American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

Some interesting pieces of information picked up from browsing their Forums.

It looks like they will have both cavalry and artillery in the game. Right now artillery is "off map" and just implemented in the Skirmishes as random barrages which sometimes kill you.

Because the Skirmishes have a maximum of only 32 soldiers per side they won't include artillery in them. It takes a ten man crew which would leave only 22 men to protect it from being overrun which would probably quickly happen. They plan to add guns when they start implementing larger formations and battlefield areas.

Cavalry will also be added much later and here is what I found posted by one of the Forum moderators:

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

They have started a U-Tube series called George's Corner. This is the first video from it. They are using their new "cinematic" camera to show live skirmishes with some commentary on what is happening. One thing you will see in it toward the middle are some white lines that temporarily appear on the ground. This is one of the few player aides they added to the game. An officer place a line using the "Q" key. It is there to act as guide for the officer trying to get a company to form a line. You will also occasionally see the clock looking graphic in the top middle of the screen. This can be temporarily called up by the "T" key to show time remaining in skirmish and who controls the objective. It also shows how many "replacement" points remain for each side. Replacement points are counters for how many times players can return to the game after being killed. It is how they "balance" the skirmishes. The only other player aide is the "Tab" key that will show a list of who is playing.

Otherwise, all you can see and hear is based on your aviator. You will also notice that every once in a while you will see text box pop up on the left side of the screen with a messages saying "team kill of...". It is very hard to identify uniforms in the game especially when there are so many styles in play. People shoot their own side quite often in the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxZBDTHGIJE

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

They now have six so called Skirmish battle zones:
The Dunker Church
The Corn Field
The Sunken Road
The West Wood
Burnside Bridge
Hagerstown Turnpike (Dawn attack down)

So far all the Skirmishes have been Union attacks but they said the next few will be Confederate attacks.
Still haven't heard when they will start implementing full battle scenarios or go to Beta so there will be more players.

Here is the second in George's Corner commentaries on player staged skirmishes. This one is on The West Wood which is the scenario I hate the most since I mostly play the Yankee side. It is very difficult to use the rifle in this one because of the dense undergrowth so you end up getting shot as soon as you manage to get close enough to "see" the Rebs. Melee is the only way to fight in the woods and I have problems with it because the game needs some fixing to melee and my video board isn't fast enough to acquire targets properly.

But it is worth watching this video through the first 20 minutes (or fast forward too) so you can see the after battle discussion they have. Not because the discussion is interesting but because they have it in one of the nearby farm houses and you get to see how they implemented furniture and windows. Windows in particular. You can see out of them but it is slightly our of focus because of the glass of that day. You can also shoot out of them which is a tactic used often in the Dunker Church skirmish. The doors can be opened and closed as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhVU_UZ2oCs

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

pretty, a showcase of how much love the details got.
The player limit(32?), is it an engine limit or a limit to ensure good performance?

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

Currently the Skirmish battles are limited to 32 per side for total of 64. I don't know if they plan on allowing larger skirmish battles, but you must remember this Alpha. They mostly put the Skirmishes out there to test combat rather than server capacity.

For late Alpha they plan to start opening up the whole battlefield to play with larger formation possible. I have no idea how large they will be able to go or how they will do this. My guess is it will be still scenario based but with much larger organizations possible.

Performance is good although they don't have high in servers yet. Pings to the servers are around 80 which is to high for final deployment but good enough for Alpha. Right now I have to use a smaller window than my monitor size because my video board can't handle the game otherwise. Probably once they get to Beta I will upgrade.

Also, right now they rarely can get 64 players available to try to log in. Even though they have four NA servers, 2 EU, and 4 Drill servers, you will rarely see more than one server in use. Only on times that players have arranged for their "Companies" (the equivalent of guilds in other games) to play mass battles do you see anything close to 64 online. Right now European players have arranged for a 2 PM(CST) Sat and Sun games and the American players for 7 PM. They like to do line battles and marching so other players try to conform to their rules when we join in to help get the number up. Most of the videos I post come from these battles.

I don't know how many Alpha players they have but apparently not enough to make a good fight without scheduling on the Event forum so people know when to log on. When Alpha first went live there were almost continuous skirmish battles for the first week but now we are down to late night and weekends.

Speaking of which joining at the Alpha level (cost $79) isn't such a bad deal. The game when it goes live will probably be a subscription game costing 10-15 per month. Since they are at least two years from going live the $79 gets you access for two years. But it probably won't be until beta that you will be able to jump into a fight anytime of day.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

Interesting short video on the Weapons available on War of Rights.
The game models the trajectories of the different weapons as well as the reload rates.
However, the latest Alpha version doesn't include the US Sharpshooters so you can't use a Sharps rifle any more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5x9o5Hh_2w

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

They added another Skirmish area which has the Rebs as the attacker and a bunch of new features which I am not yet sure how they will affect play.

August 19th - Update 66 (released)

- New skirmish area introduced: East Woods. This skirmish area is part of Confederate General Hood’s counterattack into Miller’s Cornfield and the East Woods in the early morning hours of the battle.The push would push the advancing Union forces back through East Woods & Miller’s Cornfield before stagnating due to heavy losses by the flanks. This skirmish area marks the first time the Union is on the defensive.

- Introduced regimental & class limitations. Two regiments per side per skirmish area will now be available with limited class slots: 1 officer, 2 NCO’s & 1 flag bearer available per regiment. This system will eventually include rank selection & weapon limitations in a regiment based on a percentage (50% P53 Enfields & 50% Springfield 1861’s for instance).
- Introduction of morale states: combat ready, engaged, taking losses and breaking to replace tickets. This change masks the exact status of the two teams and lays the foundation of several morale-centric mechanics to be implemented in the future.

