A proposal about handgunners

[Lysimachos]

In the game handgunners, at the moment, are treated just as other normal light foot skirmishers but, in my humble opinion, this doesn't reflect the reality of medieval warfare.
In fact, while in the classical antiquity skirmishers where really used to sprig up ahead and on the flanks of the enemy armies to harass them and usually retained a great deal of mobility, handgunners generally played a more static role, being usually positioned next to the main army body, where they sought refuge when attacked by stronger troops.
This said, in order to avoid having them running up and down on the battlefield in an anachronistic manner, shouldn't it be better to decrease their mobility from 4 to 3 while at the same time increasing their range of fire from 2 to 3?
In this way they would be probably less prone to jump ahead, remaining in the proximity of HF, MF or CV, while still retaining enough shooting power, in a way much closer to their effective tactical use on the field.

P.S.
While writing this lines I was beginning to think that probably the same argument counts for medieval LF with crossbows and bows

[batesmotel]

In the game handgunners, at the moment, are treated just as other normal light foot skirmishers but, in my humble opinion, this doesn't reflect the reality of medieval warfare.
In fact, while in the classical antiquity skirmishers where really used to sprig up ahead and on the flanks of the enemy armies to harass them and usually retained a great deal of mobility, handgunners generally played a more static role, being usually positioned next to the main army body, where they sought refuge when attacked by stronger troops.
This said, in order to avoid having them running up and down on the battlefield in an anachronistic manner, shouldn't it be better to decrease their mobility from 4 to 3 while at the same time increasing their range of fire from 2 to 3?
In this way they would be probably less prone to jump ahead, remaining in the proximity of HF, MF or CV, while still retaining enough shooting power, in a way much closer to their effective tactical use on the field.

P.S.
While writing this lines I was beginning to think that probably the same argument counts for medieval LF with crossbows and bows

I think troops that behave as you described are better represented as MF rather than as LF and this potion is available for many of the SoA armies for crossbowmen and bowmen. I think that handgunners are not allowed as MF to represent that they did not perform effective massed shooting in the period covered by the game. They really seem to have come into importance around the time of the Italian Wars after 1500 so just after the end date for Field of Glory. (The TT FoG Rennaissance rules coming out in September cover this period and firearms will be much more effective there.)

Chris

[TheGrayMouser]

The editor allows you to give medium foot handguns

Maybe some soul will make some Ren battles while we await FOG PC REN to arrive!


Edit:

I too have difficulty envisioning men with basically a metal tube tied to a tiller in one hand, with a burning stick in the other , running around "skirmishing"

Chris is right though, they certainly didnt form line and blaze away with volley fire either....

Later, after 1500 the arquebus , using a sear lever made these weapons more effective.. I believe skirmishing was the norm then , and use of cover would have been critical for troops with such slow firing weapons ( at Pavia 1525 the aqrqubusiers basically swarmed around the hedgrows and atrrited the French knights by taking popshots at them thru the day)

Later as pikes become more prevelant, the two arms, pike and shot became more and more co dependant on eachother You could argue that eventually the role of skirmishing disappeared(in general) as firepower allowed the shot to advance/hold ground reasonably well on their own

[Lysimachos]

Replying to Batesmotel:
I would instead say that this kind of troop is correctly represented as LF because, as you too observe, in the medieval period they weren't organized to perform effective mass shooting. The only problem with LF is that they have too much movement capability on the battlefield, wich doesn't match with the real role of handgunners, usually positioned just in the proximity of a body of pikemen or halberdiers. This is why I suggested to decrease their movement range by 1 while increasing a bit their fire range to make them anyway of some help.

Replying to TheGrayMouser:
It seems we feel quite the same way, and in fact I didn't say handgunners has to form a line, I just pointed out that they skirmished in proximity of other formed bodies of troops, in the ranks of wich they sought refuge form the approaching enemies. And this would probably be better represented in the game by decreasing their movement range and increasing their shooting capability.

[TheGrayMouser]

Handgunners for the time period SOA covers are somewhat problmatic in how to portray in the game... I imagine they were mostly utilised in static roles , whether it be defending city walls , or behind field fortifications or whatnot, which isnt really well presented in the game
Regardless, what you are asking for is a completely new unit class!

Edited because I completely misread what Lys. stated in his above post and was blathering on i really should stop posting at work and trying to work at the same time, i tend to miread and or miss things too often

[Skanvak]

The range of the handgunner should be based on facts, not gameplay. Otherwise this game will lose a lot of its appeal (at least to me).

I think that the unrealistic use you see result more of the way your opponnent let you play than the handgunner being slow (though they might be). In most of my game, light foot that go alone far from their heavy get slaughtered, so they don't.

[TheGrayMouser]

The range of the handgunner should be based on facts, not gameplay. Otherwise this game will lose a lot of its appeal (at least to me).

I think that the unrealistic use you see result more of the way your opponnent let you play than the handgunner being slow (though they might be). In most of my game, light foot that go alone far from their heavy get slaughtered, so they don't.

Well, what is the range of a 15th century handgun? (Not trying to be arguamentaive but I really dont know!) Having them have the same range as a javelinman doesnt seem right either...
My guess is 100 yards maybe for effective fire?

What would be nice is the ability for some units, ie crossbowman and or even handgunners , to have a portable defense simliar to stakes, this would of course be pavise shields... I imagine the effects could be signifcant protection vs enemy missle fire, since the pavise wasnt really meant to defend against cavalry or infantry attacks

[Xiggy]

100 yards is probably a bit long and the rate of fire was very slow. (I would think 50 yards or less for early hand guns) But I would need to look it up.

[kujalar]

100 yards is probably a bit long and the rate of fire was very slow. (I would think 50 yards or less for early hand guns) But I would need to look it up.

Somewhere from the internet, do not remember where I think I did find these statistics about medieval shots.
Effective accuracy about 1% when shooting at 100 yards and target is a standing medieval army. Effective accuracy about 20-30% when fired 'when the eyeballs can be seen' and the target is charging in closed formation towards shots. Practise range target shooting results were much more accurate with experienced shooters but could not be reproduced in mass when in real combat.

There are many factories that drop accuracy with smoothbore shots at the battlefield.
- The least is not that gunpowder was expensive and at average there was not much possibility for live ammo practise.
- Theory knowledge was bad, for example, at medieval time the soldiers were taught that the shot flies straight at enemy. Nobody thought much of gravity During the American Civil War the manuals started to teach that rifled muskets are different to smoothbore , their bullet flies further and has a curved flight path compared to straight path of smoothbores...
- During the combat the amount of powder poured to the gun was unpredicatable.
- Quality of homemade bullets was bad and they could curve anywhere after leaving the gun.
- There was quite a high misfire propability.
- Many soldiers could not fire their weapons in combat, they just loaded it propably with many bullets just like they did when they practised.
- If the gun was not well braced it kicked much more than modern day weapons. Barrel was long and the medieval powder was slower to burn than modern day powder, so the recoil propably affected accuracy more than with modern weapons.
- After few shots the battlefield was full of smoke and the enemy could be barely seen.