WARGAMING & DIORAMA - PART 1 "FIGHTING"

 I always had a dream: a wargaming without dice. I even found a very good name for it "sine alea"; I based my rules on the idea of a percentage of loss given by each unit to another unit, calculated on statistic reports of the epoch; so for istance I calculated that a infantry unit could give 9% of losses to enemy at 40 meters, and hence if the firing unit was of 100 men, the losses would have been 9 enemy's figures. 

The system is good, but it has the problem that you avoid the dice but you spend your evenings in calculating perecentage on your smartphone. Please not! True is that I went on with this system for years, even though the most amazing and fast battles in my memories were those done in childhood with the good ATALANTIC HO Scale Ancient Greeks against foes; (in my memory I remember a battle on my grandparents' table with a stubborn Greek square resisting till the last men!); Now I have much bigger armies, all painted but no fun. And sorry to say, to throw a die to check the results is soooo boring; better to play chess.

In my childhood I used a simply (and naif) system that was to throw a line from a soldier to the other to eliminate it. Surely it was random, without any sense and rule, but still very funny.

So the idea is now to match my first system "Sine Alea" with the "child" system and no dice; is it possible? yes it is!

The rules are good for XVIII till XIX Centuries, even though with adjustments to the numbers; what follows is the period Napoleonic till 1848.

So I calculated a minimal width of a unit, having 15 (shooting) men;  the firing unit was on 3 rows: 2 firing 1 recharging. So in 1 turn (1 minute) mor eor less they did 1 volley (in battle); so I calculated that 30 men firing (15 recharging) and a line that is as wide as the unit. 

The first metal line represents the width of the unit (on 15 men) while the second the width of the fire considered a little wider than the unit, considering that men at the edges shot also a little in diagonal.

Obvioulsy, if the rate is 2 shots/minute it will be enough to repeat the operation 2 times per turn.

In this article https://www.earmi.it/balistica/efficacia.htm there are a lot of statics about the failing shots and the precision. It is important to note that a soldier in battle under stress would have behaved in a total different way than in parade.

A shot failed 10% in a total way and 20% by some sort. It can be summarized as 18% of no-shots.

The rate firing was theoretically of 2 or or 3 shots per minute; but at the very end the rate was much less between 1 shot per minute or a little less (in the article they quote 5/8 minutes per 10 shot i.e. 1,5 shots every minute. This would go down to 1shot/minute during the fighting.

"Tests were carried out in 1811, the target was a wooden wall the size of an infantry line. The results of the practice were as follows: at a distance of 100 yards (91.44 m) 53% hits, 200 yards (182.88 m) 30% hits, 300 yards (274.32 m) 23% hits.

That was under ideal conditions, freshly issued flints and powder, there was no battle stress on the soldier and the target did not fire back .... we can probably reduce battle accuracy by 20% t all ranges, giving 100 yds 33%, 200yds 10% and 300yds 3%"

To this you have to add that the shots was on a target while the shape of a person was different. For this - accoridng to other calculation - it is possibile to divide by 50%.

It was also said that over 180 meters was impossible to be hit and at 90 meters you should be very unlucky to be hit.

At a Napoleonic Battle at 100 yards there was 5% hits. 

It is also very important to note (big mistake!) that is not true that 1 shot = 1 hit = 1 soldier; it was possible that a soldier in the first rank took 2 or 3 hits.

This allows to reduce again by 50% the numbers above. 

The precision of shooting was very relative: 

under 15 meters: 70%

15/50 m.  60%

50/100 m 50%

100/150 m 20%

150/180 m 5%

But here we don't consider the number of losses, but the accuracy of the firing. so we can increase a little the numbers above:

All this done on the idea of Scharnost:

under 15 meters: 80%

15/50 m.  70%

50/100 m 60%

100/150 m 15%

150/180 m 5%

This gives the following results on  a unit of 45 men, whose 30 are shooting:

out of 45 men,  of these 20% misfired. So 36 men shoot.

To the above numbers it is necessary to detract 15% due to double hit on the same target (soldier);

moreover I asked help on TMP about the accuracy of fighting of the 3rd rank; we agree they were really not that efficient; hence I decided that: 3rd rank represents 33% of the unit; more than half is by no means shooting with a minimal effect on target, so I reduced again the numbers by 18%

So:

SCHEME OF HIT ON THE TARGET (not losses!!)

(NB: the decreasing numbers is due to the fact that the unit undegoes losses by enemy)

  

 

Distance Meters	45 men	44 men	43 men	42 men	41 men	40 men
< 15	19,52	19,36	19,14	18,93	18,71	18,50
15/30	17,13	16,94	16,75	16,56	16,37	16,18
30/90	12,24	12,10	11,96	11,83	11,69	11,56
90/150	3,67	3,63	3,59	3,55	3,50	3,47
150/180	1,22	1,21	1,19	1,18	1,17	1,16

 

 

Distance Meters	39 men	38 men	37 men	36 men	35 men	34 men
< 15	18,27	18,06	17,84	17,62	17,41	17,19
15/30	15,99	15,80	15,61	15,42	15,23	15,04
30/90	11,42	11,28	11,15	11,02	10,88	10,74
90/150	3,42	3,38	3,34	3,30	3,26	3,16
150/180	1,15	1,14	1,13	1,12	1,11	1,07

The system to eliminate adversaries (papersoldiers obviously!) is done by a "firing front" object. This is:

Figure 1): "Firing Front"

Every match represent a shot, according to the numbers above. So for example if  39 men shoot, at 1st round, at a distance of 30/90 meters the "firing front" will have 15 (always round it down) shots. In the example (18 matches) it is enough to eliminate 3 matches (those with little lines), just to make it fast.

Now you have to put down the "distance line" and align it with the basis of the shooting unit:

Figure 2) "Distance line aligned with the basis of the (Piedmontese) shooting unit

The Piedmontese unit has 39 shooting papersoldiers - better soldiers - and 1 officer (not calculated); they stand at 40 meters (30 cm) from adversary.

Now, simply, the Piedmontese player scrolls thorugh the firing front over the distance line and impact on the enemy. Not all shots will hit the adversary, like in reality; see example below:

Figure 3) Second shooting 

In the example here above I put in evicence with 4 little red stars the Austrian troops touched/hit by the adversary. So in this case, the Austrian unit (a peloton) loses 4 men (dead/wounded).

It is usefull to remind that I consider that some shots could have gone beyond the 1st rank and touched the 2nd & 3rd ranks. It was not that easy, if the unit was in close order, but one must think about all. You calculated 10% of the losses, in this case 0,4; you add to this number the numbers over the comma 15,99 so 0,99 + 0,40 = 1,39 this means you can eliminate another soldiers. The total losse for this shooting is hence 5 men!.

As said, in battle (1848 but also Napoleonic period) it is possible to consider 40 second = 1 shots (at least at the very beginning of the shooting phase); 1 turn lasts 2 minutes, for a total of 3 shots; for every round of shots the player has to put the firing front on the 1st, 2nd and finally 3rd line of shooting as here:

Figure 4) The 3 lines of shooting

Moving the "firing front" on the 3 lines provides a sort of alea in the hits. (it would be possible to make 3 different firing fronts"