Artillery Ammo

ARTILLERY AMMO: What Gives?

<>John Tiller
<>Battlegroun Demigod

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<>The current design is based on one point of ammunition for each time a battery fires. There is a common pool for each side (or each nation of a side) not including ammunition associated with batteries scheduled as reinforcements. Batteries which arrive as reinforcements contribute towards the pool based on a number which is part of the parameter data for that scenario.

The main goal of any artillery supply system is to prevent artillery batteries from being able to fire each opportunity and to place the commander in a situation of having to decide priorities in the use of artillery batteries.

From this perspective, the amount of artillery ammo set for a given side in a scenario is based on two factors: historical accounts, and rough calculations of the number of batteries and the number of turns. The resulting value should support a certain number of firings by artillery batteries during the battle.

<>Important note: even in situations where it is true, or can be argued, that one side or the other had more artillery ammunition than is available in the scenario, it should not necessarily be the case that you want to change the ammo level for that battle. <>The point here is that each battle generally represents only one battle of a campaign. In that situation, each side could not be sure of their future ammunition requirements and so would not fire all their rounds even if they had them. So again, the point of artillery ammunition is to motivate the conservation of artillery fire.

How could the system be improved? Well obviously the ammo could be in terms of single guns instead of batteries. Also there could be better representation of an ammo train so that the location of a battery could have an influence on its ability to be resupplied.