Fire by rank vs Platoon fire

[Dead Guy]

I've been playing a new campaign since the last patch and just got guards again. I checked the unit cards quickly in battle because my guards were behaving strangely. It seemed like the guard get the platoon fire whereas line infantry get fire by rank in the abilities tab? I haven't tested it a lot but it seems that fire by rank is a lot better than plaoon firing, platoon seemed really slow and ineffective. Any thoughts or any experience on this from people who play quicker and more campaigns than me? :p

[FactionHeir]

If the first part of the unit fires, fire by rank usually has a lot more men firing than platoon firing. That's significant in that if your target moves out of range, your units will start anew and have to reload first. WIth platoon firing thus, you get off maybe 12 shots, while with fire by rank you get off around 26.

Also, platoon fire forces the unit to take on a looser formation, so they have to continually re-form their formation before firing too if targets change or if on the move.

[Didz]

Historically, platoon fire was superior to fire by ranks. In ETW they are seperate technical advances and either you have the ability or you don't. If you have platoon fire then all your infantry should be using it, if you don't then none of them will.

What I have noticed, which i consider quite clever is that sometimes, (just sometimes) a whole rank of a unit will not fire when their line of sight is obscured by friends or terrain. So, you get what looks like a platoon volley but in fact the entire rank should have fired, its just that some could not see anything to fire at.

The bad news is that this seems to muck up the fire by rank drill, and I've noticed that the dozen or so men who did fire are expected to reload before the regiment tries to fire the front rank again.

You actually get similar thing happen sometimes in naval battles where you can see a ship just fire off a few of its cannon instead of its full broadside and then there's a pause whilst it re-sync's its gun crews.

[Fisherking]

I have been skipping the fire by rank tech and moving on to the others because, if you have not noticed, it carries a penalty of a 6% increase in infantry upkeep.

Call me cheap, but I can live without it.

The money for troops is more important than the quality most of the time…

Is anyone else picking and choosing techs based on costs to you? Some can not be avoided and I get them all in the end. I just put them off as long as possible.

[Discoman]

I'm starting to be more careful when it comes to investments. I think Rank and Fire is worth it because it shows more results overtime.

Platoon firing is rather effective, it offers consistent fire to thin the enemies ranks and usually results in 2-3 kills per barrage. It also takes alot less time to prepare for than fire by rank.

[Monsieur Alphonse]

Platoon fire doesn't work for me. I like fire by rank because it gives a lot more fire power. The only reason why I research platoon fire is that I have to research something. And it unlocks the last barracks (IIRC) which give an extra XP to line infantry.

[Kulgan]

I have been skipping the fire by rank tech and moving on to the others because, if you have not noticed, it carries a penalty of a 6% increase in infantry upkeep.

Are you being serious? I find the fire by rank advancement the single most influencial technology on the battlefield. Before fire by rank only a third or less of your infantry could fire their weapon. Half can fire if you line them up two deep but those formations get owned by melee charges and the width of only a few of those units take on too much space to be a make a realistic battlefield.

Once fire by rank is there however, you can line up say 6-7 line infantry 3-4 deep* in the center of your line and have a real solid line that won't break anytime in a melee and will kill anything with musketfire that stands in front of them real soon.

This leaves you with both the free units and the free time to micromanage the flanks which are made up of specialist infantry and cavalry/horse artillery.

* 3 Deep when facing a lot of charging enemies and 4 deep when facing other musketbased armies

[Dead Guy]

Are you being serious? I find the fire by rank advancement the single most influencial technology on the battlefield. Before fire by rank only a third or less of your infantry could fire their weapon. Half can fire if you line them up two deep but those formations get owned by melee charges and the width of only a few of those units take on too much space to be a make a realistic battlefield.

Once fire by rank is there however, you can line up say 6-7 line infantry 3-4 deep* in the center of your line and have a real solid line that won't break anytime in a melee and will kill anything with musketfire that stands in front of them real soon.

This leaves you with both the free units and the free time to micromanage the flanks which are made up of specialist infantry and cavalry/horse artillery.

* 3 Deep when facing a lot of charging enemies and 4 deep when facing other musketbased armies

completely agree

[Vealer]

DEAD GUY..

I think you are onto something here.. At the end of Prussia Campaign VH/VH. I have all military techs, my observations are as follows

1) Line infantry fire by rank as default. I have not seen them platoon fire, can they even do that?

2) Guards. They fire all standing in their rows. I.e. the back rank can fire and the front rank can fire, they do not need to kneel. It seems superior as all can fire not just the first rank! Is this platoon fire?
If so it is much better than fire by rank but it seems it is more like a guard special ability as it is powerful


????

V

[FactionHeir]

Only Elite type infantry can platoon fire anyway, the rest is stuck with fire by rank. Which is a good thing. Platoon fire only works properly at the start and middle of the battle during a prolonged shootout. Once units start to waver and rout and come back and what not, platoon fire is very much useless. You simply can't kill routers efficiently with it while you can with fire by rank.

[Dead Guy]

Yeah Vealer that's what i mean. The problem I find with platoon is that the inital amount of fire is so much smaller than with rank fire, since just a section of the unit fires. My defense against cavalry for example depends a lot on a mass of fire to make the cavalry break as they reach the line. With platoon I find it's not quite able to achieve that. I guess I'll have to learn to use elite infantry in slightly different roles than line, and not just use them as a beefed up line regiment. And as FH points out, if you're shooting routers you really need a lot of shots going off in an instant before the routers get out of range again.

[antisocialmunky]

The real idea of platoon fire is suppression and making it so that the enemy can't charge. The AI will charge anyways so its kinda pointless and reduces your Frontloaded DPS.

[Vealer]

Thanks guys

I paid more attention when I was playing last night and yeah I see all elite infantry has platoon fire. To be honest it seems quite valuable to me as they start firing much more quickly and I usually chase down broken enemy with cavalry. Perhaps that is just a habit from RTW, MTW1&2 but it still works..

DO you therefore think that guards are not as not as valuable as line infantry? if I have the cash I usually get Guards but maybe I am just blindly buying the best there is.

I usually add guards to the main battle line. Grens I put them behind the battle line with Greanades on auto fire (with some obsessive manual intervention from time to time). They seem more effective like this so I never use there platoon fire in a serious way in any case