More questions

[GShock]

VC is absolutely right on the issue which is also true for infantry charging guns, not just cavalry. Perhaps the easiest solution would be to make the charger unroutable as the charge starts. Other crewmen should automatically rout and abandon the other guns when a gun in their battery is captured. Another solution could be to actually autosplit the bde during the charge so that each section charges a different gun and all of them are taken simultaneously.
The way it works i TC2M doesn't take into account that in order for a gun to shoot the infantry during a charge on the gun next to it on the side it needs to redeploy, changing ammo, aiming and actually firing in the middle of a charge. This is in the case of unattached guns previously belonging to the same battery. Count the time it takes to redeploy the remaining guns and the Inf will have captured them unlike how happens in tc2m.
Essentially the artillery crew would fire a shot against the charge if possible (and it's not always possible) and then really rout and leave the gun where it stands as infantry/cavalry arrives.

A very important thing that TCM2 lacks in regards with arty is the fact that a regiment of 600 men can be routed by a battery with cannisters. Truth be said, starting from 150yds and below, and still out of cannister range, muskets would already pick off and kill crewmembers. figure 500 soldiers shooting 16 people and imagine what remains when the first volley is done... if not entirely exterminated the whole battery of 4x16 men would be on the rout leaving the guns in place.

As u can imagine, that leaves little room for the aforementioned issue of guns shooting captured guns or routing entire inf/cav brigades when being charged. If this happens it's because in TC2M this thing is not modelled.

These things are a must in Gettysburg imo.

[BOSTON]

GShock wrote:

A very important thing that TCM2 lacks in regards with arty is the fact that a regiment of 600 men can be routed by a battery with cannisters. Truth be said, starting from 150yds and below, and still out of cannister range, muskets would already pick off and kill crewmembers. figure 500 soldiers shooting 16 people and imagine what remains when the first volley is done... if not entirely exterminated the whole battery of 4x16 men would be on the rout leaving the guns in place.
These things are a must in Gettysburg imo.

In TC2M cannisters used from 200yds. and under (look in manual), rifles from 160yds. and under. Take into consideration the reload time of the batteries to the reload time of the infantry and unit quality, also placement (battery on higher ground for instance). Are there defending infantry firing at charging unit as-well-as other batteries? Fatique condition of charging troops, what formation are they in? Charging in line formation is more fatiqueing and takes longer to cover the same distance than column.

[Gfran64]

Hey guys,

Actual canister range for the 3" OR the Union used was about 400yds. Add to that timed fuses on shaped projectiles, which essentially makes them canister. Add to that, that artillery was usually supported by infantry/cavalry that was well in front of a battery and probably higher that the attacking unit, therefore the attacking unit would need to be closer than 160yds to be able to fire while the enemy infantry being higher would be able to fire first at a range over 160yds. It was not small task to walk up to a battery and fire a volley into it at 160 yards. Also consider that the footprint of the artillery was very spread out so that the men were not really bunched together and were running around a lot performing their individual duties. Given all this, they were probably not all that easy to hit. As Dale points out, your best bet was to rout the troops directly in front of the guns so that they ran back through their guns thus making it impossible to target the enemy through their own retreating troops. For the most part, the taking of a battery that was well supported was a very costly proposition.

But, I completely agree with you guys about the capture of a battery. The whole battery should fall more easily. If you charge from the side and take the outside gun, then your infantry unit loses its target because the next gun in line is obscured by the gun you just captured. So you TC the unit and DQ them to the range of the next target and then charge it and the whole process starts again. Plus the battery shouldn't be able to fire through itself if you are within its footprint. So I think their is room for improvement in this process.

Just my thoughts,

Greg B)

[norb]

We try to put in the historical numbers, but the entire system is very hard to test. It's not like there is a function that says if hit by canister and we have this many men and our morale and fatigue is this and .....

The reason I think the AI system is good is because each system is independent. A canister hit takes morale. At certain morale levels, units will retreat. It's many systems working independently that create the overall look of the game. So stuff like this is usually numbers tweaking, but it's so hard to test because our officers and experience level of troops factor in there too.

[Amish John]

Remember also that batteries did not always operate as a 6 gun (US) or 4 gun (CS) unit. At least on the US side the 6 gun battery was broken down into three 2 gun sections. It was common and happened at Gettysburg that a section would be detached to another part of the field (such as Smith's section that was deployed apart from the other 4 guns at Devil's Den). So you'd have to impose some distance limit so that if you captured 1 gun you also captured any other gun in that battery that was within x yards.

[GShock]

Yes you are absolutely right AJ.

Anyway, whatever the cannister or, in other words, the minimum range of firing for a gun/bty, if the time it takes to redeploy it, aim, change ammo and reload and then fire is correctly computed, the inf bde surviving the first shot is certain to capture the gun in the charge unless routed by the gun/bty single shot.

Still, it is mandatory to bring to the system the fact that when 500 men shoot on 16 after the 1st volley there's no hope of operating the gun itself. Survivors would be in flight anyway.

Hey, that's why guns in the rear were placed in safe locations, far away from musket fire and if possible on heights but that's also why cav mobility/skirmish was a good deterrent for arty. It takes but 20 horsemen to kill/rout a gun crew from the distance with carabines.

I'm sure my point is clear, time to implement this which is a major change from TC2M and while it's relatively easy with humans i don't think this kind of rework would need a slight AI change... rather a very big one.

[Hancock the Superb]

Usually, am infantry regiment would come rushing up upon the battery from the front and the sides, almost surrounding it. The regiment would then have different companies charge in. If a company was chewed up by a hail of cannister, it would retreat to the main regimental line, and another company would take the chargee. Eventually, if one company went in the battery, the colonel would order the rest of the regiemnt to charge, b/c cannoneers can still fire while they are being run over. For ex. Picketts charge, the battery at the point of attack was surrounded by rebs, but they kept on firing cannister until they ran out of ammunition.

Anothe example is the Rhode Island Battery, 2nd Day, the battery was run over in 2 sections, beat the regiment off, all while still firing in the other section. Then, the rebs attacked all at once, and the battery still fired cannister while being surrounded. Rebs were on the LIMBER WAGONS (in the rear), and the gunners were still firing at rebs in their front. Eventually, the battery commander said, lets get out of here, and they ran back in the gap.