Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

I will hope that the designers will listen to the masses [^], and make artillery fire automatic. It is far to easy to wipe out an artillery park. I am all for the vagaries of battle, but in the heat of battle, I doubt the artillery crew would be asleep or quivering in fear when a 750 man Bn is in close support.

Napoleon's soldiers do not sleep on the job [8D].

Love the games, regardless. Keep up the fine work Bill.

Marechal Mitchell
Duc de Rivoli
Comte de Bordeaux
1er Regiment de Grenadiers a Pied, Veille Garde
1er Division D'Infanterie, I Corps AdN

Which game was this in? I ask this, because they are not all up to the same level of "patching" and that may make a real difference here.

FM Freiherr Gary McClellan
Generalissimus Imperial Austrian Army
Portner Grenadier Battallion
Allied Coalition C-in-C

HPS Eckmuhl

Marechal Mitchell
Duc de Rivoli
Comte de Bordeaux
1er Regiment de Grenadiers a Pied, Veille Garde
1er Division D'Infanterie, I Corps AdN

BTW it is a custom sceanrio maybe it makes a difference.


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General d. Infanterie v. Naujoks
Prinz von Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Kommandeur 1.Infanteriebrigade
Armee d. Niederrhein

"Für Gott und Vaterland"

Eckmühl 1.09


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General d. Infanterie v. Naujoks
Prinz von Mecklenburg-Schwerin
Kommandeur 1.Infanteriebrigade
Armee d. Niederrhein

"Für Gott und Vaterland"

Mr Mitchell,

One test is not sufficient to recall the system. I recommend you play a couple of dozen battles against human opponents to get a solid feel of the HPS games.

BTW, did you have the advantage slider set against the French?

Colonel Al Amos
1erè Brigade Commandant
2ème Division de Dragons

Al, I don't think my inexperience with the game engine is a factor, not that I know it all, far from it. But I have been a member since 1998 and playing the HPS titles since they came out.


Nor am I suggesting a recall, just looking for some input from members who may be able to offer an explanation for the lack of action by the artillery.

No advantage in the slider, at least I hope not !

I am very much enjoying your custom scenarios, I did not mean by my comments to suggest that the problem was with them.

Regards



Marechal Mitchell
Duc de Rivoli
Comte de Bordeaux
1er Regiment de Grenadiers a Pied, Veille Garde
1er Division D'Infanterie, I Corps AdN

This issue is not new and IMHO is a major flaw in the single phase system. The defensive fire is too weak and there are certain situations (like the one described) where the system fails completely. The suggested fix was that artillery (or any defender) should fire defensively 100% of the time prior to melee -- even if they had fired when the attacking units moved adjacent. But this fix has yet to appear in the updates so we wait... and complain.

FM Sir 'Muddy' Jones, KG
2nd Life Guards, Household Cavalry

My good Marechal,

Don't let the opponent EVER get next to artillery with an opportunity to melee. The guns will never save themselves even in BG. I have seen guns devastate and enemy approach in the MOE III tourney, but my guns could not be physically reached by my opponenet. So they advanced, got shot at and disordered, then I moved, they got shot again, then charged into their flanks by a couple thousand Lancers and Dragoons. No more threat to the guns! (Who BTW, shot the survivors again on the way down the hill!!!).

But you can't let the enemy get next to them or they are gone. Artillery is very fragile in the HPS system and almost useless without playing with the embedded melee rules.

General de Division Doug Fuller
Duc de Montmorail et Comte de Hainaut
2e' Grenadiers a' Pied de la Vielle Garde
I Corp Commander
AdN

Were the French Infantry in line formation and on the top of the stack? If so, no units stacked with a line and "behind" them will fire. This is not the case if the unit was in column formation.

Lt. Bill Spitz
1/27th Regiment of Foot (The Inniskillings)
10th Brigade, 6th Division
Anglo-Allied Army

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Tomate_Frit</i>
<br />In my humble opinion, bring back the BG guns please. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Slightly off the topic but in my opinion artillery firepower (AFP) is also an issue in BG. Although it is completely opposite issue.

I mean in BG games defence can rely on pure AFP. For example, in PTW the defender can deploy Prussian artillery just behind the creek and concentrate AFP on crossing hexes. The crossings themselves can be defended by a couple skirmish coys and by ZOC from a few battalions in a line.

This deployment almost excludes the possibility of crossing the river for the French. They will suffer horrific losses if they would try to cross, not to mention routs. On the other hand French can try the same and to place their artillery opposite the crossings and to annihilate Prussian battalions defending the crossings.

In this manner the whole battle transforms into one big massacre with no major forces in contact but artillery slaughtering each others infantry. In this environment both opponents try to hide their infantry in dead zones and it reminds cat and mouse game with artillery being a cat.

