She ain't no hussy....

My Kaiser's 2nd son sees a nice lonely rebel unit sitting north of Vienna so he decides to go take it out. It looks like a Crossbowman, easy target. He attacks and the odds are 1:2, what?
Behold....
http://aycu39.webshots.com/image/374...3549286_rs.jpg
This guy is some sick cross between a Genoese Crossbowman on steroids and a DFK, minus the shields. 15 AP MISSILE!!! Thats not a crossbow its a frackin ballista. And its only turn 6!

So I figure I'll charge, they'll get a volley off, 1 or 2 BGs go down, half the hussites get skewered. Pull back and charge again to avoid melee, which i want to avoid. The best laid plans....

Start charging.... they shoot... blood splatters everywhere, 3 BGs fall.... and
http://aycu22.webshots.com/image/373...1601371_rs.jpg

Completely STOPPED. By one shot from one crossbow unit. Damn. Reform and charge 3 more times before 54 hussites are killed and they finally rout. One of the successful charges was a little too slow and the BGs got a face full of point blank AP 15 missiles on impact - 5 more dead. In the end, 12 dead BGs and a nice Heroic Victory.

Lucky for me the AI is dumb and went on the attack (due to odds), moving out of their original position in the woods. That would have been a nightmare.....

feel my pain.

i actually LOST to Hussites, my first (painful) discovery about the Hussite Rebellion.

Its normal for a charge to stop in M2TW (more so with infantry than cavalry) if the charging unit loses too much cohesion due to men being hit and thus stopping and/or dying. Part of the reason for that of course is that a unit that just died still counts as alive and will ruin your formation for another 2-3 seconds.

Hussites are easy enough to kill with bodyguards normally. I wouldn't recommend recharging unless you really do that well. Running through them is more effective.

What I'd do would be to run round behind then charge, they probably take some time to turn around and fire, besides they only got 1 shot.

The missiles, believe it or not have mass on their own too.

I fought another battle against Hussies with my same lone general in relatively the same area (where are these guys coming from? it is less than turn 20, and I have never seen them before in several HRE campaigns). This time, Hussies were accompanied by peasant crossbows. Lucky for me the battle was on an insanely large hill in the middle of the map, with each army starting on different sides. As my BG was charging, the hussies didn't have LOS and had to do arching shot over the top of the hill, killing no BGs. 40 hussies died on impact and the rest is history.

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Originally Posted by TheLastPrivate

The missiles, believe it or not have mass on their own too.

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Not enough to stop a rider though.

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Not enough to stop a rider though.

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An xbow bolt will stop a rider. It's a function of mass x velocity. This is why a tiny little rifle bullet will knock a man back; same principle.

And the Hussites, yeah... they were badass. Largely a peasant army, they beat the HRE/Hungary combined. The pope sent 5 crusades against them and they beat those too. In the end the pope gave up & negotiated a truce which included freedom of religion. Freedom of religion in 1435! Can ya believe it?

The momentum of the projectile does not actually stop the rider or slow them down. I don't know much about horses so I am going to guess on the weights and velocities here, but it will give a general idea. A 1500 pound mount and rider traveling at 30fps (20mph) has 45,000 units of momentum. A 4 ounce bolt travelling at 400 fps has 100 units of momentum. Even the 150lb rider alone still has ~50 times the momentum. Such a large difference = no effect on velocity of the rider. It is their reaction to being hit that causes them to slow. When people are shot, even with guns they do not go flying like in the movies. If the person getting hit flew backwards, the person shooting the gun (or crossbow) would also fly backwards since the same amount of energy is being applied to both. Some differences but I won't elaborate, it is close enough for approximation. Anyway, the rider would probably fall off his horse or drop his lance or something, but that would make the game awfully complicated, so they just stop charging.

Uhm, yeah, shooting a man does not make him fly backwards. Nor would shooting a mounted man in stirrups with a crossbow bolt noticeably alter his forward momentum. The impact force of a bolt is considerably higher than that of a bullet, but not anywhere close to that much higher.

Instead the break-up of the charge denotes the fact that striking the men and horses, even non-fatally, with a hail of bolts could disrupt the formation and prevent a functional, orderly charge.

