Cannon in HPS ACW games can be agravating. You capture the guns and gain victory points, only to lose them if you spike the guns. To destroy them, you have to park a battery next to them and shoot until you score gun hits (nothing more fun that scoring 'fatigue' hits on :censored: uncrewed guns!). This is unrealistic.
An old tried and true method of destroying guns was to burst the barrels by packing them with charges and plugging the end of the barrel (also dangerous if your too close or the fuse is too short! :eek1: ).
I propose that HPS should patch the games to allow an undisrupted unit that began it's turn in the hex with uncrewed guns to destroy them at the cost of movement points and gun ammo (you have to get the powder from somewhere). If that's too easy, allow the process the possiblity to inflict some casualties (to represent a possible screw-up).
Havoc
Havoc Wrote:Cannon in HPS ACW games can be agravating. You capture the guns and gain victory points, only to lose them if you spike the guns. To destroy them, you have to park a battery next to them and shoot until you score gun hits (nothing more fun that scoring 'fatigue' hits on :censored: uncrewed guns!). This is unrealistic.
An old tried and true method of destroying guns was to burst the barrels by packing them with charges and plugging the end of the barrel (also dangerous if your too close or the fuse is too short! :eek1: ).
I propose that HPS should patch the games to allow an undisrupted unit that began it's turn in the hex with uncrewed guns to destroy them at the cost of movement points and gun ammo (you have to get the powder from somewhere). If that's too easy, allow the process the possiblity to inflict some casualties (to represent a possible screw-up).
Havoc
How do you pronounce 'tomato'? :stir: Just as unrealistic(actually more especially for the Confederacy) is parking guns adjacent to them and destroying them. Union artillery was probably 'the' major source of supply for the Confederacy during the early years of the conflict. HPS makes it easy by letting any unit even a single officer 'capture' them as long as the unit stays with them. This represents the efforts and manpower necessary to remove
them from harms way so that they may be of use in a later battle. Destroyed guns are of no use to either side and not that common occurrence in the Civil War that I have read. I propose that HPS should patch the games to prevent the 'gamey' tactic of
To destroy them, you have to park a battery next to them and shoot until you score gun hits (nothing more fun that scoring 'fatigue' hits on :censored: uncrewed guns!). :kill: This is the last thing either side would do. Waste on hand ammo blowing up captured guns(better used for shooting at them that are still shooting at you)-guns that you can use later on. You don't lose the VP for spiking them just part of them reflecting the fact that you will have to take time, effort, and resources to make them useable again. I would prefer a rule allowing you to withdraw captured guns(and getting more VPs) but having to keep a unit with them probably represents that more simply. JMHO:soap:
An interesting post for me as I was thinking just the opposite. I prefer the ACW system to the Napoleonic rules, where all you have to do to destroy guns is occupy them, and presumably spike them. This leads to very gamey suicide attacks where good men are butchered to get the points and silence the guns, even when there is no chance of them surviving.
I would like to see the ACW rules ported over to the Napoleonic battles. If a battery is captured there should be an option for counter-attack and recapture. captured guns could also be turned on their former owners with the recrew option. See-saw battles for uncrewed batteries makes for a more historical and interesting game IMHO.
The main problem with the ACW system seems to be the score keeping. If you lose your guns it should count for something, even if you spike them yourself. If you capture the guns, that should count for something also.
Fastphil,
Your comments make sense. With the horse teams dead or driven off, you can't easily move them, so you have to post a guard. I guess I'll have to refrain from spiking guns unless I can't hold'm.
Havoc
I've been complaining about the artillery "poof they are gone" Nappy mechanics for years. Guns just disappear after melee.
The problem with HPS ACW and Nappy games is that there is no good representation of guncrews, who with their caissons move and supply the guns.
I used to love exploding caissons in the paper games...
It would seem a computer could manage to simulate a paper stack of a gun counter, numeric counter for # of guns, guncrew counter and numeric counter for amount of ammo.