A Relatively Small Project's Question

Hello,

I am currently in the works of making a Waterloo scenario using for KS for my own use (will probably re-jig the original Waterloo scenario to use KS units and mechanics). However I ran into the problem that the KS 1815 full OOB does not have the same troops numbers and units (~10,000 difference for the French).

Therefore I am combining both OOB to get the most (hopefully) accurate troop numbers, but also use KS ids. This will also give me the chance to change names of some of the OOB units
Particularly the three Wellingtons. Since in the original game The Overall Coalition command was named Wellington, the Army of the Low Countries Commander was named Wellington and the Reserve Corps Commander was also named Wellington. And the face that there was three Wellingtons on the field always bugged me. So I had an idea to change the names. However I am not sure what to go for.

Potential Names

Overall Coalition Command
-The Allied Coalition
- Allied Coalition Command
- Allied Coalition Courier Service
- VII Coalition (Andrew's idea)

Reserve Corps
- Wellington's Couriers
- Wellington's Entourage

However none of these seem rather convincing currently. So do you guys have any ideas or preferences?

Question 2

Another problem I have encountered is with the inclusion of XYe et YZe Voltigeurs and X/Y unit Flank Cos. It seems that those units have men that come from thin air. I first noticed this with Maitlands brigade

KS OOB                           Original OOB
2/1 Foot Guards         919        2/1 Foot Guards  919
1st GuardsFlank Cos.   208              -----
3/1 Foot Guards         965        3/1 Foot Guards  960

As you can see, the KS OOB gives the brigade an extra 213 men (5, in 3/1). I an not sure if this is a problem with the rest of the OOB or if it is a problem here. Does anyone know? And am I correct in assuming that the Flank cos and the voltigeurs units should have ~100 soldiers from each participating battalion.

Ok I have been look through it again and Byng's Brigade has equal numbers, both the KS OOB and Original OOB have 2184 men, and that is including the Flank Cos unit. I am confused now. For units that saw combat during the previous, I will try and give the cos/volts a decent number of men each.

For the Coalition commander, you could go with Scwarzenberg. I believe he had been appointed the overall commander again.

For the reserve corps, you could use Wellington's ADC. That's what I do when a division commander is also commander of one of the brigades.

I suggest using a generic term for the overall army commander such as "Allied Army Staff".

For the reserve corps as Uncle Billy suggests something like "ADC to Lord Wellington" or whatever takes your fancy could be a good option.

Remember to change the sprites as well as I think all three use the Wellington sprite.

For the brigade light infantry capability my understanding is that about 1/5 of French battalion strength should be deducted from each battalion and these sub-totals combined into a converged light infantry unit. This must ALWAYS be the second battalion in the brigade. For other nations I use 1/8th for British and KGL and you should use a fraction that is slightly higher than the number of companies in the battalion.

For example a 6-company battalion designates 1/5th of its men as light infantry, an 8-company battalion would designate 1/7th, a 10-company battalion 1/8th and so on.

I am not sure which exact formula was used in the KS OOBs as I didn't write these but my personal approach is to assume that light and grenadier companies were more usually kept nearer their authorised strength than the centre companies plus in some cases if a skirmish formation was too weak to carry out its required function men from the other companies (particularly the grenadier company) would be assigned temporarily to it.

There are other approaches you can use:

1) Choose any number you like as the brigades light infantry capability and deduct this number from the battalions in any ratio you prefer.

2) Take the original proportions from some of the battalions, but not all, in the case of some battalions being already too weak.

3) For the French, don't bother with a light infantry capability at all. In our OOBs the 2nd battalion in the brigade will always default to skirmish order no matter what its designation is, and for the French they usually also have a second battalion in the brigade that has the option to skirmish. This makes sense for the French as their infantry was by this period all the same and could all skirmish if needed; the Ligne and Leger designations and the uniforms were the only actual difference by this stage of the Napoleonic period.

You are right in saying that these values should be drawn out of the battalions and not in addition to them. Some errors may have crept in due to the huge numbers of calculations that are done for such big armies.

Finally I generally increase the experience rating of these light units by 1 over the usual exp value of the units in the brigade just to show they tended to have a higher esprit de corps.

The first thing one learns when creating an OOB is that any number given, within reason, is an accurate representation of a unit. What is important is that a consistency in assigning those numbers be kept across the entire OOB. It's impossible to know with any certainty just how many men were involved in a battle. No one took roll call just prior to a fight.

An excellent example is the French army. Nappy always wanted updated reports on the number of men in all units. He also demanded that the numbers be accurate. Unfortunately, whenever a division or corps commander truthfully reported his unit was smaller than at the start of a campaign due to desertions, sickness, etc., Boney would fly into one of his famous rages and hurl insults at the bearer of this bad news. What's a French commander to do? Lie? That's exactly what the French did on a systematic basis. As a consequence during campaigns such as the one in 1812, reports of the number of men present at Vilna never reflected the staggering losses due to desertion and death by malnutrition and dehydration while crossing Poland and then the Niemen.

The OOB is pretty much done and the scenario plays quite well, however I am encountering a problem where the units will not take their name in the OOB file, instead they come up as their ID, I.E. #{OOBKS_Fr_Napoleon_Bonaparte}. I am not too sure how I am supposed to fix this.

Welcome to the wonderful world of MyGui, the gift that keeps on giving.

The problem arises because the commander and unit names are not found in OOBNames.xml.  That file is in the KS Nappy Mods \Layout\Media\Language folder.  You have to add  each OOB entry to this file.

I wrote a small program to automate the procedure.  Instructions are in the zip file.  Here is the link: XMLCreator