Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Can someone please point out which Austerlitz units do not have bayonets and what PDT weapon code determines this? Going through Austerlitz manual I noticed that infantry can carry arms without bayonet:

"When units are carrying weapons that have no bayonets, as indicated in the Parameter Dialog for that weapon, then their melee strength is reduced to 1/3 of normal."

Looked through a number of OOB but I could not find any units without bayonets. Eckmuhl 1.13 patch also says this but I could not track them either.
Thanks.

_________________
General-Leytenant Alexey Tartyshev
Leib-Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment (Grenadier Drum)
1st Brigade
Guard Infantry Division
5th Guard Corps


(I don't play with with ZOC kills and Rout limiting ON)

Actually they were not used in those titles. However, they are used in future titles. For instance certain Jager units used rifles without bayonets. Also wondering if the cavalry carbines of the dismounted dragoons for Austerlitz had a bayonet. Can anyone verify this either way?

FYI - anyone wanting to add in this to your PDT files you simply add in a "-" sign after the weapon type like this:

R- 1 4 2 3 3 1 -1

And of course the "+" sign means that the weapon can fire indirectly.

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Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Thank you Bill.

I tried changing PDT and I can see that units without bayonets defend at 1/3 of their strength but cannot initiate melee.

Inability to initiate melee is the design intend or its some error on my side? I was testing using Eckmuhl 1.13.

_________________
General-Leytenant Alexey Tartyshev
Leib-Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment (Grenadier Drum)
1st Brigade
Guard Infantry Division
5th Guard Corps


(I don't play with with ZOC kills and Rout limiting ON)

I had not seen that but it sort of makes sense I guess. Remember its a rare melee type and probably I should check with Rich Hamilton and John Tiller on this to see if that is what we wanted.

_________________


Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Thanks Bill, that would be really good to find out.

A number of officers in Russian army are working on a project to reduce casualty rates in HPS battles through PDT, OOB modifications. The idea was to assign “weapons with no bayonets” to all infantry to reduce unrealistically high casualties in melees.

We already achieved this with cavalry by liming a number of troops per hex and cavalry battles are lot less bloody now.

With infantry, this approach is less successful as it would be ridiculous to limit infantry to 300 troops per hex. Having “weapons with no bayonets” assigned would resolve this perfectly. Of course if they cannot initiate melee this idea is not going ahead.

_________________
General-Leytenant Alexey Tartyshev
Leib-Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment (Grenadier Drum)
1st Brigade
Guard Infantry Division
5th Guard Corps


(I don't play with with ZOC kills and Rout limiting ON)

Probably the best way to hold down casualties is to not melee as often. In our games I see far too much meleeing. But I know what you mean. Cavalry actions rarely saw as many losses as we see. They usually had maybe 10-12 men hors de combat per REGIMENT in a melee. Its was a matter of who drove the other off that mattered.

However, one aspect that you may be missing on the cavalry melee thought is the condition of the horses. Also Disorder and Blown are not the same thing.

Sigh, the engine is dated and we do the best we can with it. Its been nice to get in all of the mods we have seen.

_________________


Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

I just got a fix for this from John Tiller for Austerlitz. You will have to wait for the next update to get it. Thanks again for pointing this out!

_________________


Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Prinz Peters von Dennewitz

3. Husaren-Regiment, Reserve-Kavallerie, Preußischen Armee-Korps

Honarary CO of Garde-Ulanen Regiment, Garde-Grenadier Kavallerie

NWC Founding Member

For Club Games: I prefer the Single Phase mode of play. I prefer to play with the following options OFF:

MDF, VP4LC, NRO, MTD, CMR, PR, MIM, NDM, OMR (ver 4.07)

Agree. But players rely too much on melee because they act rationally under current conditions. Its only when game mechanics will have disincentives to use melee, players will start relying more on muskets.

We kind of achieved this by limiting cavalry to 300 per hex. Now cavalry vs cavalry battles tend to produce a lot of disorder and routing (becuase of morale reduction we implepented) but only 5-6% casualty rates. A typical cavalry clash melee in our mod would involve 400-500 cavalrymen from both sides and casualties will be around 20-30 from both sides.

