Crossbow In Non-mongol game

[Yamguy]

im just wondering if theres any way to enable theese when you arent playing in the mongol invasion scenario, or is there a mod or hack i could download to put theese dudes in my game.

[Vlad The Impaler]

i dont see any point to have crossbowmen sincer u have guns...

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

Yamguy has a point, he should be able to do so if he wish. Red Alert had the option to edit any unitbehavior and the availability to edit when or where you could buy it, even the cost I recall.

STW WE/MI now allows to edit the Troopstats, but you still can't change the hidden bonusses (yari vs cav), upgradesystem, costs, animationcycletimes/gamespeed, availability of units or allow/disallow/limit levels of upgrade.

While STW has a nice rock paper scissor system the upgrade system spoils it. When you try to fix this (for this plethora of units) you run into problems with the hidden stats and the upgrade system.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[Sword_Monkey]

Quote Originally posted by TosaInu:
Konnichiwa,
While STW has a nice rock paper scissor system the upgrade system spoils it. When you try to fix this (for this plethora of units) you run into problems with the hidden stats and the upgrade system.
[/QUOTE]

At the risk of sounding like a total newb, what exactly do you mean by the "upgrade system spoiling it" with regards to unit balancing?

Do you mean in mp where you can purchase some unit honour upgrades (such as Ashi) at rock bottom prices and wind up with a unit that can smack a "superior" unit's arse?

I just ask because I play 98% sp and can't say that I've seen upgrading spoil much of anything.

[Sword_Monkey]

Whoops, also meant to throw in my support for the idea of being able to mix and match any units you want in mp.

Hopefully with MTW they'll get this right since I have little hope of seeing any more patches for STW (WE or not). They should have historical era unit selections and a "sandbox" mode where you can mix and match anything you want. That way everyone wins. Want to play 13th century purist, go right ahead. Want to pit 5000 11th Scottish warriors against 500 15th century knights with gunpowder support, why the hell not?

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa Sword-Monkey san,

Yes, that's about what I mean. You're right when you say you don't experience this issue so much in SP, but it's there also.

The YA for example has a bonus vs cav (this parameter is stored in the exe, so it can't be changed), this bonus seems to be about 8 points. A Honor0 YA has -2 normal combatpoints. Pit the YA vs a Honor 0 NagCav with 5 combatpoints and the YA might win. Pit him against a Honor 0 No-dachi (3 points) and he'll surely lose.
This is a good system as each unit has a specific role, it's hard to win with an army composed of 1 unittype.

The upgrade system adds 1 combat point to the normal combatstats, and cheap units get them cheap too. A H7 W2 A2 YA (790 koku) kills H4 W2 Nod (876 koku), while the YA also gets the +8 yari vs cav and a Nod does not. So while at all H0 you had to take great care what to pit vs what, you can just throw the H7 YA vs anything, in other words the specific roles of units fade away.

It would be better if YA upgrades effect the yari vs cav bonus (at least partly).

You'ld expect an upgraded gun/archer to shoot better: they do not. They get more combat and extra morale. The later thing makes people believe they shoot better. But morale is only, simply stated, the time a unit will be active on the field. If 1 gunner needs 10 bullets to kill 3 enemies, a H0 musket will fire 30 bullets and kill 9 enemies, while a H3 gunner can stay longer, fire 50 bullets and thus kill 15 enemies. That is, IF the gunner gets the chance to fire 50 rounds. But neither accuracy, penetration or reload times will change.

You can argue about whether penetration/impact of a bullet should increase (larger gunpowder charges, larger calibre?), but accuracy of an experienced gunner should be better than that of a novice, he would probably reload faster too. In case of those ancient smoothbores, rate of misfires is something that could improve too.



------------------
Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[james]

i would have wanted crossbow men instead of guns,only if the reload time on xbows was better.

[Katasaki Hirojima]

Acctually, there IS a diffrence in reload time.

Its barely noticeable, but if you compare a H0 SA against a H9 Sa, the H9 one will get off I think two more volleys more then the H0..but then again, who ever puts there SA to H9???

