Welington is beaten Prussians too late

[mcaryf]

The normal misfire rate in the game is set at about 10% but for the British artillery likely to be firing Shrapnel so I have increased that to 15% to allow for shrapnel that is incorrectly fused so I hope that deals with Jean Lafitte's concerns. Although if you read the article to which I gave a link you will find that fuse setting was not too critical due to the wide spread of the Shrapnel bullets and the usual mass of French columns.

Unfortunately it does take a long time to test the whole day scenarios and annoyingly have found an effect I wanted to use does not seem to work. I will explain in case one of you could suggest another way. I wanted to reward the French if they captured Mont St Jean by having part of Wellington's army leave the battle area. The theory being that the Dutch & Belgian forces were retiring to prepare the defense of Bruxelles and the evacuation of key personnel from Belgium & Holland. In fact a Belgian Cavalry Unit did flee the battle and proclaimed defeat in Bruxelles. I ordered various Dutch & Belgian units to withdraw to Waterloo and when they arrived there I had an event that should have hidden and frozen them. This did not seem to happen. I then tried using the killoff command preceded by an A so Akilloff which I thought might make the command apply to all the subsequent units. The commanders fell off their horses and died but were replaced and the units themselves were still there!

Does anybody have a suggestion as to how an event might cause some of an AI army can be effectively disabled part way through a battle?

Regards

Mike

[RebBugler]

hideunit, Ahideunit

I'd script getting them to the edge of the map first though, keeping it at least abstractly realistic.

[mcaryf]

Hi RebBugler
I sent them to Waterloo which was quite near the edge and I had an event to hide them and lock them when they got there. Unfortunately as far as I can tell it did not happen because I still found Dutch/Belgian units trying to take MSJ back from the French. I had given them 3 commands to go to Waterloo, first Retreat, then Move to Waterloo and then ForceMove. I had not separated those in time as obviously I do not know what time the French succeed in taking MSJ. I imagine that if they are already fighting or if moving to Waterloo takes them within range of a French unit then that might upset the command. Is there any sort of delay feature which I could use to keep issuing the retreat and move commands every 5 minutes or so for a while after the fall of MSJ?

Regards

Mike

[Jean Lafitte]

The more I ponder the actual battle of Waterloo, the more I lean towards concluding that Nappy had a very poor chance of winning that battle on the day of the battle. I say that because I don't think that the French forces on the field on the morning of the battle were strong enough to beat both Wellington and Blucher's forces.

Welly had two Corps and a Reserve which was the size of a Corps. Nappy had two good infantry corps and most of the VI Corps, which was an average corps. Blucher arrives in the afternoon with close to three corps.

If the game's Army scenario is realistic, it will be tough to balance it enough to give the French a 40 to 45 percent chance of winning. Balancing might come down to taking a look at the old Waterloo Nappy's Last Battle game. In that game, the Allied or Prussian Infantry rated "Poor" could not take much punishment before Routing off of the board AND sometimes an adjacent Poor unit would Rout too, even though they had not been under fire.

But, it's got to be balanced or people will play it once and only once.

[RebBugler]

Hi RebBugler
I sent them to Waterloo which was quite near the edge and I had an event to hide them and lock them when they got there. Unfortunately as far as I can tell it did not happen because I still found Dutch/Belgian units trying to take MSJ back from the French. I had given them 3 commands to go to Waterloo, first Retreat, then Move to Waterloo and then ForceMove. I had not separated those in time as obviously I do not know what time the French succeed in taking MSJ. I imagine that if they are already fighting or if moving to Waterloo takes them within range of a French unit then that might upset the command. Is there any sort of delay feature which I could use to keep issuing the retreat and move commands every 5 minutes or so for a while after the fall of MSJ?

Regards

Mike

No need to lock units if you hide them. Use Atcommon after Amoveto destination to force units to move, even when engaged. Script it several times to be sure, it'll catch troops that were retreating before. After the initial script use Atcommoff, Amoveto or Aroadmarch, destination, Atcommon. Once at destination, evtiarrived (commanding officer arrival/destination coords.), Atcommoff, Ahideunit.

Trigger your hide unit sequence with the capturing of an objective, evtobjarmy1, etc.

To insure that the officer giving Ahideunit is successful, make him immortal at the beginning of the Battlescript.

I prefer Aattackmarch to force move troops, but it's not quite as effective, although it does give troops a better survival chance lest they run into the enemy.

[mcaryf]

Thanks RebBugler I will try that. Trouble is playing as the French I cannot always capture MSJ as the Allied AI is quite strong!

Hi Jean Lafitte
Napoleon best chances of winning the campaign came at Quatre Bras and Ligny and there he was fighting a stronger Prussian force. At Waterloo if D'Erlon's attack had succeeded there would have been time to drive Wellington away and then move to the defile at Lasnes and trap the Prussians on very poor ground. We cannot do that on the game map as it stands but it can still work that way in my mod as attacking is very costly in terms of casualties as canister is more effective. I give Napoleon a big points boost for beating Wellington by taking MSJ so if he has enough troops left to make the Prussians suffer heavy casualties as well then the person playing Napoleon will win. However, it is not easy to take MSJ.

