J. Ferry wrote:
Another abstract look at Rifle fire:
First, the maximum number of men that can fire on a 125 yard front is 250 men.
Second, although it is often said that a trained rifleman can get off three shots a minute, there is a lot of spilled powder and shots that go in the air, so let us suppose TWO aimed shots per minute. And 20-minute turns.
250 men x 2 shots/min = 500 shots x 20 min = 10,000 rounds
divided by my original accuracy estimate (1 hit per 120 shots)
the enemy would suffer 83.3 casualties in twenty minutes
Hi, John,
That would be the whole ammo allotment every turn, which is certainly not modeled in the game and doesn't sound realistic. The one incident at Gettysburg where I know ammo became a critical factor was the 20th Maine at Little Round Top. In the Paddy Griffith book, he states that Confederate Ordnance estimated an expenditure of 25-26 rounds per man, while the Union army there was issued 5,400,000 rounds total. Much of that probably wasn't expended, particularly by the VI Corps. He added that Geary's brigade fired 75 rounds during the battle, and I Corps, which was very heavily engaged on the first day, fired 86 rounds/man.
At Gettysburg, they have flank markers for a lot of the union regiments. I could not find measurements though, so I measured the distances for several of them and came to the conclusion that on average these regiments had about 400 men/hex. That gibes with Gottlieb's Maps of Gettysburg, which indicated Pender's Division deployed in a line of about 5000 men over about 1500 yds.