HPS Simulations Napoleonic Battles Optional Rules

Another tough list to find are the optional rules for HPS Sims Napoleonic Campaigns. You will have to search through the included PDF's in the updates to find the rules so to make it easy I have put them together right out of said PDF for easy reference here on my site.

Optional Rules Dialog
The Optional Rules Dialog is used to view and select the Optional Rules for a new battle. Optional Rules can be set at the beginning of a battle, but not changed once the battle has started. The Optional Rules selected in the Optional Rules Dialog are saved and become the subsequent default for new battles. See the Design Notes in the Users Manual for why Optional Rules are not called Advanced Rules.

 

• If you select Manual Defensive Fire, then each turn will consist of a number of Phases rather than two player turns. The game rules under this option are described in the Users Manual.


• Select Victory Points for Leader Casualties to have Victory Points awarded for enemy leaders that are killed, wounded, or captured. See the Design Notes in the User Manual for why this is not a default rule.


• Select Rout Limiting to reduce the amount of secondary routing that occurs. The default routing rules require that units adjacent to a unit that has failed its morale check must also take a morale check (there are restrictions such as  routing skirmishers cannot cause non-skirmishers to rout). This is applied recursively if those units also fail their check. While this can result in the rout of large number of units, given normal probabilities it is ``self limiting’’, that is, it stops after a certain number of iterations based on the situation.


• When Rout Limiting is in effect, units in adjacent hexes undergoing a morale check receive a progressively larger modifier to their default morale. This modifier starts at 1 and is increased by 1 for each iteration based on a failed morale check. So, for example, if unit A fails their morale check, unit B in an adjacent hex undergoes a morale check with +1 added to their default morale. If unit B fails this test, then unit C in an adjacent hex to B undergoes a morale check with +2 added to their default morale. And so on. Therefore, as these modifiers increase, a point is reached where units stop routing which, in general, will be before they would have stopped otherwise. See the Design Notes in the Users Manual for why this is not a default rule.


• Select Isolation Rules to cause Isolated units to have their strength divided by 2 when defending in a melee. Also Isolated leaders receive no benefit from their commanders during command checks. When an Isolated Artillery unit fires, it may become Low or Out-Of-Ammo. The Artillery unit will become resupplied when it becomes non-Isolated, unless the Artillery supply level for its side is zero. See the Design Notes in the Users Manual for an explanation of the Isolation melee effects.


• If you select Optional Fire Results, then the resulting fire casualty values are based on the average of two default fire calculations. This produces values which are more likely to be in the midrange of the casualty interval rather than uniformly distributed.


• Select Melee Terrain Modifiers to have the terrain modifier of the defending hex applied to melee results.


• Select Column Pass Through Fire to have Artillery Pass-Through fire effects apply to Infantry in Column formation as well as Infantry in Line formation.


• Select Target Density Modifier to have the fire value affected by the total number of men in the target hex. When the target hex has more than 1200 men in it, then the fire value against units in this affect is multiplied by Total/1200 where Total is the total number of men in the target hex.


• Select No Retreat Overruns to prevent the defenders of a melee from retreating into hexes containing enemy skirmishers.


• Select Weak Zone-Of-Control to allow units to move one hex through enemy Zone-Of-Control per turn and to allow units to retreat one hex through enemy Zone-Of-Control.


• Select Partial Retreats to allow some units to retreat from a hex after being defeated in melee even when there is not enough room for all of the units to retreat. See the Design Notes in the Users Manual for why this is not a default rule.


• Select Line Movement Restriction to cause infantry units that move in line formation to have the chance of becoming Disordered. The details of this are explained in the Users Manual in the section on Movement.


• Select Flank Morale Modifier to have the morale of non-Skirmisher units, with non-Skirmisher friendly units on both flanks, increased by 1 for the purpose of Rout and Disorder determination. Another way to refer to this is as "double flank elbow courage".


• If you select Optional Melee Results, then the resulting melee casualty values are based on the average of two default melee casualties. This has the effect of reducing the variation in casualty values.


• Select Multiple Cavalry Melees to allow cavalry units to melee attack units that have all already been meleed against.


• Select Multiple Infantry Melees to allow infantry units to melee attack units that have all already been meleed against.


• Select No Opportunity Fire Against Skirmishers to prevent opportunity fire from being targeted against hexes that only contain skirmishers and leaders.


• Select No Melee Eliminations to prevent defenders in a melee that have no valid retreat hex from being eliminated.