:egypt:

The Wiki page on Hussites is quite a captivating read.

A charge will be stopped if too many men are dead, and sometimes when they're just hit (not dead), they'll get knocked back and somehow turn their horses in circles (for some reason), making an orderly charge impossible.

I've realized that best couter for massed xbows (hussites, genoese..) is to abosrb the first volley with dispersed missile troops of ur own, while cavalry rides along the flank and turning for a headlong charge..

I have to echo Ramses here, generally bullets to not know people backwards when they hit them. That's just something they do in movies to make gunfights look more dramatic.

I am curious about something Ramses might know, however. In the case of somewhat powerful guns, if the person is wearing kevlar or something similiar and the bullet doesn't get a chance to pass through them(or even through part of them, losing momentum), what happens? With all of the force from the bullet putting it's energy into the spot on the vest it hits, could it knock someone back or down? Are there any guns whose rounds have enough energy to knock someone down, but not soo much that armor is worthless against them?

I've always wondered. My experience is with handguns and hunting rifles, so I know relatively little about how rounds affect people, or bullet-proof vests.

The force on impact is mass * acceleration, not velocity.

The bolt has a specific force F(b), and the rider has a specific force F(r).
When the rider is hit from the front, these forces oppose each other and can be subtracted: F(b)-F(r).
In theory, if F(b) > F(r), then the rider would be launched backwards. If F(b) = F(r), he would be stopped. If F(b) < F(r), he would continue to move forward with less velocity. So far theory.

In reality, it all depends on how much the armour is deformed and whether it is penetrated. So in most cases, the rider will not be thrown back, but his speed will decrease. Probably, he's injured that seriously that he can't continue the fight. In all cases though, he will fall out of formation.:coffeenews:

Even a large caliber round or a shotgun blast striking and failing to penetrate a steel plate against a man's chest will not knock him back ala the movies. There is excellent real world data proving this, and the physics are unquestionable. If you're curious on the latter point:

http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/mpmain.html#glass

Now crossbow bolts are considerably heavier, but fired with much less force. Projectiles varied substantially in their weight and composition, just as much as the weapons used to fire them did, but the momentum behind a trained man firmly secured to a trained horse at full charge is very much like a small car with an animal tied on top except that the latter will not react. No reasonable quantity of bolts is going to slow them down, much less bring them to a halt. That being said, these are living creatures in the midst of a difficult and carefully coordinated action.

Imagine if you were running to first base and someone threw a baseball at your face. Now imagine if you're doing that in arm's reach of 30 friends packed into lanes around you and 100 balls get thrown at the group. Some of you are going to run into each other, some of you will overbalance trying to dodge and fall, and some of you might just close your eyes and lean into it, but needless to say you won't all be reaching the base at the same time in a coordinate fashion.

:egypt:

Very interesting site, Ramses.
I must say, I'm a bit disappointed. I did not expect the first next poster to prove my theories were wrong. I'd hoped for a more exciting debate. But apparently, there's more reason in this forum than in some others...:2thumbsup:

BTW, could you tell me the difference between velocity and speed, because in German we've got only one word for both of them?

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Originally Posted by Flavius Merobaudes

Very interesting site, Ramses.
I must say, I'm a bit disappointed. I did not expect the first next poster to prove my theories were wrong. I'd hoped for a more exciting debate. But apparently, there's more reason in this forum than in some others...:2thumbsup:

BTW, could you tell me the difference between velocity and speed, because in German we've got only one word for both of them?

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Velocity is a fancier term, they mean pretty much the same (physicists like to use complicated words for perfectly normal stuff, believe me - I'm studying it).

What you actually have to consider in the current problem is momentum conservation (Impulserhaltung) and energy conservation. Basically, the proejctile has a momentum p=mv where m is its mass and v is its velocity. Taking numbers out of thin air, let the bolt have a weight of 0.3kg and a velocity of 50 m/s (I guess it's probably smaller), then you get a momentum of 15 kg m/s and a kinetic energy E=0.5 m v^2 of 375J

If we consider the rider going into exactly the opposite direction than the bolt, he will, because of momentum conservation, have to absorb this momentum by slowing down a bit (well at least if he's flying friction-free through the vacuum), so let's say he has a mass of 80kg and a velocity of 10 m/s, he'll have a momentum of 800 kg m/s, which means the momentum after being hit, p'=785 kg m/s, corresponding to a speed of v=p'/m = 9.81 m/s
So he'll be slowed down by the bolt by roughly 2% which is not a huge deal all things considered (and he's definitely not friction-free which means he'll pretty much continue going).

