Other Periods

[emperorpenguin]

Yes lots of rounds were expended because of automatic weapons, cover and recce by fire.
However that still doesn't mean bayonets saw much use!

There has always been a high ratio of shots to casualties. I have the figures for Waterloo and the sheer number of musket balls and cannon balls needed to cause a casualty is amazing!

This is what I could find for WW1 bayonet casualties

Wintringham offers a glimpse of the frequency of bayonet casualties during the First World War in stating that they were so rare no separate statistical records were maintained. Bayonet wounds treated were inclusive to the 1.02 per cent miscellaneous casualties and accidents

 

[Dorb]

Zulu / Boer Wars.

 

[The Old Soldier]

Anyone that thinks in the modern world stabbing aka bayonett is common, just doen't understand human nature. They must have been watching too many late night war movies.

Ugly truth is hand to hand fighting is rare because it is so personal. You just do not want to know who you are killing if it can be help. Much better to have a semi-faceless enemy. Examples are full of this truth.

I'll leave it up to others if they want to give such examples. I for one will just move on from this subject, because it just brings up old memories.

 

[weasel_fierce]

The suppression question can be poised easily:

If a company of troops are moving up, and are fired upon by a bunch of guys, will it affect their ability to continue moving, fighting and receiving orders unhindered ?

The answer, incidentally, is yes. Believing otherwise is sheer fantasy


EDIT: As far as hand to hand goes, in almost every case, either the charge will fail, or the receiving unit will rout before contact in made. WW1 saw an unprecendented amount of close quarter fighting (meaning grenades mostly) due to the confines of the trenches) and even then, unlikely more than 1 % actual bayonet wounds.

 

[Shadow4ce]

I actually see both sides here and depending upon ones definition of suppression both sides are correct. I therefore abstain from taking a stand with one exception.

Snipers.

I have personally witnessed battalions stalled for hours and slowed for days because of occasional well-aimed shots. When an enemy colonel or higher, ie "flag-rank" officer, gets hit from over 800 yards away and the men have no idea where it came from, they tend to all button up in vehicles if they have them, or hug the dirt if they don't. It takes some serious time to recover. Although I've seen opposite hill-sides shredded to bits by return fire, the fact of the matter is it worked. Hundreds of men were, for all intents and purposes, suppressed (frozen in place) for hours and sometime a whole day from 1 shot.

Especially hard psychologically is when it happens the next day 8 miles up the road because the sniper team has relocated. Then the next day 5 miles further along. Moving a Battalion only 12 miles in 3 days because a sniper is harrassing the battalion the whole way definitely falls into my description of suppression and demoralization.

Just some food for thought. Digest it how you will.

 

[emperorpenguin]

The suppression question can be poised easily:

If a company of troops are moving up, and are fired upon by a bunch of guys, will it affect their ability to continue moving, fighting and receiving orders unhindered ?

The answer, incidentally, is yes. Believing otherwise is sheer fantasy
.

A company of modern troops receiving fire yes.
A company of napoleonic troops no, the fire is inaccurate and not sustained.
No matter what Hiro says, the rules are designed to cover suppressive fire, ie you lose actions because you are pinned by fire unable to return it yourself.

That would not happen with muskets firing 3 times a minute. What i am saying is if you want to cover other historical periods then you cannot just use a "catch-all" rules system. Warfare hasn't always worked the same way.

 

[cordas]

A company of modern troops receiving fire yes.
A company of napoleonic troops no, the fire is inaccurate and not sustained.
No matter what Hiro says, the rules are designed to cover suppressive fire, ie you lose actions because you are pinned by fire unable to return it yourself.

That would not happen with muskets firing 3 times a minute. What i am saying is if you want to cover other historical periods then you cannot just use a "catch-all" rules system. Warfare hasn't always worked the same way.

