Napoleonic Wargame Club (NWC)

Okay can someone tell me why HPS's defensive auto fire is more like rapid fire? I found enemy units firing more than once at different units. What gives? Is there a way to fix this? I like the auto defense fire in the battleground games. Each unit gets one shot that's it.
Can the HPS games be configured that way?

Terry Lubka
ACWC - Col. 1st Corps, 2nd Div. Tiger Rifles
NWC - Lt. 15e Ligne Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Division, I Corps

This is certainly not unheard of. I'd bet no one really wants it to be like this.

Personally, I've seen individual artillery batteries fire four to five times at different units that moved during a turn. The casualties they caused seemed pretty high for a 15 minute period when one has to consider moving the guns back into place and properly aiming them after each firing.

I think your suggestion is a good one. Outside of some programming changes (take a number friend,) the only other way that I know of to fix this is to turn on MDF and manually fire them yourself.

That and wait for <font color="orange">Les Grognards</font id="orange"> and <font color="orange">BPW:Battles of Napoleon</font id="orange"> to come out.

Good luck.
Rick

Colonel Rick Motko
1er Bataillon, 33° Régiment d'Infanterie de Ligne
2eme Brigade, 11eme division
IIIe corps, Armée du Nord


Vive l'Empereur!

You can choose to set up phased play that is similiar to the old BG games (though no separate charge phase).

However, setting the autofire up for one shot and done would be a very bad idea, because that would simply lead to "dancing skirmishers"

You run a skirm unit (or even a column is skirms didn't set it off), and move it around enough to draw all the local enemy Defensive Fire... and then charge in with fresh, unblooded columns.

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

The exact algorithm by which auto defensive fire is determined is not documented, as far as I know. Interestingly a common complaint in the ACW club is that it does not occur enough.

I also believe auto defensive fire is at half strength, so firing at two targets is certainly a reasonable event.

While it has its problems and could be improved the speed up in turn processing seems to make it very useful.

If you are seeing a wide range of results from auto defensive fire, I suspect you are not playing with the optional fire rule, which effectively forces most fire results to be closer to the "average" of the fire formula. Using that may solve your issue.



Brigadier Sir Bob Breen KT

1st (The King's) Dragoon Guards
Commanding 71st Highlanders
Commandant, RMA

The ADF for the Nappy engine seems about right and doesn't need fixing in my opinion - although a gun capture/recrew/recapture feature would be a big improvement to the game engine - but this is <i>certainly</i> not the case for the ACW engine, where many units often fail to fire at all, and then only at 50%, so the attacker has a major advantage.

Playing the Nappy HPS games in multiphase mode makes no sense whatsoever - the absence of cavalry counter-charges and square forming in the defensive phase and the lack of a subsequent cavalry charge phase means that the BG engine remains clearly superior in multiphase mode, despite the various improvements introduced into the HPS engine. I'd like to see HPS restore these for those players that prefer multiphase mode, but I doubt it'll happen.


Capt Rich White
4th Cavalry Brigade
Cavalry Corps
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 Le Tondu</i>
<br />This is certainly not unheard of. I'd bet no one really wants it to be like this.

Personally, I've seen individual artillery batteries fire four to five times at different units that moved during a turn. The casualties they caused seemed pretty high for a 15 minute period when one has to consider moving the guns back into place and properly aiming them after each firing.

I think your suggestion is a good one. Outside of some programming changes (take a number friend,) the only other way that I know of to fix this is to turn on MDF and manually fire them yourself.

That and wait for <font color="orange">Les Grognards</font id="orange"> and <font color="orange">BPW:Battles of Napoleon</font id="orange"> to come out.

Good luck.
Rick

Colonel Rick Motko
1er Bataillon, 33° Régiment d'Infanterie de Ligne
2eme Brigade, 11eme division
IIIe corps, Armée du Nord


Vive l'Empereur!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Is there any records from the Napoleonic times of just how many men were killed or wounded when a cannon ball plowed through a marching coloum of say 500 men? If the ball deflected well, then i reckon it a single ball would kill or maim at least 5 to 6 men.fire ten balls that hit the target that makes 60,i dont know ,does anyone?