I will have a look at the Prussian experience levels because I have not noticed a lot of difference in their troop quality. If you look at the gane db dump file after the whole day battle a lot of units have routed - last time I played it was about 120 on each side - that seemed high to me.

Regards

Mike

[Saddletank]

Solid shot had no projectile fuse, so, that would certainly be less affected by dampness and duds, than would shrapnel. Canister shot didn't use projectile fuses, either. Shell and Shrapnel both used fuses in the projectile which could not be manually lit. If the projectile's fuse didn't light when the cannon fired, it's a dud and acts like solid shot.

Also, the musket balls in the Shrapnel rounds worked better in the dry rocky ground of Spain where ricochets would cause wounds. In the soft ground at Waterloo, a Shrapnel round musket ball that missed a French soldier would bury itself into the ground, so, ricochets there were minimal.

Certainly the original stock version of the game should have included consideration of these issues.

I am not referring to damp conditions on the day which according to most accounts had no effect on the actual firing of artillery pieces.

The issue was the wet soft ground. Solid ball buried itself into the earth far more at Waterloo than at 'dry' battlefields and moreso because Wellington took care to conceal his formations from the French guns as much as he could and used a slope to create a crude glacis effect, increasing the angle at which French rounds struck the ground. There's a number of accounts of French solid shot going into the soft soil and doing no more than splashing people with mud.

Likewise shell was a ground burst weapon and also suffered more than usual due to the wet ground. Shells might plunge several inches into the soil and when they exploded their burst was lessened. Explosive shell was supplied with a variety of fuses set to specific ranges and the gun officer selected the fuse length appropriate to the range of his target. This might or might not have been perfect, obviously. He couldn't "trim" the fuse as you could with a shrapnel round.

Shrapnel was an airburst weapon and had a trimmable fuse that allowed the gun officer to exactly time it's burst at the range he wanted. As you have pointed out shrapnel fuse was ignited in the same way shell fuse was - by the explosion of the gun charge ejecting the round, so the chances of misfires that way (and from damp conditions) were identical.

The vast majority of shrapnel casualties would be caused by the airburst effect, additional casualties caused by ricochets on hard ground were simply a bonus; such ricochet effects were not the intended main effect of the ammunition. Therefore to suggest that shrapnel was less effective at Waterloo because the soft ground didn't allow ricochets is disingenuous and in fact irrelevant. The same argument can be applied to shell as well of course except that you can appreciate that by the nature of how it functioned shell would be much more adversely affected by wet soft ground.

So all in all the conditions at Waterloo favoured shrapnel ammunition more than the dry hard conditions of Spain vis a vis the same ground conditions on other rounds.

It is clear that shrapnel was a superior ammunition type and technology. The basic design went on over succeeding decades to become the principal artillery anti-personnel round.

Given the above, to give shrapnel ammunition a % age effect reduction in the rules is quite incorrect in my view.

[mcaryf]

I do think Shrapnel was more likely to wound than kill outright. I presume the game allows a certain percentage of wounded troops to go on fighting.

At Waterloo Shrapnel was used as an area effect indirect weapon for example in the orchard at Hougoumomnt. There were no forward observers in those days although Mercer tells a story of asking a neighbouring battery commander to indicate to him how effective Mercer's shots were as the other battery had a better position to view his fall of shot. Thus in real life indirect fire Shrapnel would have probably had more misses, however, since the game does not implement indirect shooting that type of miss should be excluded.

Playing as the French against an effective Shrapnel capability is a different experience. You have to be permanently on the watch for sudden increases in casualties because the British have re-positioned a battery. I guess this new approach might not appeal to all players but I think it was the reality of the actual event. Obviously at the time the local French commander would have moved his unit but at the moment the AI is slow to do that. It would probably work better in multi-player as there would be more "local" commanders to watch out for the "Black Rain".

Does SOW multiplayer always have humans on both sides or can the AI be used to provide the opponent?

Regards

Mike

[Martin James]

Does SOW multiplayer always have humans on both sides or can the AI be used to provide the opponent?

The KS group sometimes has humans on both sides but sometimes we play coop vs the AI. Depends on what's best for the scenario, and the number of players available.

Martin (J)

[Saddletank]

I presume the game allows a certain percentage of wounded troops to go on fighting.

I am not 100% sure but am fairly confident this is not the case. A wound that's not sufficiently serious to remove a soldier from combat has no value being tracked by the game so all wounds are incapacitating. The game splits all losses into dead, wounded and deserters and these sub groups are used as the basis of calculating returning men in carry over scenarios and in the campaign.

I'm pretty sure some fragments from a bursting shell would only cause light wounds as well, as could musket balls so this isn't a very useful line of investigation I don't think.