Scourge of War Boards

GShock wrote:

In this test all my arty leaders were TCed and in NO ORDER fashion.

That may be the problem. TC'd units follow courier orders in some versions of this game and ignore them in others. I don't know why, that's just the way it's always been. I never TC units if I am going to move them via the courier system. The arty batteries will move.

You aren't by any chance using the stock couriers.csv are you? If so, that would explain your problem. The stock version is a real mess. It mixes commands that are only executed by the commander with those that are executed by the entire unit. The stances are just such an example. I've updated my courier mod and as soon as Little Powell uploads it, give it a try. That should take care of your problem. Of course that won't help you with the stock scenarios, but at least you'll be able to use couriers in sandbox mode. Sorry, I should have realized that's what was going on.

Hence this has got to be a bug of some sort, at least I hope so. Meanwhile Graham, the arty in good spot in 30 minutes at 300 yds distance killed 12 enemy soldiers

You must be using Rebel arty. The stock version is useless for anything other than canister and solid shot. I made a mod Arty&EnfiladeFire which fixed that. But the patch does not allow changes to be made to the flank and rear fire effect anymore so I am not updating it. However you can look at how I changed the arty tables and make a mod that fixes that part of the game.

Well, i disabled the couriering system and as totally expected everything went fine. Totally, believe me, totally expected.

I'm not playing scenarios anymore, just sandbox for the moment because of the mods. So yes, I'll be waiting for your mod to be uploaded and definitely give it a try.

Yes Rebel Arty in Pender's division, standard Sandbox OB Day1. Your mod is ACTIVE. I believe in the midst of battle the flank/rear bombing to be a minor morale issue, the real issue is the constant wheeling of the regiments which prevents them from firing and so 1 bad thing cancels out 1 good thing.

Regardless of that, the problem is always the same: Shrapnel/Shell. I don't really feel like messing up with artyammo.csv because that takes long hours of testing and I have never really played this game because when I saw the problems with arty I uninstalled it... now that it's starting to work I'd rather enjoy it a bit.

Do you not think that the rebel arty is completely useless? Things being what they are now in the game (and with your mod) Lee should have used about 400.000 guns if he meant to have a chance at Gettysburg.
Now I guess we all agree that Granpa was NOT senile or stupid, therefore the only logical conclusion is that this arty needs to be further beefed up.

Believe me the DIV battles are so crammed with people that you can hardly believe the arty could MISS something at 300/400 yds at all!!! Area weapon is not designed to score direct hits, even a near miss would do. Do you plan to do something to the mod?

At present stage I suggest working on the area weapons to at least optimize a simulated near-miss value. In case you plan to do it, I will gladly test it. Nothing compared to the real thing with the new arty table but it ll take a while before Norb does it... perhaps we can do something during the wait.

... and I am an ace when testing things.

Hey what do you mean...."Granpa":ohmy:;)

The CS artillery really was that bad. Consider that the 'Copse of Trees' was the designated point of attack on 3 July. Cushing's battery of six guns was immediately to the north of the target point. About 120 CS guns, mostly rifled guns at that, fired essentially at those six guns for two hours. At the end of the bombardment he still had two guns in action.
The 14th VT infantry was 400 yards SW from the Copse. They suffered about as as many casualties from poorly aimed CS artillery (mostly shrapnel & shell) as did the 13th VT who engaged in a standup fight with a significant chunk of Kemper's brigade at a range of perhaps 50 yds.

-Jim

GShock wrote:

Believe me the DIV battles are so crammed with people that you can hardly believe the arty could MISS something at 300/400 yds at all!!! Area weapon is not designed to score direct hits, even a near miss would do. Do you plan to do something to the mod?

That's just an accuracy issue that is easily modded. It's one of the changes I made in the arty fire mod. The area effect does work in this patch. Now if shrapnel overshoots and there is a nearby unit, it will take casualties if the shell explodes. The problem is that the success rate for a confederate shell exploding is 20%. From what I've read, that seems to be historically accurate, but in my mod, I upped that to 40%.

I guess I could release the arty part of the mod so those that are interested can get a better perspective of the effectiveness of artillery fire.

Yes pls upload the complete part.
Meanwhile thanks to the SR10 mod i could finally play an army vs army battle. IIRC the arty was not moved by my Corps commanders. They only moved infantry divisions leaving the arty totally out of the picture.

Bad sign.

OK, I've uploaded the revised enhanced arty fire mod and courier & mini-map mod. You'll find them in the Mods section.

