friendly fire

[Sabretache]

i was just killin' some ronin....and i thought i saw my archer's arrows killing my monkeys.....!!! the first thing that i think is "well....if an arrow gets shot into a group of people and 3/4 of them are your monks, then they're going to get hit." i didn't know if stw allows friendly fire. i'm guessing that it does with all of its other attempts at realism...

[Shigi-qutuqu]

Friendly fire...s*** happens!!!

[Catiline]

Yep, friendly fire happens, watch your archers units, they have an astouning ability to shoot themselves

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Unless the Persians fly away like birds, hide in the earth like mice, or leap into a lake like frogs, they will never see their homes again, but will die under our arrows

[Da Masta]

even though there is frendly fire the casualtys are acceptable.

(sry my spelling sucks)

[evilc]

unless its your monks and their ahsigaru, but then you shouldn't need to shoot anyway

[This message has been edited by evilc (edited 06-10-2001).]

[RageFury]

IN fact a lot of people believe that the "friendly fire" casualties r not high enough...

When ur musketeers shoot through ur own ranks u suffer almost no losses at all but the enemy gets big losses and big morale hit...i would have thought that ur own men shootin u in back would be more scary than ur enemy shootin u from front...lol

-Fury

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http://www.geocities.com/klondike_99_1999/Battle.jpg

[JoBeare]

Catiline,
It helps if you put the short archers in the front row and the tall archers in the back row.

RageFury,
The scream of musket balls whizzing past your soldier's ears keeps them from thinking about turning around and running.

JoBeare

[Kraellin]

lol jobeare. good point ;)

get magy's logfile reader and you can see the results of friendly fire in a battle.

K.

[Hosakawa Tito]

Quote Originally posted by JoBeare:
Catiline,
It helps if you put the short archers in the front row and the tall archers in the back row.

RageFury,
The scream of musket balls whizzing past your soldier's ears keeps them from thinking about turning around and running.

JoBeare[/QUOTE]
Good one JoBeare,and I always thought my warriors were charging,you made me realize they were actually routing toward the enemy. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

[Shiro]

Funny, but very true. They say the only way the British during the Revolutionary War got their men to march in those straight lines was to make them more afraid of the officers behind them, than of the enemy. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif

[Steeleye]

Rage - I agree, this is part of my all-out gripe about guns in the multi-player game esp'.

The fact that we're talking about 16th C MUSKETS here, not sniping rifles, seems to have evaded the combat rules. These weapons were accurate at about 10 metres - literally. Now add to that that your unit in front is mixed up with the enemy unit that its fighting, and far far more of your unit is in the way.

In 'real' life, firing into them would slaughter you're own troops. Muskets were fine en-masse firing at large blocks of troops because they didn't need to be accurate - they just had to propel that lead ball in vaguely the right direction, but they weren't precision missile weapons by any means - bows were FAR more accurate, but lets face it, even if you're firing into a melee with bows, generally you'll be loosing into the ball of troops, not aiming at individuals, so you should still get 50/50 casualties on either side (depending on how mixed up the ranks are). The missile rules as they stand are daft, and allow taisho to pull off some very silly tactics.

kyodaispan.

[NinjaKilla]

That told y' all!!

Shiro,

In the revolution and during WW2, Russian troops were followed into battle by commissars, who brukked anyone who was worried about getting killed. They also put machine guns behind their own troops.

[Kraellin]

steeleye,

you are prolly absolutely correct about missiles and accuracy and so on, but do you really want to have ca calculate vector analysis on each shot into a melee formation.....let's see, 60 man units, 2 groups fighting each other and 4 musket units on each side firing into that melee group at the rate of 2 shots per minutes per line, and then add in any archers, cav or otherwise all also shooting at the same time and then add in 8 players in a multi game all doing the same thing....you do the math.

i mean, come on guys, let's get real here. we're talking in a lot of cases 56k modems over internet lines that are at best erratic. if you want realism go out and buy your own cray 2 (or 3 or whatever) and program the bloody thing for whatever ya want, but let's back off a bit about stw not being 'realistic'. it's not and it's not going to be. we all know it and frankly, most of us dont care cause it's still a good GAME, which is all it ever tried to be.

now, to take the other side of things, yes, the percentages used to figure friendly fire kills could be raised; at least i'm pretty sure it could and perhaps it even shld be. i tend to agree that it does seem a bit odd at times that i have an infantry unit with their back to my guns and all in a solid melee and that i can shoot through them with near impugnity and it also seems a bit odd that at times it seems like gunfire is shooting through hills, but is it really that distracting? i mean, we all know this and we just factor this into how we play. is it realistic? no. is it still fun? yes.

so even when i try and take your side of things, i still dont understand this gripe that seems to be somewhat persistent in the various forums. ya know?

i'm sure ca has heard this complaint before. they do monitor the forums, i'm told. and perhaps that's part of the persistence, ca has never said, 'ok. we heard ya', so folks keep trying to communicate it not knowing if they've been heard by the folks they are trying to communicate to...maybe?

