"Massed Gun Batteries Firing..." Topic

During the Napoleonic era, there began a certain massing of guns at critical points where possible.

This trend continued as guns became more accurate and long-ranged, and in the ACW there were some crazy massed firing of guns.

In the Franco-Prussian war, there were times when 100-150 Krupp guns would be firing on the French.

One of my questions is if there are several batteries firing together, would they attempt to coordinate their fire? Would they spread it out so they could correct the fall of their shot more easily? Or just blast it all into the same area and hope for the best?

As guns became rifled and more accurate, did they take "fire zones" so they could see and correct their rounds more easily?

In game terms, should there be a limit on the number of guns that can fire on one target Unit? Should there be a decrease in effect by adding additional batteries at one target from a decrease in accuracy?

Thanks in advance – read this comment on a set of rules and it got me thinking…

It depends on the purpose of the fire. Many massed gunlines simply fired as fast as they could, generally firing blind because of the smoke created, but sweeping the ground in front of them. That is what happened at Wagram with the French Grand Battery.

Others were more interested in aimed fire, so the firing would be far slower to let the smoke dissipate.

In some rules, the guns can be fired one at a time to see the effect. Other rules have you determine all the targets first before any firing takes place. I like the second one better.
John

Are there any rules that model fall of shot, i.e. sometimes you miss and your artillery attack is then resolved against some other unit, adjacent to the one you fired at?

In most of the rules I've played, if the artillery missed, the shot and shells simply evaporated. I agree the fall of shot should be tracked so that it can attack another unit if one is in the area.

That used to be done with range sticks and deviation where you laid the stick from the gun to the target, then rolled a die to determine the deviation to left or right, adjusting the range stick to the possible new target.

Jim

We added in some home brew rules that for every one (best hit number) you would roll that many dice on units in the beaten zone.

example on a 10 side dice. you need a 1 or 2 to hit a unit at range each gun got one dice you have 24 guns firing and you roll 2 ones and 3 twos.

you would then roll 2 dice and if you got a 1 would result in a causality on the units in the zone.

Slows game down a little.

we tried also any unit in beaten zone roll a die get a hit.

there are cases of unit getting effected by artillery not aimed at them. tough to model in a game.

My grand batteries fire individually by battery but get a bonus being in a grand battery. Effects get fired to the closest units.