Other Periods

[emperorpenguin]

That depends...if you're using the Chinese repeating crossbows... Then there's regular bows where a trained archer can fire fairly rapidly....

still not that rapidly though.

 

[cordas]

You can't really use crossbows for suppressive shooting, though. Even if you could load and shoot rapidly enough you can't carry enough ammo...

Not sure about that, Pavaise crossbows where used in seiges to keep defenders from castle / city walls. I would call that suppression....

I would also imagine that a bunch of longbow, or other archers would be able to put up a large enough amount of arrow fire in the air to possibly suppress infantry trying to charge them down... There are numerous historical accounts of arrow fire heavy enough to turn the sky to dark.....

 

[emperorpenguin]

You can't really use crossbows for suppressive shooting, though. Even if you could load and shoot rapidly enough you can't carry enough ammo...

Not sure about that, Pavaise crossbows where used in seiges to keep defenders from castle / city walls. I would call that suppression....
....

no they were used to shoot defenders on walls! suppression requires large amounts of (relatively) accurate fire.

Archers fired massed volleys as a means of dealing with blocks of troops. Very similar to musketry, if you did BF:Evo:Napoleon there is no way you could include suppression!

 

[Lord David the Denied]

That depends...if you're using the Chinese repeating crossbows... Then there's regular bows where a trained archer can fire fairly rapidly....

The repeating crossbows rapidly exhausted their load of quarrels and took time to reload. Time enough for a chap with a sword to really mess up your day...

 

[anton970]

the way that you could get round that is rather than the amount of shots in the general area, go with the FOW pinned rule and if you take five of more hits in a single turn then you become supressed?

what you think?

 

[Hiromoon]

Actually, they look fairly easy to reload, LDD.

Course, I'd rather use the Roman repeating ballista myself.


Supression doesn't require large amounts of relatively accurate fire, EP. For the life of me I'm still trying to work out your definition of supression.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Supression doesn't require large amounts of relatively accurate fire, EP. For the life of me I'm still trying to work out your definition of supression.

Well what is yours? I am dying to know how soldiers on battlefields of the musket era could be suppressed......

 

[emperorpenguin]

Suppressive fire is a term used in military science for firing weapons at or in the direction of enemy forces with the primary goal of reducing their ability to defend themselves or return fire, by forcing them to remain under cover.


Usage
Suppressive fire differs from lethal fire (i.e. shoot-to-kill) in that its primary objective is to get the enemy to "keep their heads down" and thus reduce their ability to move, shoot, or observe their surroundings. While soldiers may be injured or killed by suppressive fire, this is not its main purpose.

That is very, very different from say musket fire of the 19th century or longbow fire of the 15th

Suppressive fire is a military term for firing weapons at or in the direction of an enemy with the primary goal of reducing their ability to defend themselves or return fire, by forcing them to remain under cover.
History
Suppressive fire became possible with the advent of firearms capable of rapid fire, and more particularly of automatic weapons. Note that the use of large groups of archers or musketeers firing multiple arrows or projectiles at enemy troop concentrations is defined as massed, rather than suppressive, fire.Usage
Suppressive fire may be either aimed (at a specific enemy soldier, group of soldiers, or vehicle) or unaimed (for example, at a building or treeline where enemy soldiers are suspected to be hiding.) To be effective, suppressive fire must be relatively continuous and high in volume. Suppression of enemy fire is vital during troop movement especially in tactical situations such as an attack on an enemy position. The use of suppressive fire is not limited to the use of infantry weapons. During an amphibuous assault on a beachhead, as often occurred during World War II, naval warships would fire their cannons at known or suspected enemy artillery, mortar, or machine gun positions, on or behind the landing beaches. This was intended to suppress enemy fire from these positions which could be directed against the landing troops.

 

[Hiromoon]

Not wanting to get in the line of fire, ergo not being able to do anything or go anywhere at all.

