Variable RR damage

[Crimguy]

Is all RR damage in a region uniform? Seems it would be good to have varible levels of damage, depending on the unit doing the destruction and how much time they spend there. I have CSA Cavalry raiders destroying 1/2 the railroads in one state in a month.

[Big Muddy]

Is all RR damage in a region uniform? Seems it would be good to have varible levels of damage, depending on the unit doing the destruction and how much time they spend there. I have CSA Cavalry raiders destroying 1/2 the railroads in one state in a month.

I don't see a need for this, and would not want to see it implemented.

[Conhugeco]

Although I have to agree with Czrasai that I don't want to see variable railroad damage represented in the game, Crimguy does make an interesting point. By 1864 the Union could repair rail lines almost as quickly as Confederate raiders could destroy them.

Dick

[Crimguy]

Conversely, the CSA didn't have the ability to repair railroads at much of a clip after 1863 or so. By Sherman's advance on Georgia, they were essentially unable to fix the railroads at all.

I am not a historical accuracy snob when it comes to games like this - I'll save that for HPS/WitP, etc. But on the historical side, the Union railroads were safe as houses in areas they had not conquered. As the game plays now, the CSA is tearing up my IA and IL railroads at a prodigious clip.

[Wilhammer]

Of course, another point in all this is how does one regiment of calvary tear down all the rail in 5 days in Pittsburgh?

The level of destruction by Sherman was all together different than a simple cut by a light calvary raid.

Perhaps we need at least two types of damage - 'light' and 'heavy'.

Light damage caused by small forces (less than a division) could be 'self healing' (in recognition of RR persons and local labor), thus resulting in only one turn of RR disruption.

Heavy damage would work like it does now, with the restriction that you must have at least a dozen or so elements in a division that does the damage.

[Conhugeco]

Wilhammer,

I understand what you're getting at, but why not then just dispense with the light damage entirely? Would a light force be able to put a RR line out of commission for two weeeks or more? I really don't know.

Excessive and unrealistic cavalry raiding was one of the game breakers for the old board wargame War Between the States (WBTS), and I really don't want it to happen to this game too.

Dick

[Crimguy]

It's always going to be somewhat unrealistic because of the level of abstraction. The excessive raiding is what we're looking to avoid. However, due to the mechanics of the game, it seems there is little else a raiding party can do other than tear up railroad. They forage and reduce supply output, but it's rarely in an area that seems to have any significant effect on the output of the nation.

[Wilhammer]

What other effect does a a lone calvary unit have in an enemy region - what is their to raid?

I do agree that it is perhaps a bit much to think that a very small force, a brigade or less, perhaps a division or less, could do enough damage to disrupt rail for two weeks.

I'd go for rules that had NO RR DAMAGE ability unless a division or more was carrying it out.

[Pocus]

It's always going to be somewhat unrealistic because of the level of abstraction. The excessive raiding is what we're looking to avoid. However, due to the mechanics of the game, it seems there is little else a raiding party can do other than tear up railroad. They forage and reduce supply output, but it's rarely in an area that seems to have any significant effect on the output of the nation.

Well there is one big thing you can do with a lone unit, which is to burn supply stock. Activate the Evade Fight order, be on the move and capture depots and towns. This will destroy 90% of the stocks.

[Queeg]

I view the whole destruction of RR deal to encompass more than just ripping up rails. And I view RRs in this context as representing a bit more than physical rails. A raid into a region would disrupt rails, roads and communications generally. And two weeks doesn't strike me as unreasonable. A reasonable abstraction in my view.

[jimwinsor]

The way cavalry raids usually broke up rail lines was to focus on bridges and culverts as targets. These were obviously vulnerable spots, and harder to repair too.

Sometimes an attempt to detroy a rail line this way would be unsuccessful. For example, a rail bridge would be targeted for a cavalry raid, but due to it being well constructed of iron or stone, or of wet wood due to rains...the cavalry would be unable to damage it.

Of course Sherman's sea marchers were able to effect very complete destruction, through actual ripping up + heat warping of rails; but then, they had many more men for such heavy tasks than a cavalry raider.

