Artillery in STW

[Whitey]

Like Kahn7 said a little while back on this forum, Artillery is possible - he used battlefield ninja for his effect, wouldn't it be better to use Kensai?

I've tried it, it works fine, and the cost is already right

1 Kensai = 1 Gun
Kensai can't move (they have marching speed of 0...)

The above means that you've got a 'Dark Omen' type system for placing Artillery - you've got to find the right site for it before the battle, it makes mis-placed artillery all but useless (it is a LOS weapon)

as for artillery damage, its just perfect - If your artillery hits a line (2,3,4 ranks) it kills two files (depending on whether it hits right) if it hits a column you can loose up to 10 men in one shot, the artillery takes about 2x musket time to reload and all it needs now is unit graphics, after reading an old thread that said PSP7 can view lbm graphics files I'm just finding it to see...the sprites seem large enough to 'just about' fit a cannon into but i'll test it with Gettysburg style artwork to make sure...if you remove all Kensai armour and all honour and combat values to '0' the solitary unit is easy to 'over-run' but still survives for a short time (enough for a counter-charge to 'retake the guns'

in all, it seems a deadly unit with a fatal flaw, deadly fire (can wreck unwary units), slow reloading time(2x muskets), usless if poorly sited, easy to over-run(LOS weapon)

The other good thing is that if you have more than two of these mothers then you tend to sacrifice too much in hth and loose the battle after the fire-fight

it encourages players to move under cover of terrain and to think more before taking on a 'frontal assault'

I know artillery wasn't used on Japanese battlefields but the whole x-pac is one big 'what-if' so I don't see why not http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

oh and one last thing, don't fire on units in melee - you can easily kill more of your own men than enemies


just a thought...

[Yoshitsune]

Thanks, very interesting, Whitey http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif I am a bit puzzled though; I thought Khan found that missile weapons couldn't be assigned to units that don't initially have them? That is why I assumed he suggested battlefield ninja rather than kensai? If you have found otherwise then that is very exciting. Are you also assigning the 'thunder-bomb' projectile with extended range like Khan?

Actually there were a couple of instances of light artillery being used in samurai battles though this usually meant siege. At Sekigahara the Western Army had a few small cannon but they played little part. Most were European cannon with only the barrel supplied so a sled-like carriage was improvised. This made them virtually immobile once set up so your solution is perfect.

[Catiline]

sounds good. I'm still questioning why Thunder bombers are being used for artillery though. THey aren't right. Most artillery in the periods people are talking about were basically splaying skittles, that is to say they fired solid round shot that basically worked like a bowling ball. My understanding of thunder bombers is that they work like shells. This is going to be wrong (ok better than nothing but it still won't have the desired effect). I don't knowq enough about ACW so Khan might get away with having shells in that, but for anything esle they're going to be wrong.

As to editing .lbm files. this can be done with PSP. Problem is though htat the files the game uses to display the units are the .bif files in the same folders. Noones yet found a way of editing them (presumably just a conversion of the .lbm).

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Oderint dum metuant

[Yoshitsune]

True, Catiline, many of the small cannon used in Japan were, in effect, like a very large arquebus.

[Whitey]

Can't edit the graphics succesfully, but you can assign missiles to units that don't have them, you just need to add an ammunition count to them for the game not to crash http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

The use of thunder-bombers is not correct (HE in 1500!!!) but looking at the different options, they are the only projectile type not already used in the 'original STW' period and when toned correctly they can have much the same effect, although its not perfect

I'm actually having great fun setting my artillery on a hill on the flanks and watching it defiling the units attacking my center, but my problem was using too much artillery (more than two 'guns' in a 16 unit army generally looses you the battle against the AI) good thing is Charging cavalry can take out guns on the flat loosing 5-15% casualties (in thin ranks), but if you send infantry against the guns...you're gonna get hurt http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif the thing I really like though is that they are so damn effective whilst being utterly useless at the same time, makes actually quite an interesting unit...

favourite tactic: sending low honour yari against the enemy and pouring artillery fire into the melee http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

[clink]

The above means that you've got a 'Dark Omen' type system for placing Artillery - you've got to find the right site for it before the battle, it makes mis-placed artillery all but useless (it is a LOS weapon)

What about in the case of siege warfare, where the start off point would be far beyond the range of artillery. There would have to be some way to move up your guns to an effective range.