A source for Napoleonic Artillery fire appears to be the book Firepower by MG B P Hughes.

In reading some referenced material in Quarrie's book on Napoleonic Campaigns in Miniature, there are a number of factors which need to be considered for actual canon fire.

First is gun elevation and the number of "bounces" produced. 0 deegrees of elevation is the ideal and could produce 5 bounces on flat terrain. A 1 degree gun elevation would result in 2 bounces and anything over 2 degrees no bounces. It would appear that firing over terrain changing in elevation was the equivalent of adding gun elevation so that is also a factor.

Now with 5 bounces the first would occur around 450 yards and the last around 950 yards. So in an HPS game that is the equivalent of bouncing in 5 hexes. <i>So you have to consider whether the game is modeling multiple hex casualties in the one target hex?</i> If the the first hit is less then 450 yards the overall bounce distance would be reduced.

The second factor is how many casualties each "bounce" causes. The Quarrie book suggests 1-5 when firing at units in line.

The last factor is rate of fire and this is a little confusing because I think Quarrie is using time as part of the game parameters and not necessarily identical to battle time (which is another topic for the HPS games as well). The firing data takes into account type of canon, nationality of the army and quality of troops. For light guns it appears to be 4 fires in a 15 minute HPS turn, 6 for horse artillery and 2 for heavy guns.

So doing the multiplication under ideal conditions for a light gun you get 4 fires x 5 bounces x (1-5) casualties or 20-100 casualties in a 15 minute HPS turn. Divide by 2 for offense and defensive fire gives you 10-50 and multiply by 6 for the average game gun unit suggests 60-300 casualties while firing at distance against an advancing enemy. I would assign the lower number is the units were in line the higher if in column or the shot was on flank.

The data suggests a pretty wide range of results, with much lower numbers in hilly terrain or soft ground. I don't ahve access to the data by gun type, and then there is also consideration of shell, canister and British shrapnel, which I understand was very effective in counter batttery fire since the french had no counter to it.



Brigadier Sir Bob Breen KT

1st (The King's) Dragoon Guards
Commanding 71st Highlanders
Commandant, RMA

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Richard</i>
Playing the Nappy HPS games in multiphase mode makes no sense whatsoever - the absence of cavalry counter-charges and square forming in the defensive phase and the lack of a subsequent cavalry charge phase means that the BG engine remains clearly superior in multiphase mode, despite the various improvements introduced into the HPS engine. I'd like to see HPS restore these for those players that prefer multiphase mode, but I doubt it'll happen.


Capt Rich White
4th Cavalry Brigade
Cavalry Corps
Anglo-Allied Army


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

I agree very much. Just tried out a scenario with the phases and its not as good as the normal game. I am going to ask John to either remove the option to play in that format or make it like the older games. Having the option otherwise just confuses people. He probably will remove it.

Bill Peters
Former NWC President, Club Founder, Prussian and Austrian Army Founder

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

Please don't have it removed. Some players like it and the more options or varients available the greater the potential market.

Colonel Al Amos

I was not aware that anyone was using it but if you think it makes that much of a difference to leave it then I wont suggest that he remove it.

I would rather see that form of play enhanced AND have the single phase get the auto square/auto charge added to boot.

Bill Peters
Former NWC President, Club Founder, Prussian and Austrian Army Founder

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

I for one still use it. I'm playing Terry with it on.

Generalissimo
Opolchenie Korpus
Russian Army

Bill,

Perhaps the best solution for the multiphase mode would be to restore the features present in the BG games (ie. square forming, formation change, cavalry counter-charge in the defensive phase, plus restore the subsequent cavalry charge phase too) and perhaps also consider the feasibility of including ADF at 50% from the single phase mode <i>in addition to</i> the normal multiphase defensive fire. With musket range only 2 hexes there wouldn't be all that much ADF anyway, but it would enhance the effectiveness of riflemen. (Not sure about adding in ADF for artillery in multiphase mode - maybe only in cannister range and/or perhaps only for lighter calibre pieces?)

