American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Mike,

It's already been done.

Keep in mind, that since the enemy can't move a captured arty battery because horses and cassions would not be available during the heat of battle, it stands to reason that spiked arty should have the same limitations. Also, if friendly units think it necessary to spike their own arty in the face of an enemy attack, it also stands to reason that they were unable to move them. Perhaps the horses were killed.

This alteration was made with the consensus of the other designers.


<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by mihalik</i>
<br />Hi, Rich,

If I might humbly suggest, don't bother with the change. Spiking, as I understand it, didn't affect the mobility of the gun, only its operation. If the spiked battery is overrun, it is uncrewed, and why would anyone want to recrew a spiked battery? On the other hand, if for some reason the enemy didn't overrun it, the owning player ought to be able to move it to safety. Anyway, just my $.02 worth.

MG Mike Mihalik
1/III/AoMiss/CSA
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Capt. 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 Ernie Sands</i>
You may recrew your own guns, with a undisrupted, unmoved infantry/cavalry unit that has a minimum of 25 men per gun. ONLY cavalry may recrew horse artillery.

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

ACWGC Cabinet member
</b></font id="gold">
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When, oh, when are we going to fix the artillery crew size problems in these games? To recrew a battery you need 25 men per gun, but to mow down an entire battery crew with rifle fire they only count as 8 men per gun? Meaning you only need a 16 man kill to uncrew a 2 gun battery (i.e. most Reb batteries) but would still need a 32 or 48 man kill in order to uncrew a standard Union battery of 4 or 6 guns, which is an almost impossible fire result under most settings unless perhaps you have an 800 man unit at one hex with muskets?

Don't guns also melee at 8 men, or is it 25? However it is done, they should all be standardized. If it takes 25 men per gun to recrew, then it should take 25 men per gun for melees and for uncrewed battery fire results as well.

Regards,

Brig. Gen. Alan Lynn
2nd Div, II Corps, AoA
VMI Training Staff

God Bless <><

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by ALynn</i>
<br />[quote]

When, oh, when are we going to fix the artillery crew size problems in these games? To recrew a battery you need 25 men per gun, but to mow down an entire battery crew with rifle fire they only count as 8 men per gun? Meaning you only need a 16 man kill to uncrew a 2 gun battery (i.e. most Reb batteries) but would still need a 32 or 48 man kill in order to uncrew a standard Union battery of 4 or 6 guns, which is an almost impossible fire result under most settings unless perhaps you have an 800 man unit at one hex with muskets?

Don't guns also melee at 8 men, or is it 25? However it is done, they should all be standardized. If it takes 25 men per gun to recrew, then it should take 25 men per gun for melees and for uncrewed battery fire results as well.
Regards,

Brig. Gen. Alan Lynn
2nd Div, II Corps, AoA
VMI Training Staff
God Bless <><
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Interesting, I wondered why the HPS guns were so prone to crew kills. Looks like the better solution is to use the HPS Nappy system of infantry fire taking out equivalent guns. It would elliminate gun capture and recrewing but I think in the overal situation it would better simulate the effect of rifle fire on batteries. Rifle fire tended to elliminate the ability to move and fire the gun either by horse or crew kills. Who captured the guns depended on who held the field at the end of the day.

MG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
III Corps, AoM (CSA)

I'm not sure what the best solution would be. If we made it fixed at 25 men for both, then wouldn't the 6 guns batteries be immune to attack. You would need a kill result of 150 men! I think the answer is simply to better defend your smaller batteries. Use the terrain and other available modifiers.

Capt. 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 />I'm not sure what the best solution would be. If we made it fixed at 25 men for both, then wouldn't the 6 guns batteries be immune to attack. You would need a kill result of 150 men! I think the answer is simply to better defend your smaller batteries. Use the terrain and other available modifiers.

