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 Post subject: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 7:08 am 
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I'm sure this subject has been discussed before but didn't see anything on it. I fully embrace General Whiteheads explanations for use of options. They all make sense to me. Unaddressed, though, is the subject of artillery stacking. As you may know, a civil war battery of six guns took over 100 yards of space to turn into battery what with guns, crews, caissons, limbers, horses, and wagons. A game hex size is 145 yards. Yet I play opponents that delight in artillery "death stacks" of far more guns. This seems highly unrealistic especially in terrain such as woods. Moreover I view it as extremely "gamey." It would seem that a good new optional rule would be to limit artillery in a stack to six-to-eight guns (to take into account 4 gun batteries) instead of allowing death stacks. Does that make sense?


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 Post subject: Re: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 9:59 am 
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Col. Nelson <salute>

Your point is well taken, made even more so by the fact the hex size is 125 yards not 145.

I have often used this limitation as an agreed to house rule as I know you have. It would surely be a good optional rule when, if ever, JTS invests the time into updating the rules for the series.

Respectfully,

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 Post subject: Re: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 11:16 am 
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I thrive on 'death stacks' but your logic makes sense. IF they ever offered it as an option then I would play with it but I'm not one to use house rules because it requires a certain amount of intelligence to keep up with 5 different games being played with 5 different sets of rules and I don't have that amount of intelligence. I'm an extremely gamey player who lets anything be done as long as the game and the club rules allow it. I would like to expand this post though. Has anyone ever done research on firing an artillery stack (or any stack for that matter) by the battery versus the effect of firing by the stack (e.g. in a stack of four 2 tube batteries, each battery firing separately [4 separate firings] versus the 8 tubes firing together). I have always had better results by firing them all together as a stack, most particularly against artillery, but is that luck/perception or is it actually the odds in my favor?

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 Post subject: Re: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 3:46 pm 
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Well, let's think about this for a minute. Textbook deployment of a battery stresses the space between guns to minimize the density of target presented to counter battery fire. That doesn't necessarily prohibit the deployment of more guns within the same space! We've all read of ACW actions in which the guns were placed "hub-to-hub," or nearly so, as at Malvern Hill, Murfreesboro and Gettysburg. So it would appear that gun stacks are a legitimate simulation, up to a point! But so also should be factored into the game's program the stack's increased vulnerability to counter-battery fire!

(I've often thought that caisson losses are not adequately modeled into the casualty equations for counter-battery fire. But that's another issue.)

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 Post subject: Re: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 5:18 pm 
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Might as well address infantry as well. I doubt if 400 men in a double-rank line could effectively fire out of a 125-yard front let alone a thousand. At least there is a density modifier option:

Select Density Fire Modifier to have fire against a target hex with more than 2/3 of the maximum stacking increased. This increase is proportional to the stacking value up to a maximum of 150% at maximum stacking.]

I believe this works for infantry, but I haven't noticed any effect against max stack artillery.

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 Post subject: Re: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Sun Jun 28, 2020 6:25 pm 
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The best man I know who deals with these issues all the time in Robert Frost of the AotC. I'll send him a message and see if he can expand on this and offer an opinion.

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 Post subject: Re: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 3:02 pm 
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General Danner is too generous in his comment. Most of my time in the ACWGC has been spent in developing large scenarios for multi-player use. As such it has involved trying to understand Turn-based play as it is shaped by the game engine. I completed some studies years back involving the rifle, movement and opportunity fire. These are stored at the ACW Engineering site (http://acwgc-engineering.com/) if you are interested.

Since this thread involves an artillery discussion, I will stick to that. Setting a maximum number of guns in a hex other than what the system will allow depends solely on whether one is willing to employ a house rule. Artillery manuals of the time allocated a 14' distance between unlimbered guns. Allowing for one gun at each end of a 125' span, this would create an 11-gun line. A maximum stack of 12 guns per hex would make sense. In addition the game system allows an unrealistic 180 degree arc of fire for said guns. If pointed generally in the same direction, said arc would be at best 90 degrees with two 45 degree oblique angles which could not be covered short of re-positioning the guns. I throw this in the mix just to illustrate that guns have greater flexibility to deliver fire than they probably did historically.

More directly to Ned Simms' question concerning gang firing, I have actually tested that hypothesis. There are aspects of the game system -- and I am not referring to optional rules -- which appear to me to be vestiges of the Battleground series. The mechanism for firing is one such. For those who have never played the Battleground series, casualties were listed as "hits". A hit caused 25 infantry casualties or a 1-gun loss. With the advent of HPS and individual manpower losses, the dynamic changed but not the actual code for firing. The act of firing is unique code which takes the selected firing unit, the targeted unit, the parameters involved and produces a result. This result is applied and the game moves on. The next time you select a unit to fire, the same series of steps result. Each firing event retains no knowledge of what occurred during the previous fire. The previous results are stored in memory, but these results are not accessed by the firing code.

For example, an artillery unit (or infantry/cavalry) fires at an infantry unit and produces a "hit" of 7 men and commensurate fatigue. This result is applied elsewhere in memory reducing the infantry unit by 7 and adding to its fatigue. Let's assume that the firing artillery unit has a defending infantry unit and the player had chosen to gang fire both instead of each individually. The gang firing is executed as two separate events, not a combination. Let's say the second event -- the infantry portion of the gang fire -- produces a "hit" of 3 losses and commensurate fatigue. This result is applied elsewhere in memory and the total effect is 10 losses plus fatigue. The losses not only reduce the size of the targeted unit, but they are used elsewhere in morale checks.