Overall, from my experience AFP dictates the battle. This is especially true for NIR where 12 gun batteries massacre everything that approaches them.

Furthermore, Russian AFP actually forces the French to rely purely on melee ignoring the historically common musket fire, simply because they cant afford to use their muskets under Russian artillery fire.

I thought the possible solution to this would be to modify OOB and reduce a number of guns per unit. Like having 2 artillery units with 4 guns per unit instead of 1 unit of 8 guns. Same for Russian batteries – 3 batteries of 4 guns each instead of one 12 gun battery.

With split units artillery still will have a decent chance to hit 25 men on medium distances and accordingly cause routing, cause fatigue on long-ranges and will be deadly enough on close ranges. Artillery role will be breaking the assaults by disordering, routing and causing combat fatigue, NOT killing everyone as it is now. Moreover, this might reduce the unhistorical number of casualties in BG games.

On the other hand attacking force will have a chance to withstand the fire without having 30-50% losses. Finally, the defender would not be able to rely purely on AFP. No longer a gamey defence of 5-6 batteries and 3-4 battalions holding a division or even a corps.

Your thoughts?



Captain Alexey Tartyshev
Moscow Grenadiers Regiment
2nd Grenadier Division
8th Infantry Corps
2nd Army of the West (NWC)

If you are hoping that artillery will STOP a melee you are blowing smoke. It just wont happen for the most part.

Artillery was best at grazing fire, disordering infantry/cavalry formations and generally causing losses OVER THE LONG HAUL.

Point blank fire may be effective in a Hollywood movie but rarely would the gunners hang around to fire at 40 meters or less. Russians being the exception.

Note that if you look at the game statistically you will find that more losses will occur from D fire at targets from 3-6 hexes. If you can position your guns so that they get in ALOT of shots over the long haul you are going to see more losses at those ranges.

The higher fire value at closer ranges is mainly to compensate for the lack of fire opportunities they get due to the AI not firing them.

I am against automatic fire from a battery for the simple reason that the gunners would take refuge ...

I am for the 100 percent value if they DO fire.

Contact Rich with your ideas. I am sure that he is considering the ACW method of D-fire for artillery but I fail to see how it will change the outcome. Units that disorder can be reinforced.

Where the point blank fire should be taken into consideration is when you commit to the melee ... meaning when you push the Assault button. That way the attacker couldnt call off an attack by a unit that closed with the guns.

Thus I am for it being a part of the melee. That is the 100 percent value for artillery. And really even then it should be a die roll if it happens.

I would like to see the same artillery capture rules added to this series.

Contact Rich at the Support email about this. Callers are standing by to take your call! (HPS Telethon pun)

Bill Peters
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

I am a non-smoker Bill ! My complaint had nothing at all to do with the stopping power of 8 guns in a melee.

To repeat, this was during a night turn, so there was no opportunity to fire at the advancing units from three/four hexes away.

But when the Austrian Bn's landed in the hex directly in front of my guns, only the French Inf Bn (in Column) fired at the Austrians. The Austrian units then initiated a melee against this stack and again only the French infantry Bn fired on the Austrians.

The French battery had two opportunities to fire and did not on either occasion. I am sure if it had fired, the resulting losses/disorder would have stopped the attack, which is what you would think would happen.


Marechal Mitchell
Duc de Rivoli
Comte de Bordeaux
1er Regiment de Grenadiers a Pied, Veille Garde
1er Division D'Infanterie, I Corps AdN

Yes, I saw your situation. Doesnt matter if its at day or night.

Frankly the guns at night WOULDNT fire for fear of hitting their own men.

Can add in other reasons too like maybe they are sleeping.

We have alot of things in the game that need to be added. However, auto fire is not the answer.

Bill Peters
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]

I would like to hear back from you guys whether you like having the guns worth 20 or 30 men per gun for melee.

In other words using the 20 man model of the upcoming Eckmuhl update does this cost you more guns lost on the average than if they were worth 30 men as per Jena.

What Rich and I dont want is gun fortresses like you had in NIR. The Russian guns were REALLY hard to take out in some cases in melee, lore of their gunner's prowess in battle notwithstanding.

While the gunners did fight for their pieces at the same time they were not mobile bunkers.

The entire issue of the auto fire is something that Rich and John will decide. I do know that an update which features the latest artillery rules for the ACW series is a strong posibility for the Nap series. I cant say when it could happen but the prospect of recrewing and spiking guns is more of a WHEN than IF.

Bill Peters
HPS Napoleonic Scenario Designer (Eckmuhl, Wagram, Jena-Auerstaedt and ... more to come)

[url="http://www.fireandmelee.net"]Fire and Melee Wargame site[/url]