Proposal: Remove ammo wagons

[Kerflumoxed]

With all the current interest in "supply" (read "ammo wagons"), I thought one or two may be interested in some data to help understand the "historical" situation. :huh:

"During the war, a six mule hitched wagon could carry a maximum of 2000 pounds, less if the teams are new and pulling over rough and hilly terrain. Counting ammunition, food and medical supplies each man required four pounds of transport capacity per day translating into one wagon per 500 men if the wagon can make one round-trip per day from base of supply to point of distribution. Increase the distance to one day each way and the number of men supplied by each wagon drops to 250 and two days equates to 125 per wagon, on the face of it a simple mathematical equation. It is easy to see, however, that the increased distance coupled with a large army could easily out strip the capacity of a combatant to supply teams and equipment. Under this formula, an army of 100,000 men, ten days by wagon road from its base of supply, would require 4000 wagons, a large number yet it falls in the upper range of the number utilized by the Army of the Potomac."

"This simple equation, however, fails to make provision for fodder (feed) either for the animals attached to the army or for the supply teams. Each animal needed approximately 40 pounds of fodder per day. Since, in most cases, the supply teams had to carry their own, either individually or in specific trains, each day a team was away from the base it had to carry 240 pounds of its own food, reducing its capacity by 60 men. Diminishing returns legislates that eventually the teams will only be able to pull their own fodder."

"Supply is, in essence, based on mathematical formulas of which many were developed during the Civil War. In the above example, the actual numbers required to supply the average Civil War army of 100,000 with its attached cavalry and artillery ten days distant from supply base would be computed at 10,975 wagons utilizing 68,850 draft animals. This does not take into account wagons required to distribute supplies to the brigade level."

Whew! One heckuva of a lot more than you wanted to know, correct?

Incidentally, the supplying of artillery ammunition was via caisson/limber chests. Supply were seldom brought into the front line; rather, the caisson was sent to the rear to have the chests replenished.

J

[SouthernSteel]

Really the only possibility that I see (and I don't even think it is possible right now) would be to only allow resupply when a unit is not firing. Therefore a unit would have to be taken off the line and back a bit to reload their pouches/pockets/caissons.

Didn't we experiment before with dropping the horsemanship stat on the wagons? We did accomplish making them dreadfully slow to move one way or another, as I recall.

[Geneal William D. Pender]

I suggested the same thing yesterday as far as have 2 wagons and just make it a gentleman rule that you can only use arty wagon to resupply arty and the inf wagon to resupply inf, I mean we are all grown ups here if you see somebody breaking a rule like this just call it out in the chat it isn't that had to do, we have had gentleman rules before I don't understand why you think it would be that hard garnier, I also agree that removing the wagon is complete stupid, they are so many other ways around it such as limiting inf down to 40 rounds a man and dropping the wagon down to 100,000 rounds or 50,000 rounds I mean it will make people choose do I want my inf to run out or do I want to resupply some of my inf and my arty, if you drop it to 50,000 rounds it will really put a strain on what you going to resupply.

[SouthernSteel]

I suggested the same thing yesterday as far as have 2 wagons and just make it a gentleman rule that you can only use arty wagon to resupply arty and the inf wagon to resupply inf, I mean we are all grown ups here if you see somebody breaking a rule like this just call it out in the chat it isn't that had to do, we have had gentleman rules before I don't understand why you think it would be that hard garnier, I also agree that removing the wagon is complete stupid, they are so many other ways around it such as limiting inf down to 40 rounds a man and dropping the wagon down to 100,000 rounds or 50,000 rounds I mean it will make people choose do I want my inf to run out or do I want to resupply some of my inf and my arty, if you drop it to 50,000 rounds it will really put a strain on what you going to resupply.

The concept itself is not difficult, but the implementation is nearly impossible. If you have noticed our discussions, gentlemen's agreements are a complete farce owing to the disposition of certain members of the community. For many, winning comes first at any cost, and so shortcuts to gain an advantage are welcomed by them. Besides, what are you going to do? Calling someone out in chat achieves absolutely nothing, and, if you do it properly, just makes the other team even madder and (as I experienced just the other day) will encourage them to trample said "agreement" even further and more blatantly.

I mean you could have a separate ammo wagon with only, say 1000 rounds or something, which would make it all but useless to infantry, but the fact remains that the wagon with more ammo could be used on either infantry or artillery and there's nothing to stop someone from doing so.

[Garnier]

Didn't we experiment before with dropping the horsemanship stat on the wagons? We did accomplish making them dreadfully slow to move one way or another, as I recall.

I'll have to look into that, making them really slow would be good regardless I think.
(Edit: They already have 0 horsemanship, so I guess they're already as slow as they go. I tried cutting calisthenics and fatigue to 0 and that didn't change anything.)

As far as agreements, it's not that I just don't like them, it's that they can't be enforced. Nothing wrong with agreeing to something with other players, but it's impossible to enforce it if someone doesn't want to follow it.

I'm fine with cutting down the ammo in wagons to say, 50,000 rounds (currently it's between 100,000 and 250,000 usually, but entirely dependent on how many troops you bring). I think all this would accomplish is make infantry not have infinite ammo, so I don't think it will affect artillery at all for players who understand how ammo works, but I don't mind trying it.

[Michael Slaunwhite]

I was wondering if you could use Mikesla's idea about sending a courier to the ammo wagon from each reg and back.

His idea isn't technically possible as I understand it.

could you have more than one ammo wagon per division?

That would just make resupply easier to do.

How about seperate wagons one for art and one for inf?

Not possible.

Hi.

I have no knowledge of code writing, but how is that impossible? Isn't the code already written in the game? You can already send courier orders to command troops, why can't you do this with supply wagons? I send out an order to the supply wagon, he sends a courier back to me, once the courier reaches me and relays the order, my men are then resupplied. The delay would be the distance between myself, and the supply wagon, how many times the courier keeps getting killed. For instance, I pull up the courier menu, choose resupply, choose arty, or inf, then write my order (request 2000/5000 rounds, etc)the courier then immediately sent to the nearest wagon.

There has always something that bothered me about having to leave the line to resupply. I have seen many battles I was in change from a winning scenario to a losing one simply because of supply. Mind you, you can always pull up your reserve (I always keep troops in reserve while in battle for this type of situation)to cover.

I must be missing something here concerning this whole matter anyway. You start a game, each side has 10,000 rounds, and that's it. If you use up your supply then tough you run out, unless someone has figured out a way to change the amounts while playing the game.

Later!

[Garnier]

You could figure out a way to send couriers to supply wagons perhaps. You wouldn't be able to have the supply wagon send a courier back. But regardless, this is something the players would have to follow themselves, and if they wanted to they could just move the supply wagon as normal, so it would make no difference.

[RDBoles]

I was wondering if a little reminder to the reg or brig commander when supplies run low let's say 50%. A little red or green light shows up on the tabs some where. As it is now you have to indiviually check each reg for low supply. This gets a little cumbersome when you have to watch everything else that is going on in the battle. After all didn't the commanders have help from subordinates, and they took care of some of the responsibilities? Just wondering?

[Garnier]

That's not something I can do.

[kg_sspoom]

Leave the ammo wagons alone.
It may not be perfect but its certainly NOT broke.