Going to 10 minute turns solves some problems but introduces new ones. One of which is that by email it would take 312 turns or two years, assuming you could get a 3 turns a week turned around, to finish Gettysburg. This is the major problem with any of the proposed shorter turn ideas. The 20 minute turn is a comprimise between not giving the player enough time to react to opponents movements and game taking forever.
On limbering and mounting, you probably need to keep these low enough that a unit can change and move. Mostly to compensate for the lack of retreat before being torn appart by fire of these units.
You are going to have a couple of problems with the PDT fire factors and fire combat in general. First going to 10 minute turns is going to double the number of casualties in an already bloody system. And, second you are going to run out of ammo twice as fast. The ammo you could fix by adding wagons and changing the overal artillery ammo level (at least I think you can).
Fire factors are tougher. They represent three factors combined, rate of fire, distance and time. When you use a 5x multiplier for rifles at one hex it doesn't just represent what the unit could do firing at one hundred yards. The game has simplified things. This fire is an average affect since the game doesn't know whether the unit just marched the whole distance and has been at 100 yards for only 4 minutes or it has been standing there in line for the whole 20 minutes. If it was standing there for 20 minutes taking 60 rounds of fire per man, then the 5x multiplier is way to low. If it has been on the march the whole time and only spent the last 4 minutes uncovered and at 100 yards then only a few volleys have been fired at it and the 5x multiplier is much to high.
The drift of all this is the factors in the PDT are created by trial and error during game design to make the game produce what the designer thinks are historic and workable results. The factors used are a fudge to try to average out what would happen over 20 minutes. As you go to shorter and shorter time intervals the fire factors should come closer and closer to what a single volley could do. Unfortunately, even this isn't a good rule of thumb because there are other factors too. One being in 20 minutes a well trained regiment could fire 60 times at an approaching formation. They actually can't do this because they only have a 40 round ammo pouch. Generally, they withheld fire until the enemy was well within 200 yards.
This all leave you with whatever you choose to do with the fire factors it's wrong[:D]. And, there will be plenty of people to tell you that[:(] which is probably why the HPS designers stay away from posting on here.
Col. Kennon Whitehead
Chatham Grays
III Corps, AoM (CSA)
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