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ORIGINAL: Mutation2241

ORIGINAL: Mutation2241

How come infantry units (that are incapable of indirect fire attack) manage to return fire when beeing shot at with indirect artillery fire from batteries deployed behind the friendly lines?! The cannonaded infantry has no line of sight then and no ability to make indirect fire attacks but returns fire nonetheless?!

So when nobody has a clue its evidence enough for me that this is screwed. A brigade of riflemen that is under artillery fire can under no circumstance shoot back at the artillery when the said artillery is blocked from the riflemens' sight, but they do. Indirect fire is available for artillery ONLY, infantry shouldnt be able to counter-fire against it

Do you have the Battle report on? It might be that said INF brigade has the Brigade Artillery upgrade.

But even if they have the brigade artillery, which are 6 pounders, how do they counter-fire INDIRECT fire with those weapons?

Also, how can it be that sometimes units can fire behind the lines at my supply caissons, etc.?

ORIGINAL: haruntaiwan

But even if they have the brigade artillery, which are 6 pounders, how do they counter-fire INDIRECT fire with those weapons?

Also, how can it be that sometimes units can fire behind the lines at my supply caissons, etc.?

A 6-pounder could fire if the enemy has the indirect fire upgrade.

I too have experienced what I thought to be the enemy firing behind my troops, using a ruler however, I could actually trace a straight line between the units, you are sure there is no possible LoS?

ORIGINAL: terje439


A 6-pounder could fire if the enemy has the indirect fire upgrade.

I too have experienced what I thought to be the enemy firing behind my troops, using a ruler however, I could actually trace a straight line between the units, you are sure there is no possible LoS?

Absolutely! Even when there are no gaps in my battleline, a continous front of infantry brigades and Arty places behind them - the Arty still takes damages if the cannonaded brigade's weapon has enough range, so the enemy brigade is firing through my infantry battleline what makes no sense or above them via indirect fire which make no sense either.

I meant placed behind them of course

I have a couple of observations on this and do not think that the effect that you are seeing is too unreasonable.

Although brigaded artillery has the characteristics of 6-pounders, this may be a function of the size of the fire unit (probably battery size or smaller) within the scale of DC rather than an absolute weapons type. If so, than some details of Civil War era field artillery makes what you are seeing possible. Perhaps one of the coders or designers could clarify if this is the case.

Indirect fire generally means that effective fire can be brought onto a target over an intervening crest but what you are describing is effective fire over troops but also within the line of sight of the firing unit. This is the important point, by 1860; there existed range tables, fuze tables and primitive devices for measuring quadrant elevation that allowed gunners to engage anything within range that they could see from the battery position.

Intervening troops do not actually block line of sight and the common wargame solution to not allow artillery fire over units is not at all accurate by the mid 19th-century. Units by themselves neither block line of sight or line of fire from weapons that can vary propelling charges and fire using predicted elevations.

It makes sense that an attached battery would reply with a couple of salvos of common shell to a threat that they could see and engaging with overhead fire would have been technically possible and doctrinally sound. The threat of possible friendly-fire casualties due to premature fuze functioning of bursting shells might have not even been a consideration from the gun platforms.

Fire over intervening crests is another matter entirely and solving the indirect fire theory problem involves a large investment in ballistic, communications and positioning issues but the rough techniques were known and had been applied in siege craft for decades before the FoF era.

I actually think that the FoF team gave field artillery a better than average treatment overall with regards to capabilities and limitations at least as far as battlefield effects are concerned.

ORIGINAL: Randomizer
In my opinion, few wargames model field artillery particularly well and I think that GShock has cut to the core of this issue.  FoF appears to treat artillery pieces in the same manners as small arms but that is flawed because the theoretical firepower of a battery depends on the number of guns rather than the number of men.  If the Union had almost 22 men per piece (numbers from Griffith regarding Gettysburg) than a 3000 man FoF Artillery Brigade represents some 188 Confederate (using GShock's numbers which are entirely reasonable and jive with any

Strength for artillery and cavalry is not 1 strength point per human being; it's an abstracted value meant to represent guns and horses and so forth.

• Strength – You will see a row of figures which represents the Strength of the unit – each little figure represents a Strength of 150. A soldier figure represents infantry Strength; a cavalry figure represents cavalry Strength; and an artillery figure represents artillery Strength. Strength represents the number of soldiers in a brigade, but for cavalry and artillery also represents the number of horses and cannon, respectively. A fully stocked brigade has a Strength rating of 3,000 (USA) or 4,000 (CSA). (Forge of Freedom manual, page 37)

Units shouldn't be able to return indirect fire if they aren't able to.  I may be able to fix this in the upcoming patch.

ORIGINAL: Ampen
I don't mind taking casulties like that, if I at least can overrun the guns. Problem is they put up a fight. No infantry unit would stay there in the line of fire and try to gun it out, instead they would close in and close them down. Naturally this would take it's toll, but if the unit isn't routed, it would overrun the guns.
Difference is infantry support. An artillery unit that is in position, and has its position supported and defended by infantry, that's another issue. But, artillery troopers are just artillery troopers, their strength lies in the fast and proper loading and firing of their pieces. They are not trained in infantry combat, or close combat for that matter.

Since FOF is at the brigade level, we do consider that artillery brigades intrinsically contain at least a small amount of supporting infantry when we consider their combat capabilities.