The 1864 Field Artillery Tactics gives the following load outs for a 12 pound gun ammo chest: 20 shot, 8 Case, 4 Canister During the war many of the artillery leaders found that using Shell instead of shot was a good trade off. If you didn't put a fuse on it you could use it as Shot. So the chest would be: 15 Shell, 20 Case, 4 Canister
This gives about 30 to 39 rounds to a chest.
A typical gun has three chest with it. One on the limber and two on the Caisson. That gives you 90 rounds with the gun in the field, 360 rounds for a Confederate battery of four guns, 540 rounds for a Union battery of six guns. In addition the Army trains would carry additional chest which depended on their current situation.
The HPS system has to represent ammo rather abstractly because the guns are firing multiple times during the 20 minute turn. A gun firing as fast as it can, can easily fire off all its ammo in one turn. Most extended fire fight the battery commanders kept the fire to a much lower pace so this wouldn't happen.
The HPS system also has one serious simplification. Note that the amount of Canister carried is very small, 12 shots per gun. The HPS system allows you to convert all ammo to whatever type you need. In reality, the guns quickly round out of Canister and could only fight an infantry assault for a few minutes.
I did a quick estimate on the ammo ratio for the Historical Antietam scenario and came up with 3195 ammo at start of scenario with about 220 guns for the Rebs. That comes to 14.5 ammo/gun (I am using optional ammor by gun rule). Even with this high number I have had to conserve ammo during games to be sure I would still have ammo at the end.
Somewhere I saw a post by one of the HPS/JT designers saying how they calculated it but I don't remember where or what the calculations was.
In designing scenarios I recommend being a little liberal with the artillery and infantry ammo because the game just doesn't give the player enough control over its use.
_________________ General Kennon Whitehead Chatham Grays AoT II/1/3 (CSA)
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