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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by mihalik</i>
Actually, with the 70 hex limit, your visibility is limited to a bit under five miles. But I could agree that beyond a certain distance objects might be indistinguishable, even in clear weather. I just am not sure how far that might be, with ACW binoculars. Also, it makes a
difference if the unit is hiding in the woods or marching down a road or whether it is a wagon, artillery, infantry or cavalry unit. Wish someone would do an experiment to get a realistic appraisal of how distance affects observation. Maybe at a certain distance question marks would be appropriate, like wagons observe.
I agree with your assessment of the pros and cons of single turn and have reached the same conclusion you have.
MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA
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Actually its 4.77 miles but the real problems is that a normal eye at that distance cannot distinquish two objects 2.5 yards apart much less count men. Further complicating estimating just how far a regiment say can be seen is that it depends on your angle of view. In Virginia where there isn't such thing as perfectly flat land a person really can't "see" five miles when viewing something at the same level as themselves. All its takes is one area of ground or vegetation to rise six feet to totally block LOS. And, in a place like I am, Houston area, where the swamp land is flat the humidity is so high that seeing an object at much over a mile is difficult.
But the real question is how much information can a commander obtain from observing enemy forces at various distances?
This is very weather dependent because they could tell that large bodies of troops were approaching over roads just by the amount of dust thrown up above the tree line. On the other hand a pike or wet roads would reveal nothing. But the key word here is "large" or "small" not 400-500 men.
Moving back to closer distances the "rule of thumb" or little finger[:D] you might say is: Objects with one degree of arc look like the width of your little finger at arms length. A man's height at 100 yards is the same. An object that size would be very difficult to aim or hit except by an accomplished marksman. You probably could tell the uniform was blue if the air was clear. You could probably tell if they were closed up or open formation but you could hardly count men accurately because most would be unseen behind the front line. Almost any kind of vegetation between you would block most of your view. Reality probably was that the officers estimated the size of the force at this distance by type of line (two rank), how many flags they could count, and width of frontage. They could probably tell nothing about what brigade or regiment they were. And, this is our typical fighting distance in our games unless there is melee.
Now stepping back to our typical non fighting distance where artillery is the main weapon say 1000 yards lets see what happens.
Our little finger rule now corresponds to an object 17.5 yards tall. We can spot any elephants they might be using but little else. A person with 20/20 vision can no longer separate something less than a foot appart. You certainly can't count men. If the officer had binoculars he might do a little better but my initial search found most were only 2x or 3x instruments. A line of two rank men now appear, assuming weeds are in the way, about the size of the lettering on a dime held at arms length.
My feeling from this short study is that:
If we meleed with them we probably know what we now know from being adjacent to the unit.
If we are merely adjacent and firing at each other we probably know their strength to the nearest 100.
At 1000 yards we know how many hexes they occupy. It's highly questionable that we would know how many regiments were in a hex much less size of the force in a hex.
At distances beyond 1000 years we probably only know there is someone out there but nothing about size or specific location.
There are special circumstances like LOS to a section of road where you can watch the movement of troops down it. You could deduct the size of force by how long you see them marching past a point on the road. But then it could be Magruder marching troops in a circle.
LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
1/1/III AoM (CSA)
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