How to make a projectile damage walls?

[Zarax]

I've been trying to mod the naphta trowers in order to be capable of doing some damage to walls, but with little success so far...

Does anyone have any idea about how to mod that?

[lugh]

None! I can't remeber seeing anything in the projectile sheet like that (damages walls? yes/no) or whatever.
I'd post this in the mod forum though, maybe someones tried it already?

[EatYerGreens]

I don't think you even need to mod them. They do come out from the siege engineer after all.

I did once try to get them to break down a gate (at a wooden stockade type fort) but even two units together were only good enough to cause maye 50-60% damage by the time they ran out of ammo and I had to bash my way in using other types of troops. They would have been better employed to throw bombs in through the gateway and blow up defenders who bunched together too much.

What I will say for them is that, being such a tiny unit, the arrow fire off the walls wasn't accurate enough to score many hits. I did lose some but nowhere near as many as bigger units tend to suffer if left standing still within range.

For some reason, I still picture the Naptha weapon as being more incendiary, like a petrol bomb, than explosive and hence not good for blowing holes through walls, especially masonry.

It would be demanding on the graphics power but it would be kind of cool if using them in woods would (unintentionally?) start a fire that set both sides' troops fleeing the scene, or using them in arid lands started a wildfire spreading across the grass, to the same effect, smoke affecting your view and so on.

[Zarax]

Well, as far as I know you can only attack gatehouses with their grenades, while I would have liked to use them to damage walls too (not a big problem on stone walls since they can barely scratch them, given the low power of their grenades)...

[Don Corleone]

I think EYG has a good point. How much damage is a molotov cocktail going to do to a 2 foot thick wall of granite? It'll spash it's incidiary contents on the wall, burn, and that's all folks.

EYG's idea for setting the woods and grasslands on fire, with both armies fleeing in terror had me in stitches. Too bad I'm locked in a quarterly business review at the moment. Had to blame it on a 'stupid customer support' email.

[Zarax]

Of course EYG is right, in fact if you don't change the grenade's power they will manage to damage a wooden wall, while the full ammo used by a naphta trower squad will do approximately 3% damage to anything in stone, this if you're lucky.

Suming up, grenades would be like a portable ballista: good against people, useful when you have to attack a fort but next to useless against stone walls.

[EatYerGreens]

EYG's idea for setting the woods and grasslands on fire, with both armies fleeing in terror had me in stitches.


Good stuff. I do like to sneak in some humour every now and then. Glad to hear it's not lost on people. ~;)

There was an interesting documentary on recently where they were trying to reconstruct the 'Greek Fire' weapon which the Byzantines used on their galleys.

There's not a whole load of information in the history books, so some parts they had to use a bit of artistic licence with. The end result was an apparatus not dissimilar to what fire brigades used to put fires out. A big lever for two or three men to push up and down, a pair of cylinders to pump the fuel with, bronze pipes leading to a metal tube at the bow.

The wierd part was one of the few details they got from the history books. The flammable mixture was held in an open dish, about the diameter of an oil drum, suspended over a hearth (anyone's guess how they never set their own ship on fire!!!). There were places in that part of the world where oil would seep out of the ground (like a tar pit, only it's the same stuff we drill for nowadays), so raw materials were not a problem. They'd mix in some powder which they described as being 'tree resin', which would make the mixture stick to surfaces, heat it over this fire to make it runny, pump it out through the bow nozzle and past a burning wick to light it. Basically a flame-thrower, then.

They built a scale model target ship (about 15-20 feet long) and didn't take too many attempts to set it ablaze with this stuff. They also tried using a ballista type thing to hurl glass pots of incendiary goo at it, which also worked, once they'd got the range right. Of course, the target was obliging by keeping still but you get the general idea. In an age when not many people could swim, having your ship set on fire basically gave you two choices, neither of them pleasant.

Anyway, my guess is that the naptha weapons contained the same kind of stuff and it's more or less like napalm. The pot smashes, burning stuff splashes everywhere, sticks to whatever it hits and sets your clothes on fire. Nasty.