You don't need a high volume of fire to achieve that at all. Look at sharp shooters during the Civil War or even during the Napleonic period. One man with a rifle can literally cause an entire column to hold up. Later on you have patrols stopping because of a single sniper. I'd argue that that patroll is suppressed because of that.

Additionally, the Suppression rules in BF:Ev seem more a mechanice of Moral without actually calling it that. Your soldiers have been torn up or have seen other units get destroyed. Do they sally forth or do they stay put? Do they retreat?


Edit:
Your definition deals with Suppressive fire, EP.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Edit:
Your definition deals with Suppressive fire, EP.

suppression and suppresive fire are the same thing but you are correct that a sniper can cause suppression, but only if he has a high enough rate of fire and is concealed

I did already say suppression was nigh impossible before 1850 which correct me if I'm wrong allows for the Civil War example :wink:

There is no way a marksman with a baker rifle could fire fast enough to cause suppression, no way!

 

[Hiromoon]

And again, I argue otherwise. Suppression is NOT the same as Suppressive Fire. And by the definition of Suppressive fire you've used, Civil War didn't heavilly rely on the good old Gatlin Gun, so that's a bit of a loss. The earliest war you could argueably look to, using your definition, would be the Spanish American war.

And you're concentrating, again, on a rapid fire sense of Suppressive Fire. A man with a Baker rifle can certainly cause supression. Heck, a guy with a Brown Bess could do it too.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Heck, a guy with a Brown Bess could do it too.

How so?

 

[Hiromoon]

Well, how about this....You stand up, someone takes a shot at you, but you can't rightly tell where it came from. Are YOU going to rush up there?

 

[emperorpenguin]

Well, how about this....You stand up, someone takes a shot at you, but you can't rightly tell where it came from. Are YOU going to rush up there?

given the effective range of a brown bess it'd be difficult to not see where the firer!
not to mention bright uniform, shako, formation of troops.....

 

[Hiromoon]

True, but there's also urban combat, siege works, and so on.

 

[cordas]

It really depends on what you call suppression....

If you call suppression

1. The use of ranged weaponry to stop your opponents from doing as they wish, then its open to a whole load of historical uses.

2. If you mean suppression as in putting down large amounts of lead from automatic gun powder weapons, then its limited to after the invention of the gattling gun.

I take supperssion in the evo rules (both BF and SST) to mean the 1st and not the 2nd. Using this interpration its possible to see how musket fire, crossbow fire, mortar fire, cannon fire on any ranged weaponry used on mass or in a snipping mode could cause the game mechanic of suppression. My example of Pavaise Crosbows seems obvious suppression to me as it was used to make the enemy keep their heads down and to try and stop them from effectively defending their walls.

 

[emperorpenguin]

urban combat was often settled with bayonets, muskets took too long to reload.
In fact bayonets almost never drew blood apart from in towns.

 

[cordas]

urban combat was often settled with bayonets, muskets took too long to reload.
In fact bayonets almost never drew blood apart from in towns.

Bayonets where also heavily used in both world wars as well once troops got up close and personal, they might have even been used in Vietnam for more than openning tins of food, but I am not sure about that.

 

[emperorpenguin]

urban combat was often settled with bayonets, muskets took too long to reload.
In fact bayonets almost never drew blood apart from in towns.

Bayonets where also heavily used in both world wars as well once troops got up close and personal, they might have even been used in Vietnam for more than openning tins of food, but I am not sure about that.

they were used in the Falklands, I know for certain

But in the 20th century I doubt they caused that many casualties as a %. In the Napoleonic wars most bayonet wounds were in fact from soldiers catching their hands while reloading!

 

[cordas]

But in the 20th century I doubt they caused that many casualties as a %. In the Napoleonic wars most bayonet wounds were in fact from soldiers catching their hands while reloading!

Not sure about that, when you read about the number of rounds fired during WW2 before anyone was actually killed, and the even worse numbers in Vietnam.... It seems the best way to kill the enemy is to stab him.... as long as you aren't suppressed before you get close to him. (Would put a smiley but feel it wouldn't be appropriate given the circumstances)