"Ammunition in games" Topic

Sparta:

I will be glad to. I am in the development stage, then playtesting and then historical validation tests. Not that the rules have to go through all that before getting them off to you. When I get them to the playtest version, I'll get them off to you.

Bill

Looking forward to it

Nic

In a Empire III game trying a 4 bombardment round limit, a trade is 4 impules for 1 bombardment and getting 2x 5 inch or less as canister rounds not counted in the bombardments. Getting interesting as return fire on a defense round counts so do you return or not and save that shot. Also had 3 batteries fire fairly long on a impulse round without effect. When their out their done.

This is an interesting question, although I suppose it comes down to why we want to model possible ammunition shortages.

If I want to restrict my guns firing ahistorically, then I want to make some use of player choice without extreme rolls depriving me of my artillery in short order and preferably without drawing up extra card decks.

I quite liked the damage system in Wings of War so would be tempted to go with something similar. I suppose a relatively simple system would be mark up a blank dice with a range of numbers from 1-3, depending on nationality or scenario. Have a set number to reach (21 or whatever) and each time a battery fires, roll the ammo dice simultaneously (I don't like extra rolling) and add to the total. When you reach 21 that battery is low on ammo or out and the total resets. However, the target number drops to 18 or whatever, so that as the game progresses it becomes more likely that batteries will run out if I maintain heavy fire.

As a commander I know how much 'slack' have left and the probability of running out, so I feel more in control of the situation. Depending on the nationality or scenario there are is possibly a set number of re-supply tokens available too.

On the question of still having cannister to fire with, it's tempting to make that always an option but I wonder in what circumstances it would be common for batteries to forego withdrawal.

Probably will do this again, could have how much a battery has on my sheet and not all the same as I am doing this game.

If you are rolling a die each time to see if you run out of ammunition why not just count the roles and do the job properly. In our rules you have a different rates of fire depending on what you want to achieve. You can then let the protagonists fire what they want and when. If an idiot wants to fire 1 crappy battery at on big battery there is a clear option. As its crappy return minimal fire so use no more than is being shot at you. Re-deploy slightly and beat the ***! out of it or. Also distant fire can be maintained but stopped when only enough is available for a reserve and the protagonist defines that logically, should he want too or just waste it as he is a bad commander of the guns. Die rolling does not work reliably. I have never understood the almost pathological desire to die roll when it is very apparent it has little connection to reality and can make the results absurd.

If you are rolling a die each time to see if you run out of ammunition why not just count the roles and do the job properly.

Properly should include not giving a high level operational commander godlike knowledge of the detailed status of every bit of gear on the field.

Exactly etotheipi – I don't like the other extreme of random rolls or card draws happening the first time a unit fires either, so I'd prefer a system when I know that I should get ~10 shots or however many before I lose a battery, etc.

The example I gave earlier was from La Batalla de Puebla – the Cinco de Mayo battle at the start of the French Intervention in Mexico. Lorencz knew he had limited artillery logistics (for reasons that I usually tell long stories about – I enjoy studying this battle), but he didn't know exactly that he would run out. He probably didn't expect to run out of artillery in the middle of the third assault up the hill on forts Guadalupe and Loreto.

The system of removing one die from a battery (that starts with three) if it rolls a six in attack, gives a minimum number of attacks and increasing probability of running out as you keep firing. The commander also sees the dice go away, so they have a feel for when they will run out, but don't know exactly how far they can press their luck. I think this recreates the situation faced by the actual operational commander.

Thank you for the example etotheipi. I'm not a fan of tracking individual batteries if possible and I've never been a fan of permanent reductions in firepower purely related to ammunition (the -1 modifier in GdeB frustrates me for this reason).

If a battery commander needs to fire off everything he's got at a critical juncture in the battle then he should be able to, rather than firing at lower effect because ammunition is now being rationed out for some hypothetical future point.

La Belle rUFFIAN, any battery commander worth his salt will keep a reserve in case the battery is threatened "personnaly" or take the risk of a Courts Marshall or dieing. So again a simple die roll to run out seems illogical without so many extra rules its proably not going to add to the simulation. Speed of simulation is a critical parameter in itself.

My main interest is the Napoleonic era, but in my past, I've also done quite a bit of WW2 aerial wargaming, in which tracking one's ammunition usage is definitely part of the game mechanics.
You know, once it's used up, it's used up.

In an aerial wargame, with the right, pre-printed, easy to use sheet, marking off ammunition expenditure takes just a few seconds ~ e.g. tick, tick.

For Napoleonic battles, my own personal preference, is to record artillery ammunition expenditure in the same way.

The last reserve to which UshCha refers is that carried in the trail chest on French guns, which was definitely not for normal use, but was jealously guarded should either the caissons be empty or fail to be in the right place at the right time.

