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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Mon Feb 20, 2012 3:19 pm 
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Battalions? So instead of moving a 100 units, you have to move 200? No, thanks. Melees are a part of the game and as I believe they can be dealt with. Many times melees are made to purposely disrupt the unit with the hope that the opponent routs. Rebs do this to union troops all the time because they know most union troops are "C" or worse. If someone melees all the time, they usually end up the loser in points and fatigue. The good players set up and select their melees and if successful, they have played the game well. The good opponent may try to reinforce to prevent the success of the melee or pull back or maybe he can do nothing at all - such are the visissitudes of battle. Melees represent the charge (not necessarily hand-to-hand conflict) and these were not infrequent events.

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 8:18 am 
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Drex wrote:
Battalions? So instead of moving a 100 units, you have to move 200? No, thanks. Melees are a part of the game and as I believe they can be dealt with. Many times melees are made to purposely disrupt the unit with the hope that the opponent routs. Rebs do this to union troops all the time because they know most union troops are "C" or worse. If someone melees all the time, they usually end up the loser in points and fatigue. The good players set up and select their melees and if successful, they have played the game well. The good opponent may try to reinforce to prevent the success of the melee or pull back or maybe he can do nothing at all - such are the visissitudes of battle. Melees represent the charge (not necessarily hand-to-hand conflict) and these were not infrequent events.

Actually this doesn't happen because very few regiments are over 400 men and require breakup. Reducing stacking to 400 both fixes melee and fire. Fire because 400 men to 120 yards is pretty close to the density of a two rank line. Melee because it is almost impossible to get 3:1 odds when all you can attack with is 400. I've played a few of the old Frost-Norris scenario and you can see this happen. If the defender holds his line with really small (<100 man) units then he is rightly overrun by melees. But if he deploys a reasonably full strength line the battle becomes a shooting contest with melees only used when a hex becomes reduced first.

For a game like Gettysburg only about 5% of the units would need to be split to meet say a 450 man stacking limit. Unfortunately you need to be able to modify the OOB which you can't to do this. I do have a modified scenario 007 where I changed the stacking to 900 by reducing just one of Davis's regiments by adding casualties to it. Even this small reduction had considerable effect since you rarely can get exact stacking so melees tended to drop down into the 2:1 max ratio.

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Tue Feb 21, 2012 9:17 am 
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I believe the reduction of the melee would favor the Union as there are many Rebs who use the melee in their offensive tactics. Another objection is historicity. The units are construed close to their actual numbers in regiments and breaking them into battalions would be ahistorical. And since battalions are a level lower than regiment, would this introduce another command step to be considered,i.e., regimental commanders?

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 9:42 am 
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For a regiment level game like HPS the more appropriate handling would be extended line but this is very difficult to handle without using semi-independent units to represent the subdivision of the regiment. Going all the way down to company level introduces to many units for ease of play plus needs some very strong organizational rules to keep the game from degenerating into a skirmisher battle.

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 1:31 pm 
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Some excellent points. My main suggestion is that we need a "self-preservation" rule. I have rarely seen it in computer military sims, either in my hobby life or professional life. I have seen the defensive force (or OPFOR) fight to the last man, which I call the Alamo Defense.

In real life, if the enemy can flee, they will, as Forest did in 1862, rather than surrender. Finally if no chance to flee or retreat, they would surrender. Once the enemy had given up in the Civil War, you had to collect them, and guard them, reducing your force. I guess I would like to see the rout rule after attack be modified so that the commander could call a retreat before standing and dying in battle. I have no clue how that would be written in code, but this would

1. be more realistic
2. lower KIA
3. allow break outs and
4. cause more manuever battles.

The charge at Gettysburg day 3 had a brief moment of hand to hand combat but it ended quickly. The Confederates hoped to the last that the Union would break and run. They didn't due to superior fire power and thus held the field.

A melee resolution of Pickett's charge would be bloody and very unlikely. The rebs retreated from the top of the hill, while the boys in Blue were too fatigued to follow. In HPS, we would slug it out to very near the end. In a battle game, you don't care how many of your troops are left so you keep on fighting to win points.

