fire rules…

Just keep it simple…  when you move a unit… from one hex to another… if both those hexes are adjacent to an enemy unit, then that enemy unit can try to disrupt you.

Adjacent means same hex or bordering hex.

In some cases, you are forced to use defensive fire while the moving enemy unit is in a particular hex.  For instance, if an enemy tank tries to move out of a hex containing one of your soldiers, if you choose to use defensive fire, you would likely have to do so while the tank is in the first hex (your hex).  That’s because once the tank is in the next hex (one hex away), most soldiers attack value at Range 1 can’t result in enough successes to match the defense of the tank to disrupt it.

Provoking Defensive Fire: A unit provokes defensive fire when it moves from one hex adjacent to an enemy unit into another hex adjacent to that same enemy unit. The hex a unit is in counts as adjacent to that unit.

Soldiers and Vehicles: Soldiers don’t provoke defensive fire from Vehicles. They can move around an enemy tank or even enter its hex without getting shot at by that Vehicle. Soldiers can exploit enemy Vehicles’ blind spots to move safely around them, but enemy Soldiers see them just fine.

Defensive-Fire Limit: A given unit can make only one defensive-fire attack per phase. For example, a US bazooka team fires defensively against a German tank in the Axis player’s movement phase, but when a second German tank moves into the bazooka team’s hex in the same movement phase, the bazooka team can’t use defensive fire—it’s already fired defensively this phase. During the Axis player’s assault phase, the bazooka team will be able to use defensive fire again.

Optional Defensive Fire: You aren’t required to use your defensive fire if you don’t want to. For example, if your opponent moves a weak unit to provoke defensive fire from one of your units, you can choose to “hold your fire” and let the weak unit pass in order to be able to use defensive fire against a more dangerous enemy moving later in the phase.

Multiple Defensive Fire: If more than one unit has the option to take defensive fire, you can make one unit’s attack before deciding whether the other units also attack.

Here is the rule as reinforced by Avalon Hill.

The Tiger immediately disrupts a soldier unit upon entering the hex (face-up counter).  This happens before defensive force occurs in that hex.  Units with face-up disrupted counters cannot perform defensive fire.

So, in order to stop the Tiger tank from using its special ability (remember- special abilities trump the rules, as explained at the back of the starter set rule book), a soldier unit must employ its defensive fire while the Tiger is in the adjacent hex.  Most soldier units don’t have enough attack dice to equal the Tiger’s frontal defense of 7, so the Tiger will have no problem moving into the hex.