Hex scale in detailed combat

[PaulWRoberts]

For the life of me, I can't find this anywhere in the manual: what is the hex scale in detailed combat? I'm guessing each hex equals 500 yards or so, but does anyone know?

[Gil R.]

One hex is about 100 yards.

[PaulWRoberts]

Thanks for the answer, Gil, but it surprises me. Would a whole brigade really keep to a frontage of just 100 yards?

[highblooded]

Another problem I see with this is Fog of War only shows you 5 or 6 hexes during daylight in clear terrain. That would be only a 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile? I would think we should see further than that.[8|]

[quikstrike]

Back when I lived in Washington, DC, I did some touring of the battlefields out that way. If you hit Gettysburg, you'll find markers which show the actual frontage of various regiments during the battle. the narrowness of the frontage is rather shocking. Brigades may have been capable of holding frontages greater than 100 yards, but it's not that far off.

[Edit]Size of frontage was also a factor of the strength of the unit in manpower. A full-strength brigade may have been capable of holding greater frontage than 100 yards, but then a depleted CSA brigade of 1,900 men or so (I'm playing CSA and have faaaarrrrrrr too many of those!) would be able to hold a much smaller frontage. I reckon it's a compromise in game terms, but not an unreasonable one. [/Edit]

[ericbabe]

Several systems of rules miniatures that I've looked at or played under limit the sighting distance of units to a few hundred yards even on open terrain on the notion that even open, flat ground is never actually perfectly flat.  If I remember correctly, the system I used to play Napoleonics miniatures with ("Napoleon's Battles", green box) limited sighting to 300 yards, which is much more extreme than FOF.  So it may seem a little unusal to limit sighting in this way, but as far as gaming systems go it's not at all unprecedented.

Regarding frontage sizes, brigades would sometimes deploy with larger frontages, sometimes with smaller, depending on the situation and their strength.  As a matter of theoretical calculation, a fully stocked brigade could take up between 300 and 400 yards of frontage with skirmishers deployed, but I don't think this theoretical size was often realized on the field; I did a few calculations where I found statistics for total battle frontage sizes and the number of men who participated in the battle, and (for the battles I looked at) the average is a little more than 100 yards for a brigade.  Since we do allow brigades to split into two separate detailed combat units, a brigade that splits into two units and forms up side-by-side takes up about 200 yards, so players do have the option to cover larger frontages with more fully stocked brigades.

[USSLockwood]

And, of course, you have the option to split brigades, if you feel the need to have more realistic brigade frontages.

[freeboy]

And if you add in that we are allowing hte player to be the General with imediate response from the f=troops, limiting the sight is a handicap to alow for a command fow