Ramareddy: Wedge

[Duke John]

ramareddy, your PM inbox is over its limits.

Hi, my name is Rama and I'm part of the RTR team.

I was wondering: would it be possible to create a wedge formation for infantry? Or would it have to be circular?
I have never tested that myself, but I have read posts in which was written that it could not be done. It should be as simple as just adding wedge. If you get an error then it's not possible.

Cheers,
DJ

[caius britannicus]

I believe you can add it. I remember hearing that people did it but it put the officer at the tip of the wedge and people didn't like the idea of that. Plus there is the whole thing of the wedge formation doing absolutely nothing. It doesn't penetrate, it doesn't give any tactical advantage. All it does it make the first 5 guys in the formation fight on the own for an extended amount of time. It really is a useless formation.

[Lord Adherbal]

simple adding "wedge" as formation type certainly doesn't do the trick, so I don't think it's possible.

[Epistolary Richard]

GodsPetMonkey came as close as we're likely to get:



http://users.on.net/~roehr/RTW/WedgedLegion.jpg

There are 2 conditions that need to be met before a unit can form a wedge.

First it must be given the wedge formation in its formation line in export_descr_unit.txt
Secondly it must be a mounted unit, ie. its category must be cavalry

The first condition is simple, and what most people tried alone. The second one is not, because a cavalry unit must have a mount, else the game will error out.

So I created a new mount, the model is just one vertex, so its effectively invisible, and set it up (in descr_ mount.txt) to have the rider as close to the ground as possible. Then I made the legion a cavalry unit, gave it this blank mount, and away we go!

[wlesmana]

Of course, those soldiers with the wedge formation will awesomely glide through the battlefield.

[snevets]

Well unless you put this on a different skeleton and then add the infantry anims instead of the cavalry ones, which gpm probably did.

[Duke John]

That does not work. The riders have a considerably smaller range of animations and the unit will be always remain in the standing/idle/ready animations when moving as the invisible mount is doing the walking.

[PROMETHEUS]

Problem is that you even loose the testudo animation , this has a peculiar seto fo anims , meaning you need to edit those anims to let them use this formation befoure anything .....

[ramareddy]

I would actually want a wedge made out of the horde formation, so the unit would always be in it. That too, it wouldn't be a triangle so much as a wide trapezoid.

[Duke John]

Not possible. Or at least not useable as the horde formation always points towards the same direction (north, west, or whatever). You cannot make it turn or wheel.

[Myrddraal]

Not possible. Or at least not useable as the horde formation always points towards the same direction (north, west, or whatever). You cannot make it turn or wheel.

I didn't know that... That's a pain.

[Glaucus]

and if that unit fights... say triarii, triarii would get a bonus since it considers the unit in wedge a cavalry. Right?

[ramareddy]

Not possible. Or at least not useable as the horde formation always points towards the same direction (north, west, or whatever). You cannot make it turn or wheel.

So if I start a battle with a unit facing north, they will only face north throughout the battle?

How can that be? In vanilla you could change directions when a unit was in horde formation.

[wlesmana]

Because Horde is coded differently. Try going to the left or right on a Horde unit. They go straight and not re-position themselves on a square like square units.

[Duke John]

The horde formation is round (look up my tutorial about this) and because of that you never noticed that it was always facing the same direction. The formation remains the same facing but the soldiers do change.