Effective Usage of Skirmishers

[Mirjana]

So, I finished a game on Brigadier General with the Union where I was always maxing out brigade size. Always 500 man skirmisher brigades, whether sniper or carbines. But in my new Confederacy campaign, I didn't have enough rifles to make a full sniper brigade, so I made a smaller brigade of about 250. To my surprise...it was just as good as the old 500 man brigade. Maybe even better. Which leads me to two questions:

1)Do larger rifle skirmisher brigades reduce efficiency in some way, ala the 12 gun vs 24 battery artillery brigades? The difference just seems huge to me (as the smaller sniper brigades get fired at less and rack up similar kill counts), but I figured it could potentially be that a smaller sniper brigade is more easily able to shoot through gaps in infantry lines.

2)Is there any reason to prefer carbine skirmishers over carbine cavalry? Dismounted cav seems to perform the same role with significantly more firepower.

[The Soldier]

There's been some stuff about skirmisher brigades suffering the same fate as artillery - they reach a certain point of best damage and then drops off like a rock into uselessness, even with properly ranked officers.  I haven't had the opportunity to properly test it (thanks for removing that enemy brigade control bug @Nick Thomadis, it would have been incredibly useful in some bits  ), though someone else did a test on the Steam forums and found that it capped out at 300-man brigades before dropping off in effectiveness.

No reason whatsoever to put a short carbine in the hands of a skirmisher.  They'd be just gimped cavalry.  Skirmishers really need access to the infantry rifles along with removing those silly carbines and changing their name to "Sharpshooters".

[Bounty Jumper]

17 hours ago, The Soldier said:

No reason whatsoever to put a short carbine in the hands of a skirmisher.  They'd be just gimped cavalry.  Skirmishers really need access to the infantry rifles along with removing those silly carbines and changing their name to "Sharpshooters".

At least the rifles (M1841, Fayetteville, and Tyler Texas?) should be available for them.

There are few weapons really missing from this game too: the M1855 rifle (the two-banded variant Fayetteville was based on) and the two-band Enfield short rifles (actually incorrectly used for picture of P53 Enfield at the moment). The latter was supposedly the most accurate minie rifle of Civil War (P58/P60) and choise for Rebel sharpshooters.

Edited October 7, 2017 by Bounty Jumper

[The Soldier]

The M1855 Springfield actually is in the game?  It's the main rifle the Union can use until Fredricksburg.

Also, the M1841 Mississippi HUD image is also used for the Pattern 1853 Enfield HUD image for some reason.  No idea why.

The Pattern 1861 Enfield is in the game (I think it's this one that was known for accuracy because it had tighter rifling?).  Just part of the Cavalry.  Decent little rifle too, longest-ranged Cavalry carbine out there.

[Bounty Jumper]

1 hour ago, The Soldier said:

The M1855 Springfield actually is in the game?  It's the main rifle the Union can use until Fredricksburg.

Also, the M1841 Mississippi HUD image is also used for the Pattern 1853 Enfield HUD image for some reason.  No idea why.

The Pattern 1861 Enfield is in the game (I think it's this one that was known for accuracy because it had tighter rifling?).  Just part of the Cavalry.  Decent little rifle too, longest-ranged Cavalry carbine out there.

Both the Springfield and Harper's Ferry M1855 represent the three-banded rifle-musket, not the two-banded rifle variant from Harper's Ferry. From what I have understood 'rifles' in this period had shorter and often heavier barrels and usually sword bayonets. The rifle-muskets were longer for sake of saftey in ranked firing and melee utility (with conventional bayonet), not accuracy. In Harper's Ferry's case, Jackson captured the tools for both the rifle-musket and the rifle in early days of the war. These became Richmond rifle-musket and Fayetteville rifle in Confederate production.

But you are right the Enfield has M1841 picture, didn't notice before. An odd choice as P53 was a rifle-musket and had three bands in this period. One of the Springfields would fit better in case art assets are no longer available for post release support. M1863 would have the least overlap.

P61 "musketoon" is much shorter weapon still than the P58 and P60 rifles though it does seem to have shared the same rifling. It looks like P61 is sharing it's picture with few other carbines too. And speaking of shared pictures, Fayetteville would be reasonable for P58 naval rifle.