I am currently in a seige warfare fight in the Atlanta Campaign and I am faced with a time frame and a limit on how to move. I can't go on and ignore the bunkers and breast works I face at a battle like Resaca. I can pound my troops at his breatworks, and keep on pounding regardless of slaughter, because I have to break his lines to take the victory point spots. His troops have to stay as well and defend for the same reason, to protect spots on the map. That is why we have unheard of causilities. IF my troops refuse to attack, or his refuse to stand, it makes for a more interesting tactical game.

Is it possible to write the code like that? I bet it would be very tough.

http://www.resacabattlefield.org/

Here is one quote from the webpage "Johnston seemed to already anticipate Sherman's next move, to possibly flank him out of his army's strong position at Resaca, just as he had at Dalton. But when Walker arrived, there was no sign of Northern troops"

It was a 3 day battle. I have 45 turns to win it. I don't have room on the game map to move around him.

The battle ended this way, with both armies facing each other but not able to budge the enemy. Then "With his position flanked . . . , Johnston had little choice but to pull out of Resaca. He did so skillfully, leaving absolutely nothing of value for the Union troops behind but for his lost battery. (Scaife, p. 37) About 3:30 a.m. on May 16, the Confederates set fire to the bridge, thus destroying what Union artillery could not from a distance throughout the course of May 15. ........The fury of the Confederate resistance at Resaca made a profound impression upon Sherman's mind throughout the rest of the campaign. It would be five long weeks before the Union commander would try another major assault upon any entrenched Southern positions. The nature of the War Between the States had changed forever. It was now a matter of trench warfare that the rest of the world would not come to understand until some 50 years later in Europe."

Maybe I am just lousy at trench warfare?

MG Elkin

3rd Div (2nd Cav) XVIth Corps AotT



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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 3:05 pm 
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You can eliminate the Victory point hexes in any game using the Scenario editor in the game folder. Thus you are not forced to take or defend any specific hex and the battle is decided on casualties. This probably prevents "decisive" or "major victories" unless one of the players makes a disastrous mistake or continues frontal assaults without proper preparation (if that is possible).
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but there was melee at the angle that soon degenerated into a retreat by the Rebs as more Union reinforcements arrived.
When a unit is overrun or disappears in a melee or under fire, it does not represent 100% fatalities but only casualties which include surrender, wounded and of course killed.

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 10:03 am 
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At the end of Pickett's charge there was a brief hand to hand but it was a rather small affair. Basically they reached the guns and realized the enemy wasn't going to break and out numbered them so they laid down their arms if they were to close to turn around and make their way back across the killing ground.

The "Melee" does represent a lot more than the hand to hand. It represents the close range fire that takes place as well as the captures when the other side breaks and some just give up rather than try to escape. Back years ago when only board games existed the designers said they rolled all this into one combat to keep things simple for the player and justified it by pointing out yes a whole lot of things went on in the melee but the final result is just as easily represented by a single die roll so why introduce a whole lot of unnecessary detail.

The Computer though open up the possibility of not treating something like melee as one size fits all. Unfortunately we are a rather nitch market that isn't going to bring in the kind of development effort that it would take to properly simulate things like melee. It could be done. Melee could be broken down into its components. The troops having to keep moving toward their objective instead of losing out to their instinct to stop and fire to protect themselves. Closing those last few yards and not turning around and running. The defender having to decide whether he thinks he can win and stands versus saving himself by retreating. Then the actual hand to hand contact that could cause large scale surrenders or not. The response by both sides to the result. Does the attacker if he fails just fall back 50 or 100 yards and take up firing positions or retreat all the way back to his starting point. When the defender decides he can't hold does he fall back fighting all the way or run like hell is after him?