- Added morning fog in Miller’s Cornfield & East Woods.
- Tweaks to smoke - less bright against the sun.
- Tweaks to time of day.
- Several LOD updates to characters.
- Increased CSA morale by 25 at bloody lane.
- Added more loading screenshots.
- Added the correct overview maps of the current active skirmish area in the deploy menu screen.
- Added preliminary casualty reports in the victory/defeat screen.
- Added numbers next to the regiments, indicating the amount of players in each regiment.
- Added several new ground textures (such as muddy patches in the drill camps).
- Updated most of the rocks (they were in dire need of an overhaul).
- Increased the speed of the animation of thrusting the bayonet & entering melee mode with no bayonet attached to make it feel more natural. Delay between melee attacks is unchanged.
- Added movement animations while aiming with a rifle.
- Added revolver aim idle animation.
- Fixed an animation issue where other players would drop their rifle to their knees when moving while being at the ready.
-Tweaks to artillery shrapnel whizzes to make them feel more “3D” (the sensation of chunks of metal flying past your head).
- Gunshots resonate more in the environment.
- Added first person & third person fire sounds.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

They are apparently working on adding Harpers Ferry.
Here are some screen shots from the new map locations:

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

Impressive

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General Ernie Sands
President ACWGC -Sept 2015- Dec 2020
7th Brigade, 1st Division, XVI Corps, AoT
ACWGC Records Site Admin

"If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there."

Indeed, that is breathtaking.

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Lieutenant General Christian Hecht
Commander I Corps, Army of the Potomac

"Where to stop? I don't know. At Hell, I expect."

Novel concept for a wargame. Reminds me of many of the ACW movies.

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Optional Rules I Use in WDS ACW Games:
(by column from left to right)
Column 1: All ON except for Man. Def. Fire; Column 2: All ON except for Alt Fixed Unit Rel.; Column 3: All ON except for Art.Capt. & Prop.Op.Fire

They added another skirmish area to the game: Pry Ford

And some updates. Here is a short list:
- Added 4th Pennsylvania Cavalry (dismounted). The 4th PA was used as dismounted skirmishers in support for other regular infantry regiments in the center (and some in the northern part) of Antietam during the battle. The 4th PA was quite heavily engaged throughout the day, losing its commander Colonel Childs to a cannonball during the fighting.
- Added new skirmish area Pry Ford: This skirmish area represents one of the most north-eastern parts of the battlefield. Between Union commander McClellan's headquaters at P. Pry House and the S. Pry farm and grist mill at Little Antietam lies Pry Ford. The skirmish area itself offers a very open playing field with plenty of possibility of massing fire by lines.
- Added M1859 Sharps carbine.
- Added M1860 US Light Cavalry Saber
- An icon in the lower right corner of the screen now pops up, indicating whether or not you have the formation buff (In Formation / Out of Line).
- Fixed various bugs with the formation buff not enabling while in formation.
- Banning should now be more persistent between server restarts until the ban is revoked.
- Made capturing of the capture zone scale on the amount of players on the server. With a scarcely populated server, a max of 3 players can capture the zone at the same time. On a full server, 12 players can capture the zone at the same time, but the capture effect of each player is reduced, so get your men in that zone and capture it!
- Added WIP improved melee movement animations.
- Slightly increased player proxy to avoid some of the clipping issues presented in the last patch.

I will try and edit in a screen shot of the Ford later.

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

Here is a video touring the Pry Ford skirmish battle ground. I have yet to play the scenario but judging from how far the objective is from the Ford it will be fought in the open fields well west of the ford. Just have to cross the ford on the way to the battle.

You can tell where the objective is in the video by watching for the "shield" like icon that gets displayed every once in a while. It has two crossed flags on it and the bottom points down to where the objective is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZBEfbgtRgI

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

They have been busy the last few months over on War of Rights. They now are testing servers with up to 150 people on them. They have added a number of new Skirmish areas. They have also added a Camera for making user videos which you can see in use in video link below. If you watch shortly into the video you will see the artillery they have added. Still only for looks, nether side can man and fire them yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=46&v=mgD55154G9o

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)

They have posted their planned schedule (copy below) but not when Closed Beta will start although it looks like maybe by summer. We are still in Closed Alpha Phase 2.

Tentative roadmap of War of Rights (From Kickstarter)
War of Rights Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../war-of-rights

War of Rights is to be released in several stages, stretching from the earliest test version to the final release… and further on with post launch support.

Skirmishes Phase 1 (Closed Alpha)


The first version of our smaller scaled engagements titled Skirmishes. This version will only available as a reward for Kickstarter backers.

To be added during Skirmishes Phase 1 (Closed Alpha):

Antietam skirmish areas
Additional weapons
Regiments Classes (private, NCO, Flag bearer, officer)
First iteration of the order system
Skirmishes Phase 2 (Closed Beta)


The second version of the smaller engagements titled Skirmishes.

To be added during Skirmishes Phase 2 (Closed Beta):

Additional skirmish areas
Additional weapons
More regiment variations
Classes (Sharpshooters)
2nd iteration of the order system
Early Access (Open Beta)


This marks the launch of our Early Access version of the game on the Steam platform. This stage is to be a long one since it will stretch all the way from adding additional features such as entirely new branches to the deployment of our huge historical open map battles.

To be added during Early Access:

Additional skirmish areas
Additional weapons
Artillery branch
Cavalry branch
More regiment variations
Classes (Battery Commander, General)
Complete chain of command system (General to officer to privates)
Own server code implementation allowing for massive player amounts
Complete and fully explorable Harper’s Ferry, South Mountain, Antietam & Shepherdstown maps
Historical battle gamemode

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General Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
AoT II/1/3 (CSA)