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Post by Von Widdler on Nov 2, 2020 16:10:04 GMT
I'm just sitting on a break at work, and my mind drifted to Black Powder for some reason.
I was thinking, at some point in the future, we could test a rule regarding smoke. As the name suggests, Black powder revolves around periods using gunpowder weapons. These of course, when fired on mass and repeatedly, generate quite a bit of smoke. I don't believe this is reflected in the current rules.
My suggestion is that if a unit has fired for two consecutive turns, and has not moved forward at all, it suffers a -1 penalty for shooting, as the smoke is obscuring the target. This works both ways as the opposing target would suffer the same penalty. I would also suggest that the same penalty applies to incoming fire received while charging an enemy to the front, if smoke is present between the targets.
This way may lie madness, as we could then get into wind directions etc lol. Thoughts?
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Post by dandare on Nov 5, 2020 9:50:39 GMT
I'm not sure. Powder smoke seems to hang about more in damp, still conditions, and seems to have been a more common problem at sea. It certainly affected both sides pretty equally. Given that volleys were generally delivered by "platoons" in sequence, in order to keep up a rolling fire, at least at the start of a firefight, rather than a whole battalion, the volume of smoke would be (in the case of the British at least) 1/16th of a battalion's worth. Most other nations had a comparable system. I suspect that a: there was not a lot of aiming anyway b: most troops fired at the enemy muzzle flashes..
I read a very boring book on this, called Firepower. Hundreds of pages, which concluded that the reason that British musketry was relatively more successful was that it was delivered at ranges of less than 50 yards, not because of platoon firing, or better training.
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Post by Zhao Zilong on Nov 6, 2020 14:24:52 GMT
There's probably also the add on that usually one side would break after a (relatively) short amount of time. Not saying there wasn't times when smoke would be an issue, there was. I do support rules that could lead to madness though. I have a set of rules somewhere that has you roll for precipitation levels pre battle we could use?
I once read 'Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland' which went into far too much detail about fire control systems and accuracy - for nearly 400 pages
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