American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by KWhitehead</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Rich Walker</i>
<br />If someone would be willing to test a better long range fire value for each of the guns, I would be glad to consider it. The problem is that some games use consolidated batteries, and other play with sectional artillery. I would assume the Drex is playing with consolidated batteries. And most likely firing combined batteries as a single stack.

Don't take this as a defensive comment, but rather as an explanation to a complicated question.

Gen Whitehead says "<i>the game's artillery accuracy particularly in long range counter battery fire is way off</i>"

Now, I don't necessarily disagree, BUT, the problem must consider the different ways the game can be played. For example: Consolidated vs. Sectional. I haven't found a good method to reconcile to two. If there was only one way to play, I (and other designers) could create a better pdt fire value. But if I cut the value for consolidated batteries, I will heavily weaken the chance for a sectional kill.

Having said that, I could and probably should create two different pdts. One for each method of play. Not sure why I didn't think of that before.

Lt. Col. Richard Walker
I Corps Army of the Mississippi 2nd Brigade, 3rd Division
"Defenders of Tennessee"
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Actually I tried changing the fire factors for artillery and rifles in the modified 007 scenario posted on the CSAWC site. I reduced the long range fire factors for artillery to about 1/4 to 1/2 their original values as well as shorten their range on some.

The problem with the HPS fire factors isn't so much they are incorrect as they represent a level of fire that could be sustained if the ammo rules worked realisticly. The fire factors in the game represent 20 minutes of sustained fire, probably the equivalent of one shot per minute. If a battery of six guns fired at a target 1000 yards away for that period of time they probably would cause the hits the fire table gives. They would also use 120 solid shots. A caisson holds 32 rounds. There are four caissons per gun for a total of 24 caissons in the battery or 768 loads. I couldn't find what the typical distribution of ammo types was but even assuming a high 50% round one turn of fire has used up a quarter of your ammo supply. I have some references indicating that many batteries preferred not to even use round but filled their caisons with the more versatle shell.

Either way both army's had standing orders not to engage in counter battery fire nor to engage infantry at long ranges. When they did it was usually at a much lower rate of fire since it's intention was to suppress the enemy or force them to cover. My modifications basically assume that at long ranges a lower fire rate would be used. I made a similar assumption on rifle fire and shortened the range to 4 hexes but this was more to help reduce ammo depletions from auto defense fire so the AI wouldn't waste ammo or force you to set it to minimum fire range to conserve.

Our small arms useage in these games are even more out of proportion than the artillery. We as players routinely fire every turn every unit that can see an enemy. In the three day battles or short battles with limited wagons we may cut down some or just complain about the lack of wagons.

Hess's new book, "The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat", throws a completely different view of how the weapon was used. His analysis shows that running out of ammo was rare and only occurred in intense extended fights like the Mule Shoe. The reason was they didn't really fire their weapons that much. Typically the average shots fired per man for a battle was 33 rounds. Well below what they carried to the battle. In our battles this represents less than one turn of fire by each unit. That's why we have these enormous casualty levels in our game.

Probably the best simulation of the situation would be to correct it through the ammo supply and maybe the fire tables. Give the player much more control of fire by the AI so it doesn't waste ammo, implement the one gun one ammo for artillery to all the games, then serverely restrict the ammo supply.

Fire tables could stand some reduction mostly to reflect the lower rate of fire used at long distance. Most fire was made at an average of 120 yards during the Civil War. Here is a possible way to simulate this. Reduce fire factors for all weapons for ranges 2+ hexes but take away the ammo depletion check for these ranges. Increase the odds of ammo depeletion considerably for one hex range fire. Limit the number of wagons available to replentish ammo but give them a map edge or supply source hex that they could return to to refill.

Artillery fire problem would probably be fixed once the new optional rule of one gun one ammo is put in place and realistic ammo levels provided. The one change needed to help in this area is better range of settings for AI Defensive fire. The medium range currently is random and needs to be either broken up into two to three more ranges or threshold driven (odds of causing damage) rather than random.

LG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
1/1/III AoM (CSA)
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Ken

This post echos my first comment on this thread regarding the way players fire vs. historical fire. But I am still working on improving the pdts.

Lt. Col. Richard Walker
I Corps
Army of the Mississippi
2nd Brigade, 3rd Division
"Defenders of Tennessee"