Besides, the kinetic energy will be almost completely converted into deformation of armor and rider respectively.

Of course, if we're talking about being able to continue the charge is quite a different issue when you just got a bolt into your stomach, because bolts are quite sharp and therefore their whole momentum is concentrated into a pinpoint that will penetrate your intestines and probably your armor quite nicely and cause a serious health risk.

Velocity and speed are essentially the same, velocity just has the benefit of a more precise definition for use in calculation while speed is better adapted to common use. English is funny like that. :laugh4:

:egypt:

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Originally Posted by Flavius Merobaudes

The force on impact is mass * acceleration, not velocity.

The bolt has a specific force F(b), and the rider has a specific force F(r).
When the rider is hit from the front, these forces oppose each other and can be subtracted: F(b)-F(r).
In theory, if F(b) > F(r), then the rider would be launched backwards. If F(b) = F(r), he would be stopped. If F(b) < F(r), he would continue to move forward with less velocity. So far theory.

In reality, it all depends on how much the armour is deformed and whether it is penetrated. So in most cases, the rider will not be thrown back, but his speed will decrease. Probably, he's injured that seriously that he can't continue the fight. In all cases though, he will fall out of formation.:coffeenews:

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I specifically said momentum, not force. Analyzing forces is probably the most difficult way to do this problem. Momentum = mass*velocity and is often more intuitive when analyzing collisons. I could have used kinetic energy as well 1/2m *v^2 but using momentum keeps the math easier and gives the same result. I would never use forces to solve this problem.

The bullet and the rider do not have a force all to themselves, all forces have two 'actors': the object that is causing it and the object that is taking it. Your F(b) is the force of the bullet on the rider. F(r) is the force of the rider on the bullet. These are equal and opposite forces from Newtons second law. F(b) = -F(r) no matter what happens to the rider. The forces for your relationships would be F(b), the force of bullet on rider, and F(h), the force of the horse pushing the rider foward (to be simple). As you can see this makes the problem much more complicated and gives the same answer as the way I did it. What makes it even more complicated to use force is that you have to try to find the acceleration in question, which means you have to know the length of time the bullet was in contact with the rider and it just gets really ugly. Using momentum you can just assume a worst case scenario (perfect inelastic collision in which neither armour or missile are deformed) and only need masses and velocities to get an answer. I didn't even bother finding an answer because the momentums are orders of magnitude apart and the result is obvious - the rider keeps moving foward at close to his original speed.

That said, i'm not saying that the rider will not stop, only that it is not the force of the missile that causes him to do it. The missile hitting a small lightweight part of the body could move that bodypart (like his arm causing him to jerk the reigns). Plus the shock of the impact and injury could make him lose his balance. This is the graphical effect we see in the game, after men get hit by missiles they take a second to shake it off and recover.

Ah... interesting "debate" over physics. I won't do any math here, you people have already seen to that. :yes:

But, I must just add a few cents into this by saying that the better armour the target has, the more will the bolt/bullet slow him down (if at all). If the bolt is shot at, and into (or even through), a man with no armour, some of the energy will be absorbed by the flesh and blood of the poor rider. If the bolt simply hits the armour with no penetration, and falls to the ground, all of the movement-energy in the bolt is transferred onto the rider in the opposite direction of his movement.

This is why new cars are produced in a fashion that makes sure the hood of the car crumbles on impact if it crashes. It's to absorb some of the energy of the impact, and thus save the passengers/drivers in the car from death or serious injuries.

edit: Pretty much what Flavius Merobaudes said above. Sorry for not paying enough attention...

Interesting post. From Hussites to charges to crossbows to bullets to velocity and now kevlar?! :laugh4: I love this Forum!