Having tried to quantify this so that it could be programmed into a game, I have found their is very little information on just what happens tactically when the two sides move into close range. Yes, there are some details on highly popular events like Pickett's Charge and the Mule Shoe but little on the ebb and flow that occurred through out the battle on very small scales. At Antietam they didn't really know better so you have the classic Napoleonic fights with lines walking across the open fields, closing ranks to replace the fallen, and marching on to eventual destruction. Later battles the rank and file knew better and qucikly decided whether they were being asked to commit suicide or not and acted accordingly.

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Thu Feb 23, 2012 10:16 am 
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It would take a different kind of game, more tactical, like "Take Command" to offer those kind of choices. As the unit charged, you could be offered a drop down menu offerring you choices to keep going, stop and fire, retreat,etc. This menu could be offerred after every enemy volley. Volley results would be shown before the menu so you could gauge the damage. I would enjoy something like that.

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:45 am 
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What I have found interesting, and somewhat dismaying, is the lack any serious study of Civil War small unit tactics. Almost nothing exists in print on just what happened when two regiments get withing a 100 yards of each other. Nosworthy's "The Bloody Crucible of Courage" is the most detail study but it really doesn't answer most of the questions of how small units fought. I have a feeling that maybe at the College level people are doing something for maybe their Ph.D. presentations but nothing seems to end up in print but some memoirs. The 1863 U.S. Infantry Tactics manual tells how they intended they should fight but what was the reality? How often did the advance to attack turn into a fire fight instead and at what distance? How often did a unit use the bayonet for something other than a candle holder? When they actually advanced into the enemy position how often was there any enemy to fight and how many got captured?

These are questions that need to be answered before anyone can attempt to properly simulate melee or fire combat.

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 11:11 am 
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KWhitehead wrote:
What I have found interesting, and somewhat dismaying, is the lack any serious study of Civil War small unit tactics. Almost nothing exists in print on just what happened when two regiments get withing a 100 yards of each other.


Hi, General,

I recommend "Battle Tactics of the Civil War", by Paddy Griffith. While I don't share all of his conclusions, he includes a lot of info on tactics, both theoretical and what actually happened.

Also, in many of the best battle books, such as Pfanz's books on Gettysburg, "No Quarter" by Slotkin (on the Battle of the Crater), and Champion's Hill by Timothy Smith, you have what I feel to be excellent accounts of how things went down on a tactical level.

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Fri Feb 24, 2012 11:24 am 
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I was going to suggest Griffith's "Battle Tactics" also. It is interesting that he mentions that it was difficult to get troops to charge the enemy all the way, that they tended to stop and fire and lost momentum. Melee is never mentioned by name, rather close assault . Melee is a not an infantry drill after all.

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 Post subject: Re: Meleeing
PostPosted: Sat Feb 25, 2012 10:44 am 
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I have that one as well but Nosworthy's is probably the better study. Another good one is "The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth" by Hess. It is more narrowly focused but takes on the question of whether the Rifle really changed warfare that much. All of these books are heavily filled with useless background information and just little tibits of useful sprinkled through them.

All seem to agree the rifle didn't significantly change warfare even into the Twenthy Century. Most firefights still occurred at under 120 yards and muskets were just as effective making up for accuracy with more lead. The machine gun was what made WW I different. The terrain of America is what made the Civil War fight different along with the lower professionalism of the troops.

All seem to also agree that the ability of a regiment to take a position was more dependent on their training, morale and leadership than anything else. Green troops tended to stop and return fire whenever fired on effectively stopping the charge. Even elite troops were prono to this making leaders and whether they got shot on the way more important than ever in delivering a charge. The professional armies of the Napoleonic era didn't have as much problem with this since it was beaten into them to obey and keep walking no matter what.

Likewise the defender's ability to hold a position was very dependent on their training and morale. If the defender could be kept under control and hold their first volley until the enemy was in effective range which was really 100 yards for a rifle that first volley would usually stop the enemy line. The resulting fire fight so favored the defender at that distance that the withdrawal of the enemy line was a sure thing. The cornfield at Antietam is an all morning demonstration of this. The statistic that the average number shots fired in CW battles was about 12 rounds per man supports a much lower level fire fights than our games have.

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