Artillery

[RebBugler]

Garnier, apologies if insults were felt, but I'm just reflecting my experiences in participating in a game a few months back. And during this period of play, I had three batteries that accounted for less than a dozen kills for over an hour of play, at between 300 and 500 yards. Their crews were mid-level experienced with clear LOS. For me, this was well below stock statistics, and frustrating play.

I respect your dedication to SOW and your contributions, but I've gotta tell it like it is, or was, for my immersion. Possibly this has been improved upon, but it did turn me off to wanting to participate again. I know what batteries can do, even captured batteries with green crews fair better than the results I saw.

You've got quite a following, proof that you're sating many folks with your designs, congrats. My personal preferences are just different, each to their own.

[NY Cavalry]

We all want historically accurate play. Like I said I play stock artillery in my own mod.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

I agree with Reb Bugler. I too think SOW has the artillery about right. The only changes I've made to the stock munitions file for my use is to up the canister damage which was reduced in the 1.4 patch. I also upped the rebel chance to hit, for shrapnel and shell. While it accurately modeled Gettysburg's peculiar circumstances, it was likely a bit more reliable in other battles.

[Saddletank]

With due respect to everyone, perhaps this discussion could be conducted elsewhere and we might leave this thread to deal with the question of artillery mods for Napoleonic warfare that VC has raised?

[Von_Clausewitz]

The mod is here:

http://www.norbsoftdev.net/forum/modifi ... e-fire-mod

The game still seems to produce casualty rates that are too high but one can I suppose explain that by assuming a certain percentage of the "losses" suffered by a unit in a battle are stragglers, men hiding, the lightly wounded, men "helping their wounded comrades to the rear" and so on. A unit might be listed at the end of a battle as having 70% casualties but in fact 2/3rds of these would return to the colours after the battle.

Thank you, i downloaded this yesterday, i have not tried it yet though. I was trying to see what each mod does.

Is there a variable in game that affects moral based on being under artillery fire or not?
We can play on that setting instead of casualties or casualty rate.

VC

[Saddletank]

I'll let MTG give the technical answer but I don't think so, its all calculated with casualty rates, regardless of how inflicted. But as you can imagine canister is very good at upsetting shaky units.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Von Clausewitz wrote:

Is there a variable in game that affects moral based on being under artillery fire or not?
We can play on that setting instead of casualties or casualty rate.

Yes, it's in the munitions.csv file. However, that is one of the files that cannot be modded for MP play.

[Von_Clausewitz]

Von Clausewitz wrote:

Is there a variable in game that affects moral based on being under artillery fire or not?
We can play on that setting instead of casualties or casualty rate.

Yes, it's in the munitions.csv file. However, that is one of the files that cannot be modded for MP play.

Bummer, that would have been one way to cause an early rout from canister without affecting other mechanics.

VC

[gunship24]

I tested canister alot, sometimes the unit ran sometimes it didnt , sometimes it would almost distroy a battalion sometimes not. At one point it was way to powerful so i adjusted it to give the AI some chance of winning otherwise it was too easy. This is something that would have to be rebalanced if an MP version was available. I admot that my testing is hardly extensive so tweaking canister might be a good suggestion, and something i can do.

But to answer your questions, no there is no bounce through in the engine that im aware of, however firing at a column with roundshot will cause more casualties then firing at a line. In one of the patches Norb implemented a area of effect for the roundshot hit.

The one ammunition type not talked about is shrapnel, in my poinion this doesnt do near enough damage but im not sure histrically that it ever did, considering the ratio of cannons to howitzers on the battlefield.

Canister i think is ok, perhpas the unit stats need to be tweaked abit to saddletanks suggestion of retreating then rallying? I can adjust the stats for taking casualties, like percentage change to kill from a hit, percentage change of unit withdrawing etc but I cant single out artillery fire.

One of the problems with balancing is that a battery has 6 guns (say), and thats a lot of canister flying around and batteries can fire canister way to easily, i.e. behind and close to freindly units. I think this issue is well known.

[Saddletank]

In support of Gunships post I would say that there are some BIG variables in the base game and its these that both add to its enduring flavour - the unpredictability of events makes 1000 MP battles all interesting - but this large variable window on so many game mechanics also gets some players new to the game critical of it "so-and-so happened and it would never be like that IRL" and such.

You have to be here for months for the great quality and subtelty of the game to really sink in and this also makes rule tweaking problematic because its easy to over-adjust something.