The guarding of this trail chest ammunition as a last reserve is made specifically clear in the regulations of the time:

Manoeuvres des Batteries de Campagne pour l'Artillerie de La Garde Imperiale, published by Magimel, Paris, 1812.

The mere fact that it's mentioned at all shows that the battery commander needed to be aware that the flow of ammunition to his guns during an action wasn't guaranteed, as the realities and confusion of combat could all too easily override the best of intentions: the traffic jams on roads, horrendously muddy fields, horse team casualties, orders for replenishment being countermanded, or never arriving at all, etc, etc.

Anyway, recording artillery ammunition for me is really important, and in my experience, it doesn't take long. But clearly, the above is just my personal preference.

Thank you for that explanation Tassie. Indeed, in the system I outlined you would only find out that the battery had been forced to use its last rounds after you have resolved the effect of the fire. Suddenly discovering that a battery still in place cannot fire or is doing so at reduced effect that turn is too much for me. I'm already rolling for the effect of the fire anyway.

I like the idea in BBB that a high (successful) roll could result in a low ammo outcome but it seems a bit harsh in that a well provisioned battery is penalised for shooting well as much as a desperately out of supply battery.

I don't like too much bookkeeping but a formation could be allocated artillery counters – buckets etc to place on or behind the gun or caisson base and each time a given roll is achieved (eg best possible like in BBB), one of those counters could be removed. That way a poorly supplied battery could have one or two, a well supplied battery four (or even more if it's in a well equipped fort). That way the player has imprecise knowledge of how long the battery can continue to shoot. When down to its last token, it could lose one off its die roll or trade that for one higher chance of losing its last token. That way, if there's a life or death shot they could shoot less conservatively but with a higher risk of using their final supplies. Whether a player then retires the battery or resupplies it would be a matter of choice or further rule design issues and accompanying complexity. The tokens could be redistributed between batteries in a larger formation if that was preferred.

I suspect leaving canister out of the equation is sensible since although they wouldn't have as much of it, they're unlikely to use it all up. I may be completely wrong though – maybe there are cases of batteries repelling multiple attacks to the point that they ran out of ammunition.

Cheers,
John

John, I definitely agree on the first point. I haven't played BBB yet, but it sounds similar to GdeB in that respect. It's a random event that occurs out of nowhere and makes one player frustrated with the game. Having thought a bit more about it, there seem to be two issues at play.

The first is from a game perspective. Do players waste time with long-range fire to little effect? It doesn't seem to occupy much time in my games so why limit it? If it is an issue then maybe specify that the artillery shouldn't be on any negative modifiers before opening fire and don't bother counting the shots. i.e. The artillery need target positive modifiers (enfilade/bounce through, etc.) to negate those for distance. Or only impact on morale/cohesion rather than serious casualties.

Counter-battery fire seems to have been 'a thing' regardless of the manuals, so why did it happen? What are you trying to achieve? Silencing the enemy or drawing their fire? There are just four outcomes to introduce: destroyed/silenced for a time/must return fire/no effect.

The first is from a simulation aspect, do we want batteries to have a chance of running out of ammunition and if so, how likely is that? If it's a common occurence and the the re-supply chain/ battery replacement system regularly fails the we should consider it, so we first need to consider the likelihood and build it into the rules or army 'characteristics'. Otherwise it might just be a scenario addition. Either way, more comparative data would be helpful.

any battery commander worth his salt will keep a reserve in case the battery is threatened "personnaly" or take the risk of a Courts Marshall

So, they won't face execution at a court martial if they stopped firing while the infantry was assaulting uphill toward the enemy fort and the enemy cavalry raided downhill (in the lack of artillery cover) to savage them? "Sure, sir, I had ammo left. But I was saving it." or "Of course, I didn't shoot my last few volleys … after the enemy slaughtered all our infantry, they were going to come after us!"

You would think any battery commander worth his salt would actually protect the forces he is assigned to protect.

Regardless, what does reserving a fixed number of volleys have to do with whether or not a given commander has exact deterministic or bounded probabilistic awareness of ammo state for his batteries?

etotheipi, does it not depend on the level of the commander and the time per turn? If I'm commanding a division I would expect to be kept informed if an issue was developing. If I'm Corp or Army level, then I normally have someone who's dealing with that.

It absolutely depends on which command level decision space you want to represent in your game.

I don't think anyone other than the battery commander would have the exact count (maybe their NCO, or maybe only their NCO). I think the people who have someone dealing with that – Lorencz, in my example – would be informed of important changes in ammo state. So they would have basically the same information as the person taking care of it for them when they make a decision, if not the interim updates.

"Sir, the south battery in nearing depletion. Maybe we should shift our assault to concentrate on Fort Loreto."

I would only model that distinction if the explicit purpose of the game (or one of them) was to walk through the friction of war between the commander and that part of his staff.

