American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

I'm sure that this topic has been covered before, but I can't find anything in the designer notes as to why a 50% reduction in fire strength is made when using Automatic Defensive Fire in the HPS games! Can someone explain this to me? I note that there is no such reduction when using the Manual Defensive Fire option.

It seems as if HPS has presented the PBEM player with a poor choice in either playing a quicker game with lousy defensive fire penalties, or having to play a longer game to get a more realistic defensive fire capability. Simply put, cannot HPS provide an ADF without the 50% reduction as an option?

Col. Jos. C. Meyer,
4th "California" Brg'd, Cav. Div., 14th Corps, Army of the Cumberland

The short answer is simply to compensate for the potential number of times a unit can fire. During manual def fire, a unit can fire only once. With ADF, they can fire many times (potentially).

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

<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 />The short answer is simply to compensate for the potential number of times a unit can fire. During manual def fire, a unit can fire only once. With ADF, they can fire many times (potentially).

Lt. Col. Richard Walker
I Corps
Army of the Mississippi
2nd Brigade, 3rd Division
"Defenders of Tennessee"
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

....but that "potentially" can be a killer sometimes. [8D]

General Mark Nelms
6/3/IX/AoO
"Blackhawk Brigade"
Union Military Academy Instructor
Union Cabinet Secretary

I'd like to see 100% ADF, and consider every shot a single volley. Each volley can result in low ammo, so I think that is where balance would come in. Add it as a Optional Rule would be fine, too.

MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos

The Union Forever! Huzzah!

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Joe Meyer</i>
<br />I'm sure that this topic has been covered before, but I can't find anything in the designer notes as to why a 50% reduction in fire strength is made when using Automatic Defensive Fire in the HPS games! Can someone explain this to me? I note that there is no such reduction when using the Manual Defensive Fire option.

It seems as if HPS has presented the PBEM player with a poor choice in either playing a quicker game with lousy defensive fire penalties, or having to play a longer game to get a more realistic defensive fire capability. Simply put, cannot HPS provide an ADF without the 50% reduction as an option?

Col. Jos. C. Meyer,
4th "California" Brg'd, Cav. Div., 14th Corps, Army of the Cumberland
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ADF only uses the half strength fire when you play in "Turn" mode. If you play in "Phased" mode with ADF the defensive fire will occur after movement and will be at full strength. Both "Turn" and "Phased" mode take the same number of email exchanges when using ADF. The difference is in "Turn" mode defensive fire occurs during movement so it can hit a unit before it reaches cover. Since it acts like an opportunity fire and can occur multiple times the designers halved its strength.

The drawback to "Turn" mode ADF is that most combat occurs between adjacent units and the defending units may not even fire when the attacker moves adjacent where it could do the most damage. A player who knows the game mechanics can exploit this using large stacks to avoid triggering fire while moving and once adjacent firing the whole stack to avoid triggering more ADF.

In "Phase" play the ADF takes place after all movement and fires at full strength. Since this is usually at attacking players after they have moved adjacent, it is quite powerful.

The most recent game, Antietam, added a partial fix for the "Turn" mode games in that melee now occurs after the movement/fire phase and includes an automatic fire against attacking units. I haven't played with this rule so I don't know how well it works.

I personally highly recomment Phased play over Turn. The only time Turn has an advantage is when playing a multiplayer game. In that it will save you some emails.

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

Thank you, Kennon, for explaining to me the subtle differences for ADF involved in "Turn" and "Phased" mode play. It will force me to more closely examine all of the issues of both modes.

In the meantime let me ask if there is possibly room for consideration of reducing the penalty to ADF in the "Turn" mode from 50% to, say, a more reasonable 25%, or even 15%?

Also, exactly what are the various triggering mechanisms for ADF and how do they operate. It all seems slightly whimsical to me in its current state. And is it true that ADF is not susceptible to ammo depletion?

Col. Jos. C. Meyer,
4th "California" Brg'd, Cav. Div., 14th Corps, Army of the Cumberland