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Thread: In-game Artillery Facts / Questions / Concerns

  1. #31
    Will artillerymen spawn in with weapons? Curious if we will have a way of defending ourselves, besides the cannons, should the enemy infantry get too close for comfort.

  2. #32

    USA General of the Army

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    Artillerymen of the Civil war, Numbers 1 - 7 did not carry weapons, they used the tools of their trade as weapons. The corporal and the sergeants carried pistols lieutenants and up carried both sabre and pistols.

  3. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by A. P. Hill View Post
    Artillerymen of the Civil war, Numbers 1 - 7 did not carry weapons, they used the tools of their trade as weapons. The corporal and the sergeants carried pistols lieutenants and up carried both sabre and pistols.
    By the book they did not , but there where a few batteries that had rifles behind the piece especially in the Confederate late war period. Some independent organized batteries had some small arms . Not much though mostly a knife used as a tool rather then weapon.
    Last edited by Dutchconfederate; 05-18-2019 at 10:00 PM.

  4. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dutchconfederate View Post
    By the book they did not , but there where batteries that had rifles stacked behind the piece especially in the Confederate late war period. Some independent organized batteries had some arms . Not much though mostly a knife used as a tool rather then weapon.
    I respectfully have to disagree.
    Supporting evidence please.

    I've been studying the ACW for over 50 years and I have read tons of volumes of records and histories and battery accounts and etc. None that I recall have ever mentioned arming themselves. There jobs were the cannon. IF enemies got too close their job was to pull tail and get out of the area as fast as they could … and if they couldn't take the guns with them, they were to leave them. Not the preferred option.

  5. #35
    I believe that's what distinguishes 'heavy artillery is it comes with its own infantry support within the battery.

    I've thought on the artillery a bit and I have a lot of concerns but there's no real clear picture of how it's going to be. I have a whole lot of concerns about a lot of things and artillery is the biggest. Allow me to inject a good dose of post-work day PLM negativity into this.

    To me... when your infantry contingent in two ranks takes up ~5% of the play area width it makes no sense to introduce artillery because they have little-to-nothing to shoot at. I'm afraid I'm not in the same universe in terms of what I'm imagining the end result vs what most others are imagining (negative or not). I'm envisioning artillery settling into a token feature where on certain maps artillery may be useful in certain situations while on others a few buffoons pick the artillery roles reducing the infantry contingents and get off a few ineffectual shots.... gun crews loading their gun with canister and hiding back 20 yards only to dash up and fire as soon as infantry get close before running off and leaving their guns to be lost since it will probably have no effect on the outcome of the match and they certainly don't give a crap because that might be the best they can hope for. Etc.

    Realistic motivations and behavior are so hard to compel on a player, it doesn't just happen in a video game. People might come for it but it doesn't just happen. You can host a festival and convince 10,000 people to attend but if you didn't plan it meticulously and plan it again you'll probably end up on the news for a humanitarian crisis. You can envision stuff working well but actually having a combined arms Civil War game is something I would have never conceived to ask for before first seeing infantry combat become first rate.

    If the artillery have individual weapons, will they be forced to stay near their guns and not be able to abandon them? Or are we going to see artillerymen wandering about within the infantry, pistol or rammer in-hand? What if the guns are overran? Can they abandon their guns? Can the guns move a little or just a lot? How would it handle horses, which were so critical to their operation? Since the game doesn't support AI, what will horses do if they do exist? If a battery is ill-positioned and all its horses started getting dropped, it would leave 100% of the time. That was a big deal. They counted the loss of horses in their reports. So if there's no horses to drop... that isn't really fair to infantrymen who're fighting the artillery.

    If the guns can't limber up and can't move a whole lot and the gunners can't retreat themselves, are they just going to be rabbits tied down at a stake? If they have personal defense, to what extent? What's to stop them from stopping the operations of their guns and becoming an infantry unit even in-place. IRL they'd limber up and leave, never risking their guns in a friggin' brawl with infantry. But what's to stop artillerymen from doing that, what's the punishment for losing your guns?

    Are they going to spawn at the same pace as infantry? How will they respawn? When you have numerous infantry units on a field and two batteries present is it really fair to let a battery reinforce at the same rate as the infantry? Gunners getting picked off should hamper their operation more than infantrymen getting dropped hampers an infantry regiment.

    If the gunners can't defend themselves what's to stop lone infantryman or small groups from tip-toeing the edges of the map and preying on them?

    How will active positions be chosen? For example... since the infantry on Hooker's Push have to walk so far, and were historically under fire from Nicodemus Hill, will the batteries up there be active at all (not that they have much to fire at).


    I just hope and prey the random shells stop bursting here and there so the disruption they cause it as least an earned.
    Last edited by Poorlaggedman; 05-19-2019 at 01:54 AM.
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