problem with missile units

[vasilisguru]

Hello. I am a new member.
After spending allot of time with total war and many mods, I decided to post something that bothers me.
Some missile units, crossbowmen, musketeers… take much time to load and reload.
So they actually do not have the time to fire when they are in range and fast units engage without being affected. Especially units with short range weapons like handguners, don’t have the opportunity to fire at all.
I sagest that foot missile units (not bowmen) and mounted ones should go into battle with there weapons loaded us real solders did.
Practically it must be: (fire – reload) not (load – fire – reload…)
Does anyone agree to this?

[Abokasee]

Ahh thats because your using them wrong my friend

Crossbows (MTW2) Have a very long range and can take out many enemy infantry in short amount of time, against unarmoured cavalry they can butcher them at range when there going into there missles!

Hand gunners... well primitive technogly, thus dont expect much from them, the only use I see for them is ranged heavy infantry with there nice armour, of coures, if your venice they completely obsolute, aqubeisers are highly effective providing you use them right (I find spreading them thin does more damage since more people can fire) and musket are the same just even more effective (Cossacks, Musketeers, Jannisary the like will massacre enemies if used correctly, especially Cossack and Jannisarries)

Fast cavalry are perfect counter XBow and Powder units, its only fair to have a counter to something, which is why you should always bring some people with long sticks with a metal bit at the end, even if its pike militia (Taking away there sword weapon is a good idea, most mods do this)

As for units already being loaded up and ready to go, this wouldnt of been pratical for a long march as "black powder" was generally hard to maintain and could have the bad habit of ripping off your limbs if the worst case scenerio happened, and it was useless if it was wet so it needed to be kept in a dry enviroment, witch are usually quite hot, and gun powder REALLY likes those places and will explode with joy, as for normal bows, well it would be quite difficult to keep your arrow all the way back for that long march as well as that quick jolt fowards to fire off your load before your cut down by a man with a lance that broke in your face before he whips out his sword cuts your mates head off, and im quite sure that running with a crossbow would make bolt fall out (I am not sure of this)

[Martok]

Welcome to the Org, vasilisguru!

In addition to Abokasee's advice, you may also wish to ask around in the Citadel. Chances are you'll get as much (if not more) information/advice as you'll need.

[vasilisguru]

Thank you guys for replying and enlighten me but see this:
Imagine yourself being an xbowman in a battlefield watching enemy approaching,
Would you charge your bow at the time they were at range and give them the opportunity to advance more? No! You have it charged and loaded already and you wait in an aiming position so when they are in range, you fire at once and then load again. Am I wrong?

[Puzz3D]

Would you charge your bow at the time they were at range and give them the opportunity to advance more? No! You have it charged and loaded already and you wait in an aiming position so when they are in range, you fire at once and then load again. Am I wrong?

You're not wrong. This is yet another of many examples why the new battle engine is inferior to the old battle engine. In the old battle engine, your ranged units are loaded and ready to shoot at incoming enemy units. As soon as your ranged unit stops moving it can shoot, and you can control how long it holds its fire before it shoots. On top of that, the reload rate of archers in M2TW is just plain wrong for no apparent reason other than the graphic artist made the reload animation too slow.

[PBI]

This always particularly annoys me with cannons; the soldiers take so long to load the thing that by the time it's ready to fire, the target unit has moved too far sideways. Rather than just turning the loaded cannon and firing, they have to turn and then start the whole loading animation again from scratch.

I seriously hope this gets fixed in Empire.

[Raz]

Ahh... the limitations of Video Games, they will always be there...

[Puzz3D]

Ahh... the limitations of Video Games, they will always be there...

This limitation wasn't present in the older TW games.

[vasilisguru]

This limitation wasn't present in the older TW games.

Thanks my friend. I would never reach these conclusions myself. After all it’s been years since I used the early engine. It fascinates my no more and on the other hand
I never looked at what these tiny solders do in the early engine battles. I give all my hopes to the new engine coming.
One more thing, I do not complain. Great work has been done! After all, what is this conversation about, if not a brainstorm for further development!

[Puzz3D]

Thanks my friend. I would never reach these conclusions myself. After all it’s been years since I used the early engine. It fascinates my no more and on the other hand
I never looked at what these tiny solders do in the early engine battles. I give all my hopes to the new engine coming.
One more thing, I do not complain. Great work has been done! After all, what is this conversation about, if not a brainstorm for further development!

This thread has no impact on CA. Playbalance of missile units has been discussed for years with lots of excellent feedback given to CA and yet the playbalance of missle units has gotten worse. The suggestions on playbalance were not implemented by CA. I clearly remember a post by a CA dev in which, when asked why player suggestions on playblance were not being implemented, he said that CA makes the gameplay the way they want it. I remember that post because that along with their attitude towards playbalancing during the RTW v1.2 beta testing are the reasons I no longer make suggestions or try to identify bugs in TW games.

Your hopes will be dashed yet again. Practically all the players who were interested in the game engine details are gone. The only brainstorming that you'll get around here is for better graphics because that's what the majority of the players are interested in now. They don't care if the archers have 4 second reload or 12 second reload or are loaded and ready to shoot or not. They think it doesn't matter. Some players went so far as to say one gameplay isn't better than another it's only different. That was actually their defense for the M2TW battlefield gameplay. However, the newer TW games don't get properly rebalanced anyway because it's too much work. Besides, you can't balance the game until the engine is working properly, and CA has a lot of trouble these days getting the engine to work properly even after patching several times.

[vasilisguru]

This thread has no impact on CA. Playbalance of missile units has been discussed for years with lots of excellent feedback given to CA and yet the playbalance of missle units has gotten worse...

So, what do we do? Do you know any one that can mod this? I do not.
If it is an animation problem, it may be fixed.

The next TW game we expecting is basically based on gunpowder.
If this continues, the whole warfare may change. CV will be much more
Powerful in battle and cannons that should be the most decisive weapons will
be inferior. I don’t think that CA will not try to make it work properly.
But we wait and see!

[TheLastPrivate]

If you wanted, you could change the reload time of missiles in the desc file, i think desc_missiles but that could make certain units overpowered.

As for CA not making ranged as effective as they should be in real life, I think they want to keep the melee brawl goodness of the game as much as they can. Already a volley of high-quality crossbows can decimate charging units up to a certain extent. '

Simply put the game woudlnt be fun nor challenging (passive AI guys?) if we were to play archer duels.