AT fire in assault hexes

[triangular_cube]

TC, don't disagree with you in much of what you say---as I said "murky"....

Some of the consequences trouble me though----
IF you can AT fire, without instigating an Assault response.....
Does that mean that later in that turn the Other side can attack those units with impunity---that is 
  those that AT fired have no attack back?.....

So in the above example if the units fired at the PzIII....as AT fire, and it did NOT instigate an Assault firefight,
the units could (even individually (see other ongoing thread about multiple assaults...) ) Attack the tanks (all at once) 
and suffer no return fire....

I guess that's plausible....the Russians being so focused on the PzIII they ignored the infantry ....

I have some trouble with a, for example, 37mm AT gun deciding it will AT fire at a Tank in the hex (for example) and
doing so without having to suffer a firefight response....thinking they could take the shots and NOT have to deal with 
return fire/ instigating a firefight seems .....well....skewed....

I agree we need a ruling......
Between this issue, and the "multiple assaults" question...the whole Assault mechanic may change for me...

"So in the above example if the units fired at the PzIII....as AT fire, and it did NOT instigate an Assault firefight,
the units could (even individually (see other ongoing thread about multiple assaults...) ) Attack the tanks (all at once) 
and suffer no return fire...."

I would think that if the PzIII survived the AT fire, it could return AT fire on its activation, Or it and the INF could attack on the assault chart and suffer the retaliatory fire. Units that have already activated still get to retaliate when they are attacked on the assault chart. 

To me, the limitation that the AT firing units not add their DF values to the assault total is limited to their specific activation. Even if firing AT in the hex DID trigger the defensive assault fire, and on the following activation the German's did an assault of their own, I would expect the Soviet tanks to be able to use defensive fire in Assault. I THINK the implication of the text is that a combined arms force is assaulting in one activation, with the tanks AT firing at something else and the INF assaulting the pile. 

To me at least, the AT fire within the hex acts just like AT fire from one hex away, just without the modifiers from the CRT in play. 

And to be honest I'm still very uneasy with the legality of the multi assaults. It still seems very "wrong" to me, but it doesnt seem to have many objections on here. I'm leaning on house ruling against that one myself but I'm still experimenting a bit with it.

Again, a reminder, this is all my opinion. Ask me again next week and it might be completely different.