Mass Combat errata

[Ulzgoroth]

Another one for the pile: The draft team and mount elements don't make any sense together. Mounts cost 6 times as much to raise and 12x as much to maintain, and do half as much.

Should the draft team only have foot mobility, maybe?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Another one for the pile: The draft team and mount elements don't make any sense together. Mounts cost 6 times as much to raise and 12x as much to maintain, and do half as much.

Should the draft team only have foot mobility, maybe?

Alternatively, one could make low-TL wagons more sensitive to bad terrain than low-TL mounted units.

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Another one for the pile: The draft team and mount elements don't make any sense together. Mounts cost 6 times as much to raise and 12x as much to maintain, and do half as much.

Should the draft team only have foot mobility, maybe?

Possibly, though if so the only use it would have is to move elements without mobility (at least, land mobility) like boats and balloons. Otherwise, it should just be more expensive.

On the whole issue of mounts, what good is horse artillery? For the cost of two horse artillery elements I can buy three light artillery elements with mounts, with a better total TS [24 v. 20] and all the same other abilities.

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by cmdicely

On the whole issue of mounts, what good is horse artillery? For the cost of two horse artillery elements I can buy three light artillery elements with mounts, with a better total TS [24 v. 20] and all the same other abilities.

Horse Artillery dosen't have a parenthal TS, whilst Light Artillery do.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Another one for the pile: The draft team and mount elements don't make any sense together. Mounts cost 6 times as much to raise and 12x as much to maintain, and do half as much.

Should the draft team only have foot mobility, maybe?

I believe this may be the case.

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by Dinadon

Horse Artillery dosen't have a parenthal TS, whilst Light Artillery do.

Right. My brain slid right over that.

[cmdicely]

The Draft Team with Mob: Foot doesn't seem very useful -- as I point out above, everything on the low tech list but the balloon and a couple boats won't benefit -- unless some other units are meant to have 0 mobility. It might make sense for the Light and Heavy Artillery to have Mob: 0 instead of Foot, then the Draft Team could be used for them.

[hal]

Just out of curiosity...

Horse Artillery is listed as an unbracketed TS value of 10. It is the only Artillery value in the land battles table for TL 0-5, that is unbracketed. I thought that the reason for the brackets was because units so designated could not fight in a head to head battle with ordinary troops.

It seems a touch odd, that Horse Artillery is listed as being a single gun with its crew, ammunition, horses, etc - can take on line infantry flat out, whereas light artillery with "Mounts" can't.

So what is the difference between using horses with field artillery, ammo boxes, etc, versus light artillery using horse mounts to transport it (which presumably uses the same set up as the Horse Artillery uses (trunnions etc).

[DungeonCrawler]

The key difference in horse artillery and other kinds was the fact that horse artillery was highly mobile.

It could dash in, set up, blast a slow-moving infantry unit, re-limber, and be gone before orders were issued to attack it. Of course, that depended on the armies in question, but the rule is a general one, especially if the attack was delivered from the flank or had cavalry ready to attack any unit sent to deal with the horse artillery.

However, the big use for it was to support a cavalry attack, especially against a flank. Or if the enemy infantry formed squares, to just pound them until they were vulnerable to cavalry attack anyway. The guns out-ranged infantry firepower of the age, even though they were significantly shorter-ranged than normal artillery of the time.

Wikipedia doesn't go into all the details, but the article isn't bad for a general overview.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_artillery

In game terms, I suspect it means horse artillery is meant to close with the enemy (to its range, anyway) and then disrupt or destroy them--or limber up and move out--before the enemy can bring the horse artillery into their own range.

It doesn't just sit in place and generally support an attack or move slower than infantry.

Since horse artillery was usually light caliber (by artillery standards), very mobile, fairly rapid firing, and much of the time it was firing grape or canister shot it's not totally unreasonable to think of it as an early (and naturally less capable) version of a heavy machinegun. (No, I know it didn't fire that fast, it was the effect it had on massed formations that matter.)

And yes, there were a lot of armies and numerous times where horse artillery was used as regular artillery and people were shocked by its failure to perform as well as much heavier guns.

There are a lot of decent to excellent Napoleonic and earlier rule sets for miniature combat where you can see that in action. You can still see it in American Civil War rules, but rifle ranges started to catch up with it.

[hal]

I can see to a degree the reasoning, but then again, if you liken it to machine guns because of its "shotgun-like" capabilities using grape, etc - then one need only look at the higher tech values for machine guns to see that the Horse Artillery is different than the rest...

Heavy support weapons (machine guns) is listed as being (50) instead of just 50.

Game mechanics wise, it seems that artillery or support weapons with a high rate of fire - both can't go up against normal infantry with their full value, but instead, are treated as being items that only count for those special categories.