christof139
Posts: 980
Joined: 12/7/2006 Status: offline
|
quote:
A good 'unofficial' list of how units were armed is to look at the old Battleground/Talonsoft ACW games and of course the newer HPS ACW titles. The type of weapon a unit was armed with is very important in these games so I would hazard a guess that this area was researched fairly well. Unfortunately the types are broken down into basic types eg musket/rifle/shotgun/mixed etc and not by actual make. Information is contained in an exportable oob text file so you don't have to open up the game scenarios to check, although I had a quick look at Picketts Charge to see if any US units still had muskets by 1863....didn't see any. TalonSoft equipped the units randomly with small arms, and the games only sometimes have accurately equipped Infantry units. Many units that had SBs have RMs in those games, but overall they are OK because they generally use an overall percentage of weapon types and a random assignment of those weaposn that is permanently imbeded in the OOB. In Chickamauga, Wilder's Lightning Brigade is properly equipped if I remember right. The Arty. is also off in most instances. Easy to fix though, just time consuming. I modded Antietam down to the section and even individaul guns in the CSA and USA Arty. per some good books such as Artillery Hell, and the game was so much more fun to ply, only I didn't save some of my work and my Hard drive crashed, but I still have some left. I believe I might also have some stuff saved for Murfreesboro. The OOBs are easy to alter in many ways including weapon types, and new weapons can be easily created in the PDT (maybe PDF file, I forget offhand). You may already be familiar with all this, and are aware of the ACW Cartographer's Office and ACW gaming Club and the NIR (Napoleon in Russia project) led by JM Barbier in France. Lots of helpful info. at these sites for modding, and John Tiller of HPS still has helpful info. and file downloads for the TalonSoft games. Lots of people have done greatmods with the TS battleground games, including the Napoleonics, and I have about 20 Nappy War disks from NIR, including Wavre during the 1815 waterloo Campaign. Fantastic and very accurate maps, unit icons (including Sappers) with correct uniforms, correct OOBs as far as is historically possible, etc. I like the BMP unit panel icon files in the game, and they are easily moddableincluding adding new units, takes some time though. Plus, the unit sprites that appear on the game screen battlefield are also moddable. The Sabine Pass scenario at NIR is by me, and I made all the ship icons and stats, and the CSA can have Gunboats in the TalonSoft games. I was the first and only person to do that as far as I know. You have to arm the Gunboats generically because of the greatly varied mix onf weapons that were usually carried on the ships. The sprites for both the USA and CSA are only one type, and I have thought about trying to add some different sprites to the sprite sheet, but this will require some work and testing, and I don't know if it would work, but someone much more knowledgeable than me in the past also considered it and said it just might work. I do have this stuff saved on disk, the Unit.bmp files with Gunboats and Ships, and quite a few people have used my work, it's free. I had evey class of Gunboat and Ironclad represented, plus sailing ships and Sloops of War etc. Chris
|