Another major argument in favour of limiting cavalry to 300 per hex is that cavalry battle formation was a two-ranks line - hence the maximum number of cavalry to fit into 100m hex is about 250. Any other following behind did not have a chance to use thier weapons. For that reason cavalry used columns for charge extremly rarely as it was not efficcient.

However, in HPS we usually get massive clashes of up to thousands horsemen packed into 100m by 100m which also results in massive casualites but no one routs. Further problem, is that for the purpose of meelee losses calculation HPS engine will take into account every single cavalryman in the attaking hex. Hence we believe 300 cav per hex is more realistic than original settings. Of course other conditions like horses fatigue is harder to simulate.


thank you very much for raising this with game desiners, looking forward to new update – we can assign weapons with no bayonets to all infantry and hopefully melee will look far more realistic than it is now.

_________________
General-Leytenant Alexey Tartyshev
Leib-Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment (Grenadier Drum)
1st Brigade
Guard Infantry Division
5th Guard Corps


(I don't play with with ZOC kills and Rout limiting ON)

Bill and Alexey,

That issue of the no bayonets and restricting the cav per hex are trying to achieve the same purpose, reducing the casualties inflicted by melee whilst still achieving an outcome which includes appropriate fatigue and moral loss.
Surely then have Fatigue, Quality, Position and Command being more important factors/modifiers in melee resolution and reduce the casualty effect from melee?
Personally I think those factors need increasing and this would go some way to achieving the reduction in melee type combat I'm sure most of us agree on but have lived with as part of the system restrictions.
Is that hard to do or is it too much variation?
I like the ideas and the intent. Seems the outcome could be worth the changes.

Exaaaaactly Mike… We thought about this as well. For that reason we set the initial fatigue levels to 150. The outcome is that a typical infantry unit of 400-500 men will lose some of its combat effectiveness (due to above 300 fatigue) as it gains 15-20% losses. Less combat effective units ready to die to the last man > less casualties.
With cavalry this issue is even more extreme. Small squadrons of 100 men hardly ever gain fatigue and despite ridiculous losses of beyond 50-60-70% are still combat effective and nothing stops the player from sending them into another charge until total annihilation.

To fix this issue we limited the number of cavalry units per hex to TWO (through PDT) and increased initial cavalry fatigue (through scenario editor) to 225 and we also modified OOB so average cavalry squadron is set to 120 (min is 95 max is 150). Now the cavalry progressively loses combat effectiveness as it gains losses and at the point of 50% casualties it does not achieve breakeven points in melee versus an infantry battalion. Neither can you concentrate them into unhistorical formations of above 300 horsemen per hex.

But frankly this is just a fraction of the changes we made. We are at the advanced stages of the testing and hopefully in about a month time we will be able to share all the details (about 20 pages of text). If someone is intrested in the draft please let me know.

As I said earlier, unfortunately the idea if taking bayonets away from infantry is not going ahead for now because of the melee glitch, but having this in the future will allow some historicity concerned players (and I believe there are a few in NWC) to improve the experience through a simple PDT fix.

PS. Oh.. forgot to add that we are also recruiting an Editor-in-Chief who would be able to spend a couple of evenings to put the final document in more grammatically correct and simple English.

_________________
General-Leytenant Alexey Tartyshev
Leib-Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment (Grenadier Drum)
1st Brigade
Guard Infantry Division
5th Guard Corps


(I don't play with with ZOC kills and Rout limiting ON)

Alexey,

I like the efforts, especially in regards to reducing casualties and hex stacking. I am however very wary of changing things without giving additional weight to factors such as tactical position (high ground, cover, flanks rear etc), degrees and strength of support and threat, Officer presence effect.
The increase in effect of cav back to the x5 I think is also something that should help in regards a number of related areas.
I would be interested in reading what you have done and would also offer my time to do the Editor-in-Chief job, as a first reading only (as I'm no English teacher), but do have a good understanding of wargame/orders/intent/process that I think would achieve what your after intially.

Let me know, m.ellwood06@yahoo.com

Thanks Mike - the document has been sent.

_________________
General-Leytenant Alexey Tartyshev
Leib-Guard Preobrazhensky Regiment (Grenadier Drum)
1st Brigade
Guard Infantry Division
5th Guard Corps


(I don't play with with ZOC kills and Rout limiting ON)