Edited October 7, 2017 by Bounty Jumper

[The Soldier]

Pretty sure the M1855's HUD image is a 3-band rifle, as how it was designed.  The Harper's Ferry should have only 2 bands though.

Don't think rifles in this period were solely shorter than other arms - in the Napoleonic era, sure (I just had a...well, let's be polite and call it a "discussion" with someone on the Steam forums about this) when rifles were difficult to make and only issued out to skirmishers, weapons like the Baker rifle were much shorter to make it easier for skirmishers in an open formation taking cover to use.  But by time of the American Civil War, stuff like the M1855, M1861, and Pattern 1853 Enfield were all full-length military rifles with 40-inch barrels or so.

As for the HUD images, eh.  I would totally make up the rest of the remaining HUD images that aren't correct, if only for my own sanity.  Modding does have it's perks.

[Bounty Jumper]

29 minutes ago, The Soldier said:

Pretty sure the M1855's HUD image is a 3-band rifle, as how it was designed.  The Harper's Ferry should have only 2 bands though.

Don't think rifles in this period were solely shorter than other arms - in the Napoleonic era, sure (I just had a...well, let's be polite and call it a "discussion" with someone on the Steam forums about this), rifles like the Baker rifle were much shorter to make it easier for skirmishers in an open formation taking cover to use.  But by time of the American Civil War, stuff like the M1855, M1861, and Pattern 1853 Enfield were all full-length military rifles with 40-inch barrels or so.

Harper's Ferry produced both the three-band rifle-musket and the two-band rifle (the former was more major type). Since the rifle had a sword bayonet I would suppose that the in-game weapon, with lowest melee rating among infantry weapons, is indeed intended to be the rifle-musket.

E.g. here's the HF rifle vs. rifle-musket at auction house:

http://rockislandauction.com/detail/54/1140/u-s-harpers-ferry-model-1855-percussion-rifle-with-bayonet#detail

https://www.rockislandauction.com/detail/70/143/u-s-harpers-ferry-model-1855-percussion-rifle-musket

And you are right that the rifle-muskets are all rifles in the modern sense. However in the period sense "rifle" and "rifle-musket" were seen as two specific subsets of rifled long arm.

Edited October 7, 2017 by Bounty Jumper

[Hitorishizuka]

On 10/6/2017 at 8:25 AM, The Soldier said:

There's been some stuff about skirmisher brigades suffering the same fate as artillery - they reach a certain point of best damage and then drops off like a rock into uselessness, even with properly ranked officers.  I haven't had the opportunity to properly test it (thanks for removing that enemy brigade control bug, it would have been incredibly useful in some bits  ), though someone else did a test on the Steam forums and found that it capped out at 300-man brigades before dropping off in effectiveness.

Do you recall if that's still accurate/how bad the drop off is? I've been using 500 man skirmishers at the top end, I'd be curious to know whether I need to let them wither down.

[The Soldier]

I can't find the thread, so I think skirmishers were most effective at 300 men.  500 men dropped effectiveness down to 30% of 300 men (I think).  So yeah, stick with 300 men.

[Andre Bolkonsky]

On 10/6/2017 at 10:25 AM, The Soldier said:

I haven't had the opportunity to properly test it".

Using my best Ryan Reynolds voice, let me slip into yon red costume - 

There is no reason to follow up and determine if there is or is not a problem

(Added in a husky whisper)

You know what you have to do

[Mirjana]

Thanks for the confirmation of my suspicions! Though this does of course make me wonder: is there a max effective size for carbine cav? Is 750 extra firepower or just a hindrance?

[The Soldier]

3 hours ago, Mirjana said:

Thanks for the confirmation of my suspicions! Though this does of course make me wonder: is there a max effective size for carbine cav? Is 750 extra firepower or just a hindrance?

Was thinking the same thing.  Not sure.

[quicksabre]

I'm running a game now with a lot of snipers, so I could potentially test skirmisher effectiveness. Does anyone have any ideas for good battles to do so (Union Campaign, up to Fredericksburg now, so that battle or after). Ideally it would be a battle where I could easily line up a bunch of sharpshooters and just shoot for an hour or two of game time without taking return fire or having much risk of a counterattack. Mule shoe maybe?

Edited October 21, 2017 by quicksabre