All right, so it looks like we'll have to deal with the lack of the area effect table and target type table for the moment but surely the mod shows signs of improvements in regards with the artillery effectiveness.

The main problem I identified is that despite the CSA arty divisions, while being part of my same corps (AP Hill DRF OOB but dont remember which one exactly) are in se a pair of divisions of their own, therefore, not endorsed under Pender and the other DIV leader whose name escapes my memory right now.

I was able to command the movement and deployment via DIV leader (arty div leader) and I saw the same problem I saw at 1.0 with the DIV commmanders moving while leaving their troops behind. While this seems to have been fixed (I even managed a army vs army battle by taking Lee and having the whole army structure beneath me) for the infantry, this was still there for the artillery.

For some strange reason, and I repeat, excluding the AI Div leader issue because the Arty Div leader is NOT endorsed, the Arty batteries would keep moving without any orders. This happened in 4 consecutive tests as corps leader.

I never TCed the arty leaders but I noticed they would keep the STRAT orders given. They obviously were in No order status and such were the orders of their ai subordinates as well.

Now I noticed the DIV leaders would move the arty CONSTANTLY. In one test I had 25 casualties (and 25 kills) for the whole battle which lasted almost 2 hours. I am obviously unsatisfied of this kill rate but the point stands: if the leader keeps making minor corrections, the crew will keep pushing the guns up and down, their fatigue levels will rise and the accuracy will further be affected. So essentially this is what I saw, for some reason (and it might well be related to the mod) a NO ORDER bde kept moving the batteries, sometimes limbering them some other times by just minor corrections and men pushing them.

I say it is mandatory the arty stays where you place it. The AI leader may be allowed to move the arty BACK to a safer position (towards the DIV leader or the CORPS leader or the ARMY leader) but no other movement should be possible. Minor corrections should be possible to allow line of sight to target but if a gun can't see, it must be moved where it can see and STAY THERE we can't let the crews getting tired or we'll never get the hang of it.

Looking back at this particular test, I had 1 entire gun division out of commission for the entire game, with 25 kills in 2 hours and 250 men totally exhausted with doing what? pushing the guns up and down.

I managed to rout all enemy batteries by musket fire. The losses were extreme since in the SowGB world the crew of a gun can sustain an entire volley of muskets from a rgt without routing or being totally annhilated.
I witnessed for minutes and minutes an entire infantry division shoot at musket range a USA battery (set of batteries) encompassing AT LEAST 12 guns and taking a severe punishment.

When the gun fiinally routs, the limbering takes 1 second and the gun goes away. It should stay in place all right but the point is that the crew of a gun, can shoot one, maybe 2 cannister rounds but it will be decimated if not totally obliterated by a single regiment.

How many volleys you think you would personally survive if 300+ men per volley were shooting at you? This is something that DEFINITELY needs to be addressed. Gun routed means crew routed and cannon in place for capture, musket vs gun at 100 yds mean 1 maybe 2 cannister shots then crew routed or full of led.

Back to the guns, the issue is with the DIV leader of arty division. If you move the no order leader and his guns, those guns will stay but sooner or later (as you guys told me) the DIV leader will take over and move that bde leader again. As explained this translated into a whole division being out of commission for the entire battle. It did shoot constantly hitting basically nothing but what puzzled me is that it was extremely tired.

Fatigue must surely affect accuracy but in a corps vs corps battle, for some reason the other div took 500 heads but this div in particular only took 25. Perhaps the No Orders allows too much room of manouvering to the DIV leader. Arty in any case having 2000yds range must be allowed to move following the same rules of the infantry (which can be moved even when under fire). Luckily this happens with no orders so we can use hold to the last to keep the arty in place but this won't prevent minor movements an you can see the men pushing their guns up and down for an hour with no apparent reason (surely not proximity of the enemy). Why this guy pushed his guns around for so long while the other guy didn't (and scored) is a mystery to me.

Finally, it appears to me that while being a good player I certainly am no master with SowGB. The player has a TOTAL advantage against the AI because he can manouver his rgt under cover one by one if he's present in the second lines (good visibility but in safe spot). The AI doesn't ad this is true both for your troops and the enemy troops. Essentially you can hardly lose against the AI if you are always shoot from cover while the enemy is neglecting that cover. This strategy must be PRIORITIZED in the AI routines. It must look for cover and shoot from there if possible or... take a minor punishment and retreat.

So, carrying on with the obs on 1.2 arty.

We are now with 20+ sandbox battles in corps vs corps and I've yet to lose one (historical level customized with no couriers and all in sight view but still with 10m camera restriction).