Capt. Richard Walker
I Corps
Army of the Mississippi
2nd Brigade, 3rd Division
"Defenders of Tennessee"
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That still gives a relative advantage to larger batteries, which means mostly that the Yanks have the advantage in almost every case, and God knows their guns cause us Rebs enough trouble as it is!!! [:D] Especially in a game like Peninsula where almost ALL of the Reb batteries are of the 1 or 2 gun variety it makes crew kills much easier for the Yanks to get than for the Rebs. At least a feature allowing for individual guns to be lost instead of the entire battery crew would level the playing field - yes, the Yank batteries would still have more guns and take longer to whittle down, but at least it could be done and the chances would be equal for a single gun loss for both sides instead of having a very notable advantage for one side or the other in complete crew kills.

Regards,

Brig. Gen. Alan Lynn
2nd Div, II Corps, AoA
VMI Training Staff

God Bless <><

I understand that due to the various calibers of weapons used the Confederate artillery is essentially represented at section strength. If this is correct, then the only way to balance everything out is to represent the Union artillery at the section level as well.

In those situations where a section only has a single gun then it either needs to be rolled into an existing 2 guns section, possibly sacrificing historical gun mix accuracy, or not represent the gun at all, possibly sacrificing historical number of guns available accuracy.

Niether choice is 100%, and the designer has to decide what he feels is best, but having one army with 6 gun counters and the other army with 2 gun counters is inheirently unbalanced in favor to the larger battery.



MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos
3rd "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, Cavalry Division, XX Corps, AoC
The Union Forever! Huzzah!

I agree about the single gun batteries. But as you say, that's a designer's choice. Your comment about "balance" is interesting. I have for a long time found that most players feel the games (on average) favor the confederates. Perhaps, taking the one Union advantage away, would further "unbalance" the games. Also, 6 gun batteries are risky. If lost, they become a huge burden to bare. In my new title, I have several of the more important battles with all batteries being sectionalized, in addition to being kept whole. So players can choose to play with either sectional or whole batteries. Both Franklin and Shiloh OOBs offer up batteries to be whole or sectionalized. So an energitic soul could edit the scns to have sectional arty. Feel free to use them and offer your alternatives as a download to the group.

BTW, I'm not in favor of changing the engine to take guns away as a result of rifle fire. Having played these ACW Tiller games from day one (TS to HPS), that's too big a change for me to contemplate. So let's not dwell on that issue too much. Sorry!

I heard many complaints that in Gettysburgs, there are too many 2 gun batteries. They cost too much in VPs and take too long to move and have too little effect during combat firing. In short, there is no perfect answer and we simply can't get a universal consensus on many issues.

But let's keep trying!!!


Capt. 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 />I'm not sure what the best solution would be. If we made it fixed at 25 men for both, then wouldn't the 6 guns batteries be immune to attack. You would need a kill result of 150 men! I think the answer is simply to better defend your smaller batteries. Use the terrain and other available modifiers.

Capt. Richard Walker I Corps
Army of the Mississippi
2nd Brigade, 3rd Division
"Defenders of Tennessee"
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Depends on how the game actually determines a kill. Does it require a casualty result from the equation greater than what it considers the crew size to be or does it use the number to determine the probability of a kill (similar to what it does for determining whether to check for disrupt). If it uses probability then the whole thing may even out statistically but I have done the math.

I think the crew problem could be easily addressed by just always using sections for both sides. All batteries were organized as 2-3 sections anyway and many were deployed by section not battery. It does create a road stacking problem but I think its minor compared to others.

The more critical problem I feel is the ammo usage of guns. <font color="red">We need artillery ammo usage to be based on number of guns not the counter.</font id="red"> As is we are force into very gamey tactics of having to withdraw any section that get reduced and sending any section that is started with only one gun to the rear in order to conserve ammo. Any scenario with limited artillery ammo has this problem. Even the Yankees started suffering from it since some of the Peninsula scenarios gave them pretty limited ammo. In many of my Gettysburg campaign games I find by the final battle over a third of my artillery is useless due to reductions.

MG. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
III Corps, AoM (CSA)

"It does create a road stacking problem ..."