I don't know how many people actually play the HPS games in multiphase mode, but I expect there are still some players out there who haven't moved over to the HPS system from BG due to the fact that these useful features - defensive square forming and counter charges - weren't carried over. This certainly provides a valid reason for players continuing to play the BG games even if they also play some HPS, which may possibly result in reduced HPS sales.

Yes, I'd also like to see the single phase get auto-square and counter-charge added, but how easy would it be for this to be coded in? Attempting to form square could be automatic when charging cavalry in LOS approach infantry - so perhaps not so difficult to code - but presumably it would be necessary for players to be able to set counter charge orders for cavalry in their previous turn on a unit by unit basis? <i>Age of Rifles </i>has a counter-charge feature, although I'm not entirely sure how it works. However, it's certainly possible to provide move/fire "orders" on a unit by unit basis in that game. For instance, infantry can be set to the following:

Free fire
Near fire
Hold fire

and perhaps several other orders that I can't recall off-hand. Perhaps there's also a "Control fire". The different fire orders seem to have an effect on how effective the fire is and how much ammo is used up. Meanwhile, cavalry can be set to "free move", "near move" etc, which presumably determines counter-charge orders.

I suspect players would much prefer to "pre-set" (ie. in their own previous turn) cavalry counter-charge orders rather than have the A/I handle this entirely automatically (and probably randomly).


Capt Rich White
4th Cavalry Brigade
Cavalry Corps
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 Richard</i>
<br />Bill,

Perhaps the best solution for the multiphase mode would be to restore the features present in the BG games (ie. square forming, formation change, cavalry counter-charge in the defensive phase, plus restore the subsequent cavalry charge phase too) and perhaps also consider the feasibility of including ADF at 50% from the single phase mode <i>in addition to</i> the normal multiphase defensive fire. With musket range only 2 hexes there wouldn't be all that much ADF anyway, but it would enhance the effectiveness of riflemen. (Not sure about adding in ADF for artillery in multiphase mode - maybe only in cannister range and/or perhaps only for lighter calibre pieces?)

I don't know how many people actually play the HPS games in multiphase mode, but I expect there are still some players out there who haven't moved over to the HPS system from BG due to the fact that these useful features - defensive square forming and counter charges - weren't carried over. This certainly provides a valid reason for players continuing to play the BG games even if they also play some HPS, which may possibly result in reduced HPS sales.

Yes, I'd also like to see the single phase get auto-square and counter-charge added, but how easy would it be for this to be coded in? Attempting to form square could be automatic when charging cavalry in LOS approach infantry - so perhaps not so difficult to code - but presumably it would be necessary for players to be able to set counter charge orders for cavalry in their previous turn on a unit by unit basis? <i>Age of Rifles </i>has a counter-charge feature, although I'm not entirely sure how it works. However, it's certainly possible to provide move/fire "orders" on a unit by unit basis in that game. For instance, infantry can be set to the following:

Free fire
Near fire
Hold fire

and perhaps several other orders that I can't recall off-hand. Perhaps there's also a "Control fire". The different fire orders seem to have an effect on how effective the fire is and how much ammo is used up. Meanwhile, cavalry can be set to "free move", "near move" etc, which presumably determines counter-charge orders.

I suspect players would much prefer to "pre-set" (ie. in their own previous turn) cavalry counter-charge orders rather than have the A/I handle this entirely automatically (and probably randomly).


Capt Rich White
4th Cavalry Brigade
Cavalry Corps
Anglo-Allied Army

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

I actually prefer the cavalry charge phase being part of the Movement Phase. Why? Because the defender gets to shoot at the cavalry before they attack.

In the old game guys could mask their cavalry and you never could shoot at them if you didnt want to square.

I wont argue this with John though guys. The best thing you can do is send an email to the HPS support email asking for this to happen.

Customers make more of an impact on John than the designers for the most part. If I ask for it its one voice. If Rich forwards 30 emails to John about this then its got more umph behind it.

Bill Peters
Former NWC President, Club Founder, Prussian and Austrian Army Founder

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