JaM

It gets much better later on... Season 3 is especially great, with big storm in the first episode (better than the one in Master and Commander...),while last episode of Season 3 is like a dream come true... with large land and sea battle, with Blackbeard leading a fleet of pirates against British ships...

definitely Napoleonic wars, because it gives more role to cavalry, makes battles more about maneuver than pure firepower..

Another British admiral worth mentioning is winner of Quiberon bay - Admiral Edward Hawke: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Hawke,_1st_Baron_Hawke batle of Quiberon bay was one of those crazy battles near the shore in bad weather, with some ships even sinking because they tried to open lower gun ports..

Admiral George Anson (1697-1762) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Anson,_1st_Baron_Anson he was practically a mastermind behind British rise to power in the middle of 18.century..

I think you have missed Anson... there would be no Nelson without Anson.. his reforms allowed Britain to become dominant power. plus he was quite a good admiral as well.

you know what amuses me? that there are so many contradicting studies being made, one downplays artillery effects, another musket lethality, bayonets, cavalry... but then if you take them all seriously, what exactly caused all those dead? they didnt died of the old age... Norm during Napoleonic times was around 2000-3000 musket rounds fired for a single casualty, yet average musket couldnt fire more than 40-50 rounds without malfunction, while average ammo load was around 25 rounds (60 for British)... Statistics are made from innacurate numbers. We dont have real numbers, they are just extrapolated from incomplete info. like the assumption of 10-15% casualty rate for artillery during Napoleonic times because of data published by Frech hospitals, where about 10-15% of wounded were due to artillery - such assumption doesnt take into consideration that being hit by a solid shot would most likely kill you, while even if you are "lucky" and it just takes your leg, you had pretty low chance surviving the following operation... same is true for bayonets.. It its nature, bayonet was technically very dangerous weapon - soldiers didnt used armor, so were practically defenseless against it, while you actually didnt had to thrust it hard into enemy, as even thrusts with relatively low energy had high chance to get deep into human torso and cause lethal wounds. Yet, bayonet fights were extremely rare, (french in the same report, reported 3% wounded by bayonet). Why is that? it actually has more to do with the psychical aspect of close combat than anything else.. amount of psychical stress soldier was facing equipped with a weapon that can kill enemy but gives you no protection against enemy doing the same to you was just way too much for majority of men... instead of following thorugh with bayonets into close combat, one side (with lower morale) just withdrawn from the fight before contact.. majority of bayonet use was when one side chased down the retreating enemy, while soldiers could stab enemy in the back without fear of being stabbed by somebody.. but lets get back to artillery. As all weapons, its effectivity depends on many aspects, and in some cases, if something is not right, results will be flawed. Using direct fire artillery against broken terrain would greatly reduce its effects on target, smoke on the battlefield would eliminate any advantage guns could get from rifling, inexperienced officers unable to realize potential of their weapons... etc etc etc.. these are factors that could greatly impact the effectivity of artillery in particular battle and it was not that uncommon to get totally different results with some adjustments to employed tactics. Like with the Seramont battery at Friedland who refused to use its battery statically, and instead he "charged" the enemy with first example of overwatch fire tactics that is something used today with tank units (one unit is stationary and covers another unit moving with their fire). At Friedland he managed to literally wipe out several Russian regiments completely, causing incredible carnage, yet there are plenty of examples of poor use of artillery which fired hundreds of projectiles and achieved nothing...

no i was refering more to the fact that European battles of the same era were a lot more decisive, battles were not of inconclusive line agaisnt line shootouts where commanders soon lost the control of the unit. Instead, Prussians set the base for the modern infantry fighting in open order, something Napoleonic Light Infantry was predating but was unable to use it as a main doctrine due to insuficient firepower of muzzle loaded muskets. As i said, im no expert on ACW, but in Napoleonic times, aritllery created in average about 10-15% casualties, but it greatly depends on particular use in battle (Check battle of Friedland or Borodino, where artillery were actually a main killers) Musketry was always random for plethora of reasons, actual weapon innacuracy practically didnt played any significant role.. more important was the fact that majority of men didnt even aimed their weapons at enemy, or fired into couds of smoke blindly... advantage of rifles during Napoleonic times was minimal during large scale battles because of the same reasons... once battlefield is obscured, actual point accuracy goes out of window. add stress, lack of training, poor command and control, and you end up with completely random musket fire. What actually changed the battlefield was smokeless powder, open "skirmish" order and actual proper command and control for infantry, which was used by Prussians and later Germans in WW1. and about case shot, it really doesnt matter if bullet is made of steel,iron or lead. human body is soft, armor was not in use.. question is how much different it would be from minie hit, and how easily could medical examiner identify the entry wound to be able to say what was caused by minie bullet and what was caused by case shot bullet. Especially when these statistics were made shortly after battle with hundreds of wounded and dieing men being moved to field hospitals. Were there any medical examinations made on dead bodies? Data from Napoleonic times were made only from wounded, not from dead (there was no time to examine dead and make statistics of it)

please dont go there.. dont change the course of discussion by marking me as some religionist. I have stated im no expert on Civil War, i have specialized myself on Napoleonic warfare, and i mentioned the fact of common misidentification of battlefield wounds, because it was common during Napoleonic times. if you want to discard any possibility of such, and want to completely believe those data, im fine with it. It is your choice. I just find quite interesting that CW produced completely different results than wars waged in Europe of the same Era, with similar/same technology. (French vs Prussians, Austrians vs Prussians etc)

