Its just not adding up...

For sometime now I have been working on developing Neil Thomas's rules covered in his book "Napoleonic Wargaming" into a larger scale system to play out some of our more grander conflicts.

To his credit I have failed every time, the rules seem simple, fast and balanced.  Sure a few things madden me but I can live with them (until I can and venture off into another fruitless attempt to improve them).  You see he explains his thinking and rule formation in detail through out his book, his book is 160 pages and his rules are covered off in 8 pages (plus some Orders of Battle and Campaign flavour).

Well Neil I think I have you now!

Its the British you see.

Neil has covered off regarding the shooting with British troops that they hit on 3+ rather than the 4+ all other infantry hit on.  This we have played and enjoyed for some time now.  But what has bothered me (despite having a British army) is that they only have two strips of figures to everyone else having 3, naturally this is due to the 2 rank not 3 rank.  But when I place 4 stands of infantry in a line fronting their French counterparts should I not have a 1/3 additional frontage.

Also running the number (sleepy yet?) you end up with this;

4 stands, hitting on 3, will hit 67% or 2.67 each shot (British)
4 stands, hitting on 4, will hit 50% or 2 each shot (3 rank Infantry)

This gives me a 1.33 ratio or one hit in every 3 stand over the 3 ranks not the 1 hit in every 2 that it should be.

It is actually more accurate to add two stand to the British, this gives them more frontage and makes the fire figures more accurate.  The stands now all hit on 4+ as the British didn't shoot better, just had more guns, which is covered by the additional stands.

6 stands, hitting on 4, will hit 50% or 3 each shot
4 stands, hitting on 4, will hit 50% or 2 each shot

This brings my fire ratio to 1.5 and provides a more accurate frontage.

BUT

It does mean that I have 2 extra stands for each unit giving it 8 extra hits.  My thinking is that this is simply fixed.  With the addition of stands to my unit I must water down the hits a stand can take, this will mean that a unit takes a total of 16 hits normally and so the British must spread that out of the 6 stand, this doesnt work out.  so

All 3 rank stands have 3 hits.  All 2 rank stands have 2 hits.  This gives a 6 stand unit 12 hits and a 4 stand unit (3 ranks) 12 hits.  Evening out the hits again.

Adding to this a desire to change morale a little.  Rather than have morale rolled for each stand lost to fire, I have decided to try it with all units having a morale of 4+ keeping it simple so all rolls are made with 4+ (besides Artillery and I have yet to work out what I want to change there if anything).  But morale grade of a unit just determines teh number of stands you can lose before you need start rolling for morale, so Elite can lose 2 stands, Regular lose 1, Conscripts must roll morale at the first stand lost.

Anyway will chew these over in some play testing and see what I come back with.