Rate of Fire

[mcaryf]

I must apologise if this has been dealt with in earlier posts - I am new to the game and forum.

I would like to understand the settings for rates of fire. In the East Cavalry Field scenario the units of 5th Michigan do not seem to have particularly fast rates of fire compared to other units yet they were equipped with Spencer Repeating rifles notionally capable of 20 rounds per minute. is the game trying to represent some restriction to match possible orders to conserve ammunition?

Regards

Mike

[Saddletank]

Be very cautious about stated rates of fire (often claimed by the manufacturer). In the same way that car manufacturers these days advertise very high miles-per-gallon performances in order to boost sales, Mr Remington and others would give high states of fire for their products in order to get richer more quickly.

A WW2 German MG42 had a ROF of something incredible like 2000 RPM, but no sane machine gunner ever held the trigger down for more than a second or two for a short burst because longer bursts lost accuracy and wore the barrel out extremely fast.

A ROF or 20 rnds/min will cause a regiment to burn through its available ammo in 3 minutes. Then what?

A soldier firing this fast can't possibly be fully aware of all his surroundings, can't be taking time to aim at all and will get tired very quickly.

Troops would be commanded by their officers and controlled to an extent as well so rates of fire would be ordered to be lowered in many cases.

The great benefits of high ROF in a firearm are to discourage an enemy bayonet or other close combat assault. At average combat ranges of 100 to 150 yds or more blasting away your ammunition quickly isn't going to achieve anything much beyond forcing an enemy to keep his heads down within the designated swept zone of fire.

I don't have an official answer why the game rules have slow ROFs but I imagine NSD took most of the above battlefield conditions and practices into account.

[Jim]

The Spencer Repeating Rifle had a tubular magazine with a capacity of seven rounds. While a soldier could fire off the rounds in the magazine fairly quickly, when the magazine was empty it had to be replaced. The magazines were in a separate box, carried over the shoulder or strapped to the saddle. The soldier had to remove the empty magazine from the access port at the butt stock, put the empty in the magazine box, remove a new full magazine from the box and insert it into the access port. The magazines were expensive and did not take well to being dropped in the mud. Also given the black powder fouling and heating, a slower rate of fire resulted in less jamming of the gun. For the game we have to set a single number for rate of fire that represents the average over an extended period of time.

-Jim

[mcaryf]

In various places I have read that Custer's 5th Michigan achieved definite advantage from their high rate of fire repeaters. When watching an East Cavalry Field scenario I have seen Confederate Cavalry on horseback successfully charge 5th Michigan when they were also behind a picket fence. In practice mounted cavalry would have had a whole load of grief if they had tried that. I would have thought there ought to be a feature for high ROF weapons to switch to a much more rapid fire mode when being charged.

Regards

Mike