yet still, you didnt replied on the fact i was mentioning Shrapnell bullets to be hard to identify and easy to confuse with the musket wounds.. similarly in Napoleonic times, canister bullets were also causing wounds very hard to distinguish from musket wounds. statistics during Napoleonic times were based on medical records made by surgeons in the field, who determined the wound by sight. So, yes, you can clearly tell what is wound caused by solid shot or shells, but it would be impossible to tell a casualty made from musket fire to a casualty caused by Shrapnell round (the one which explodes in the air and kills target with a cloud of bullets) or canister... the only way how to identify those would be after operation with bullet removed, but medical statistics were usually made from data given by medical examiner, who filtered wounded with a chance to survive and those who couldnt survive the operation. (at least that was a practice set up by Napoleonic surgeons)

Also, i think more ammo types should be added, for example, there is no shrapnell round in the game, which was the main anti-infantry round at medium range. I think it would be not that bad to remove ammo selection from player and let the battery itself to decide what to use based on target, terrain and distance. Battery itself would then chose based on type of guns in the battery what ammo it will use.

definitely Napoleonic battle, or preferably entire campaign... like.. having command during Italian campaign of 1796, orAustrerlitz campaign or similar.

I was not talking about solid shot or shell wounds. those are definitely quite distinctive. But about Shrapnell wounds. these contained multiple small lead balls and were quite undistinguishable from musket balls unless removed from wound. (shrapnell balls were round, musket ball werent.) and btw, quite interesting essay about this topic can be found here: http://johnsmilitaryhistory.com/cwarmy.html btw, i dont claim to have some ultimate knowledge about Civil war, it is not my area of expertize, so far i have focused myself more on Napoleonic era or 18.century. Anyway a lot of things are quite similar, Artillery was underestimated in those times as well, yet again, canister casualty effect was also greatly overlooked back then,as again, medical sources didnt differentiated musket wounds from canister wounds, and counted them towards musket casualties..

David Fair: regarding aritllery casualties - medical records are a bit flawed, because artillery also used shrapnell and canisters, while for a doctor these wounds were similar to musket wounds therefore were not counted as caused by artillery. (doctor would not know what caused them until bullet is removed). so 10% is casualties caused by solid shots and percusion grenades, but not for all aritllery projectiles used.

If you are still looking for Betatesters, maybe i could help i have some free time right now, there is no point working on R2 mods right now anyway.. right now i have: i5 2500K,8Gb RAM, GTX760

Ammo ressuply is a must, for artillery and infantry. In ETW there was just no point in keeping artillery in reserve, as there was no need to preserve ammo for important part of battle, which was quite essential for sucess.. Anyway, regarding infantry ammo, it was not strictly restricted to supply train only. On lots of occasions reserve units just game their ammo to front line, cavalry units passed their cartridges to infantry etc... Anyway for any pre-battle movement and maneuvering, speed of march was important. For infantry major factors impacting speed of march was food supply and having boots. While it might sound silly for some, having undamaged boots had great impact, and practically whole Battle of Gettisburgh happened just because Union Generals had info about large supply of new boots in Gettisburgh warehouses. Also, while role of cavalry during ACW was not as big as during Napoleonic Wars, Cavalry was crutial force for finding enemy line of march, identifying their main forces, attacking their rear guard, and fighting any delaying actions. Cavalry practically tranformed into all Dragoon force, where usually cavalrymen fought dismounted, anyway would be good to see cavalry fullfiling their true role being an Eyes of the Army. Oh, and one very important and quite overlooked thing is the smoke. Smoke played a big part in battles, obscuring the battlefields making any long range accurate fire impossible. Units accuracy should decay fast after first few salvos due to smoke and confusion until a point where continuing fire was just a waste of ammo. Anyway direction and strength of wind should also make some impact on battlefield awareness, where smoke could obscure certain parts of battlefield making it harder to identify enemy units.. And i'd like to mention the formation issue (but you are for sure well aware of this), there should be several standard formations unit can have, like Line, Column or skirmish order,where each formation should have its own benefits and negatives. Column for example should be the fastest moving, should allow transformations into other formations (it was quite hard to do anyformation or movement changes while deployed in Line) etc, but should have limited firepower and be quite vulnerable to artillery. WHile ACW columns were not as tight as Napoleonic columns, artillery effectivity improved dramatically so columns were much better targets than ever before. Anyway even such dissadvantage didnt prevented Europeans to use them sucesfully (Stoss taktik) during Prussian-French and Prussian-Austrian wars. While American historians defend ACW forces to be superior at ranged combat, truth is, Prussians and French used much more advanced weapons (rear loaded early bolt action rifles) and still using the colums tactics for attacks instead of undecisive ranged shootout of two line formation at the range. Weapon argument is quite popular, anyway weapon accuracy was not that great either. During 1991 Austrian Military Museum in Graz performed live fire tests of their exeplars at shooting range and found some quite interesting facts. For example 1861 rifled musket was found having just average accuracy at 100m, matched by late 16.century (high quality) heavy Matchlock musket! or short flintlock pistols having similar performance and dispersion at 30m as modern Glock 9mm pistols.. so clearly quality of manufacture was quite important for weapon performance, and standard issue rifled muskets were not well known for overall quality.. (i will try to find one study about ACW which investigated this issue in more detail)

Nick/Darth, I'm glad seeing you doing something like this, it looks really promissing.