K.

[Steeleye]

Kraellin,

I'm not griping that the game isn't 'historically accurate', merely that the combat rules can be very silly. The game IS great fun, otherwise I wouldn't play it, and in Kyodaihood we certainly aren't the types to take STW too seriously. My point is though, that the combat rules on guns especially, take away from the enjoyment of the game - part of STW being fun is that the engine for the battles IS realistic, surely?

Considering honour, morale, and I think arrow vectors are worked out individually in the game (correct me if I'm wrong), then I can't see why there couldn't be more realistic rules on musket balls - it needn't track the vector of each shot - it just needs some more realistic combat rules by percentages on who gets hit in certain situations. I'm not criticising the programmers, and hell, I couldn't programme for toffee, but this element of the game does irritate me.

Sorry! I hate guns anyway.

Kyodaispan

[Kraellin]

steeleye,

points noted. thanks :)

K.

[Koga No Goshi]

My thoughts...

I think if you have two units of musketeers, one behind the other, within 3 volleys the unit in front should be between 10-50% left standing. (That's assuming they're back to back, less if they're further apart).

The overall morale damage done by musket shots should be reduced. It should still apply at very very close range, but I don't think warrior monks or no dachi or even yari samurai with 50 or more men left in the unit should retreat before even reaching the musketeers. Especially a large line of them, which often happens to me. They all just turn tail and run. In MP games, the morale damage done by bystanding musket units combined with the monk rush makes most games predictable and difficult.

Just my thoughts,

[CaptMac]

The game imitating real life.
Perhaps not a perfect recreation but provides additional realism. I believe one of the most stressed pointers is to form your missle units on a hill/rise to assist in increasing effectiveness of unit and indirectly reducing friendly fire losses.

JoBeare - PLEASE post how to put the short archers in the front row and the tall archers in the back row (and visaversa) http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif . I know All my units could definitely benefit from this http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/biggrin.gif

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The only thing you have to regret are the chances not taken.
Expect the unexpected and take in air.

[Kraellin]

koga,

as for the morale damage to enemies facing muskets, the multi game places no time period on the game. that is, we dont know how long guns have been in existence for this time period. remember, muskets, even arqu's were 'high tech' for that time period. armies never facing guns before often ran at the first shot when facing these 'magical' weapons. think about it. you are a soldier in an army. you've seen heavy horse and swords and bows, but suddenly you hear a small thunderclap and the soldier next to you suddenly falls over dead quite mysteriously. you saw no arrow flying through the air. no sword was even close and no horse had left the enemy ranks, yet the fellow next to you is suddenly lying on the ground, dead. if you dont think that causes some 'morale damage' then you have not put yourself in that soldier's shoes.

later on in history, horses were trained to not bolt at the sound of gunfire and soldiers began to understand the 'magic' and therefore didnt fear it quite as much. but again, we dont know at what time in history a multi game takes place.

and even if we say it's 'later on' and that everyone now understands what guns are and what they do and how they work, there is still something quite demoralizing about seeing friends drop all around you and you never even see the bullet.

i was a little put out with the folks that wanted to change the friendly fire routines at first, but i'm starting to come around a bit on that point. perhaps the percentages shld be raised a bit as long as they can also fix the 'shoot through hills' aspect...or was that one fixed? to me though, a bit of abstract doesnt bother me. i dont mind the friendly fire thing. is it realistic? prolly not. so, ok, it's not perfect realism; i just adjust my thinking accordingly. can they make it more realistic? perhaps, but if they sacrifice playability for realism then i will be disappointed, for you can nit pick and code a game with so much 'realism' and thus lines of code as to render it unworkable.

and i think that's one of the reasons i like this game...it's workable. the rules dont perfectly follow 'real' but it is playable, workable, with a lot of differing aspects. so, as long as you dont lose that part, then adjust the tables however you want and i wont mind.

K.