Fix Bayonets

[Garnier]

I'm just worried, if a change is made that is not mod-able, it will be like what happened when we requested autocharge. Changes that can't be modded are very dangerous. Changes that let more stuff be modded provide a way for us to fix the problems that we encounter in MP, because we can do the extensive testing that is required.

[Damned Black Hat]

The thing is that autocharge CAN be avoided. If you don't want your unit to engage in hand-to-hand, just use the Short Retreat button and they will immediately stop and will fall back roughly 20 yards - out of melee range, but not out of the fight. Just because a regiment is fixing bayonets and charging at the enemy does not mean you can't stop them from doing so. No regiment of mine has engaged in hand-to-hand unless I either ordered it or allowed it to happen.

[Blaugrana]

Is that a button on Reb Bugler's toolbar?

[Damned Black Hat]

Is that a button on Reb Bugler's toolbar?

Correct. It's a red button with an arrow pointing down.

[Hancock the Superb]

I'll throw in two cents that are based on personal experience.

The first is, who here has fired a modern rifle before. If you have, you will understand exactly what I am talking about.

Lets choose a round distance. 100 yards is good enough. Now you are on the bench (that means, you have a bench steadying you, not standing up), and you get ready to fire. The target the size of a man's head 100 yards away is barely a black dot in open sights. I can barely hit 20 shots in the 9s and 10s, and everything is perfect when I target shoot. So now imagine standing up and holding the gun steady, firing, and hitting the target. I'm not necessarily even on the target when I stand up, let alone accurate. Now add worse vision (I've got 20/20, and most people don't). Can you still hit that target at 100 yards? Now add the uselessness of a Civil War weapon, it fouls a lot, it doesn't fire very accurately, it is heavy. Add the smoke of battle and the stress. Even though the body is larger than a head, could you even hit a person you were aiming at when with a Civil War era weapon at 100 yards in a combat situation? And that is assuming your weapon works!

So I think that really anything over 100 yards is rather foolish when it comes to engaging in musketry fights. Sure, commanders have said, they started firing when the enemy was 200 yards out. But how would they know what 100 yards was? I don't think you can see 200 yards well in North America due to the rolling nature of the ground! Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. And that isn't even close to the 400 yards that some of the rifles are set for in the game!

But now for close range firing. First of all, stand on a football field. Have another person stand at the 50 yard line. Can you see them easily? Could you shoot them with a gun? Remember, you are standing upright, your gun is heavy, and the slightest movement will send your bullet to Pluto. Still sure you can hit your target? Now take into account that most Civil War weapons were sighted for 100 yards. That means your bullet is actually going to go over your target unless you aim for their feet or remember to adjust the sights.

I think it is reasonable to believe that about 20 yards is close range. At that range, it would be rather hard to miss. However, your rifle will foul. You don't necessarily aim properly. You forget to pull the trigger. You can't actually see due to smoke. All these factors add up and decrease the deadliness that we expect.

I think it is safe to assume that at 100 yards, a regiment could cause 100 casualties in 1 hour. This seems consistent with the 20th Indiana at Gettysburg, the 20th Maine at Gettysburg. Closer range fighting (50 yards or less lets say) would incure perhaps the same number of casualties in just over 30 minutes (about the amount of time each of Rickett's Brigades were engaged, but that may be closer to 45). My point is, musket fire is too deadly as it is now. Regiments are toasted after 15 minutes, not 45.

What needs to be changed is movement speed. According to my calculations, troops moving at the quick time should move at 2.917 mph, not the 4 mph it is set at in the game. It is difficult enough to walk at 3 mph, so how on Earth would one walk at 4? That is FAST walking. Instead of the 8 mph for double quick the game has, the actual speed should be either 5.156 or 5.625 (depending upon which number of strides the colonel designates). So, if we want to increase casualties, we should decrease all speeds to their correct values. However, that is not to say that accuracy should not be decreased as well. I think that casualties should be decreased to researched numbers (have a random sample of guys get on a firing range with a gun and see how many times they can hit a body sized target at different ranges). The decreased speed will make the moving while under fire that much more deadly. Artillery effectiveness might increase as well. If you wanted to speed up game time, just double everything, speed, reload time, etc.

I hope this helps.

[A.S. Johnston]

I suspect that the movement speed of the infantry is one of those compromises with reality which was necessitated by the fact that this is a game, not an attempt at an exact simulation of the Civil War battlefields.

What is wanted is a mechanism by which infantry units which charge infantry have a lesser chance of closing to contact than they do at this time. As I said, what about a change to the effect on morale - which would then cause the charging unit to fall back without contacting the target unit - I'll take a look and see what file I was looking at last night and thinking of when I wrote earlier about this. But that would be closer to an optimum fix for the problem.

[KG_Soldier]

I'll throw in two cents that are based on personal experience.

The first is, who here has fired a modern rifle before. If you have, you will understand exactly what I am talking about.

