Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Is this something that could be tested without much fiddling with OOB/PDT files ?

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[img]</center>
<center>Monsieur le Marechal Baron John Corbin
Duc de Paive
Commanding the Division de Cavalerie de la Jeune Garde
NWC President</center>

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by John Corbin</i>
<br />Is this something that could be tested without much fiddling with OOB/PDT files ?
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John, it requires a simple change to the pdt file. I've been using it for a good while now, ever since I got sick of stacks of 8 x 25 man rifle armed skirmishers in BGW, racing around the map shooting up cavalry. With either a change to the 1-2 FP line, or the addition of a new 1FP line, that can only cause fatigue; then even with the +2 mod vs cavalry, the best this stack can do is cause a fatigue hit. Conversely, a larger company (say 75 men), unmoved, will still be able to fire on the 3-4 FP line and inflict casualties.

In general it means that skirmishers will be a nuisance factor in that they will fatigue the enemy formations, but more usually at the rate of 1 point / phase rather than the 1 for casualties and a second for fatigue; will cause less disorder and so will be less of an influence on the outcome of the game.

Works for me anyhow [:)]

Mark

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Mark Eason</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by John Corbin</i>
<br />Is this something that could be tested without much fiddling with OOB/PDT files ?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

John, it requires a simple change to the pdt file. I've been using it for a good while now, ever since I got sick of stacks of 8 x 25 man rifle armed skirmishers in BGW, racing around the map shooting up cavalry. With either a change to the 1-2 FP line, or the addition of a new 1FP line, that can only cause fatigue; then even with the +2 mod vs cavalry, the best this stack can do is cause a fatigue hit. Conversely, a larger company (say 75 men), unmoved, will still be able to fire on the 3-4 FP line and inflict casualties.

In general it means that skirmishers will be a nuisance factor in that they will fatigue the enemy formations, but more usually at the rate of 1 point / phase rather than the 1 for casualties and a second for fatigue; will cause less disorder and so will be less of an influence on the outcome of the game.

Works for me anyhow [:)]

Mark
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Instaed of just asking John to do this, we should test thoroughly first and see if any unexpected results crop up.


<center>
[img]</center>
<center>Monsieur le Marechal Baron John Corbin
Duc de Paive
Commanding the Division de Cavalerie de la Jeune Garde
NWC President</center>

The new firetable together with a few more improvements is available at NS.
I fought at Borodino twice (NIR) using reduced FP for skirmishes and I am running PTW game now. There were no any unexpected results- the change works well.

Moreover, as I said earlier French superiority in Light troops in PTW is still overwhelming and I think it would not harm to reduce the FP at FP2 & FP3 even further. Now French lights can cause 2-3 fatigue per turn per Prussian battalion they are in contact with. After a couple of hours the whole Prussian line gets red fatigue. Note: in my game Prussian fusiliers are allowed to detach a company of skirmishes but that’s still not enough to form a line of skirmishes.

Mark Eason, don’t get me wrong- I do not advocate the reduction of FP for artillery. I am just saying that by breaking the batteries of 8 guns into two units (Russian 12 into 3 units) would be good balance between playability and historicity.

Currently concentrated artillery FP prevents BG players to follow the historical strategy and tactics. I think the problem lies in the game engine and turn based system where a player can protect his batteries by infantry and ZOC and be sure that nothing will be able to reach and overrun his guns in a next 15 minutes. Meanwhile he can safely enjoy firing canister at the advancing enemy form 3 hexes (2 hexes if possibility of cavalry attack is excluded). On the other hand there is no other way for attacker to attack. He is forced to approach and get canister shot from the enemy battery. On other occasions of course any sensible player would try to hide his units.

One unit 8 guns have devastating FP at range 2-3-4. Two units of 4 guns will cause fewer casualties statistically, but arguably the same disorder and more fatigue. No longer artillery FP of 24-32 guns will make a “safe areaâ€

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i></i>
<br />I agree with Mark completely and well said sir. The artillery in the Napoleonic wars was lethal at close range due to a combination of the dense formations of the targets and the machine gun like effect of canister. if you read your history you will find numerous accounts of the terrible damage canister did to whole formations. A good commander should allow for this exactly as Mark suggests.

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But still Napoleon was able to attack frontally at two places simultaneously for 6 hours and loose only 10,000 men and Prussian lost even more.
If the French player will try the same at PTW he will run out of men much sooner then 6 hours. On the other hand Prussian casualties will be MUCH lower and artillery will be the MAIN reason for that.
(Of course all provided that opponents are roughly the same skilful)

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