<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by BMG</i>
<br />The benefit is the decoy. You might be facing down a large force hidden by woods, or surmise it is a ruse and send a large force there at dawn only to find nothing or a whole corps. But it held your units in place, or moved them where they weren't needed. Deception is a big part of warfare, and this idea was used often during the period.
Fld. Lt. Bryan Gentry ANV
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Lt. Gentry,
I think what General Mishurda is asking is, what are the benefits of fire OTHER than deception. If the ONLY benefit of lighting a fire is deception, the enemy will know that and the lighting of a fire serves no useful purpose.
Now, if a fire could serve some other useful purpose, then it could be used as a deception. For instance, a unit in the same hex as a fire could recovere fatigue sooner. At night, this would represent the warmth generated by the fire. During daylight hours, the fire could be used to heat food. In this case, a fire COULD be used to increase fatigue OR to deceive the enemy. If there is no benefit besides deception, there is little benefit to the deception.
Also, how would the fires show up? Would the enemy see them as some symbol, in much the way a question mark indicates a unit sighted only by a supply wagon? Would they be visible only if there is unobstructed line-of-sight? Would they ever be visible during daylight hours?
I think there are too many unanswered questions on this one at this point, although it might be something for Tiller & company to consider.
As for abatis, that one might be doable. Another abatis option I would like to see would be for the 'owning' side (the defender, currently -- or the side that builds the abatis, if this suggestion is implemented) to 'see' the abatis, even if there are no friendly units with LOS to it. In some scenarios (I'm thinking especially of the Paducah scenario of the Corinth engine), long lines of abatis are set up in the woods but the defender has no knowledge of them. If the defending player is one of those (like me) who happens to think 'offense is the best defense', or even if he likes to move forward to make the attacker fight for every hex, he (the defender) is apt to get units entangled -- and thus disrupted -- by his own abatis. If an army has spent the time to build abatis, isn't it reasonable to assume they would remember where they built them?
Perhaps abatis could be treated like fixed supply wagons: They belong to one side or the other, and would indicate a question mark when the enemy moved next to them. (During the civil war, I've read of tin cans being tied to strings to indicate the approach of the enemy.) Once the abatis were 'captured', however, and fell into enemy hands, they would switch to the other side. The original side would at least have some vague idea of where the abatis were, but the benefit would then go to the other side.
Just some more food for thought.
Your humble servant,
Gen 'Dee Dubya' Mallory
David W. Mallory
ACW - General, Chief of the Armies, Confederate States of America & Cabinet Member
CCC - Ensign, Georgia Volunteers, Southern Regional Department, Colonial American Army
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