Which I feel is an historical problem. Commanders had to deal with more traffic control issues than we do. This leads us to be more mobile and flexible with our armies than they were historically which leads us to employ blitzkrieg tactics which leads us to griping about said tactics.


MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos
3rd "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, Cavalry Division, XX Corps, AoC
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 Bill Peters</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Al Amos</i>
<br />"It does create a road stacking problem ..."

Which I feel is an historical problem. Commanders had to deal with more traffic control issues than we do. This leads us to be more mobile and flexible with our armies than they were historically which leads us to employ blitzkrieg tactics which leads us to griping about said tactics.


MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos
3rd "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, Cavalry Division, XX Corps, AoC
The Union Forever! Huzzah!

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TOTALLY agree with you Al. GMT Games ACW series has it right. When a unit over a certain size moves in road mode it occupies two hexes and some large units like the Vermont regiments take up 3 hexes.

This is missing from the games. Something that I wish we could see ...

Bill Peters
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This is the Reb problem in Campaign Peninsula, were all of our batteries are broken down by section and therefore take up a single road hex for 2 or sometimes 1 gun, whereas the Yanks larger batteries only take up one hex for 4 or 6 guns. This means that the Yank can move his columns comparitively faster on roads than the Reb because the Reb columns will snake out farther as a result of the smaller gun sections. So we either must leave all or most guns at the rear of any columns and risk being outgunned up front on the line by the larger Union batteries, or else we keep guns with their brigades and face being momentarilly outmanned by larger numbers of Union infantry since their column isn't broken up by 6 road hexes worth of artillery before the next infantry brigade arrives, etc.

Regards,

Brig. Gen. Alan Lynn
2nd Div, II Corps, AoA
VMI Training Staff

God Bless <><

Guys,

One MAJOR MAJOR problem with: <i>We need artillery ammo usage to be based on number of guns not the counter.</i> It would negate every scn in the series. Every scn would have to have it's ammo supply recalculated and adjusted. Speaking for myself, I don't think it would be worth the effort. Sorry, but I'm trying to be honest. I like the concept, but it may be too late for that type of adjustment.

On the other hand, there will be more engine changes. We are always trying to make the games better.

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

???????? [:0]

Wow! What a response. No offence, but wow!

I suspect if each designer would have a formula for how many ammo points per gun per turn they would find a host of volunteers to help make the needed adjustments.

MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos
3rd "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, Cavalry Division, XX Corps, AoC
The Union Forever! Huzzah!

Al,

Not impossible, but very time consuming.

First you would have to count each tube used in each scn. You can't just count from the OOB. Then determine the position of each tube for usage probabilities. Example, a 6 gun battery deployed on the front lines vs. a 6 gun battery arriving from on off map position late in the game. Also, each scn has it's own varibles that each designer considers before determining ammo supply.

You can't just do a quick adjustment, if you want it to be right.



<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Al Amos</i>
<br />???????? [:0]

Wow! What a response. No offence, but wow!

I suspect if each designer would have a formula for how many ammo points per gun per turn they would find a host of volunteers to help make the needed adjustments.

MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos
3rd "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, Cavalry Division, XX Corps, AoC
The Union Forever! Huzzah!

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

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

"You can't just do a quick adjustment, if you want it to be right."

Okay, you win.

You designers crack me up! [:p]



MajGen Al 'Ambushed' Amos
3rd "Amos' Ambushers" Bde, Cavalry Division, XX Corps, AoC
The Union Forever! Huzzah!

Kudos to the report herein that now permits the capture / re-capture and spiking of the heavy ordnance on the battlefield. Something a few of us have been thinkin' bout since our proposed "Battleground II" Housekeeping List back on the TS boards.

Again, congratulations for moving forward magnificently on this feature!

Now, a tweak or two to 1) temper the Turn-based game play option and 2) forward at the "Friendly FOG" end of our 200 Foot foible, and there's more light at the end of the gun barrel, eh? [^] --Denny

(shoeless) Secretary of the Cabinet, CSA (Ret.)
1st Tenn Provisional Army


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