Aurochs
11-10-2004, 23:43
One day, while I was playing a campaign, I decided that the Ballista was too inacurrate against people. Personally, I think that the ballista should be an anti-personnel weapon rather than a useless one, so I endevored to make it more accurate. I opened up PROJECTILESTATS.TXT in GnomeEditor and noticed that the value in the Accuracy field was already high (at .9), but I bumped it up to 1 anyway. Tests showed no improvement. So I went and read this thread, (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=13105) in which GilJaySmith commented that the left-right movement was hardcoded and couldn't be changed.
This depressed me. But I looked at the text file again, and when I did, I noticed that both the Ballista and the Serpentine had low Field of Fire values. I decided that this might account for some inaccuracies - both those weapons can turn, so why should they have any Field of Fire value at all? Why don't any bow units have a FoF value? Why are Ballistae and Serpentines the most accurate seige weapons in the game? I knocked the Ballista's FoF to 1 and tested.
It worked! I tested with one Ballista and one Saracen Infantry unit against one Urban Militia unit, all on zero valor. I put the Ballista well behind the Saracen Infantry to negate the effects of the land on firing range (the Ballista seems to have the worst up-down aiming abilities) and fired on the Urban Militia as soon as I could. That Ballista killed ten or fifteen militia before they engaged the Saracen Infantry.
So I guess Gil was wrong, huh? Seems that deviation is hardcoded into all projectile weapons, not just seige weapons. Increasing FoF amplifies the effects.
This depressed me. But I looked at the text file again, and when I did, I noticed that both the Ballista and the Serpentine had low Field of Fire values. I decided that this might account for some inaccuracies - both those weapons can turn, so why should they have any Field of Fire value at all? Why don't any bow units have a FoF value? Why are Ballistae and Serpentines the most accurate seige weapons in the game? I knocked the Ballista's FoF to 1 and tested.
It worked! I tested with one Ballista and one Saracen Infantry unit against one Urban Militia unit, all on zero valor. I put the Ballista well behind the Saracen Infantry to negate the effects of the land on firing range (the Ballista seems to have the worst up-down aiming abilities) and fired on the Urban Militia as soon as I could. That Ballista killed ten or fifteen militia before they engaged the Saracen Infantry.
So I guess Gil was wrong, huh? Seems that deviation is hardcoded into all projectile weapons, not just seige weapons. Increasing FoF amplifies the effects.