JTS Melee Calculations

[TheGrayMouser]

Just looking through this, LarkinVB and TheGrayMouser. You want the attacker in melees to be more favoured? Really? I am always bothered that the thing that seems most unrealistic about the entire series is that there is a strong incentive to melee all the time rather than form a line and fire, yet forming a line and firing was what was mostly done in Napoleonic battles and there was always - naturally - quite a reluctance to roll the brutal melee dice. So I'm always inclined to think that almost anything that encourages people to melee less, as the default attack method, must be ok. Most PBEM games I've played have consisted of both sides marching up and - mostly - heading straight into the melee. Maybe my sample is biased, but that's my experience of the games. I think it accounts for why in the game casualty numbers regularly seem so much higher than historical casualties.

So the OP was asking how the modifiers and combat works, and to date no-one has been able to say how it really works...   I did slip in my thoughts on the matter though

I disagree with some of your points,  I feel the current system in the Nap engine encourages/requires large melee stacks to have any chance of success.  Shouldnt there be other mechanisms to achieve what your suggest  ie infantry stopped cold by musketry instead of melee?   The game engine already has one, in the form of op fire or defensive fire.  The sad fact though, is that a line has no chance to "stop" 4 stacked columns that race at it with only one chance to fire, and only at 1 of those  attacking columns.  So that is broken in some way. ( Perhaps if on units disrupts , they all disrupt?
Hmm..)

( In case your not aware all these Tiller tactical games use the same melee combat resolution, be it the Civil war, M&P, EAW)

 In contrast the 7 years war game gets around the problem with very restrictive stacking limits, so basically it unlikley you would ever have two infantry battallions be able to stack together.  Thus fire power rules the day and feels so much more realistic.

BTW I do agree that melee was rare and bayonets almost never killed anyone on pitched battles in the  Nap era, however it makes no sense that in cavalry versus infantry or cavalry vs cavalry the defender should be given such a massive defense bonus.

It also makes no sense in the Ren engine with large 100% only melee units.


I just find the fact that when I have a 300 strength A+++ Cuirassiers with a leader UPHILL melee a leaderless mob of 500 disordered high fatiuged cossacks from the flank, and I lose 65 men to 31, to be frustrating and more on an immersion killer that the POTENTIAL for melee becoming more broadly usefull.   I mostly play AI or hotseat and I self regulate myself to not do things I feel would not have any chance to succeed in realife.  I recognise though that is not possible in MP.

Cheers man!