American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Have played a few scenarios including currently with Dan Little John, three days starting with only 350 ammo level for CS, and I assume 500 for US?

Based on my study of Civil War history for this campaign, one thing they were not lacking was ammo, for small arms or artillery. The only issue the CS ever had with ammo was the fuses on the case shot and shells, would not work well.

Why are the ammo levels in this game so low?
Don

_________________
Your Obediant Servant,

Donald Vandergriff
Brigadier General, CSA
Commanding 7th Brigade
Army of Mississippi

Long Technical Answer.

When building a scenario you create an Ammo level setting for each side. In your scenario lets say there are 500 Union shells and 350 Rebel shells.

Next...

There are two different ways Artillery Ammo can be used in the optional rules. If you have Artillery Ammo by Cannon selected than it will double the ammo to 1000/700. The reason is that each cannon will fire one shot. So a 6-gun Union battery will use 6 shells. Leaving the Yanks with 994 shells. A single Rebel gun firing will leave the Rebs with 699 shells.

If the option is not selected it will then start you with the default level of 500/350. When the same 6 Union guns fire it will cost them one round leaving them 499 left. The single Reb gun will fire and cost you as many shells as the Union did though they fired 5 more guns. After both batteries fired it would be 499/349 left despite the Yanks firing 5 more guns.


Thats the techincal answer at least.


Why are ammo levels set to what they are? Now that one is something I am not sure of. I am sure they use some sort of measuring stick but I couldn't tell you for sure. Be happy the ammo levels or low though. Otherwise those gun-happy Yanks would just try to fight all their battles rolling cannon forward like some giant tank. Yank infantry ain't worth spit

Artillery ammo is a hard one to set because of the various things that affect it and how the game simulates it. Artillery didn't carry all that much ammo with it and only had limited access to more ammo from the artillery trains. While it isn't difficult to come up with a number for any major battle as to how many shot, shell or canister the guns had, it is difficult to turn this into a reasonable number for the game. The game number doesn't respresent how many rounds the gun has but how long it can fire in 20 minutes segaments of time. It is further complicated by the fact that the game doesn't track ammo by type and allows ammo to automatically be evenly distributed across the entire battlefield.

This is further messed up by the fact we as players over use artillery as compared to actual Civil War use. The game makes this worse by giving us very little control over the ammo useage especially by single gun sections if you aren't using the one gun one shot rule.

So it all ends up in the scenario designers lap as to whether he feels the particular scenario should limit artillery useage or not. In Gettysburg there were know limits to both sides. Lee couldn't bring all the ammo wagons he would have liked to have north with him. Hunt made sure the Union army was over supplied with ammo. Three day battles which will consume large amounts of artillery ammo are prone to having limitations. One day battles are often short enough that the ammo carried by the limbers is more than enough to get them through the battle.

So its the designers call but you can second guess him by changing the numbers in the parameter file.

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

Actually the artillery ammo is set in the Scenario file not the PDT and can be changed with the Scenario Editor, you can find an intro to using the editor at http://home.comcast.net/~acwco_engineering/

_________________
Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

3/1/II
Chief of Staff
AotP

Thanks Ken, will try it. Can you do it after you have began the scenario? Can I go into the files that Dan and are playing and update the ammo?

Don

_________________
Your Obediant Servant,

Donald Vandergriff
Brigadier General, CSA
Commanding 7th Brigade
Army of Mississippi

Once you start a scenario the info from the .scn file is transferred to the bte file and saved in it every turn so changes to the .scn file will have no affect. The .pdt file along with the .map and .oob files on the other hand are called by the bte file every time you load it so changes to them will show up right away.

If you didn't use encryption you could edit the .bte file with a text editor or if it's a campaign the .cpf file and increase the artillery ammo. You'll find the ammo numbers just above the .map listing in the .bte and .cpf files.

_________________
Gen. Ken Miller



The McKeesport Union Guard

3/1/II
Chief of Staff
AotP