ARCH - Siege - How to use our resources

[Steelquist, John]

Okay, I'll give a litle more detail to both the set-up and my questions:

We should have enough balista (effectively direct fire engines) to line them
'shoulder to shoulder' and cover the entire width of the castle.  

The rates of fire definitely vary from engine to engine, but I'd say average
about 8-10 a minute (combat conditions).  

At this last Gulf Wars, we had something like 8 balista.  Defending, we
formed into a battery of 4 machines and had four independent machines
otherwise.  The battery of 4 was extremely effective at providing support to
the towers on the left, preventing any concerted push to gain a foothold.  

On the offensive, the balistas again formed a battery (6 engines) and
decimated the main gate defenders.  

Just like combat archery, a couple of the single engines were also very good
at suppressing an entire unit or picking off single fighters - some had a
very high kill percentage since they could 'shop' their shots.

My primary questions are these:
What is a good number of engines per battery?  
Should we attempt to create 'lines of fire', 'targets of fire (the unit in
red...)', or 'areas of fire'?  
Should some engines delay fire so that the entire battery can fire together,
or should we give a fire for effect?  
Should we keep a couple of engines available for 'sniper' fire?  Or let any
engine fire at targets of opportunity?

Currently, the basic plan is to kill them all with siege and archery, then
mop up the few defenders (or attackers, for that matter) left.  The
opponent's expected reaction is to try an all out push at the start.  We're
hoping to stop or delay such a rush and let the missles do their work.

We actually out gunned them this last Gulf Wars.  I don't expect more than
10 engines at the extreme high end (probably the same 3 engines they had
last year) from the opponents.  Thus, counter battery fire will be almost a
side-line.

As a side note - isn't is typical, we've been trying to get a large enough
archer core for years to be able to have effective massed fire, and those
darn siege engines get to do it first :) .

Ulsted
Kingdom Warlord

-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Dewart [mailto:gilli at seacove.net]
Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2000 6:41 PM
To: ansteorra-archery at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: ARCH - Siege - How to use our resources

Greetings and Hi There,

To answer this question we need to know a few things:

Which type of battle is it?  What is the commander's intent?  How does the
commander plan to fight the battle?  How might the enemy react?

Plachoya is correct.  Form up into batteries so that you may do continuous
fire if interdiction is the mission such as helping keep a tower pinned
down.  Or even a battery of batteries if area interdiction is needed such as
breaking up a counter attack.

A good thing bad  thing about batteries is that while they are easier to
defend they are also few targets to attack.

Knowing the answers to the above questions may let the commander use his
seige engines, depending on type, in an offensive manner; such as moving
forward an to the flank a bit to set up a support by fire position.  This
could also serve as an economy of forces in a blocking position.

A tactic I think would work well is to team the engines with the archers.
At a distance, balistas are still pretty flat trijectory while the archer
attack more or less from above.  It's hard  to defend  from those two
attacks at once.

Ofcourse to start with a large number of the engines will probably be needed
to do counter battery fire on the opposing engines.

Since our communications on the field are as fast as modern commo,
somethings need to be worked out in advance (here's where knowing the
commander's intent comes in).  For example the commander wants to attack
hard on the right flank.  During the battle a hold is called.  When lay on
is called every engine and archer fires two missles at that area of the
enemy line.  If they are too far away to hit that area, say on the other
side, get as close to that part of the enemy line as they can.  Then they go
back  to their missions prior to the hold.  Exception to this would be those
units activley involed in counter battery fights when the hold was called.

Gilli
Who in real life is an instructor at the III Corp Battle Simulation Ceter on
Fort Hood Texas.  :)  I like arty (big grin).

-----Original Message-----
From: Steelquist, John <John.Steelquist at csoconline.com>
To: 'Ansteorra Archery List' <ansteorra-archery at ansteorra.org>
Date: Thursday, June 15, 2000 9:06 AM
Subject: ARCH - Siege - How to use our resources


>Greetings.
>
>Here's my first siege engine question:
>
>How should we best set-up and use the tremendous siege resources we should
>have next year?
>
>Ulsted
>===========================================================================
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