Platoon Fire

[Unteroffizier Rizz]

What was the historical usage of platoon fire in the Napoleonic era? Simple question. Should it have been implemented in the game?

[Melonfish]

I know the british used platoon fire, each company would split into half companies and the line would form for the battallion you'd end up with about 700 men in 2 ranks, then as a column or infantry company walked towards the line the rolling volleys would start from the brits. platoon fire i.e. half companies would be directed by the lieutenants and ensigns or even sargeants. and i agree it should have been introduced into the game, perhaps as a researchable item (as it takes a fair bit of co-ordination)

[Didz]

What was the historical usage of platoon fire in the Napoleonic era? Simple question. Should it have been implemented in the game?

Yes! All armies of this period used some variation of platoon fire except the French. The French abandoned the platoon fire system in 1791 and adopted a voluntary firing system based on two ranks.

The British used a three rank volley system based on a cycle of five platoons firing either by rank, or more normally by file. (nobody knelt down by the way)

The Prussians used several different systems over the period, but the most popular was volley fire by half-platoon with all three ranks firing together, and each half platoon firing in turn from right to left. They sometimes combined this with an advance with each half platoon firing and then reloading whilst the one to its right continued to advance and then halted and fired and reloaded whilst the other now reloaded moved forward. A bit like the modern fire and advance system.

[Unteroffizier Rizz]

+Rep! Do you know if there's any way to have any of these platoon firing drills implemented in-game?? It would be amazing to have a platoon fire drill for all units or maybe a select few of the well trained.

[Bryanrows]

+Rep! Do you know if there's any way to have any of these platoon firing drills implemented in-game?? It would be amazing to have a platoon fire drill for all units or maybe a select few of the well trained.

Theres a lot of carry overs from empire into napoleon. basically just little bits of code that have been left behind.
theres a chance that platoon fire was left over as well.
you might want to head over to the mod section and see if anyones made a mod for it. i know at the very least, they've made several fire by rank mods, so there could be a platoon fire one there as well.

[Didz]

+Rep! Do you know if there's any way to have any of these platoon firing drills implemented in-game?? It would be amazing to have a platoon fire drill for all units or maybe a select few of the well trained.

I'm not aware of any way of doing so.

I'm currently using the TROM 2 mod in my game which does a reasonable job of simulating the French voluntary fire system simply by having all infantry use the skirmisher fire system built into the code. But even this isn't quite right as it allows every rank to participate in the firing whereas according to the manual only the first two ranks were supposed to shoot.

@Bryanrows

The only problem with using left over ETW coding is that CA got the drills wrong in ETW too, so even if it was possible to invoke the ETW version of volley fire (by Rank or Platoon) you would just be substituting one inaccurate firing control system for another.

For the time being I'm happy to accept the TROM 2 solution which has all the infantry performing something similar to the French voluntary fire system. The latest theory from historians is that most units became so scared after two or three rounds of firing that they lapsed into a rabble anyway, so if they are to be believed then all semblence of order collapsed and men just began blazing away at each other which is pretty much how the TROM2 mod depicts it.

Personally, I don't accept this view, but it sells lots of books and there are certainly a lot of people on this forum who accept the chaos theory.