I have recently been playing a Peninsula campaign, an Atlanta Campaign and a Gettysburg game. I noticed a month or two ago that the Rebel guns in Atlanta were inflicting some fearful damage on my infantry which really made my eyebrows raise. I had some discussions with my opponent about that and we finally began looking at the parameter data between games and comparing notes.
Most veteren players know that some games list woods as 5MPs rather than 4. We also know how unpleasant it is to move a supply wagon 5 spaces on a road rather than 10. It seems, however, that these nuances are easy to pick-up on compared to learning the variations in every gun type in every game. Here is an example of what I mean, using the Napoleon as an example.
There appear to be 5 different sets of data for the Napoleon across every HPS title (which actually surprised this 5 year player). To keep this short and sweet, lets just look at the Napoleon at 1 hex. Here are the firepower numbers:
12 - Corinth, Peninsula, Ozark, Vicksburg 14 - Gettysburg 15- Chancellorsville 17 - Antietam (which includes 1st Bull Run) 20 - Shiloh, Franklin, Chicamauga, Atlanta
Thus we can see there are four titles with '12' and four titles with '20'. Then, of course, the 'in betweens'.
I will also note that the numbers seem to have been tweeked in the updates. I saw that Shiloh was '22' in version one and Franklin was '8' in its first version.
Undoudtedly, the numbers all come down to the designer's feeling about how effective a Napoleon was at close range. I'm all for some leeway in making an empirically impossible judgment into a weapon's effectiveness, yet the gap between numbers is quite significant. The first point aside, it simply isn't logical that a Napoleon fired more effectively at Shiloh, then a few months later, lost half its effectiveness at Corinth. It would be logical to say that gun construction, ammo, or crews got better during the war making later guns more effective but that relationship doesn't show up with the current data.
In addition, if we broke down the parameter data for all the weapons, I'm sure we would more wide differences in performance between titles that would be nearly impossible for anyone to keep track of especially if it is changing in updates.
Of course both players play with the same parameter data, so in a sense, the numbers don't determine what happens in a game. On the other hand, if a player is playing Corinth and Atlanta simultaneously, they probably at some point scratch their heads and say, "I'm getting some really lousy fire results. Why?" Further, they might ask how it was possible to easily charge one position with two guns in one game while in the other game in a similar situation they got blown to pieces. Again, the player could check every single weapon available to figure it out but that seems like a bit much especially for new players who might be busy enough just understanding game mechanics.
My question, therefore, is this. Should the data be 'standardized' for every game through a consensus (or at least brought closer to some center position like the movement/defensive bonus data)? Again, this is not a difference of a few percents. Napoleons at Shiloh are 67% more effective (at range one) than at Wilson's Creek. That's pretty statistically significant.
_________________ MG R.Virts Cast Iron Division VI Corps, AofS
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