I favor keeping it simple.
No orphan crews waiting for a gun to recover and recrew, but they die with their gun. Yeah, they could run and wait for their infantry to recapture their cannons, but these games are messy enough already.
New crews should be taken from infantry units, as is. That reminds me of Hood's attack against Schofield at Franklin with crews recruited from infantry units ready to take over and operate captured union cannons. "Don't count your chickens,...I mean cannons before they're captured." [8D]
Looking for the site of an ACW artillery manual from a previous post, I could not find it. It had detailed information on how many rounds and what types were a standard load for a caisson for various cannon. However, below are two sites almost as good.
Civil War Artillery Organization and Drill
http://www.cwartillery.org/adrill.html
Excerpts:
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="3" face="book antiqua" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> It is often stated that the typical Federal battery had six guns, and the typical Confederate battery had four, but the exceptions to this rule are so numerous as to render it suspect. The Atlanta Campaign furnishes a late-War illustration of artillery organization. The Union had 29 four-gun batteries, 22 six-gun batteries, and one very anomolous five-gun battery. The Confederate artillery, nominally made up of 44 four-gun batteries, was actually organized into battalions of three batteries each, with the battalion operating in effect as a single twelve-gun unit.
The battery was commanded by a captain; each section (a pair of guns) was commanded by a lieutenant. A section often operated as an independent unit for small-scale operations. Each gun was under the command of a sergeant, with two corporals, one the gunner and the other in charge of the caisson. Though only seven or eight cannoneers were necessary to serve a piece, it took 25 to 30 men to keep a single gun in the field and in operating condition. The following link provides a detailed description of the personnel of a typical battery.
Especially under combat conditions, a gun crew might need to operate a piece with fewer than a full complement of cannoneers, and in theory a cannon could continue in service with only two men.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
This establishes that <font color="yellow">a single gun crew was 7 or 8 gunners</font id="yellow"> although there would be about <font color="yellow">25 men per gun</font id="yellow"> in the organization and <font color="yellow">even 2 men could keep a gun in operation</font id="yellow">.
My preferred site with a Civil War Artillery Manual stated that caissons carried enough rounds for about 30 minutes of continuous firing.
If so, to me that means that a supply wagon should be within resupply range to keep firing more than two turns, or be out of ammo during the second turn.
That would certainly change our artillery and supply unit deployments, as well as cut down casualty rates. It would profoundly diminish and limit the artillery role in our games. Supply wagons would have a greatly enhanced value.
If this information is accurate, I say, "Game designers, let's do it!" Simplest would be to have artillery run out of ammo, if they fire in any two turns without being within resupply range of a supply wagon.
Finally, here is another site with instructions on how to operate a field artillery piece with 9 men per gun.
http://www.geocities.com/generalgreene1 ... piece.html
I think that it is safe to say that there were minor variations of crews, especially considering that there were many variations and sizes of cannons.
BG Ross McDaniel
2nd Bde, 3rd Div, III Corps, AoG, CSA