[antisocialmunky]

I saw that too. I thought it was excellent. Afterall, engagements of that period were very close quartered and based around boarding actions. It's not like the broadside of a huge long galley would be hard to hit.

The ingame version used thunder bomber coding from MI and is rather inaccurate to compare the two. Whereas Chinese grenades were made to detonate and send iron ball sharpnel everywhere, Naptha was more about setting everything on fire.

[EatYerGreens]

Like I said before, it's perfect for the arid areas, where it's basically grassland but by midsummer, it's a tinderbox. Drop a 'volley' in front of an advancing unit and you deny it a direct route to wherever it was trying to attack. It will have to back up, or take a detour to get around the patch of burning grass and, whilst it's maneuvering, it's temporarily vulnerable. On top of that, you have all the smoke obscuring the view of the action for one or both commanders.

I guess they'd be a lot less effective in full desert, since there's a risk the pot will land in soft sand and not break. If it does smash, the fuel will soak away and not burn for very long. They might get lucky if the twits coming at them are in helmets and armour and they score a direct hit....

[Mithrandir]

Moved to Modding Dojo.

[Zarax]

Thanks Mithrandir

[Iustinus]

You can create burning grass-
I've done it. Of course, it doesn't hurt men or cause fear, but it does make for some cool effects and low visibility. All you have to do is mod the stuff in the models folder- I copied the shrub/grass parts, renamed them wheat, and made one part very easily burnable, the other part with the same qualities as normal grass in the game. The reason you have to do a mix of unburnable and burnable is because to make it burnable, you have to turn it into a more permanent model and then units can't walk through it. I'll post some pics and better instructions some time. It can be set on fire by flaming arrows/torches, but the best is by a catapult- the bouncing projectile can set many on fire at once.
Sorry to be rather confusing.
Justin

[lugh]

That sounds pretty interesting! Screenshots would be appreciated, I wouldn't mind doing it myself it looks good enough to be worth the bother.

[Iustinus]

When I get the chance I will post screenshots and instructions on how to do it (it's really easy.)
It might not be for a few days, though- I'm very busy.
Thanks!
Justin

[lugh]

Don't rush on my account! I've no pc that can play MTW at the moment in any case. :(

[EatYerGreens]

Good to hear Iustinus has got this worked out already but it sounds like a lot of work on a lot of (arid) maps would be required to give decent odds of the player ever getting to see this in action. I was going to say it will be a lot to download as well but the mappack3 download had dozens of them and wasn't so bad (I'm on ADSL).

It would be fun if the fire-arrow missile model could be tacked onto the Naptha unit model, just set the missile range to something reasonable for the distance they can throw the pots (30-40 yards?). Only trouble is, I guess the code for fire arrows is only ever triggered when you target a stockade object, instead of troop units. Somehow, you'd have to find out how to get your burnable section of grass to make itself be recognised as a legitimate target and thus make the missile fire icon go green, or the player will never realise it's even possible. (Could have undesired effects when 'fire at will' is switched on, like using all their ammo up on empty space when they're meant to be marching to somewhere else).

As a.s.m. said, the Thunderbomber coding is hard-wired into Naptha units and can't be switched off. No biggie, though - the casualties inflicted and fear caused already match expectations and our imagination can do the rest.

[Aenarion]

Can't u increase the damage that the grenades do (in projectiles)? or is it Hard coded?

[Iustinus]

The arrow does go green- theres just one problem- you can't make all of the grass flammable. To make it flammable, it has to be more 'solid,' if you know what I mean- like a building, so if all the grass was flammable the it could not be walked through. But it still looks cool though, if I can figure out a way to get it out to people people can use it on their own stuff, I just don't have time right now, lots of school work.
One thing I am trying right now which may not be possible is siege towers- or at least towers that fire arrows/naphtha over castle walls. They work fine (like other siege models, you can move them pre-battle) but when you order them to shoot at something you get a ctd. I wish they would work!
Oh, there's one other thing I haven't seen many people do, outside of a little bit in the METW mod. You can mod the tree models in the game to be much bigger, and get huge forests, where your vision is actually obstructed and that look fairly realistic. The pines look better than the oaks, though.
Laus Deo,
Justin