American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

For those who want to add weather to games like Gettysburg that under the new version, 1.04, support it but have no pdt or scenario files set up to use it here is how:

Weather control records are added at the end of the pdt file after the last data record in it. The Weather section is ended by a record entry of "0". This will make a two record weather entry look like:

1 1863 6 29 7 0 100 6 135 90 -10 0 Heavy Mist
1 1863 6 30 7 0 58 8 135 90 -10 0 Light Mist
0

where the fields are for first record as example:

1 Some kind of flag, use unknown
1863 The year stamp
6 The Month stamp
29 The day stamp
7 The hour stamp
0 The minute stamp (0, 20 or 40)
100 Chance of weather occuring
6 Visibility in hexes
135 Movement cost factor in percent
90 Artillery modifier in percent (I believe)
-10 Attack Modifier (used by fire and probably melee).
0 Another flag of unknown use.
Heavy Mist {Label for weather type}

One more highly important change you must make to the pdt file before weather is enabled. <font color="red">Change the File version type which is the very first entry in the file to "6" or weather will be disabled.</font id="red">

While weather wasn't a critical factor in the Gettysburg battle it can be used to change the LOS value from 70 to something more reasonable. Smoke was a critical factor but since using weather to implement smoke is global, affects the whole map, this works better in scenarios.

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

Weather effects options would be nice for some. We have too much information about enemy deployments.
However, I have played several games that the drop in visibility and fire effectiveness are built in by default, and the game stayed enjoyable. Total War's "Shogun" and "Medieval" variants come to mind.

I would like to see local visibility dropping due to black powder smoke by hundreds of riflemen over a period past 20 minutes.
I remember reading that as late as WWI in the East Africa campaign that black powder smoke obscured the battle between Col Otto von Lettow-Vorbeck's askaris and the British expeditionary force.

But it is probably not worth the trouble of programming it in and then having players nit pick it to death with criticism because of the complications of different factors left out. ie
How many hundreds of riflemen and cannon firing for how long would be necessary to reduce visibility to 4, 3, 2, or 1 hex(es)?
Would targets within range stay distinguishable as separate units?

BG Ross McDaniel

I am mainly thinking of using it to reduce LOS to something around 20. This is a compromise between the fact that they could see further but really couldn't tell what they were seeing except at much closer distances of about 10 hexes. I may even go for less but would have to make sure no combat situation were adversely affected.



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

First off the weather rules only allow you to set the conditions by a probability die roll. There is no way you can use it to simulate smoky conditions. You could write a weather line that would allow for a 10-20-30% chance of reduced visibility on any turn but could not correlate it to combat conditions.

I have written a set of weather lines that result in something more realistic for morning/evening turns. Normally visibility is constant until the dusk turn at which time it reduces to 4 hexes then after an hour on the first night turn it goes to 1 hex. Mornings are just the opposite going from 1 hex to 4 at dawn for an hour then to full visibility. I have written a set of weather conditions that result in a slow increase in visibility over a period of two hours with no combat modifiers, it affects only visibility and includes a second set for slowly decreasing visibility in the evening. It is available for download at the ACWCO Engineering page along with description of all the lines of the pdt file.


Gen. Ken Miller
1/2/VI
AoS

But, you could set the % at 100% and have reduced visibility for the entire game. This might be good for set piece battles, with troops already in place, but not a good idea for something like Gettysburg, historical and others. It would not be a good idea for any ME, but visibility of 15 to 20 hexes could make for some interesting play.

<b><font color="gold">Ernie Sands
General, Commanding, Army of Ohio

ACWGC Cabinet Member
ACWGC Records Site Administrator
</b></font id="gold">

Remember that the LOS is from any unit, so a 10-20 hex range wouldn't be so bad for the 3-day G-burg. A player could 'see' a scattering of units across the map, but units would only be 'reacting' to those that are close to it.

MG Al "Ambushed" Amos, Commanding Officer
4th "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, 1st Div, XX Corps, AoC, USA

One of the reasons I came over to HPS from the BG games was the promise of weather and variable visibility. I enjoy the unpredictability of the Antietam weather variants.

I recently modded Gettysburg's pdt files with a version of Kennon's weather files to cover all scenarios and Campaigns June 1-July 17th 1863, but it doesn't look like I can do it for Corinth, even though the "changes" file for Corinth says that weather is available as of version 1.07. Does anyone have any ideas if adding weather files for Corinth is possible?

_________________
Brigadier General Richard Simonitch
1st Brigade, 2nd Division
VI Corps, AoS

As I understand it the PDT file has a version number on the first line. Having looked at the .pdt files in my Corinth folder I note that none have a version number beyond 3. Current .pdt versions are up to 7 last I heard and as indicated at the ACWGC Engineering page
http://home.comcast.net/~acwco_engineering/
on pdt files a pdt must be set to version 5 for weather to work. Suggest you try copying and renaming the basic pdt file you wish to use, change the version to 5 then add your weather lines. Then copy and rename a scenario file and edit it to use your new pdt and see if that works.

_________________
Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

3/1/II
AotP

I tried that and no joy. The scenarios error out with anything other than 2 as a version number. Also, the Corinth pdt files end at line 74 and the Weather lines are to begin at line 77 so I think there is an insurmountable problem.

Unless HPS upgrades Corinth I guess we don't get weather like the others until a patch (while they are at it, if they could remove the CD requirement from Antietam....) I can't help but feel a little jilted, since the variable visibility was a marketing hook that helped bring me here.

Anyway, playing with a guaranteed 70 hex visibility feels really artificial to me, so I'm modeling the historical weather patterns for the Gettysburg Campaign which appears to be well documented all the way back to Brandy Station (heavy morning fog) and a few rainy afternoons through the month of June. No rain but cloudy through July 3rd and rain again on the 4th. Going to dig a bit deeper.

Gettysburg is version "5" but changing the pdt to "6" allows weather lines. I don't know if versions "3" or "4" allow weather, since I don't have them (Ozark and Franklin?).

I might add, Mr. Miller that without your reverse engineering pages I would be quite lost. Thank you!

_________________
Brigadier General Richard Simonitch
1st Brigade, 2nd Division
VI Corps, AoS