star forts: why is wall defense so inefficient?

[al Roumi]

If what I posted doesn't make sense , make your self a nice drink and read it again because I'm very certain I didn't phrase it all nearly as well as I wanted {I'm still not sure how to properly explain what I susspect is the problem} .

I tried the drrrrrink thnggg but it's not workking.

Diagrams. They would help -if you can be arsed.

[Didz]

Actually the problems with the star forts begins with the model of the fort itself.

The whole principle of the star fort (and I suspect the artillery fort) was NOT that it had walls, but that it had ditches and glacis. The objective was not to create a wall but to create an obsticle and to make it as hard as possible for attackers to reach the fort or to hit it with their own guns.

To this end the profile of the defences were kept as low as possible, so that defending guns could fire on a relatively flat trajectory right across the glacis and sweep it effectively with cannister at close range.


[Profile of a star fort, if one imagines trying to take this with an ETW army you realise you would need a bit more than a few grappling hooks.]

The glacis itself would be almost as high as the gun positions so that enemy artillery could not hit the face of the wall and so that incoming shot would merely bounce off the glacis straight over the defenders. Finally, between the glacis and the wall would be at least one deep ditch, covered by guns in special emplacements that could sweep it with cannister and musketry.

None of this is modelled in ETW, which means that the forts don't actually work properly.

BTW: My apologies for the poor quality of the diagram. I was forced to scan it from one of my books as I could not find a single on-line reference with a diagram explaining the principles of Vaubin's fortifications. It seems that like CA, the online community is fixated on the 'Star' part of the name and chooses to ignore the fact that it was also a fort. Also starforts are always photographed from the air simply because viewed at ground level there is practically nothing to see, so its difficult to get a picture to demonstrate the principle that made them so hard to take.

[Mr Frost]

I tried the drrrrrink thnggg but it's not workking.

Diagrams. They would help -if you can be arsed.

I'll need a good nights' sleep

I'll try to remember tomorrow and see if I can cobble together some sort of diagrams to illustrate .
If it doesn't appear though , it won't be deliberate : the warranty on my memory ran out years ago

[Sheogorath]

Forts should also come with a basic garrison crew that mans the guns. While I'm delighted that CA put guns on the walls, having your line infantry man them is pretty silly.

To paraphrase the ever-relevant Mr. Pratchett, "There is one way to load a cannon correctly, and about a hundred ways to do it explosively wrong."

Somehow, I don't think line infantry of the 18th century were overly adept at practical artillery usage. By my knowledge, even garrison artillery crews were regarded as semi-elite and had to be fairly intelligent fellows in order to A) Avoid blowing themselves up and B) Actually hit something.

Although this might explain why (for me, anyway) fort cannons are so spectacularly incapable of hitting anything.

[Didz]

Forts should also come with a basic garrison crew that mans the guns.

That would be very sensible. The cost of every fort should include a basic garrison detachment. Even if CA stuck with the rule that the walls had to have another unit near them to operate as they did in MTW2.

[antisocialmunky]

Well, if free militia unit actually scaled with infrastructure, we could have that modded in but as it stands. I'm not sure. Its a decent representation nonetheless.