Lets choose a round distance. 100 yards is good enough. Now you are on the bench (that means, you have a bench steadying you, not standing up), and you get ready to fire. The target the size of a man's head 100 yards away is barely a black dot in open sights. I can barely hit 20 shots in the 9s and 10s, and everything is perfect when I target shoot. So now imagine standing up and holding the gun steady, firing, and hitting the target. I'm not necessarily even on the target when I stand up, let alone accurate. Now add worse vision (I've got 20/20, and most people don't). Can you still hit that target at 100 yards? Now add the uselessness of a Civil War weapon, it fouls a lot, it doesn't fire very accurately, it is heavy. Add the smoke of battle and the stress. Even though the body is larger than a head, could you even hit a person you were aiming at when with a Civil War era weapon at 100 yards in a combat situation? And that is assuming your weapon works!

So I think that really anything over 100 yards is rather foolish when it comes to engaging in musketry fights. Sure, commanders have said, they started firing when the enemy was 200 yards out. But how would they know what 100 yards was? I don't think you can see 200 yards well in North America due to the rolling nature of the ground! Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. And that isn't even close to the 400 yards that some of the rifles are set for in the game!

But now for close range firing. First of all, stand on a football field. Have another person stand at the 50 yard line. Can you see them easily? Could you shoot them with a gun? Remember, you are standing upright, your gun is heavy, and the slightest movement will send your bullet to Pluto. Still sure you can hit your target? Now take into account that most Civil War weapons were sighted for 100 yards. That means your bullet is actually going to go over your target unless you aim for their feet or remember to adjust the sights.

I think it is reasonable to believe that about 20 yards is close range. At that range, it would be rather hard to miss. However, your rifle will foul. You don't necessarily aim properly. You forget to pull the trigger. You can't actually see due to smoke. All these factors add up and decrease the deadliness that we expect.

I think it is safe to assume that at 100 yards, a regiment could cause 100 casualties in 1 hour. This seems consistent with the 20th Indiana at Gettysburg, the 20th Maine at Gettysburg. Closer range fighting (50 yards or less lets say) would incure perhaps the same number of casualties in just over 30 minutes (about the amount of time each of Rickett's Brigades were engaged, but that may be closer to 45). My point is, musket fire is too deadly as it is now. Regiments are toasted after 15 minutes, not 45.

What needs to be changed is movement speed. According to my calculations, troops moving at the quick time should move at 2.917 mph, not the 4 mph it is set at in the game. It is difficult enough to walk at 3 mph, so how on Earth would one walk at 4? That is FAST walking. Instead of the 8 mph for double quick the game has, the actual speed should be either 5.156 or 5.625 (depending upon which number of strides the colonel designates). So, if we want to increase casualties, we should decrease all speeds to their correct values. However, that is not to say that accuracy should not be decreased as well. I think that casualties should be decreased to researched numbers (have a random sample of guys get on a firing range with a gun and see how many times they can hit a body sized target at different ranges). The decreased speed will make the moving while under fire that much more deadly. Artillery effectiveness might increase as well. If you wanted to speed up game time, just double everything, speed, reload time, etc.

I hope this helps.

Hancock. . . there's no getting around the game moving faster than real life. No one wants to take 2 hours to march into position. Slowing the game down is not an option. I don't have 5 hours to play a single game. And there's no need to speed up the game. But there is a need to stop the ease at which a brigade or division can move to melee against a brigade or division set up behind stone walls or fences without taking more casualties than they now do.

We're not talking about firefights. We're talking about regiments marching into close range while not firing and not paying a price for it.

[Hancock the Superb]

If you start with the actual speed and correct modifiers for 1:1 gameplay, it should be a relatively simple task of doubling everything to increase speeds. You would get the appropriate effect that way.

I'm not saying we need to slow down the game, I'm saying we need to get data which allows us to represent the civil war in this engine. Then when we speed it all up, we won't have differing realtime ratios for musket fire speed and accuracy as well as movement speed. The reason why it is not deadly enough to charge is not because the musket fire isn't effective enough, it is because the troops are moving at a greater speed ratio than musket fire is at. If you make the reload time a bit faster, but decrease the effectiveness, charging would be deadly.

[KG_Soldier]

If you start with the actual speed and correct modifiers for 1:1 gameplay, it should be a relatively simple task of doubling everything to increase speeds. You would get the appropriate effect that way.

I'm not saying we need to slow down the game, I'm saying we need to get data which allows us to represent the civil war in this engine. Then when we speed it all up, we won't have differing realtime ratios for musket fire speed and accuracy as well as movement speed. The reason why it is not deadly enough to charge is not because the musket fire isn't effective enough, it is because the troops are moving at a greater speed ratio than musket fire is at. If you make the reload time a bit faster, but decrease the effectiveness, charging would be deadly.

It is that musket fire at close range isn't deadly enough. I'm not asking to rework the entire game. It's really rather simple.

Increasing reload rate would affect all firefights. That's not what we're after.

[Willard]

All right. . . I know you guys are working on a patch. So I thought I'd throw this out there.


In MP Games, we see many players advancing aggressively to contact with the enemy, especially if they have them outnumbered. Fine. Attack the weak point in the line. Fine.

