Losing strength after move?

[amattin]

Hi, I'm playing Bob's Gettysburg and having a great time. One question, which I don't think is scenario specific:

Playing as Union A lot of my units are bunched up and my line is grinding against the Confederate line. I have some higher strengthen Infantry units that I'm trying to shift along the line, but I notice that when I move them laterally, they lose a couple of strength points (I didn't notice whether the defense points change). So, like a 19-17 will shift one adjacent hex and it will have been reduced to 16-17. I can't see that this is from opportunity fire, though there are a lot of enemy cannons around. Is there a strength penalty for moving under fire, or moving while in an enemy zoc?

[Lobster]

When a unit moves it loses readiness, it becomes less ready. For a Civil War formation I imagine it becomes a bit disorganized since formation was a big factor in fire power that would result in a loss of strength. It uses supply. It loses people, some can't keep up and become stragglers. All of this results in a loss of strength. If you don't move the unit it regains that lost strength for obvious reasons.

I've probably missed a couple of things but it's early and I've not had coffee yet. [;)]

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: amattin

Hi, I'm playing Bob's Gettysburg and having a great time. One question, which I don't think is scenario specific:

Playing as Union A lot of my units are bunched up and my line is grinding against the Confederate line. I have some higher strengthen Infantry units that I'm trying to shift along the line, but I notice that when I move them laterally, they lose a couple of strength points (I didn't notice whether the defense points change). So, like a 19-17 will shift one adjacent hex and it will have been reduced to 16-17. I can't see that this is from opportunity fire, though there are a lot of enemy cannons around. Is there a strength penalty for moving under fire, or moving while in an enemy zoc?

Lobster's comments usually apply to most scenarios. But, for Gettysburg 1863, both the Supply and Readiness costs of movement are zero. His remarks about stragglers still apply, though. Also, if a unit moves from an enemy zoc and there was no remaining friendly unit in that zoc it suffers a disengagement attack. That may be what is happening. (See 10.4.10)

[golden delicious]

If the units are losing a noticeable amount of strength when moving, it might also be because their supply level was above 100%. Units in place can go up to 150% supply, but when moving it immediately drops to a maximum of 100%.

Unit quality is (2x proficiency + readiness + supply) / 4 so a typical unit would go from (60 + 60 + 100 + 150) / 4 = 92.5 to (60 + 60 + 100 + 100) / 4 = 80. That would account for losing a couple of points of strength on the counter.

[amattin]

Thanks everyone, as always this is super helpful. What you'd all said about readiness, supply, and disengagement makes complete sense. I think that, as with many things in the game, I was taking a simplistic view of the "strength" number. As in, I was thinking that strength represented the number of soldiers (guns, etc) and the unit health rolled up supply and readiness. So after a move or disorganization I expected strength to stay the same but health to go down. Basically I expected strength to stay the same unless parts of the unit were casualties. I definitely think that I have enough awareness of the basic game now to dig into the manual and have it make a little more sense. I have another question about stack sizes but I'll put that in a separate thread. Thank you all for being so helpful!