Expanded Toolbar - Grog

[DarkRob]

And there 'ain't no way' anyone is going to beat one of my scenarios with a one click formation move, regardless of the formations design.

Is that a dare or a double dare?

Neither, just covering my ass. Seemed like the diplomatic solution at the time since things were getting somewhat unfriendly and I felt it was a neutral route to take to comply with a request without taking sides. Did it work?

Oh man, I guess my sarcastic sense of humor doesn't come across so well in text, that quote was from a movie and ive always wanted to use it and that seemed like the perfect time, it was only meant as a joke. You know Ive always been very supportive of everything you've done for the game and how much I love the Grog Toolbar.
I still don't necessarily agree with putting this formation in the game, but having seen it now, I don't think its that bad. In my mind I envisioned it was going to be a one button fortress formation. The fortress is a formation I created awhile back and what Mike was describing sounded very similar. The fortress is a broken formation because the AI has no idea what to do against it and invariably will just walk or gallop up to it and get itself slaughtered. Your formation is different, but not to different. All it will really do is make creating the fortress a lot faster. And as long as its there Il be happy to abuse it.

I wasn't trying to be unfriendly and I don't think Mike was either. I may not agree with everything as far as his point of view on the game goes. But I don't question his love of the game and I thought we were just two wargamers discussing our different points of view. I never meant any of it as a personal attack and I hope he knows that. I certainly never took anything he said personally, just as a difference of opinion.

[Didz]

It's obviously good from a gaming viewpoint even if its not in keeping with the tactical doctrine of the period.

[mcaryf]

Hi Reb

I have tried it out as the French and the British with somewhat mixed results. I had not fully considered the variety of sizes for divisional structures. However, when playing Ligny I tried Friant's division of Imperial Guard and he had two attached artillery units and these were placed at either end of the set of squares. I tried Pecheux's division and the artillery seemed to want to position itself somewhat to the front of the squares and fairly well to the left. The British unit seemed to behave as I would expect. I will try a few more variants and will remove all mods except your tool bar.

I am sorry about my questions re the formtype command, I thought that was involved with special formations. I will have a go picking up the references in your drills.csv file: thus form:DRIL_Lvl4_Inf_Squares_FR would be for the French.

Regards

Mike

[RebBugler]

Hi Reb

I have tried it out as the French and the British with somewhat mixed results. I had not fully considered the variety of sizes for divisional structures. However, when playing Ligny I tried Friant's division of Imperial Guard and he had two attached artillery units and these were placed at either end of the set of squares. I tried Pecheux's division and the artillery seemed to want to position itself somewhat to the front of the squares and fairly well to the left. The British unit seemed to behave as I would expect. I will try a few more variants and will remove all mods except your tool bar.

I am sorry about my questions re the formtype command, I thought that was involved with special formations. I will have a go picking up the references in your drills.csv file: thus form:DRIL_Lvl4_Inf_Squares_FR would be for the French.

Regards

Mike

Batteries flanking squares results when there are more batteries in the Division than Infantry Brigades. For this formation to be most effective the player must know the makeup of the Division and detach Batteries when necessary before executing this formation to prevent them from being positioned and exposed on the flanks.

[mcaryf]

Hi Reb

I notice that the artillery between squares entries in the Drills.csv file exist for the French and the Allies, which uses British Squares, but they do not specifically have one for Prussians. I have tried the "British" formation and that does seem to work. However, I have noticed a slightly strange effect in that during play if I use the Toolbar to give a Prussian Division Commander an order to use that formation he will often ignore it until I give him a different formation order to start his units moving and then change it to the artillery in squares formation and then it works. At the moment I am trying to recreate the situation when the Prussian 15th Brigade of Bulow's Corps arrived in the Paris wood an hour or so before the next Brigade from IV Corps. It seemed to me that artillery between squares formation might be a sensible one for the AI to adopt in case Domon or Subervie's cavalry came calling!

