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Old 03-30-2019, 01:50 PM
Vespers War Vespers War is offline
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A criticism of the rules rather than the post - the mule is listed with an 80 kg load, but per the World War I era handbook for Quartermasters, a mule's typical load was 250 pounds, or ~113 kilos. The J-118 Escort Wagon was a 2-mule wagon that had a typical load of 3000 pounds (1360 kg), and on flat-and-level road could carry 5000 pounds (2260 kg). For horses, the US Cavalry Manual of Horse Management recommended loads be limited to 20% of a horse's weight, so that 350 kg horse would have a load of 70 kg (or, conversely, the 120 kg load would belong to a 600 kg horse). Some sources suggest that can go up to 30% of body weight, but that puts more stress on the horse according to veterinary studies.

One alternative not discussed in the rules is the use of dogs as pack animals. They can carry half their body weight and pull a cart or sled with double their body weight.

While they likely wouldn't be built until years into the post-war collapse, Conestogas with 4-7 horses could haul 5 tons over rather terrible roads, though usually 1 or 2 tons were given over to fodder for the horses (giving about 12-42 days of range from the absolute minimum of 1 ton for 7 horses up to the maximum of 2 tons for 4 horses).

The overland travel being the same makes sense to me. Strategically, cavalry units were often slower than infantry because of the time needed to care for the animals and their walking speed not being significantly faster. Cavalry is effective because of their tactical speed.

On a battlefield with any sort of automatic weapons, acting as dragoons makes the most sense, as a horse is a large target and a prone human is much smaller.

For the height difference, I'd use the Punch hit location table from James Langham's Unarmed Combat, and say that a mounted attacker hitting an infantry defender rolls 1d4 for hit location, while the infantry attacker hitting a mounted defender rolls 1d8+2 (and flips a coin for which arm if it comes up as arm).
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