Instead of trying to differentiate between "heavy" and "light" rail damage, perhaps it would be easier to implement and make more sense to just have a chance for rail damage, with the chance varying on the amount of troops trying to accompish the destruction?

[Jabberwock]

The way cavalry raids usually broke up rail lines was to focus on bridges and culverts as targets. These were obviously vulnerable spots, and harder to repair too.

On a raid in 1862, Morgan had his men push flaming rail cars into a tunnel north of Nashville, causing an extensive cave-in. It took a long time to fix. If the heavy / light system or something like it is implemented, I would like to see a chance for cavalry forces to do heavy damage.

[veji1]

I actually think that having a chance to manage to destroy RR, like we have a chance to succeed in force march would be great. I would creat a new spectrum for the game, small or big damage issue would be nice as well, but not that necessary IMO :

- lone cavalry unit (one element) would have a 30% chance of destroying RR, if at full cohesion, then as its cohesion falls down, the chance go down.
- chances would go up 10% per element more (so 4 cavalry elemens would mean 100% when at full cohesion), topped at 60%. This would encourage heavy raiding as a more efficient way of destroying, but still results wouldn't be that good without a leader.
- Divisions of more than 50 AV (so at least one leader and 2 cav elements) would have 60% chances as well.
- Leaders would influence heavily, allowing to add traits. on leader would add 10% chances if no special competence (so say you have 2cav regts and a leader, that is 30+10+10=50%).
- 2 traits would be created for leaders, different from the "raiders" we have now : Sabotager (level 1) and expert sabotager (level 2). Sabotager would increase by say 20% the chances of succeeding and expert sabotager by 40% (add that to the original 10% bonus provided by a leader).

So say Forrest has the expert sabotager trait : he adds 40+10=50 to the chances of the stack : This means that forrest alone with a cav unit has 80% chances of succeeding !! Put him in a division or with 3 cav units and you have 100% chances.

So if a player wanted efficient sabotaging, he would have to put his leaders at risk because they are the real difference makers.

This way players and AI would have to focus more on heavy raiding (at least 3 cavs to have 50% chances), and leader driven raids. Which means riskier raids, and mechanically less one cav element stacks running around, or they would be running around uselessly.

Note that a stack with a leader that has no special competence would be topped at 70% chances (60 for the units + 10 for the leader). I don't know if it would be good to have a threshold that says that if a stack has more than 500 AV than his chance go up to 100%, to avoid having a 40 000 men stack unable to tear railways ?

Engineer units would have the expert sabotager trait as well (meaning they have a 70%chance by themselves to destroy railways and give any stack of more than 4 elements a 100% chance).

This might a bit to complicated I guess, but it could add some flavor...

[Jabberwock]

I like your ideas veji.

Maybe if they did that they could change the 3CP hostile territory movement penalty back down to 2CP where it belongs.

[McNaughton]

Here's a point for consideration. Does the AI use generals in specific roles? Will they not only put Forrest in command of cavalry forces, but, would the AI actually also then use Forrest in a raiding capacity? It may be, that these specifications on rules will just serve to help the Human player, who can easily and quickly organize their forces and use them to 100% efficiency, but not the AI. Just something to consider.

[Levis]

While veji 's ideas have some merit, I'm not sure that the added complexity would give much of a payoff in historicity. Remember that in the 1860s railroads were very fragile (at least by later standards). Just about all the infrastructure was made of wood (apart from some impressive stone viaducts in the east) and even a small unit could burn bridges, engine houses, etc. Recall the Andrew's Raid in 1862 that nearly succeeded in isolating Chattanooga. Few railroads then had a thick network of branch lines, so a single roadblock could shut down the line until the bottleneck was repaired. The real variable was not so much the size of the unit, but time. As the war went on both destruction and repair became more sophisticated. By 1864 even cavalry raids were making "Sherman's neckties" while the Union had work trains on standby with prefabricated parts to rebuild bridges. As a famous quote (attributed to various people) put it: "The damn Yankees can build bridges quicker than we can burn them down."