On a different topic I was experimenting with using the diagnostic feature to show the zones of control created by units. When I took a cavalry squadron and put it into skirmish format the "tiles" it controlled actually went down from 3 to 1. My main interest in cavalry as skirmishers was to see if they could offer some sort of extended protection to batteries as their graphical representation certainly extends across 2 adjacent batteries. It seems, however, that their real influence could actually be less. Thus I think I can definitely confirm that I am not requesting that cavalry formation at the squadron level.

Regards

Mike

[Didz]

Unlike the British and French it appears that the Prussians did have designated formations for larger bodies of troops. David Nash includes the brigade formations in his book on the Prussian Army 1808-1815, which includes the brigade formation for an attack.

The pre-1813 formation for a brigade about to make an attack shows a skirmish line deployed to the front supported by the brigades two Fusilier battalions to their rear (one would assume that the skirmish line itself was provided by the third rank of both battalions)

To their rear the brigades five musketeer battalions are shown in column of divisions (the two flanking columns consisting of two battalions and the centre consisting of one battalion) with the brigades foot artillery companies deployed on either flank.

To their rear a further musketeer battalion and the combined grenadier battalion cover the intervals between the musketeer columns, and behind them covering the intervals are three columns of the brigades cavalry each consisting of 4 x squadrons in column of half-squadrons with the brigades two horse batteries bringing up the rear of the central column.

A variation of this formation is shown suggesting an alternative that would have been employed if the brigade was opposed by enemy cavalry. In this variation the skirmish line has been recalled and the Fusilier battalions have been withdrawn through the musketeer columns to form on the flanks of the reserve line formed by the single musketeer battalion and the grenadiers. The positions of the artillery are not shown in this diagram and I assume that in keeping with normal tactical doctrine it has been withdrawn to the rear to protect the guns, although Nash doesn't confirm this in his notes.

The same diagram appears as Figure 132 in 'Imperial Bayonets' which is probably where Nash copied it from. Nafziger has added notes on the intervals between the lines of the formation as 150 paces and 50 paces between the skirmish formation as its supports. He also confirms that the artillery would normally be deployed to the rear of the formation and only brought forward once the opposing infantry was locked in a firefight.

[DarkRob]

@Reb Bugler

Hi Reb, so I was talking with Hook over on the steam forum and he introduced me to the Z-Key(the zoom function)which for some reason I never knew about. Probably because Ive always been enamored with the spyglass on the grog toolbar. However the spyglass has one glaring limitation that the zoom function doesn't. The camera can still be rotated while using the zoom function, but cannot be rotated when using the spyglass. Could you possibly do one last update to the grog toolbar allowing us to use the spyglass while still being able to rotate the view? I realize I could just use the zoom function instead, but I like the spyglass so much more when playing hits because of the immersion it adds to the game, which is basically my reason for playing HITS to begin with.

Pretty please with a cherry on top?

[RebBugler]

@Reb Bugler

Hi Reb, so I was talking with Hook over on the steam forum and he introduced me to the Z-Key(the zoom function)which for some reason I never knew about. Probably because Ive always been enamored with the spyglass on the grog toolbar. However the spyglass has one glaring limitation that the zoom function doesn't. The camera can still be rotated while using the zoom function, but cannot be rotated when using the spyglass. Could you possibly do one last update to the grog toolbar allowing us to use the spyglass while still being able to rotate the view? I realize I could just use the zoom function instead, but I like the spyglass so much more when playing hits because of the immersion it adds to the game, which is basically my reason for playing HITS to begin with.

Right click hold toward the bottom of the screen and pan away. A tool tip pops up notifying of the area providing this function.

[DarkRob]

Right click hold toward the bottom of the screen and pan away. A tool tip pops up notifying of the area providing this function.

Cant believe I never noticed that before haha. You're the man Reb, thanks.

[jlan5031]

DarkRob,
I don't know how to reach any better than this method. I just watched your Chancellorsville video from 2017. As far as I can tell, it's the latest Gettysburg video on the internet. I watch and like your videos but prefer GB games to WL. Won't you please add a GB video once in awhile?