So arrow storms, or the roman Pilum wheren't used to break up enemy shield walls or charges and reduce their ability to fight (loose actions because they where "pinned" down (literally) and unable to react normally) once charged by the Legonaries with short swords, or mounted cavalry?

It all depends on what you read suppression to be, if you want to use the Evo rules to play pre automatic weapons then you have to look at the rules FLUFF and re-write the rules FLUFF. Please note the difference between RULES and rules FLUFF.

It seems to me there are plently of historical (and not so historical) examples of how non automatic gunfire is capable of giving suppression, if you are prepared to read the rules FLUFF differently.

P.S. No one is suggesting a single musket (firing 3 shots a min in the hands of a highly trained proferssional) could provide suppression (unless it was one of those long barreled American ones used in the War of Independance by highly skilled hunters / marksmen - snippers to pick off unit leaders and cause suppression by chaos), as 3 missed shots a minute would / could not suppress a unit.

Just as in the same way in Bf:EVO its impossible for a single soldier not armed with a MG to suppress anymore than a single enemy model. Its about the AMOUNT of gunfire coming in. Have 50 muskets firing at 5 enemy soldiers and I am sure there is a good chance they willl be suppressed..... 150 rounds a min bouncing around me and a couple of mates would have me well and truely suppressed..... having one guy taking pot shots at me and some mates every 20 seconds or so would have us either high tailling it out of there, or if there was no escape going and dealing with him.

 

[emperorpenguin]

So arrow storms, or the roman Pilum wheren't used to break up enemy shield walls or charges and reduce their ability to fight (loose actions because they where "pinned" down (literally) and unable to react normally) once charged by the Legonaries with short swords, or mounted cavalry?.

No the Pilum was designed to kill or render useless the shield of an enemy. Not to have him cowering unable to act, he was still perfectly capable of swinging a sword and cutting you open.....

Look you can take my advice or you can say expand BF:Evo to other time frames (say a Sharpe type Napoleonic skirmish) and just use the current rules with suppression. You will not win over anyone familiar with the period because they will be mystified as to why modern rules are part of the game

 

[Old Bear]

Suppression in Napoleonic terms equates to the forced re-ordering of formations. British fire into French columns regularly slowed them down, if only because stepping over the dead isn't easy.

 

[emperorpenguin]

That I would debate Old Bear. There is such a historical myth about British line versus French column. Often what happened was the French moved in column until at musket range, then changed to line before firing.
In your example we would never see suppression between two lines of musketry such as was common in the Seven years war.

Look up the definition of suppression and you see it is linked to automatic fire, I am at pains trying to understand why people want to apply modern warfare to older periods!

 

[Old Bear]

Like somebody else said, it's a matter of fluff. Change the word 'suppression' and the theory still holds good. French columns as often as not were driven into line ahead of time by weight of fire.

I've spent years in Napoleonic re-enactments, both in the infantry and then the cavalry, and I've hung around with the biggest geeks available, so i don't come into this conversation unarmed. :wink:

Even with unloaded muskets, I can tell you that the knowledge that one of the blokes opposite might not have removed his ramrod is enough to make you a little twitchy when the muskets level up.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Like somebody else said, it's a matter of fluff. Change the word 'suppression' and the theory still holds good. French columns as often as not were driven into line ahead of time by weight of fire.

I've spent years in Napoleonic re-enactments, both in the infantry and then the cavalry, and I've hung around with the biggest geeks available, so i don't come into this conversation unarmed. :wink:

Even with unloaded muskets, I can tell you that the knowledge that one of the blokes opposite might not have removed his ramrod is enough to make you a little twitchy when the muskets level up.

Cool, it's good to see someone with a knowledge of Napoleonic warfare!

I still disagree that changing the word "suppression" works. You'd have battalions paralysed unable to fire which simply didn't happen.
Aside from which BF:Evo wouldn't suit massed combat anyway, skirmish level perhaps.
There is still a difference between "twitchy" and unable to act on the battlefield.

