Screenies

[Ulstan]

The extremely low proportion of casualties caused by bayonets generally also accords with the fact that actual melees were a rarety, especially in open field and especially between large bodies of troops. In the vast majority of cases, either the charging formation broke under musket fire or the other side ran away.

Yes, but, as I said, that doesn't mean that bayonet charges were not important, did not occur, or that melee combat shouldn't' figure in the game (as people like Beesting are advocating).

Charges to melee were extremely common and very important. They were pretty much the primary means of shifting people off terrain you wanted to capture in the NW. The fact that the enemy usually fled from them indicates that they were considered much more deadly than musket fire.

The depth and the proportion of depth to width of the formations in the screenshots is not that of a line.

It is a formation wider than it is deep. Therefore, a line rather than a column.

inaccuracy of muskets were made up by exchanging fire at 50 yards (unless you are a skirmisher firing a rifle) and the effect fired from massive volleys were devastating

British officers calculated that in some Peninsular battles it took them about 460 rounds fired to cause one French casualty. And these are British troops in the Napoleonic wars, unarguably the best at actual fire drill in the heat of battle. And their weapons would be even more accurate than ones used in the early 1700's.

There were *occasional* instances of point blank (like, 20 yards) surprise fire being devastating, but the shooting back and forth at most ranges was shockingly ineffective.

Melee should have a very prominent place in these games, as it was highly relied upon and very effective up through the very end of the time period being covered. Some of the most iconic and vicious struggles of the NW were protracted hand to hand melees inside villages and towns and redoubts. It is simply an inarguable historical fact that **both** charges to melee and musketry exchanges were very important facets of infantry warfare during that time period.

but majority of death and wounds were still caused by small arms

You don't know that. We have figures from hospitals that says most hospital patients admitted were there because of small arms fire. This says nothing about people killed out right, or those too badly wounded to go to make it to hospitals, or not wounded enough to go to hospitals.

Anyway, as I said, that doesn't really mean much. If a bayonet charge routes your enemy while a desultory musket exchange doesn't, the bayonet charge is better even if does cause fewer casualties, and it would be a gross historical injustice of the highest order not to include it in a military simulation of that time frame.