There's just one problem. There's no penalty, or very little, for closing with the enemy. In assault columns or in line or even in road columns, there's no way for multiple regiments even behind stone walls to stop the enemy cold or even slow them down. Rifle fire at 75 yards or less should devastate advancing regiments who are not firing but simply advancing to melee.

If the real guns had been this weak at close range, Lee would have been successful on 3 July.

We need something like Buck & Ball. We need to make regiments pay for advancing to melee against regiments behind stone walls or fences or woods or even out in the open.

Please help. I think it would be good for the game.

There are a couple of things that can be done to "fix" this.

First, MP issues are slightly different than SP issues because we play with "GCM rules" which have nerfed the effectiveness of artillery, increased artillery reload times, and increased the range of infantry.

There are four changes that can be put into effect in GCM games that will help:

First, increase the artillery reload times - which I believe is influenced by the gun crews. GCM has only 10 man crews and the reload times are horribly slow. In stock games, reload times are between 30-45 secs. In GCM, my experience is that they are at least 60-75 secs.

Second, increase the effectiveness of the GCM artillery to halfway between its current level and that of the stock game.

For infantry, decrease the rifle range to 200 yards to eliminate the 20 yard disparity.

Finally, dramatically decrease the transition speed for units switching between column/attack column/line(this will put a big break on units without decreasing the formation speed itself, as the units will not be able to defend/fire while transitioning AND it is unrealistic for a 400 man unit in road column to transition to line in 10-15 seconds!).

Given the limitations of the current game engine, this will serve to minimize some of the imbalance that we are seeing based upon the tactics being used. Artillery was an effective deterrent for assaults that has been neutered in GCM games. Defenders were able to hold sectors with less BECAUSE of the artillery, not INSPITE of the artillery as it is currently configured in GCM. This should allow players to set up lightly manned defensive positions with artillery and mass MORE troops for offensive actions and flanking movements. Right now, depending upon the terrain, a defender needs to maintain at least a 5-4 ratio in order to hold a line. That is no where near the historical ability of troops to hold a defensive line with ratios between 1-1 and 3-1 easily attainable in CW battles.

The 220 rifles currently allow alot of stacking in game so you can place regiments at 200 yards and 210 and 220, creating an overlapping area of fire of 3 regiments on 1 single regiment. That basically puts fire from 3 regiments on 1 in the same battle space. With artillery unable to hit effectively (i.e. without canister) past 200 yards, there is no way that this 1 regiment can hold up even behind a wall. Throw in troops moving up in double-time in column/assault formation and it only adds to the problem.

I fully understand that assaults in columns did occur - most notably at Spotslyvannia - but there were some uniques circumstances in that successful incident. Emory Upton led 12 regiments on a dawn assault having to cross only between 200-400yards at the point of attack against the horseshoe. He benefited from both the suprise attack AND the fact that Lee had pulled EVERY SINGLE BATTERY out of that sector the night before. The attack took place with overwhelming force on an entrenched defender without artillery support.

Assault/attack (or heavy) columns were used in the Napoleonic wars and were somewhat effective based upon sheer numbers. There is some historical debate as to how they were actually used and how effective they actually were:

http://www.napoleon-series.org/military ... maida.html

The fundamental difference between the CW and NW was of course the rifled musket, which increased accuracy and killing range AND artillery improvements which accomplished the same. That is why the use attack columns were problematic - you could get away with 70% of your troops not firing while advancing when artillery and musket ranges were short and close order/melee assaults ruled the battlefield. However, that increased range of rifles and infantry don't give you as much time and space to deploy and successfully assault in such close formations. That is why large scale cavalry charges of a Napoleonic nature were few and far between in the CW - the time/space needed to deploy those large formations was not generally available on CW battlefields and the increased range/effectiveness of artillery would cause great disruptions to those formations.

-------------------

Now in a perfect gaming engine, we should be able to tweak as KG suggested. However, my suggestion would be to work on increasing the morale and fatigue malus of assaulting troops VICE increasing casaulty rates. For the most part, the casaulty rates are about where they should be. The problem is that the tactics described don't result in a higher morale and fatigue malus on attacking troops so you end up with this tidal wave effect in the absence of any breakers within the game engine.

The same problem impacts artillery - specifically counter-battery fire. From my testing in stock games, counter-battery casualty results are pretty spot on. The problem is that you can't "split" artillery's CB fire effectiveness from other types of fire such as when you target infantry. When you nerf the guns, it impacts all firing types. Additionally, based upon what Garnier has told me, at this point in time we can't increase the morale and fatigue malus of units under fire. For infantry targeted fire, this would simulate the "keep your heads" down effect of artillery without having to increase casualty numbers to ahistoric levels. For artillery, this would appropriately simulate the effects of counter battery fire in the CW. At Gettysburg, the majority of CB fire engagements resulted in one/more batteries being driven off by accurate CB fire that didn't necessarily knockout guns or inflict casaulties - basically it got too "hot" at that location to keep up the fire and batteries were driven off. The guns can be "silenced" as morale and fatigue malus inflicted should decrease firing rates and accuracy forcing the player to pull the guns back and regroup.