Using artillery

[Drambuie]

Hi,

Was just reading captainmatt's excellent AAR and noticed something that i've picked up on a bit in my own games. That is, at what point does the number of artillery batteries/pieces become unmanageable and unusable during the battle mechanics?

For example in the AAR McClellan repeatedly had masses of artillery - upwards of 600 pieces in several battles - yet did next to no ranged damage in comparison to the CSA forces and got heavily outshot most of the time. He had an artillery commander in the stack. Certainly in my experience of games/wargaming/reading such a huge artillery advantage would tell (if in fact it would be almost impossible to have such numbers anyway)

So I guess my question is does artillery get used in large numbers or is there a threshold of no. of batteries which is not worth going over in stacks/battles? I do appreciate that the multiple battle calculations etc will impact on force commital etc during the fighting but get the feeling that all those guns make little difference and should perhaps be spread around more by the AI as well as me!

Thanks

[GShock]

Frontage rules is the limit. These are dependant on terrain and structures (towns and forts). Runyan stated no more than 4 arty pieces are useful in a DIV but the essence of frontage rules is still a mystery.

Considering not all troops fight simultaneously and not all corps and armies arrive at the same moment we may imagine that once a piece falls back it is replaced but it's not clear if another piece will kick in or another unit of some other kind.

The answer to your question is yes it is used according to the frontage limits...now what these limits are i think only very few know. Surely not I

[Roger B]

As a newbie this seems to be a huge mystery to me as well.

This isn't about frontage but I have another question about artillery.

In my limited smallish battles I've kept my Parrots and other rifled heavy guns as my corps reserve since the big 10 and 20 pounders weren't really meant for close support of an attack. I don't know enough about the battle reports to digest much of what I'm seeing as far as ranged hits.

I thought I read a thread here a couple of days ago that guns attached to a corps shoots at the biggest target while divisional artillery fires at what the division is attackingt? Maybe I read this wrong.

Or am I doing it wrong and should I have all artillery added to the divisions and just forgo any corps reserve?

[Pocus]

I thought I read a thread here a couple of days ago that guns attached to a corps shoots at the biggest target while divisional artillery fires at what the division is attacking? Maybe I read this wrong.

true

[Roger B]

true

Glad to see I had this right.

Another point on artillery on the corps level. Do they engage in counter battery fire if they see opponents artillery in the corps or do they just engage the bigger force?

[Pocus]

No counter fire, sorry.