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.

This patch is more of a quick fix patch to address a few issues that were left out of 1.4. What you propose would be a big change that could affect a lot of things. However I'm adding it to the list for a future release because it's something I'd like to see as well. Close range = devastating results.

I agree with Soldier on this one i have been on the receiving end of column charges the devastating fire from close range would all but stop them under normal circumstances but the lack of short range effect really makes the column charge the assault weapon of choice.

If this is looked at, it would best if it was added as a mod-able option, maybe to rifles.csv or something. That way it doesn't risk messing up the stock game.

Just to be clear, are you saying as the game is right now, musket fire does not become more effective as the range decreases? So when two regiments fire at each other from 160 yards they inflict the same casualty rate as if they were 10 yards apart? I'm probably just misunderstanding something here. Or is it that musket fire does become more effective as range decreases and KG is asking for this effect to be increased from what it already is.

Amish John wrote:


AJ,

I think it becomes more effective at closer ranges, but not much, so yes, I'm asking that it become much more effective.

I agree Soldier. There should be a high price to be paid for forming up, and crossing open ground under direct fire without ever stopping to return fire.

Garnier wrote:



Agreed

It was rifled artillery that was chiefly responsible for breaking up dense formations, not rifled muskets.

During last night's MP game on Culp's Hill, we had the better part of *2* divisions entrenched along the breastworks on Culp's Hill proper, myself and Jmcraz8. Jim's men spotted an enemy division running up the slope about 120 yards out and opened fire. I shifted some regiments over to provide more fire, and moved my big brigade down the slopes some to try to get behind the attacker. With 6 to 8 regiments firing from behind breastworks, from uphill, into targets that are running from the downhill, you'd expect to see men falling like corn to a combine, especially as they drew to within 50 yards or so. But that wasn't the case. They weren't even slowed down a bit. I won't go into the swirling unavoidable melee and auto-charge issue, since that's another subject and sounds like one of the subjects of the next patch.

But, it seems to me that for the sake of realism, some range tables could be added to whatever .scv file is appropriate. Then, every weapon type in the game could have their 'best effective range'... say 120 yards for a Springfield rifle, and then from 119 yards to 90 yards, its slightly more effective, 89 yards to 50 yards even more so, and within 50 yards, massed fire becomes devastating. And the opposite effect for ranges greater than 120 yrds. And I agree with Garnier that making it an MP moddable function would be best.

Marching Thru Georgia wrote:



So you're saying that a regiment approaching an enemy position should take no more casualties at 40 yards than it does at 140 yards from small arms fire?

If only the infantry could be ordered to hold fire/fire by volley command.This would surely have to add the desired effect of massed musket fire on closing formations.

Marching Thru Georgia wrote:


I didn't say anything about rifled muskets "breaking up" dense formations. I said they (rifled muskets) should be more deadly at close range so they can stop or at least slow down regiments closing to melee.

KG_Soldier wrote:


Yes, it does become more effective.. That's why there are multiple ranges listed in the rifles/artillery.csv files (as pointed out to me by Adukes).

But we can look into making it more effective, especially at really close ranges.

KG_Soldier wrote:

I agree that the number of melees is extremely unrealistic. There were only 7 recorded instances of it happening at Gettysburg and 3 at Antietam. There were many charges but almost all ended with the defenders retreating, the attackers stopping mid-way and firing, or the attackers falling back. People don't seem to mind getting shot, but they definitely don't want to be stabbed. The issue was discussed in another thread a few months ago.
Regiment Disorganization
I'm all for fixing this problem. I just don't think upping the musket effectiveness is the way to do it.

As things stand now, a regiment that opens fire at 220 yards (we upped the range in our MP games to stop the canister parties) on an enemy regiment that is in assault formation/column by division will score *maybe* 20 casualties if they are lucky before the enemy crashes into them. That seems to be highly unrealistic. The enemy also suffers no morale loss from soaking up all the rifle fire when running into it. I don't think any of us are asking for machine gun-like effects at close range. Just more a more realistic effect of close range fire. If a morale hit could also be added into the mix, I think that would help with the number of melees going on.

I'm not saying there should be no more hand to hand fighting. It has it's place and its uses, but there are a couple players in MP who's only tactic is to mass their division and rush it headlong into the enemy. Every game. Sometimes multiple times in the same battle.

I definitely agree that close range fire should be upped in effectiveness (or moddable like soldier and garnier said). There are multiple times in MP where you have great ground (hill with fence/wall and open field of fire) that should be incredibly hard to take but simply isn't. The enemy can surge forward, taking minimal casualties, even if they are slowed by crossing fences and then drive off the defender. This is simply unrealistic as the quality of the ground should be able to overcome the numbers of the attacker (sometimes ) or at least make them pay for the ground they are taking.

Additionally, I think it could also be capped if the fatigue it takes to charge is dramatically increased. Several regiments would not be able to engage in repeated instances of hand-to-hand effectively.

Perhaps the reduction in morale caused by receiving casualties by fire could be increased sufficiently to produce the desired result, rather than having yet another mod that cannot be used in MP games. I have forgotten which file that is in, but IIRC it is one that is moddable for MP.

One this one I am not sure of the solution. In the past I have stressed then need for short range rifle fire to be more deadly. The big picture needs to be looked at. The three main things that I am concerned with at the moment is long range artillery effects, effects from canister, and short range rifle effects.

Canister fire has been changed and it is really what should be stopping column charges and charges in general; the cannons have been moved off the front lines which is what we all wanted.

Effective counter battery fire is not modeled well and it appears that it is not possible with the current game design. That is too bad, but that is the way it is. We cannot have it all.


I just want historical accuracy and we have had to give up some of that accuracy because of gamey tactics.

I just would want a lot of testing done before a change in rifles is implemented. Not to be disrespectful, but the best option would be to make it modable so any change could be played out in mp with the results made available to everyone. We could play test it every day and 2 or 3 times a day.

Barksdale's charge is one of the more famous of the war. That needs to be shown in this game simulation. He charged the peach orchard busted it up and then turned north and rolled up the rest of the 3rd corp and then made a drive for cemetery ridge where he fell and his charge ran out of steam and was stopped. That particular scenario is a good one and plays well(except for sharpshooters with a 400 yard range?)

In the Pickett's Charge scenario the rebel troops do not take enough casualties while closing on the clump of trees.

Marching through Georgia is right. There are way to many charges in this simulation. I wonder if everyone understands what that means. It means that offensives will be harder. We need to keep the game with a good flow so that players don't feel like they have to stay back. I think this can all be done.

I think that the changes made to LOS were excellent and that the new fatigue went a little to far, but was better than what we had.

Of course as always I defer to the developers.

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.

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.

Is that a button on Reb Bugler's toolbar?

Blaugrana wrote:


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

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.

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.

Hancock the Superb wrote:


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.

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.

Hancock the Superb wrote:


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.

KG_Soldier wrote:


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:

www.napoleon-series.org/military/organization/maida/c_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.