Artillery

[McNaughton]

The discussion of artillery has been brought up again, and a few observations were made by many players. Primarily, the question is, which is the best gun to buy?

The answers tend to be split between three guns. First comes the 6-lb. Its very inexpensive price lends it to be a useful gun. When creating forts, besieging, etc., it is just as effective as any other gun. It is half the cost of a 10-lb parrott, and even cheaper when compared to seige. Second is the 12-lb Napoleon. For just a few more dollars and war materials you get a substantially better gun than the 6-lb, but is statistically better than the 10-lb Parrott. Lastly, if money is no option, getting the Columbiad/Rodman is a no brainer, since it has everything a lighter gun has (speed, initiative, range) and with greater firepower and accuracy.

This leaves a few guns without desirable jobs. The 10-lb Parrot, the 20-lb Parrott, seige artillery and Coastal Guns. The roles that these 4 guns do can easily be taken over by the 6-lb, 12-lb or Columbiad/Rodman.

I propose a few general changes (indeed, Stonewall has proposed changes, many of the ideas here are not my own, but a conglomoration of ideas from many players and modders).

--DAMAGE PROBLEM--

It has also been noted that artillery causes a lot of physical damage at range, sometimes prohibitively large amounts. Artillery was more effective at shaking the morale of infantry, rather than destroying them at range. I propose that range 'damage' be done differently, that the 'physical damage' done is reduced (to 1 or 2 from the original average of 3) and cohesion damage be increased (to 20 or 25 from the original average of 15). Assault damage will remain the same, representing the use of cannister (which was devestating for both morale and for a soldier's health).

[McNaughton]

Artillery needs to be split into two cateogires. Field artillery and Seige Artillery. Field artillery represents the guns that followed field armies into battle from 1861-1865. Their focusses were on mobility (thereby light weapons), firepower, range and accuracy. Field artillery is split into two categories, Light (6-lb) and Field (12-lb, 10-lb, 20-lb).

Each Gun in Field Artillery has a specific reason for being there. Throughout the war, most of these guns (except the 6-lb) were retained for service as they were all useful.

6-lb smoothbore:

This gun, originating from weapons used during the Mexican Wars, was obsolete at the beginning of the Civil War. The Confederates used this gun on all fronts, while the Union limited its use to some units in the Western theatre.

Strengths
-Cheap Cost, Reliable

Weaknesses
-Range, Firepower, Accuracy

12-lb Napoleon

A recent development of smoothbore artillery, was a useful gun in field battles due to the general close nature of war. Most battles were fought well within the gun's effective range from 1861-1863, making this a useful weapon. Yet, like with all smoothbores, accuracy was not great at range.

Strengths
-Reliable, Firepower

Weakness
-Range, Accuracy

10-lb Parrott

A very useful gun, the 10-lb was a rifled gun, with good range and accuracy. It was one of the most numerous gun in service during the Civil war due to its inexpensiveness and speed at production (due to being made from iron). It was unreliable, as the process of forging the Iron resulted in a brittle gun (reinforced it still exploded).

Strengths
-Range, Accuracy, Cost

Weakness
-Reliablility

20-lb Parrott

Like the 10-lb, the 20-lb was a rifled gun. It's size was the maximum effective size of an artillery piece to serve in a field army (any larger, and mobility suffers). Indeed, use of the 20-lb itself was fairly limited (at Antietam, only 20 guns were 20-lb of the hundreds fielded).

Strengths
-Range, Accuracy

Weankess
-Reliability

3" Ordnance (replaced Horse Artillery)

Currently horse artillery is rated as a very weak 6-lb gun. Historically most horse artillery were equipped with the 3" ordnance. Significantly more expensive to produce than the parrott, it was more reliable.

Strengths
-Range, Accuracy, Relibaiblity

Weakness
-Cost

[McNaughton]

How can we best compare Rifled to Smoothbore aritllery? On paper, the 12-lb Napoleon fires a heavier shell, at a comparable range to the 10-lb. This makes the current AGEOD representation true. However, some differentiation between smoothbore (6-lb and 12-lb) and rifled (3", 10-lb, 20-lb) need to be made to make them useful.

Here are a few ideas that have been floating around the board the past few months.

1. Attack/Defense accuracy

Smoothbore: Make them more accurate while defending. Representing their strong use of cannister (smoothbore barrels don't get wrecked when firing cannister). This makes the 12-lb and 6-lb good guns for defending, while rifled weapons have greater attack accuracy values.

2. Assault vs Range Damage

Smoothbore: Since we have two factors for affecting damage, we can use this to represent a gun's ability to fight close vs. ranged. The smoothbore weaponry can have greater damage and cohension affects during the assault phase than a rifled weapon (representing their use in repelling a close assault), with the rifled weapons having some sort of ranged bonus.

3. Range

Have range represent 'most accurate range'. This will have the smoothbores with reduced 'range', making the rifled guns have their effective ranges remain greater.

[Pdubya64]

Artillery needs to be split into two cateogires. Field artillery and Seige Artillery. Field artillery represents the guns that followed field armies into battle from 1861-1865. Their focusses were on mobility (thereby light weapons), firepower, range and accuracy. Field artillery is split into two categories, Light (6-lb) and Field (12-lb, 10-lb, 20-lb).

Each Gun in Field Artillery has a specific reason for being there. Throughout the war, most of these guns (except the 6-lb) were retained for service as they were all useful.

Ahhh! This looks like a good solution to the artillery/fort issue I was (rather badly) trying to talk about in this thread recently.
What I really like is that separating the artillery into Field and Siege might, with a couple tweaks, help to make it just a bit easier to build Forts. Possibly?
I just think Forts get a bum rap right now because they cost 4 artillery and 2 supply units. Youch! That's an awfully big price to pay and so far I have not read any AARs etc., that players are using them to any degree, have you?
What do you guys think?

[tagwyn]

Would be very valuable but I have been unable to accumulate the wherewithal to construct one! Perhaps presence of an engineer and the cost would be less? Tag

[Pdubya64]

Tag,
I think the Engineer mearly speeds up the process of completing the fort (the same as railroad rebuilding). I for one am looking forward to someone with seniority around here revisiting the way Forts (modern ones that is) work. They seem too far out of reach cost-wise at the moment IMO.

I also wonder if the type of the four artillery elements or units you choose to help build a Fort have any impact on the statistics of the Fort. Does it even matter? I think it would be nice if using something other than the cheapest artillery you can by would pay off in a better artillery "rating" for the Fort in question. Of course, it might already work this way, but Pocus and Co. would have to confirm it.