Regimental Frontage and Rifle Range

[nimitstexan]

A couple of question about he game scale:

First, will regiments and batteries occupy a realistic amount of frontage relative to the scale of the terrain?

Second, any thought on addressing the default rifle range, raising it a bit? Everything I have read indicates that ACW regiments often opened fire in excess of 200 yds, and firefights under 50 yards(which were somewhat common in TC2) seemed to generally be considered extremely close range for sustained combat by ACW regimental and brigade commanders.

[JC Edwards]

Hey nimitstexan... great to see you here with us.

I do believe both of your questions are being addressed as part of this new venture. From what I've gathered, the maps are being created to scale....which should make for some foot-sore and weary troops.

[Chamberlain]

JC Edwards wrote:

From what I've gathered, the maps are being created to scale....which should make for some foot-sore and weary troops.

Hey JC,

This sounds like a case for

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pick your product :

Tinactin® Liquid Spray

Tinactin® Powder Spray

and don't forget :

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Chamberlain

[ironsight]

Second, any thought on addressing the default rifle range, raising it a bit? Everything I have read indicates that ACW regiments often opened fire in excess of 200 yds

Howdy nimitstexan,
Don't know if you've ever fired a CW era rifled musket but hitting a man-sized target out to 200+ yards is definitely do-able under the right conditions. While some units may have opened fire at that range on their own without orders or were highly trained units, it was generally considered impractical by most commanders for the following reasons:

-prolonged firing of black powder(BP) severly fouls the barell which not only can reduce accuracy but at some point also can make it difficult to ram the minie down.
There are accounts of soldiers during heated battles pounding their ramrods with stones or hitting it against a tree in order to drive the minie down the barell. This can be especially true in hot dry weather with questionable bullet lubes. In this case the BP fouling can get just about hard as cement.
Also pounding the soft lead minie down the barell distorts it further reducing accuracy.

-the average CW grunt generally had inadequate marksmanship practice as some commanders thought it a waste of ammo. Later on when repeating rifles made their appearance, some commanders foolishly thought they would needlessly waste ammo.

-hitting a target at 200 yards under stressless conditions is one thing but a terifyed nervous CW grunt under fire is another thing. Fear, I think might be one reason some rifles found on the field at Gburg had multiple rounds loaded in them.

-the heavy slow velocity minie fired out of a CW mustket has a very pronounced trajectory arc which makes the elevation adjustment on the rear sight critical. Combine this with lack of marksmanship training, fear and fouled barells and it indeed might be a waste of ammo for long range targets.

-some units were equipped with smooth bores which virtually makes it impossible to repeatedly hit a target at 200 yards.

-the ordnance department had a headache with all the different rifles and calibers used during the CW. Especially true with the South. Sometimes they had to make do using the wrong projectiles.

-many subcontracters produced shoddy sub standard rifles during the war.

[nimitstexan]

The practical difficulty of hitting targets at longer ranges aside (which may, in a related note, indicate why in ACW, or any Age of Rifles war, the number of casulaties inflicted, vs number of rounds fired, seemed so low), aside, all my reading has indicated that firefights as often as not started at 250yds or farther.

- In Sears's Gettysburg, most of the battle reports he cites either talk of opening fire in excess of 200 yards, or mention shorter ranged firfights (150yds or less) as something notable for its abnormality.

- Paddy Griffith came up with an average rifle engagement range of 141 . . . being an average, and knowing that engagements did at times close to 100yds or less, it is logical to assume that there are an equal number of firefights fought at 180 yards or more.

- Brent Nosworthy, for all his Euro-centrcism, does take the time to point out firefights starting at 250+yds was very common.

I will not dispute that rifle engagements generally became decisive at 150yds or less, but the fact of the matter is, alot of rifle ammunition was expended in battle at 250yds plus . . . not simulating that fact is going to screw with the simulation of ACW battles I know Norb is aiming at.

[ironsight]

nimitstexan wrote:
..is going to screw with the simulation of ACW battles I know Norb is aiming at.

I'm probably wrong on this but i think it might be possible at least with TC2M to change the open fire distance some where in the data base tables. Maybe some knowledgeable modder will chime in on this.

Units did occassionally open fire at long range no doubt about it, i agree, but i think it was probably due more to racking the nerves of assaulting enemy than it was to actually hit any of em. Most likely for purposes of harassment or if a unit had ammo to burn and/or strong reserve forces backing them up.

The CW soldier was typically told to aim for the enemy's belt buckles which i doubt you could see at 200+ yards without a scope.
The CW soldier also carried only 50 to 60 rounds of ammo which can run low very quickly during a hotly heated engagement.
At 3 rounds/minute, thats around 20 minutes to engage in a firefight, then its time to resupply not to mention probably swabbing the barell also. Although, whenever possible, scavenging ammo from fallen comrads or enemy was common. With the military weapons and tactics at the time it made sense to make every round count.

That great quote from the Revolutionary War albeit still had some relevance in the ACW:
'Don't fire til you see the whites of their eyes'

[nimitstexan]

Well that is part of the point I was trying to make . . . it seemed in TC2 that casulaties were to high, and too many combats ended in melee, mostly because engagement ranges were too close and units were not blasting away at each other at longer ranges.

And you you could edit ranges in the TC2 files, for sure, but when the rest of the data files and scenarios were built around the shorter ranges, it seemed to me that moving the max range of a rifled musket to 200 or 250 could cause as many problems as it could fix.

[Hancock the Superb]

I do think we need to an extended range for rifles, though.

[Jim]

The regimental frontage is close to historical values and greatly improved over TC2M. We have not gotten down to the finer level of detail of maximum ranges for infantry weapons. It will be adjusted so that if the report in the OR says that 7th Regiment opened fire at 50 rods (look it up), then they will be able to open fire at that range in-game. We place a strong emphasis on historical accuracy. We will not get it perfect, but it will be better than TC2M and the next game will be better than this one.

[Amish John]

Based on the suspected subject of the first game and the historical popularity of that battle, I hope any improvements designed into a second game can be backfitted into the first game.