Rhetor
Posts: 117
Joined: 1/31/2005 From: Gdansk, Poland Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Ashantai 15 minute turns simulate a lot, whether it be one cannon shot or five. Actually player is allowed to fire twice, once per fire phase, and that is the maximum rate of fire. i.e. the crews are loading and firing as fast as they can. Such rate of fire was very tiring for the crews, and was discouraged by the artillery commanders, save when repelling an infantry charge. Currently lack of fatigue + lack of realistic artillery ammo means that a single battery can unlimber and fire away practically forever, which is very, very unhistorical. Imagine a Chancellorsville scenario, in which Federal batteries on Fairview would not have to limber up and retreat to refill their limbers. quote:
And how would you handle opportunity fire in an HPS situation? Would that cause fatigue too? If so, it would be monstrously unfair as people could draw the sting of the cannon fire until they were fatigued, then close in for the kill! I have no idea, since I haven't got any of the HPS games. From what I have read in other forums, the during enemy phase there is no salvo limit in opportunity fire, so it seems to be very unhistorical. I haven't seen any of the games myself, so I won't give any definite judgement in this case. quote:
Even if we are sticking with the classic TS games, if you PBEM, automatic defensive fire is so very, very useful, but not so if you can't choose what to fire at! You'd necessarily have to play every single defensive fire phase, which doubles the number of e-mail exchanges! I always played hotseat, and there was no problem with numerous turns :-D quote:
All I'm saying is that HPS and TS did what they did for a reason, and I see no other fair alternative than the system in HPS + adding in artillery ammo per cannon, rather than per battery. The system where infantry regiments can get out of ammo, and artillery batteries have unlimited ammo, is not the right system. The whole idea of having an artillery reserve in 19th century armies was to replace the tired batteries with low ammo with fresh batteries with full limbers. Currently players can put all available batteries in the line and have them fire for all day in all turns without any consequences whatsoever. That is very, very unhistorical, because in reality such manner of firing would mean that the crews would get tired very quickly, and the limbers in batteries would get empty. The order not to return fire during Confederate artillery preparation before the Pickett Charge at Gettysburg was given precisely for that reason - to keep the limbers full to have something to shoot with, when the infantry charge came.
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