Scourge of War Boards

Canister rounds in 1863 contained 27 total shot. This is independent of the size of the gun, larger guns simply had larger shot. Shot leaving the gun barrel disperse in a cone following standard geometry and the usual ballistics equations.

There is no published data on what the angle of the shot cone was, only anecdotal suggestion that rifled guns have a wider angle of the shot cone due to the spin from the rifling.

I have done extensive numerical modeling of hit rates at various shot cone angle and at various ranges. The difficulty is trying to balance the high known effectiveness at short ranges with the reported utility at longer ranges. There is no magic answer that fulfills all needs. If you widen the angle to maximize effectiveness at short ranges, which is well documented, then long range hit rates suffer. The numbers that I picked lean towards short range effect. The result is that that the casualty rates at longer ranges are rather sparse due to the larger size of the shot cone.

An additional issue is that the AI will open up on infantry with canister as soon as they are in range. If we set the canister range notably longer, then the artillery will shot itself dry of canister before the infantry get into really effective range. The standard loadout of canister was about 12 rounds per gun so this is a real problem.

I am not disputing that artillery did sometimes use canister at longer ranges, if conditions were right. At GB, the ground was soft due to the rains the week before, so bounces really were not happening. The designer has to balance a number of factors in game design and this is an area where the model lacks sufficient flexibility to perfectly model reality as we think we know it.

-Jim

Jim -

Thanks for your comments. Having played MP extensively and almost exclusively working the guns, you touched on the biggest issue above.

The mid-range effectiveness needs to be improved just a bit. At that 200-500 yard range artillery should be scoring more hits than it currently is. This is extremely important for counter-battery fire. Players roll their guns out in the open up real close because they can - meaning there is currently no deterrant of counter-battery fire at that range.

That is the single biggest factor - even more so than infantry ranges - in pushing guns back.
Depending on the situation, I will sometimes exclusively target artillery early in a game. As the game evolves, I generally switch to targeting infantry once everyone is committed. It is usually during the end game phase in which players will move their guns up to support in an attack.
Of course there are examples of this during the CW, but those occurred when either there was no enemy artillery or it had been driven off.

I have sat there and pounded away with 3inch batteries in outstanding defensive position from 500 yards targeting batteries out in the open. I eventually have an affect on the enemy battery but it can take anyway from 10-15 minutes to drive them off. That is a lifetime if that battery has closed to 200 yards against infantry and it will give the enemey battery more than enough time to punish the infantry in range.

Additionally, players also move the guns up more often because they believe that they aren't doing any damage against infantry at ranges exceeding 200 yards. I don't necessarily agree with that as I have had pretty good success in racking up points PROVIDED I committ the batteries for an extended period of time. The key is that artillery does more damage against fatigued and low morale infantry than infantry that has high morale and is well rested. Therefore it is imperative that you keep up a steady stream of artillery fire especially against infantry that has been engaged for an extended period of time. I think some minor tweaking should be in order but not a wholesale change.

As I mentioned in previous threads, the one change I would like to see is increased morale/fatigue/damage hits to infantry in column at all ranges. That would eliminate column charging more than anything and realistically model why column wasn't used as an attack formation during the CW. One of the biggest issues is that with columns not being punished by artillery, players will rush up troops in column much faster than what could be historically expected - especially when factoring in the superspeed at which units deploy to/from column into line formation. Consequently, instead of deploying in line much further back, troops move quickly up in column and are not hit as often by the artillery as they would be in line formation (meaning line formation moves slowly so artillery should have more "hits" on it as the formation takes longer to get from point A to B). Since column formation isn't "punished" with a higher fatigue/morale/damage model, players will continue to use the tactic. This also skews the mid-range artillery results because players are using a tactic the game engine allows to prevent more damage to their troops.

*S*
Willard

As far as the infantry stacking goes...there were instances of 3 and 4 rows deep in reality. Not all firing in unison but more so loading and passing rifles to the front rank which gave the impression of double and triple the firepower. This was the case with cobbs brigade at the stone wall at fredericksburg. Either way...if both teams can do it, its not cheating. Just play the game...the better team usually wins anyhow!

- JNewton

Your points all seem well taken. However, regarding close support by guns I would say that to fire or not to fire should be reserved to commanders with the understanding that friendly casualties will occur.

I've playing some SP battles lately and the artillery effectiveness it greatly improved past 200 yards since the last patch. I will usually push my guns to 400 yards of the enemy. As Yanks, I'm causing more casualties vs infantry and I'm knocking out their guns. As Rebs, I'm rethinking my whole 400yds strategy. I'm losing in counter battery. My reb batteries are taking a hell of a beating. It's not taking much time for this to happen either. My reb batteries are inflicting more casualties vs infantry and are causing some casualties against the yank batteries.
Has anyone else noticed this increased effectiveness? For those of us who lets the artillery do their work.
I wouldn't care to see artillery effectiveness increased any further or the reb artillery would be worthless by 10 min into the fight.