Now I not only get to learn about game and history, but also physics and maths. Not to mention economics and logistics somewhat too! :2thumbsup:

Re bullets/bolts, I would've thought that if a projectile hits a person hard and penetrates, it simply passes right through him. The person hit remains almost stationary BUT his lifeless body drops to the ground.

In the case of a cavalry charge, this means his friends behind him have to avoid him or trip over him. This destroys the cohesion of the charge...

If the projectile does NOT penetrate, then it transfers it's energy to the target and THEN he might be thrown backwards by the impact. Which also destoys the charge. A soldier falling off his horse is still a soldier falling off his horse, regardless of whether or not he is alive.

Of course, it may have been better for him to have died from the shot, since the consequence of falling off his horse means he may very well be trampled by his comrades behind. :sweatdrop:

...

Incidentally, I played the Custom Battle of Agincourt the other day and I think it's such a pity we can't duplicate the effects of weather in this game. Imagine muddy fields (cavalry penalties), rain (archer penalties) and so on...

Ah well.

yes, but they would have to modify so that when the knights get hit in the head, they will still keep charging.

afterall, there arent much inside a knight's head to damage with. hairs, perhaps. also a life time of being blungeon on the side of the head should take care of those inconvenient and pesky IQ!

seriously though, i am surprise as well that Hussite would have such a high stats. didnt the description as well as the history stated that they are peasants? i thought i was fighting the Jedi Knights. also Hussites are Czech, and I was fighting them in Germany (and i believe France border at one stage)?

Crossbow bolts could pierce many types of armour (AP bonus in game halves the target's armour value), so the head is not the only vulnerable spot :skull:

And I would like to agree with everyone else says. A missile that passes completely through a target is not losing all of its energy and so is not causing maximum damage. I also like the idea of a fallen man hindering the men behind him, i didn't think of that one.

As for the whole knocking people over argument which doesn't seem to be settled: (I will spare you the screen space if you don't want to read my statistical ramblings)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Watch videos of cops doing traffic stops and being shot at point blank with a pistol and they are able to run away and/or return fire almost immediately. They do not get knocked back or knocked over, and since the bullet does not penetrate the vest, all of the bullets energy is stopped by their vest/body and therefore "pushing them back". I did a little search, its hard to find info on crossbow projectile weight/velocity but I did find 140-150fps and 1.25oz missile for medieval crossbows. Of course there were many different types of xbows with different drawing systems and therefore different power, but this was 740lb draw so obviously a mechanical crank of some sort and on the higher end of the power range. So 18 gram missile at 50m/s, you get about 65J of energy. A 9mm has about 8g projectile at 400m/s = 600J+, ~10 times as much as the crossbow and still does not usually knock a man over from its energy alone.

Medieval missile weapons were not designed to and did not knock men over by the force of impact. They were designed to and did knock men over from the injuries they received.

Pre-emptive reply: Modern rifle/MG rounds are a different story :skull: 5.56 1400J, 7.62 3000J, 12.7 15-20,000J. Although they are designed for extreme range and armour penetration rather than sending someone flying Hollywood-style.

PS. LOL this thread has nothing to do with the original topic.

PPS. I've started spelling armor as armour, will I start drinking tea next, or have I just been playing TW games too much?

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Originally Posted by ReiseReise

PS. LOL this thread has nothing to do with the original topic.

PPS. I've started spelling armor as armour, will I start drinking tea next, or have I just been playing TW games too much?

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Response to PS: Which is the cool thing about the forum... I can talk about tactics in the OP and end up discussing banana waffles at the end (or insert suitably unrelated topic here!). :laugh4:

Response to PPS: Elementary, my dear Reise, you're slowly being Anglicised. The next step is to start spelling words like "specialisation" and "optimisation" with "s" instead of "z". After which you'll start longing for fish n chips with mushy peas. Mmmmmm... Heavenly... :beam:

I never really did mean that mass alone would knock a knight off his horse or stop the huge oncoming mass of horse+metal+person.. :laugh4:

but it was informative, and lets conclude that hussites are dangerous...:laugh4:

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Originally Posted by TheLastPrivate

... and lets conclude that hussites are dangerous...:laugh4:

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Well said.