[Khan7]

Well, I feel REALLLLLy stupid right now. You have to add an ammo value. I AM a moron, LOFL! :-P

My problem is that I don't think you can simulate the problems and effects of artillery with just one thunderbomb. The artillery I made is very dependent on height advantage an LOS, but if it has these two advantages it can do some considerable damage even at long ranges. But often the thunderbombs will spread out and just hit around the target and only inflict a couple if any casualties. At closer ranges they can be just as ineffective, except not as often and that when they ARE effective they take out half a unit :-P

The way I handled this was giving it a range of 20000, an accuracy of 0.2, a reload time of 30, and thinking of the unit as a two-gun battery firing canister shot. All of the effects were quite realistic IMO, except for the fact that they're SNEAKY little cannons LOL.

Will have to experiment with Kensai tho.. still my dream solution is just being able to make the ninjas unsneaky.

Thanx for the info tho Whitey.

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Khan7

[Khan7]

I was right-- KensaiCannons are bunk. There's no way to make them destructive enough for he civil war, and even with accuracy and speed and whatever else all jacked up they have an annoying tendency to miss EVERYSINGLETIME.

You really need the multiple projectiles provided you by Ninjas to get things to work right. If only I could either modify some other unit to be as small, or get the Ninjas not to be so damn sneaky. But until then, myself and anyone else interested in playing the Civil War mod (which is practically completed at this point) will just have to deal with not being able to target cannons until you've overrun your enemy's line.

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Khan7

[Whitey]

miss every time???

I generally end battles with Kensai-Artillery having 150-200 casualties every battle, that pays for them even with the 600koku cost http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

what accuracy setting did you use?

[Whitey]

whoops sorry - for an ACW mod, these are useless - I was using them in the original game with original units http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif

[Lmhockey10]

Ever since S:TW came out, I didn't like it because of it's Japanese theme. I liked it because it brought the sense of a real battle on massive scale to my mind. I loved just doing all guns verse all spearmen just to watch the battle break out. I loved trying to do real life scenarios that happened in movies like Gladiator and etc. etc.. ARTILLERY WAS MY DREAM! I always wished that arty was in S:TW and when MI came out with Thunder Bombers, that had me real excited because of the explosives idea (close range arty I guess :-\). Now hearing about this has me so excited that even though I didn't understand how to get it to work, I'll sit here for a long time and try and figure it out. THANKYOU MOD EDITORS!!!

[Khan7]

Well, looks like you're determined to figure it out all on your own, so my only comment is this:

People talk about what a great historical movie Gladiator is, and it is somewhat good in terms of the gladatorial combat, but forget the entire first half of the movie if you want history.

Pretty much the only nugget of knowledge you can get out of that entire section is the fact that they WERE up north and they DID beat up on some Germanic tribes.. but trust me that's it! 100% of everything else, the battle, everything, is 100% bullshaznak.

Anyway, just had to throw that out there, makes me mad that they made the movie that way to fool poor people into thinking it was that way!

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Khan7

[Algesan]

Indirect fire and explosive shells where in use during the Napoleonic era, but it was an artform with gun chiefs having to make best guess on the right amount of charge to put the shell over the target and cut the fuse at the right length so it resulted in an airburst. Since humidity, wind, heat of the weapon, variations in the bore and munitions among the "same" calibers, inconsistent quality control of powder and fuses, etc. are some of the factors in this, well.....

[Khan7]

Of course they had grapshot and canister before then, and STW maps are too small for any unit to barely ever be out of range of canister.. which I believe was considered effective out to 200 or 300 yards. This kind of shot is like a big shotgun, and is almost certainly much easier to deal with. The purpose of exploding shells (at this point in time) was to deliver a similar effect at longer ranges, ranges which aren't possible in STW.

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Khan7