Applying this to battery vs. battery fire provides something interesting. In order to eliminate a gun, a "hit" must consist of 25 losses. Here is where the concept of unit fire makes a difference. A 6-gun battery is much more likely to register 25 casualties with its "hit", than will a 2-gun section, or another 2-gun section, etc. Each firing is a separate event. Why should a battery have a greater chance of scoring a gun hit than its component sections? It should not, but the manner in which the game works, it does. Occasionally a 2-gun section will score a gun hit, but that requires a random good "hit" in terms of casualties. I solve part of this problem by modifying 6-gun batteries into a primary 4 and sub 2 in an OOB.

The manner in which opportunity fire works presents another disconnect between smaller and larger batteries, differences which shouldn't exist. A 6-gun battery fires defensively with a value of 3 guns. A stack of one 4-gun unit and one 2-gun section will fire, at the most, with a value of 2 guns. The Turn-based system fires by units and only once in all the testing I have ever done has it fired all of the units in a hex defensively as a gang fire. It just doesn't work this way. This gives an artificial (and significant) advantage to 6-gun battery units. Our Rebel readers will agree with this assertion.

Does everything work as I have outlined above? I don't know. Until the workings of the system are documented, or someone else does their own testing which proves me wrong, this is my story and I am sticking to it.

The question of infantry stacking/movement/fire can be discussed further in this thread or in a new one. I will hold thoughts for the moment.

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 Post subject: Re: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Mon Jun 29, 2020 9:10 pm 
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General Meyer correctly pointed out that guns could be positioned much closer and by that allowing much more guns in a hex, for this he also listed historical examples. He also pointed out that higher stacking, beyond 2/3, make any unit in such a hex more vulnerable.
I had the pleasure that a gentlemen allowed me to test this, he kept stacking a hex with as much artillery as he could, and I fired a stack of my artillery on them. Of course my rifled artillery was more effective at range and at first I got a kill every 1-2 turns, that declined when stacking in that hex lowered but he refused to acknowledge his mistake and kept stacking that hex with artillery and I kept punishing him for that.

Besides this, while the CW series is missing a max stacking for guns like the Napy series has, it seems to effectively limit them because of:
A. Max stacking is usually 1000 men.
B. Most games resort to depicts sections per counter instead of batteries.
C. Most games have max counter stacking of 7 or 8.
That limits the guns usually to 14-16, where we also see a limit of 14 guns in the Napy series.

So overall I do neither see max stacking artillery in a hex as unrealistic nor gamey, at least not so that it needs a house rule or new optional rule.
If a players goes for it make him pay for it either by killing that artillery stack or by outmaneuvering it.


PS: AFAIK the 3 hex firing arc in the CW series depicts 120 degree.

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 Post subject: Re: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Thu Jan 18, 2024 11:44 pm 
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Death to "House Rules"!

Long live John Tiller (R.I.P.) rules!

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Major General Kyle FitzMaurice
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Army of the Tennessee
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 Post subject: Re: Artillery Stacking
PostPosted: Fri Jan 19, 2024 12:53 am 
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K. Fitzmaurice wrote:
Death to "House Rules"!

Long live John Tiller (R.I.P.) rules!


Regrettably, the rules of the current version are significantly different to those in the final version issued by JTS.

The odd situation in the games (JTS & WDS [and I think Talonsoft and HPS as well]) arises due to the 1,000 man hex limit mentioned above. As the artillery units have men allocated to them according to how many guns are in that unit you then have the absurd result of up 20 guns lined up across 125 yards. After the first rounds had been fired there would be chaos, and probably quite a few men injured or killed. And then there's the smoke, you wouldn't be able to see a few yards in front of you let along sight the target.
Also, this absurd situation can usually only be achieved by the Union. The reason is that the 'counter limit' usually restricts the ability of the Confederate side to amass 20 guns in one hex before they reach the counter limit (due to artillery units usually having fewer guns). Additionally, the previous operation of the Optional Rule Mixed Organization Penalty [another absurd rule with no historical basis] meant that such stacking would suffer a morale penalty for mixing guns from different 'brigades'. [Relatively recent changes have exempted artillery from the Mixed Organization Penalty Rule.]

Therefore, the only way to bring some measure of simulation to the games in regard to artillery is to introduce a house rule imposing a maximum of eight, or six, guns per hex at all times. Eight being the absolute maximum number of guns that could unlimber in 125 yards to operate their guns. Further details and references that support this argument can be found here (https://wargame.ch/board/acwgc/viewtopic.php?f=134&t=22657#p119421).
[The maximum of eight guns when limbered is exceedingly generous, especially when using trail/road/pike movement. The Union Manual (link to be found in the forum link above) has the lengths for each piece on page 186. Each gun requires more than 39 yards of road: piece drawn by six horses = 14 yards; caisson drawn by six horses = 14 yards; and limber drawn by six horses = 11 yards. It's 'more than 39 yards' because you need space between each of those things and then between that gun team and the next one. You're only going to get two complete limbered gun teams in each 125-yard stretch of road. Still, for some simplicity (and to aid playability) we say eight, or six, guns per hex at all times.]

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