As I said this has something to do with the fact that you can pinpoint your combat zones so that you have a distinct advantage in rifle vs rifle combat with the enemy.

So the first priority imho is to make the game harder by working on the ai.
As corps commander, I am ahead of the Div commander and I observe the battle from behind the lines. This is what I do and what the AI should do as well.

If a rgt is in open vs covered: fallback (if the rgt is facing overwhelming odds, instant retreat).
If a rgt is in open vs open and there's cover between rgt an enemy: advance to cover.
If a rgt is flanking an enemy rgt which is already engaged: advance.
If a rgt is shooting a gun: advance.

Obviously against such tactic, the AI has no chance. I tried with all OOBs, all objective scenarios, with and without force balancement and with both sides: about 20 games played, only major victories. Essentially the AI is routed much sooner and I carry on pounding it.

If the AI could do what I do manually the game would be TOTALLY different and I urge you guys to do something about this issue. The AI against me is always fighting in the open against covered regiments. It will never stand a chance.

So back to the main business: artillery.

I already said the most important thing here to do is to modify the behavior of the DIV leader so that he will not see his guns as an assemblement of troops to be kept in a particular formation.
The only formation needed here is the one that gives visibility to a target, even just one target. When that is achieved the gun, the battery, the entire DIV should stay in place. If the target changes (either manually or via AI decision) the DIv leader should relocate the gun just for the purpose of visibility and this means a slight move by pushing the gun but NOT the limbering/unlimbering and big movements.

Luckily, when the DIV is in hold at all costs, the guns STAY in place but do mind that in this stance you can't move the guns even if you want to because on the battlefield they will almost always be under fire by enemy artillery or have targets in range.

So now you see why the courier system doesn't work with artillery: You'll have to change stance, then issue the move order, check roads/double quick, then issue the stance order again. In the meanwhile the courier has arrived, God knows what can have changed on the battlefield... the couriering system is ok it's the fact that the DIV leader moves his guns up and down with no purpose that messes everything up. I believe the way the DIV arty leader manages things is the main reason why the crews are always exhausted. Though I don't see why they shouldn't recover fatigue when shooting in place. It's not that tiring activity after all. Fatigue is extra important. We will never manage to build appropriate accuracy tables if fatigue keeps altering it.

About the command map. Did you guys notice that if you open the command map (all in sight) you will see not where your DIV is (any DIV) but where it will be at the end of the previous "N" order?
Quite obvious isn't it...

but well there's something more.You will ALSO see where the enemy troops will be at the end of their order. This violates the fog of war and you can move ahead of them (especially if they are guns) and catch them where they will be. I presume this will totally mess up multiplayer and I can imagine what a guy playing USA with the cavalry will do against the guy playing CSA with moving his artillery. This has got to be addressed... do mind what this problem means not just in the "no couriers" but with the "bde level" courier setting. Mind that each time you give an order you've got to wait and see what happens... then what the AI will do after that order is taken and still... hope the AI won't override it.

Before closing this observations post (for the moment!) I wanted to tell I finally took a look at the sprite of a gun hit by my cannons and being destroyed. That was totally cool. We just need a sprite with a standing gun and limber, the sprites of the routing crews and we'll have fixed a MAJOR gamey problem with this engine: The arty routing and taking the gun with it! How comes when you need to limber/unlimber it takes you a minute while when you rout you can instantly limber the gun and flee?
Next step is to increase the morale loss for crews under musket fire. Make them rout after 30 seconds when they are half dead and you'll see how the strategies against guns change. No more guns in the front line AS IT SHOULD HAVE ALWAYS BEEN. Can't imagine the implications of capturing the guns without need to charge them. The game would become history in itself. We need, imho, to address the 300 shooting vs 15 reloading morale issue. The crew can't keep shooting cannister when under musket fire. Dead or alive, they must rout and leave the gun in place for capture. Now THAT becomes a cannister armed gun in the middle of the enemy lines... and this is why I am SURE the guns would not be used in front line anymore. No more gamey tactics.

Finally, I don't know whether or not this is bc of DRF mod but the supply wagon cart has totally disappeared. I only see the horses now. Minor graph glitch, totally unimportant and I am sure you all already know.

Finally, I don't know whether or not this is bc of DRF mod but the supply wagon cart has totally disappeared. I only see the horses now. Minor graph glitch, totally unimportant and I am sure you all already know.

That's caused by the SR10 mod, it's not a bug. Troop numbers for Ammo Wagons must be adjusted for each modded ratio: SR1 - 3, SR10 - 21...stock of course being 10 men.