How much tweaking would it take to extrapolate from Guns at War to post Pike-and-Shot Era games? Say, American colonial period, or even American War of Independence through the Napoleonic Wars?
I can't imagine it would be hugely difficult. You'd need to do some tinkering with equipment, but all that is really, is dropping all the firearms bar Flintlocks (unless you want the odd anachronistic old heirloom to appear), and lose the current "muskets" and rename the current "arquebus" to "musket".
Rewrite the types of troops and as you allude to, you need some stats for bayonets. Which isn't much more than allowing a musket to act as a spear. Otherwise firearms and artillery are all covered to a good degree already.
The biggest effort would come in reworking the economics; the currency standard of the Age of Pike and Shot is different to that of the Napoleonic era.
I agree with what Kiero said.
The first change is that pike-and-shot is replaced with bayonet-rifle. I think you could allow a unit of bayonet-armed infantry to fight in melee as if armed with spears. If the unit readies, it would have to determine in advance whether its ready for fire or ready for bayonet.
The second change is that gunpowder weapons should no longer automatically trigger shock rolls. The weapon of shock on the Napoleonic battlefield is the bayonet charge.
Third I think you'd want to model column, line, and square explicitly on the battlefield - perhaps using counters to mark the status, as we do for 'ready" and "defend" - as follows:
- Square: Unit cannot move, unit gains +4 bonus to AC vs. cavalry, unit rate of fire reduced to 1/2, unit suffers double damage from cannon attacks in all directions
- Line: Unit can only march, unit suffers double damage from cannon attacks to flank (enfilade), unit must make shock roll if charged
- Column: Unit can march/hustle/charge, unit rate of fire reduced to 1/2, unit suffers double damage from cannon attacks to front
[Or double all artillery damage and have formations halve damage where appropriate]
Normally, you would adopt each formation when activated as an action in lieu of attacking.
However, a "ready" unit could use its readied action to change formation from Column or Line to Square if cavalry move adjacent. A "ready" unit already in Square could fire on the approaching cavalry.
If this is of interest, perhaps its something I could explore in a future Kickstarter. I love Napoleonics! (I actually much prefer Napoleonics to Pike-and-Shot but the latter was closer to ACKS relevance.)
If you wanted the additional nuance, you could even toss in a distinction between old-fashioned troops who only have plug bayonets (thus who can't fire once they've fixed bayonets, and have to remove them again) and those with socket bayonets, which allow them to continue loading and firing (albeit skinning their knuckles if they're not careful).
I do wonder if it's worth making any kind of concession to the fact that real spears are much handier than bayonets? In a straight up melee between a spearman and a fusilier, the spearman is at a distinct advantage, since his weapon is both lighter and better balanced for a fight. What he doesn't have, though, is the option of making ranged attacks (or shooting someone point blank).
One last thought on close quarters combat - butt strikes. Without a bayonet a musket could also double as a club.
Agreed on the need for new formations; it was late when I replied the other day and was looking over the very thoroughly done section on the early/middle/late styles of pike blocks, and thinking none of that applies to the linear tactics of Napoleon's day. Is it worth distinguishing between two-rank and three-rank lines? The former having more firepower, but being even more vulnerable to cavalry.
I love the rock-paper-scissors aspect to Napoleonic tactics, whereby the more arms you have available to you, the more options you have.
As an aside from a comment you made on the Dark Ages thread, I'd welcome an ACKSonomics article on the Napoleonic/Regency period. There's an OSR game The Ghastly Affair which does a horror-type spin on the era, but tries to mostly handwave the economics, rather than attempting to model it properly. Given it's a period in which people of quality are intimately acquainted with their worth and cost of living, it seems a misguided choice to avoid the topic.
[quote="Alex"]
If this is of interest, perhaps its something I could explore in a future Kickstarter. I love Napoleonics! (I actually much prefer Napoleonics to Pike-and-Shot but the latter was closer to ACKS relevance.)
[/quote]
[quote="Kiero"]
As an aside from a comment you made on the Dark Ages thread, I'd welcome an ACKSonomics article on the Napoleonic/Regency period.
[/quote]
I'd love to see an early (1650-1815) Westphalian-era supplement for ACKS!
Agreed!
One more formation I forgot, limited to appropriately-trained infantry: skirmish order. Whereby they break off into pairs who alternate shooting and loading, choosing their own targets. Makes them very difficult to hit with volley fire or artillery, but they're unable to provide more than token resistance to cavalry. They also can't stop infantry massed in columns from pushing past them.