Now that you bring it up, I think this could be easily modeled by having the artillery roll their dice under a cup (where the command staff (player or players) can't see them) and just announce their "hits". A small additional level of effort over keeping the dice next to the batteries and rolling them in the open that would adequately require explicit information transfer among the command elements.

In BBB artillery can fire in the defensive fire phase and later in the sequence in its sides offensive fire phase.
Ammo is recovered at the end of the next fire phase so in effect it misses fire for half a turn. Additionally artillery out of ammo is still able to fire in the defensive fire phase at a target within 3 inches at half it's fire factor.
The 11 or 12 score that results in out of ammo typically generates one extra base loss against a target.

Mike I think the point is any sane Battery commander would have enough at least to fight off one local attack on his battery at full strength, not at reduced strength. That's far too gamey in my opinion. In most of the accounts of generals I have read they are encpouraged to think at least 3 levels down and in certain circumstances even lower.

At one part of I think it was the Bulge the army commnder gave all the Artillery as it could bring to bear as priority to a single Company! He knew that company had to hold for a while to save the entire army. It is proably why Ceaser is always reported to be where the thick of the battle was, so he could if neccessary control at a micro level. Rommel for all his supposeded greatness was guilty of micro manageing i.e too low down not too far up.

Liking my system alot, next game might make it uneven by side or a few batteries. Shame as solo playing know which batteries are short so in theory could assault them but haven't.

(Since BBB is being discussed)

@UshCha: Actually, I'd suggest the rule pretty much represents what you're asking for. Note that an artillery base in BBB is typically four or six batteries, not one, and a game turn typically an hour or more. The half-value shot a Low Ammo artillery unit still gets could be two batteries firing to cover the others limbering up and bugging out; or the whole lot firing their last half-hour's worth of ammo. That may or may not be enough to fight off one local attack (no battery commander could ever guarantee that), but it does represent the gunners trying to do so.

@etothepi's point about command level represented: BBB provides a compromise in that the player can decide whether to take the low-chance, long-range shot; he also thereby takes the risk of going low on ammo with a high roll; but he doesn't have detailed knowledge of how much ammo the guns have and how many shots they will get to fire before going low ammo.

@John Edmundson's point that "it seems a bit harsh in that a well provisioned battery is penalised for shooting well as much as a desperately out of supply battery": well, it isn't necessarily so. In some scenarios where one side is much worse supplied than the other, the worse-off side's guns are twice as likely to go low ammo (roll of 10+ rather than 11+); there are even scenarios where the ammo situation is bad enough that the guns get removed entirely rather than just missing a shot. Conversely, you could have artillery such as fortress guns with nigh-inexhaustible ready supplies only going low ammo on a roll of 12, or not at all.

Chris

Bloody Big BATTLES!
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@UshCha I would be cautious about accounts of Caesar as most were written as propaganda to further his political career.
As to the level of management I find 2-down is an optimal level but it is sometimes challenging to have rules that handle the next level down without player input.
The fire control that you referred to at the Bulge is not something that would apply on a Napoleonic battlefield. My preference is for a narrow arc of fire to prevent dispersed artillery "gang-up" on high value targets.

Have not noticed this particular aspect having been discussed, but what about shortages by particular ammunition type(s)? An artillery line, for example, that has expended a great deal of long range ammunition in an extended preparatory bombardment may yet retain an ample supply of short range canister.

Is it worth drawing the distinction? I could see cases where it would be relevant.

FWIW.

B

Blutarski I did, Having 4 rounds ( Napoleonic era smoothbore) of bombardment transfering 1 to 4 impulse rounds and then additional 2 rounds of canister under 5" worked well. Marked off expenditure first and many were wasted shots. A counter fire counts as well as a impules or canister. Those 2 canister are hard numbers as well knowing only so many are carried in this time.
Finished game and worked well, quite a few ran out of bombardment rounds in a 8 round game. Though solo so really knew if a battery was out but had a few silent for awile so had a cavalry charge at them as might a unknowingly opponent only to find out they were not out of canister. Didn't come up but know at least 1 battery was out of canister though didn't get tested.
Might play with a uneven supply either sides or could just be short 1 caliber but going to start doing this.

I think there are several issues here, not necessarily related:

1. Is the administrative bean counting worth it? It *might* be depending on the scale, Lower scales making more sense, fewer batteries, closer to the batteries in command structure.

2. How often and how much was this an issue at any level? A resupply system from the train usually was in place. The example of the 1806 Prussians is a good example of an unusually crap supply system, with little cooperation between arms. I would think in *most all* cases, running out of ammo would be no more than a temporary issue, one handled administratively by artillerists.

3. How involved/informed/responsible were division, corps and army commanders in battlefield artillery operations the day of battle? From my reading, not much. It was more about where they wanted gun support/action and being informed at some point that ammo was low. Period.

I think any answers would apply to Napoleonic wars through 1870 at least.