ACWGC UNION ARMY HEADQUARTERS FORUM

A small ceremony took place today in a corner of the AotC Parade Grounds. Those in attendance were Kevin Killeen, Lutz Schmidt, and David Danner. Special guests were Ernest Sands, and Joseph Meyer. The honored guest was Robert Frost, who had no knowledge the event and was not even dressed in formal attire. Indeed he had just arrived from Maryland, where he is Commanding the first three officers in his variant of "Down the Pike."

Many of the AotC officers do not know that General Frost has worked on improving the TS and HPS gaming systems since he has been a Club member. Even now he is striving to improve the reality of the turn-based play with PDT changes and bringing integrity to the small arms weapons effectiveness that are historically too high and produce casualties most of us feel are exaggerated. He expects to have his system available soon for anyone to implement in any game engine and he is also developing multi-player scenarios in the Gettysburg series for club-wide use.

General Frost in recognition of this tedious and time consuming work plus study of historical documents you are here-by awarded the Honorable Service Medal with special compliments from your multi-player subordinates.

Great job.

I would have to say that this award is particularly well-earned and long overdue to a fine officer! Congratulations, Robert!

Very well deserved Robert. Good work!

I thank one and all. Drinks on me! In years past I have done an amount of work concerning what I felt to be ahistorical power for artillery. This is still true to an extent, but it is not as egregious as the totally out of line (no pun intended) force of small arms fire. It has all sorts of ramifications on game play. There is a certain lack of credibility in the HPS numbers. How can a Napoleon range in fire value from 10 to 20 across various PDTs? Whatever its value it should be consistent game to game. HPS has never documented how they arrived at their values for Weapons Effectiveness. I have asked them a couple of times over the years, but have never received any answer. As far as I can determine the numbers were just ported from the Battleground Series. I questioned those.

I will document the exact basis for my figures and will have primary source numbers to prove them. I intend to distribute documents for review by selected Union officers -- I will ask General Danner to forward said documentation -- for any input they may have or to point out errors in my logic. Sometime before Christmas...