American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

A while ago someone made an observation about an aspect of the graphics Mod work completed recently by the Old Banshee team...
It regarded the fact that the new graphics generally reduce the Artillery units to using a single generic Unit Card for all the guns Sections/Battery's regardless of the weapon they are equipped with.

I was wondering how the community felt regarding the portrayal of Artillery in the game:

Do you prefer to see weapon specific pictures used for each Artillery unit?
Are you generally indifferent/unconcerned with the matter?
Do you think that Fog-of-war benefits from not knowing what gun type an enemy unit is using?

Generally the HPS arrangement is to have immediately recognisable images for the different guns that are being used. You can tell at any range what exactly you are facing ...which I felt was not a realistic situation. (Generally that is. Sometimes, especially for the Rebs the situation is a bit more mixed).
Can the technical historians tell us how much awareness the Infantry and Artillery forces would have had about what they were up against?
I feel that, as long as both players are using the new graphics, the game benefits from not knowing if you are in range of an enemy piece or not ...or not knowing how deadly the enemy Artillery is likely to prove to be if it's a large stack.
I'm sure that players must often make position changes prompted by the visible threat of certain gun concentrations and I thought it was a "gamey" aspect that could be easily rectified.

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Brigadier-General Jim Wilkes.
2nd Brigade, Cavalry Division, XX Corps.
AoC. U.S.A.

The player can still get an idea of the type of artillery by viewing the units in 3D. It gets a bit jumbled when there are multiple types, but perhaps that is how it should be.

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

I think for artillery, having an accurate depiction of the gun type is preferable, as even at a distance you could tell if a gun was brass or iron, and thereby generally tell if it was a rifle or smoothbore. Infantry is a different matter. Unless a unit wore a distinctive uniform such as zouaves or the Iron Brigade, you shouldn't be able to tell who they are or what they are armed with until they get close.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA

Jim, that's a good question about the technical aspects of whether opposing forces could actually tell what type of enemy artillery they faced! I'm not so certain that one could easily discern the gun types at extended range by merely looking at them, or in the direction he thought them to be! Certainly by just a visual inspection at long range one would not be able to distinguish much else, perhaps, other than possibly the glint of bronze as opposed to cast iron. Of course, there'd be nothing like the experience of formerly being under fire to make an eductated guess about what type of guns were firing at you when they actually fired! And in that arena I'd expect an artilleryman to have a better education!

And going a bit further, I'd bet one of the more distinguishing elements of recognition might have been the sounds of discharge, flight and strike or explosion. But this would be conjecture on my part. Surely a trained eye could probably assess the general gun type also by the distance of engagement. But there would be some real limitations to all of this if one were trying to make determination between, say, a 10-pound Parrott, a 3-inch Ordnance Rifle and a 12-lb James Rifle! A 6-lb James Rifle and a 12-lb Napoleon might be a hard thing to distinguish at range as well, since both could effectively fire the same distance.

But for the substance of your question, I do believe that gun type recognition at extended range would be a hard thing to do, especially when one throws in all of the normal battlefield distractions and visual interferences. And I also believe that the HPS graphical arrangement provides an unrealistic identification of enemy gun types. I know that I've relied upon exactly that kind of thing to develope some of my tactical decisions upon the field.

Ideally, there'd be some generic image for all gun types at extended range, which would transpose to a more definable image when the guns engaged or the range became moderate. Otherwise, having a generic image maintained throughout for the sake of Fog-of-War would seem to be unrealistic, especially after your boys had taken almost double the number of short range casualties from those Napoleons they thought were Parrotts!

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General Jos. C. Meyer, ACWGC
Union Army Chief of Staff
Commander, Army of the Shenandoah
Commander, Army of the Tennessee
(2011-2014 UA CoA/GinC)

I have been trying to pin down what troops could and couldn't see and particularily how far they could fire and hit something for some time. From what I have been able to gather so far they couldn't reliably recognize much of anything until it fired on them and they couldn't hit a barn standing inside of it.

It looks like their ability to recognize a formation, whether its skirmish or a regiment, doesn't extend much further than 300 yards. And that assumes no smoke has been generated from gun fire. I doubt seriously they could tell anything about artillery unless it deployed in an open field in front of them until it started firing. That is why Hunt tried to keep the guns on Cemetery Hill from returning fire since it would reveal their positions. The defending force probably could tell little about the type of gun firing until it openned fire and they could see how far it fired and what ammo was used. And they probably didn't care because at distances that a rifled gun was needed to reach it couldn't hit anything anyway.

I am still researching artillery accuracy but to show how bad infantry was here is some data from various military writers quoted in "With Musket, Cannon and Sword":

Their estimates of percentage of shots fired hitting a target between a low of 0.03% to 5% with a typical number around 0.2%. That means a 1000 man regiment firing all it's ammo (assuming 40 rounds) would kill anywhere from 12 men to 2000 with a typical of 80. Considering only one writer gave a number greater than 0.5% the 80 is probably close.

I think our games grossly overestimate what can be seen. Partially because the game mechanics don't allow realistic LOS to be used. That is you need to more or less see around you the distance you can move in a single turn. The other is they can't handle the fine detail of being able to see movement in the distance versus recognize what made the movement. In HPS games you can "see" 70 hexes or about 9000 yards. This is the range of the longest range artillery. And, yes a good commander could tell troops were moving at that distance by the amount of dust thrown up. But he could count regiments, tell how many men were in each regiment to the nearest 100, whether they were cavalry or infantry unless something else gave him a hint, or which direction they were going. Artillery in a wood line a thousand feet a way would be invisible unless they fired.

Also we over look how information is gathered on the battlefield. If the commanding general is observing the distant formations he would have the experience to make a reasonable estimate to the enemy strength and movements. But if its some skirmisher reporting back through the chain of command, the observation would be vary vague at best.

I personally think the little graphics telling us about a unit should be limited to our own units and adjacent enemy units. Those over 300 yards away should be nothing but "?" mark counters with may the type (infantry, artillery or cavalry) indicated. Those less than 300 just some detail and that randomized to some extent to create more FOG.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

Just noticed that you can't even tell what kind of artillery you captured after you captured it.

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MG Mike Mihalik
Forrest's Cavalry Corps
AoWest/CSA