Behind the Scenes Improvements

The Confederates have re-organized and strengthened their forces for the start of August 1861.  The Union side is doing the same and is done or almost done. We are all learning from our first four turns of the Grand Campaign. On the "behind the scenes" side, I am improving all of the templates I use to track movement, casualties, attrition, etc. to make it easier to set up scenarios, record data, and prepare reports.

In Turns 1 - 4, I had to go back to the end save for the last scenario in which a unit fought to find out what its ammo status was at the end of the engagement and carry it into the units next scenario. I also was using single cells in an excel spreadsheet to record killed, wounded and missing for each unit during a month. This meant adding numbers on with each engagement.  (e.g. The killed cell for a casualty battalion would end up being something like: =4+3+1+6+2, with the latest losses being added after each fight.) It was a lot of work and had the potential for errors.

For Turns 5 - 8,  I will have a separate spreadsheet for each unit, with rows for each day of August 1861. After a unit is engaged, I go to each unit's spreadsheet, go to the row with the date of the engagement, and enter in casualties, grade, and ending ammo. It then generates the balance of men present for duty, ammunition remaining, and grade.  This makes it a lot easier to find, as opposed to identifying the unit's last engagement, opening the end save in TC2M and then going to the unit to get the data. I plan to link the totals from these sheets to an attrition sheet (casualties, sickness, desertion, returned convalescents, returned, prisoners, etc., and then link the attrition sheet into the sheet I use for end of month returns. Live and learn.

I have also updated my movement sheet, which shows where each ends each day of the month and when it intersects with an enemy unit resulting in an engagement. The movement sheet is where a turn starts, after I have received orders from both sides.

We may be able to to get Turn 5 started in October. I can't wait to see what the Union side looks like and then get the first week's orders.