 

[Old Bear]

I'm a big fan of a computer-based rules set called Blood & Iron, which was released about a decade ago by English Computer Wargames for the ACW. they did a Napoelonic version as well. Most enjoyable games I ever played, and one of the key features was that weight of firepower could seriously slow down and disorganise units. Making it work well in a set of rules may not be straightforward but I'm utterly convinced of the relaism of the notion.

 

[emperorpenguin]

units were always getting disorganised, hence sergeants with halberds and pikes shoving men into position, levelling muskets etc

But you couldn't stop the fire of an entire battalion, so the suppression rules (designed for modern combat) don't cover it very well

 

[Old Bear]

But you're trying to force a game mechanism into real life. it's impossible to accurately portray the plethora of delays that a unit can go through. A simple mechanism giving the possibility of losing an action seems to me quite an adequate method.

 

[emperorpenguin]

I'm confused! :? It appears to me that you are trying to force the game mechanism "suppression" into real life by retrospectively applying it to the Napoleonic wars.

You simply cannot have two battalions face off and the one firing first wins because the second is suppressed.....

 

[Poko]

arrow storms,

you mean the patheticly ineffective shit that,with the sole excaption of steppe recurve was too weak to pierce through anything but flesh?the only really efective war-bows were the recurves and welsh longbows, anything else was glorified hunt equipment pressed into service. heck, peltasts were more dangerous than bowmen in may cases!(i'm talking about antiquity of course and the medieaval.after that i don't know)

up until XIXcent the most common way to survive shooting was to push forward, at least as far as ranked units went. skirmishers of course could just peel away,but skirmishers didn't win battles. sure, if you inflicted enough casualties you could stall the enemy charge,but it was not easy thing by any stretch,even in the world of muskets and cannons.

if any "Ancient Evo" or "Knights&Mercenaries Evo" came to being, the suppression rule should be done with imo.

 

[Hiromoon]

EP:
Says the man who's definition of Suppression is 'Suppressive Fire'. Again, it's a catch-all term that draws from numerous things.

In fact, you could give a Viking unit a special rule that allows them to cause suppression when they charge into close combat if they take a ready action to shout and bang their weapons against thier sheilds enough to unnerve the enemy.

Poko: Funny, the Persians, Babylonians, and Egyptians seemed quite capabale of killing people with arrows, and they weren't using the Mongolian Recurve bow or the Welsh Longbow...

 

[cordas]

I still disagree that changing the word "suppression" works. You'd have battalions paralysed unable to fire which simply didn't happen.
Aside from which BF:Evo wouldn't suit massed combat anyway, skirmish level perhaps.
There is still a difference between "twitchy" and unable to act on the battlefield.

Quite right, EVO is a SKIRMISH game, it works on the level of squads not on company, regiment or brigade level. Its completely useless for trying to deal with battles on that scale... Unless you where to have each "model" represent a company or part of, and it would require different rules and ways of handeling moral / suppression to deal with it.

I don't think people are wanting to play "old" era games using Evo on those large scales, but to use it as a skirimish game.

A cohort of legonaries thowing pilum (anything from 150 - 1000 men depending on the era) into a massed unit of 500 - 2000 charging Celtic Swordsem is not going to suppress all those men, and as a game mechanic would fail.

A Contubernium (8 men) throwing pilum into a group of 12 charging celtic Swordsmen however is a different thing all together in gaming terms I feel that the suppression rule could / would work for this very nicely. If we had to change the rule name from suppression to intimidation then I wouldn't quibble overly about it, as long as it worked the same way.

 

[emperorpenguin]

In fact, you could give a Viking unit a special rule that allows them to cause suppression when they charge into close combat if they take a ready action to shout and bang their weapons against thier sheilds enough to unnerve the enemy....

you could and I'd not play that game and keep playing Warhammer Ancients/DBA or anything else which doesn't try to replicate modern warfare....