Colonial Campaigns Club (CCC)

Do you think there should be a separate scouting unit in the games? similar to the piquet units in the hps Austerlitz game in that they can be detached from light and Indian units to scout and recon an area. What does everybody think?

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Colonel Comte du Colon "Le Longue Barbe"
Troupes de la Marine - Commanding
L'Armee de Terre Royale

My Blog
https://thechiefwargamingblog.blogspot.com

I would tend to say no. While it would be more accurate in a sense, it would actually make the overall game less accurate. Yes, the armies often had scouts (alongside the ranger types you mention, that's what the dragoons were for), but the games scouting is currently too powerful as it is, with everyone having GPS equipped Cell Phones, so it would just make that aspect of things yet worse.

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Major General Gary McClellan, DSM
5th Maryland Regiment
Maryland Brigade
Second Division
Continental American Army

I brought this up in regards to fiw and c1776 for historical accuracy. just Looking back at major fiw battles and there wasn't many battles that scouts were not used to locate the enemies advance.

I would Make it so you can detach 1/3 of a light/indian unit to scout in advance similar to dragoons in the Napoleonic war games.

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Colonel Comte du Colon "Le Longue Barbe"
Troupes de la Marine - Commanding
L'Armee de Terre Royale

My Blog
https://thechiefwargamingblog.blogspot.com

I think I agree with Gary, here, and that's not easily said

What would scouts of the time report? That they had seen an enemy and give approximate numbers. This reported in an, if you forgive the anachronism, operational or even strategic timeframe. Certainly not tactical, hence Gary's witticism re GPS cell phones.

All this and more is already available to the commanders by merely bringing up a scenario and stepping through manually without fog of war. Even if it is a might Un-British to so practice and prepare; this I have done. Monty may not have read another gentleman's mail, but then, Monty was an idiot in that regard!

Tactical scouts? They would behave too much like forward artillery spotters with secure SATCOM in that the operational commander would recieve a perfect picture of what the scouts see. No lag time for a runner, no "human element" imperfection in evaluation ("Gee, it LOOKED like a whole battalion to me"). This can already be achieved by sending up a platoon of lights, Indians, dragoons, etc.

So I do ont think scouts would be useful here in that the information reported would be too perfect.

But I do like your questions and thinking as to the game system, bravo!

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Brigadier General Steve Jones
Lord of Rhode Island
23d Royal Welch Fusiliers

As I understand the military practices and doctrines of the times, details called advanced parties, flankers, guards, etc would be formed on a daily basis as needed on the bn/bde levels at the descretion of the overall commander. These details would range from 6-7 (camp day guards per bn) to 400-600 (advanced guards for LARGE army movements.) The best way to reflect them is to put them into the OOB file, and deduct the troops from the parent formations. I have attempted to do this in a few of my recent scenarios.

The detaching of a handful of men to 'look over the hill' at the company/battalion level in an abstract manner just wouldn't reflect the practice of the times, in my opinion.

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LtGen Al Amos
1st Continental Light Dragoons
Commander Lt Dragoon Bde - American Army

The issue here is that there are really two different forms of "realism" in play here. On a narrow level, the provision for flankers, scouts and the like is absolutely authentic.

However, as I said yesterday, it only makes worse one of the ongoing issues of the game. The information loop is entirely too "tight". Scouting is only half the problem. An equivalent problem is that the commander can issue orders and have them followed immediately.

In game terms, it's not unreasonable to see the following happen: An advance scout well ahead of the left flank sees a major enemy column. Seeing that, the commander directs some reserve infantry he had behind his right flank to begin countermarching behind the line to reinforce the left. It can easily be 25 hexes from the scout to the commander, another 15 from the commander to the right flank troops, and every last bit of that is done with an effective loss of zero time. At this point, anything that increases the information that is available to players makes this yet worse.

So, an increase in the strict realism of allowing for flankers, guards and other scout parties makes the game less realistic because of the way the information loop works in the game.

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Major General Gary McClellan, DSM
5th Maryland Regiment
Maryland Brigade
Second Division
Continental American Army

Also, to speak further against the resolution:

Unless recent engine mods have changed this, a unit with at least one surviving member (or given this proposal, a scout unit of complement 1 man) blocks Line-of-sight and exerts zone-of-control. I fear some of our fellow commanders might, in desparation, be tempted to use such scout units as rearguard delay units.

In my mind's eye, I can just picture my reaction to the case of a one-man scout stopping in their tracks two 50 man companies of Guards.

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Brigadier General Steve Jones
Lord of Rhode Island
23d Royal Welch Fusiliers

Some very good arguments against here....

_________________
Colonel Comte du Colon "Le Longue Barbe"
Troupes de la Marine - Commanding
L'Armee de Terre Royale

My Blog
https://thechiefwargamingblog.blogspot.com