A couple of ideas for RTW

[Psyco]

I had a couple of possible ideas for R:TW, which are:

Movement-
I have always found it annoying how whenever you order you men to move to the side a little bit, they have to turn their formation, march about 6 steps, then change their facing again. There should be a button (or have it auto) to make it so that your troops can move short distances without changing the formations facing.

Shooting-
It would be a great feature to have the stat "shooting skill". The higher, the better they are at shooting the weapon. This way elite troops could be good with a weapon, without having to make a new weapon with one small stat change. Or even expanding it into "reloading" and "accuracy". the base stat for "reloading" would be 1 (100% of the weapons reloading time) and then elites could have .75 or .60 (75% or 60% of the reloading time).

Any comments are appreciated.

[Longshanks]

Quote[/b] ]Movement-
I have always found it annoying how whenever you order you men to move to the side a little bit, they have to turn their formation, march about 6 steps, then change their facing again. There should be a button (or have it auto) to make it so that your troops can move short distances without changing the formations facing.

I agree.

Left Face.
Forward March.
"Formation" Halt.
Right Face.

Not a very complicated maneuver.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Knight_Yellow]

Quote[/b] (Psyco @ May 23 2004,00:16)]Shooting-
It would be a great feature to have the stat "shooting skill". The higher, the better they are at shooting the weapon. This way elite troops could be good with a weapon, without having to make a new weapon with one small stat change. Or even expanding it into "reloading" and "accuracy". the base stat for "reloading" would be 1 (100% of the weapons reloading time) and then elites could have .75 or .60 (75% or 60% of the reloading time).

Any comments are appreciated.
IIRC a high valour ranged unit in MTW is more acurate than a crap valour one...

it *might* affect reloading times too, ive seen some of my artillery fire quicker than others but im not 100% sure on that...

[hundurinn]

About the movement. The units in RTW are much better than in MTW and CA said that units are much more flexible.

[Colovion]

Well if the units don't move together, like they do in MTW - but indepentantly, then I think that it'll more than likely make small, precise unit movements much easier.

[hundurinn]

According to what I've read they will be totally differen't from MTW. When I wanted my units to go to a certain point they usually stopped because some bloody bastard decided to attack somebody http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wall.gif The units will move indepentently so you don't have to worry about that.

[Colovion]

I wish you could split the units up a little.... it would change the game too much probably but if you could split a unit into threes and keep them within a certain proximity to the others then you could flank the other unit with the left over warriors that are sitting in the sides or the back just waiting to fight.

[Jango Fett]

i totally agree about the movement that really annoyed me in MTW and STW but i forgot to say anything about it here thanks for reminding everyone psyco http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-blush.gif

[hoom]

Well at least in Shogun you can get units moving short distances without turning, I know because I noted it just the other day when I was cutting up 16 units of Ashigaru with a maxed out Monk unit.

As has been noted, high valour missile units are more acurate.
Whats needed is more varieties of missile weapon & it seems fairly clear that this is definitely present in Rome.

[Oaty]

Knight Yellow The reason some artillery units fire faster than another artillery piece of the same type is because the size of the crew. A full crew will fire faster then 1 that has been depleted. Also valour has nothing to with reloading times.

Colovian if you watched Timecommanders you will see that when a unit is engaged they start filing out the back to hit the flanks but not all the times so it may have something to do with the unit type. Such as legionaires who will stay in formation and may even get a penalties if they break formation whereas auxillary units may be more than willing to break formation to start hitting the flanks. As far as splitting a unit up that could make the game to easy as for the A.I. to be good it needs less variables. Now if its done before battle I could see that such as if you have only 1 cavalry unit but you want cavalry on each flank or you have 15 units total and you want to split some up so you have a full 20 for more maneuverability and options on the battlefield but there could be penalties in discipline for a split unit because half the unit is not with there normal leader.

[Psyco]

About the shooting, I'm not say elite as in valor, but as in troop type, ie a unit of generic archers should be worse at shooting than a unit of Parthians, even when using the same weapon.
Does that help?

[Colovion]

@ oaty

for the splitting units it would be really tough to get it to work properly. I was thinking of being able to split the units into two, or being able to take one third of the men from a unit and do what you want with them. They have to stay inside a certain range of their unit leader or their moral will drop and they will route too easily. That's the only way I could think to do it - mainly it would be used when you have a bunch of units on the edges of a battle not doign anything and you can flank the enemy if the unit isnt' wrapping around like it should. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif

[RisingSun]

Psyco, different units already do have different accuracy values as well as reload times. Longbows are more accurate and reload faster, for example.

[Psyco]

@Rising Sun, the only reason that longbows have the upped range and accuracy is that they have a longbow. What im trying to say (and apparently failing at) is that a peasent can shoot a longbow with the same accuracy, reload time, etc, as a longbowman. If there were a stat (in the unit_prod, not PROJECTILE_STATS) to affect it, then modding would be alot easier (you don't have to make a new weapon to have a unit a bit better at shooting than normal).

[bighairyman]

Um a peasant can't shoot with a longbow, they attack with pitch fokes. Anyway, longbows were effective because they were professions, they were trained since birth.

[zelda12]

That's funny as I was under the impression that all the longbowmen that were used where peasents that were firing longbows from the age of 10 as it was the law for every man to spend a certain number of hours every sunday firing a longbow.
Then some of the peasents would join the mercenary bands that the lords relied on for manpower. So in essence the whole male population could be called upon to fire a longbow in battle. Although in actuality they were only ever called upon once or twice mainly to repel scottissh raiders in northumberland.
Any way I think that they already have the archer bonuses in honour and valor as units produced in certain areas will have bonuses and as such will be better. Than units produced elsewhere.

[hoom]

What he meant is that if you mod the stats so that peasants fire longbows, then a peasant unit can fire long bows just as well as a normal longbow unit does.

The game sets accuracy, power etc of a missile at the level of the weapon rather than within the unit.
Within the unit stats, you just say 'fire a longbow'.

[Kraxis]

Longbowmen were yeomen, free farmers that owned their own land. They were the ones that filled the ranks. So it is right that they were peasants, mainly, but some became pros, and it was such a force that won at Agincourt...

[Psyco]

Finally someone (Arrrse) understands what I am trying to say

For those of you who don't, I'll try again.

All units with a short bow shoot at exactly the same rate, accuracy, etc, as eachother (disregarding valor). With a new stat (or two) in the unit_prod, you can make some of them better or worse at shooting the same weapon. One unit could be more accurate, but have a longer reload time, than another unit using the same weapon.

Thats about as simple as I can make it.

[hoom]

http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/idea.gif I'm not too au fait with modding units but it just occured to me that there is some kind of default or base valour setting in unit_prod right?
This relates to the eliteness or something.
Wouldn't a unit with a high base valour shoot a normal bow better than a unit with a low base valour?
That could possibly explain the Trebizon Archers do more damage than plain Archers quandary?