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| Use of the Hollow Square in the American Rev https://wargame.ch/board/cc/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5908 |
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| Author: | 927 [ Sun Jul 17, 2005 2:51 am ] |
| Post subject: | Use of the Hollow Square in the American Rev |
Some warfare literature eloquently summarizes the nature of musket warfare: rock/paper/scissors. Advancing infantry deployed loosely across the battlefield is rather immune to artillery. But vulnerable to cavalry. Cavalry forces infantry to concentrate (during the Napoleonic period, the defensive posture was the classic square). Once concentrated, artillery could bring substantial harm to infantry..... compensating for the harm that concentrated infantry could bring to cavalry. I have been experimenting with OOB's and PDT's in ways to help re-create this "bloody triangle" of tactics. The process described below is for a small scale simulation with 35 feet per hex. Perhaps there are those who could come up with a parallel approach to conventional 125 feet/hex map scale. Step 1: I limited the number of counters in a hex to four (4) and the total soldiers per hex at 50. Step 2: "PAPER" I created a group of skirmishers whose purpose is to protect larger units from artillery and infantry fire (purely by blocking site lines). Notice that this effect is not "real" in the sense that historically skirmishers did not really have this effect, but within the confines of the CCC engine, this approach "simulates" the value of having skirmishers. Skirmisher numbers were set at about 1/3 of the total of 50 (about 16 per hex). This was accomplished by creating four different sized counters to swirl around in front of the main infantry: 3, 4, 5, and 6 (total = 18). STEP 3: "SCISSORS" To disperse these skirmishers, we need cavalary units - - large enough to easily eliminate skirmishers, but not so powerful enough large that they are a match for regular infantry. I am still tinkering with this, by reducing the quality of more numerous cavalry, or higher quality with fewer cavalry. An additional consideration is that despite the relative vulnerability of cavalry to gunshot (due to the size of a man sitting on a horse), the speed of cavalry helps reduce overall casualties. One way to help simulate this is to have several smaller units in a hex - - so that when hit by fire, one of the smaller units becomes disordered, rather than the whole unit. In the case of my 50 men per hex scenario, I am using 4 units of 9 men each (fewer horse per unit than infantry). 1 or 2 of these 9-man cavalry units should be able to quickly dispatch skirmisher units, but I still haven't established the correct balance at this point. STEP 4: "ROCK" Within the world of the CCC engine, the "rock" could be applied to the power of artillery, or a volley at close range. Artillery is a very nice way of "reaching out and touching" infantry at long range. But if a swirling cloud of skirmishers are in the way, and artillery ammo is limited, there would be a natural hesitance to killing or disrupting tiny 3 to 6 man units. That is why the cavalry is called in to carve a swatch through the skirmishers, creating line of site for the cannons against the infantry. And this would be true about creating lines of site between OPPOSING infantry units. But the question became how to size regular infantry? Using the zoomed-in scale, I wanted to establish the MAXIMUM wreckage an opposing infantry unit could make on another. In a conventional pdt, the closest range was 125 feet (or roughly 43 yards). But in this new pdt, the closest range 35 feet (or roughly 10 yards). So... how much damage shall we establish for opposing infantry at 10 yards? Well, heck, it would be a lot! In fact, SO MUCH, that if I divided up the maximum "hex population" into anything more than 2, then we would instantly revert to a skirmish situation.... small units soaking up large amounts of fire. So, only partly arbitrarily, I set the MAX casualties (on average) at 10 yards to 50% of the opposing unit. Thus, regular infantry units could come in two varieties: 1 unit at 100% of the hex limit, or 2 units at 50% of the hex limit. So I decided to create 1/3 of the 100% units and 2/3 of the double units. The advantage for this kind of ratio was that once the cavalry had its way with the skirmishers, there needed to be a way for infantry to resist swarms of cavalry. In the colonial period, resistance was not as powerful as in the Napoleonic period ... but some testing will tell me if I've made the colonial non-skirmish infantry too powerful against cavalry. Since the cavalry are divided into 4 units per hex, a full volley of 100% infantry would be soaked up by 25% of a hex full of cavalry. Perhaps this is about right. But it may be that dividing the non-skirmish infantry into two, and thus making it possible for 50% of the cavalry to be hit, makes for a more authentic balance. I'm still testing. Part of the testing involves adjusting command qualities and quality of troops to achieve the correct balances. Notice, then, that issues of command and troop quality are not the BEGINNING of the process, but the END of the process. Sorry for the length of the post. As you can see, putting together a "rock/paper/scissors" OOB at close range is a complicated affair! Regards, Lieutenant Brooks |
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