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I haven't been playing too much; has anyone noticed what this is like? What kind of friendly casualties do you take positioning firearms behind ur own meleeing troops? Also, what kind of friendly damage do arrows inflict on ur own meleeing men?
Thanks.
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Clan Kenchikuka
I have a hard time believing you, you are an old timer here... http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
But ok, if your missiles are behind your troops firing into the melee, then your losses will be quite big. Your men won't have the protection of shields if they have any (not counting the Varangian Guards who have their shields on the back when fighting, meaning those engaged are protected from missiles from the rear). The FF will be real bad if your missiles are not archers but crossbows or gun units.
If I fire into melee, which I often do with javelins (they tend to be the best at this), I try to fire from the side or rear. Then the chance of FF will be lowered quite a bit and the enemy shields won't help while your own shields will help in a few cases.
Generally, I find FF losses to be around a third of what the enemy recieves if you have the archers positioned a unit length behind the melee, but about a fifth if you fire into the side.
Best targets for this are rigid formation such as spears, worst targets are sword units that mix up a good bit with your men (unless your men are spears).
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
I think it helps keep down casualties if your units that are taking friendly fire have a high armor rating. Like in STW, your troops don't seem to suffer any morale penalty for getting shot in the back by their own peers, so it is worth the cost to do so, at least in the single player campaign.
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Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell so that they look forward to making the trip.
Norman Swartzkopf said their is no such thing as friendly fire. Once the "missile" has left, there is nothing friendly about it.
[This message has been edited by Cardinal (edited 10-07-2002).]
Quote Originally posted by Hosakawa Tito:
Like in STW, your troops don't seem to suffer any morale penalty for getting shot in the back by their own peers, so it is worth the cost to do so, at least in the single player campaign.
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Hmmm... didn't know that... perhaps that is why the AI fires into the melee so much.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
Quote Originally posted by Kraxis:
I have a hard time believing you, you are an old timer here... http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif
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I meant I hadn't been playing MTW much. http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/smile.gif It just occurred to me that the developers are likely to have altered the somewhat ridiculous ability of missiles to magically avoid their own troops that we encountered during the last games.
Yeah I think you're right about the moral penalty Tito, but Kraxis are you sure about armour being directional? I guess it something that I'll have to test some more.
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Clan Kenchikuka
Armour is not directional, but shields are, and they add to armour.
Yup not like the Korean Skirmishers had had all round protection from their shields...
Firing into the back of retreating units can be very rewarding, both the shields don't protect anymore and the lack of leading the unit will ensure more arrows hit the target.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
No wonder those damn AUM were chewing up my Chic Searg's and Chiv Knights.
I developed this utter fear of the AUM's in my first few games, and every time I see one I consistently rain down all fire possible on those units - and I got to fear them even more when they'd attack my center (usually a chic searg and at least another behind it) and punch through in about 2 seconds.... maybe it's because I was killing all my own men... hmmmm....
You can also hit your own troops that are just passing in front of a missile unit. I thought I actually saw a bowman get killed by either himself or someone in his unit once, but that was so strange that it would take some testing to verify. You can however hit a friendly unit that is too close or mixed in with a missile unit. Watch out for this when you are maneuvering your forces around while firing.
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Kyle Goodridge
Quote Originally posted by Goodridge:
You can also hit your own troops that are just passing in front of a missile unit. I thought I actually saw a bowman get killed by either himself or someone in his unit once, but that was so strange that it would take some testing to verify. You can however hit a friendly unit that is too close or mixed in with a missile unit. Watch out for this when you are maneuvering your forces around while firing.
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That happened quite a lot in STW... You could put Archers in one row and some archers would die, from time to time... it was quite funny. Imagine him falling over onto his quiver with an arrow sticking out.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
Your right there Kraxis. When shooting uphill your archers sometimes shot the poor sod in front of or next to them. Used to happen to me when assaulting castles in STW, and I knew it happened because sometimes the enemy didn't have any archers at all. I've also seen what Goodridge described, shooting your own men in a unit that marches in front of or among a missile unit. Hopefully the patch will enable the logfiles so we can see how much we lose to friendly fire, like it was listed in STW's logfiles.
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Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell so that they look forward to making the trip.
Listed in the TC
Cheetah, what is going on???? TC???? I thought it had something to do with the PAF or something but a living thread, clearly not.
They still kill each other when firing uphill, I think I have seen a few cases, but far from the numbers in STW.
Log files are going to be enabled in the patch... that is going to be great, I want to see how many my heirs kill and so on.
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BTW, Danish Crusades are true to history.
You may not care about war, but war cares about you!
I have had a few interesting (non bug) experiences with this. Friendly fire from catapults HURTS for instance http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/wink.gif.
I saw 12 men die in one shot during a multiplayer game today. MY catapult & MY men!! I decided there and then to aim at another enemy unit not so close to my own! And catapults are terrible aiming at level 0!!