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"I maintain none the less that Yin-Yang Dualism can be overcome. With sufficent enlightment, we can give substance to any distinction: Mind without body, north without south, pleasure without pain. Renember, enlightment is a function of will power, not of physical strength."- Shang-ji Yang, essays on mind and matter.

[Tac]

err.. higher honour archers do hit more than lower honour ones. Their accuracy is improved.

Put H0 archers vs YS and they may kill 10 men out of 100 before the YS get into range (in flat terrain) to make the archers skirmish.

Put H4 archers, and the YS will get murdered, losing 70 or more men before getting into range.

If that isnt accuracy, then they sure as heck get some kind of bonus. Maybe their arrows penetrate more or something, dunno.

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

There is no difference in reloadtime, what COULD happen though is that low honor ones hesitate after some 10 rounds whether they should fire more or run, or what also happens, the unit falls back a bit after a hit.

Yuuki and I have tested missiles many times, there is no difference in shooting power between a H0 and a H9 lsam. Also test (not sure if those have been done thouroughly) show no difference in either firepower, accuracy or reload between H9 and H0 muskets.

As we've tweaked a lot on Projectiles.txt, we can tell you that changing accuracy with 0.1 makes a lot of difference.

Tac san, first off there's quite a difference in how units behave in on- and offline battles. First off, test using AI units are far from reliable. Second there's quite some statistic fluctuation: if you want to test missiles (or any combat) you have to run multiple tests.

You didn't say what honor the YS were, I assume H2 in both cases. To make the AI H2 YS attack a H0 (!) Lsam on Ironing Board (together with Green the flatest map around), you have to make the AI attacker. Thus you can't see the weather (which might have an influence on how archers fire, I'm not sure about that anymore either, firearms do worse in rain).

When the YS is the attacker it charges the H0 lsam without resting (as the lsam has 0 combatpoints and the YS 4, the AI KNOWS that he's superior in HTH).
When you use a H4 Lsam, the Lsam has 4 combatpoints too, the lsam even has 2 more moralepoints. The AI isn't assured of a win anymore, and he hesitates to attack. What happens is that he charges, and stops for a while, inside lsam range. And yes the lsam has more time for another volley then.

In the brief offline test I did kills were 13 for H0 15 for H4. But again you should test these things online or on a lan using identical conditions (weather, formation distances, volleys etc).

The only bonus missile units get is the same as a hcav or wm gets: morale, attack (melee) defense, charge and armor (armor only helps vs missiles it does nothing vs a sword). This breaks the rock paper scissor.

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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[Puzz3D]

I just ran this test on LAN: Flat map, fine day, 3 H0 SA and 3 H9 SA in 3 rows vs 6 H2 YS in 10x6 deep block, separation is 2 tiles (range 4000), SA have 10 arrows each.

H0 SA = 18 kills
H0 SA = 17 kills
H0 SA = 24 kills
average = 19.7

H9 SA = 28 kills
H9 SA = 19 kills
H9 SA = 25 kills
average = 24.0

The statistical error for a normal distribution (square root of N divided by N)is plus or minus 2.6. 95% of all results will fall within twice that range. There are not enough events in this test to say for sure that the H9 SA is better. The H9 SA at 3162 koku might be a little better in shooting ability than the H0 SA at 153 koku. By extrapolation, the H9 SA would be getting 11 more kills than the H0 SA with the full 28 arrows. BTW, all units fired at the same rate.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[TosaInu]

Konnichiwa,

Thanks for testing this again Yuuki. 4 more kills for 3,000 koku. At the same time the H9 Lsam gained 9 combatpoints (from 0 to 9) and gained 18 moralepoints. So instead of significantly (if at all) improving the archer, you improve qualities you actually don't need in an archer (or which they couldn't have).

A H0 yariashi has -2 normal combatpoints vs any unit, his 8 points yari vs cav bonus makes him still useful against cavalry. The -2 normal combat, worthless against nods.

A H7 W2 A2 YA has 9 normal combatpoints. You can clearly see that the power shifted from more than 100% yari vs cav bonus to less than 50%. To illustrate this a bit more: H7 A2 W2 YA costs 790 koku (9 points), H4 W2 Nod costs 876 koku (also 9 points). Where's the rock paper scissor now?

What would be better to rescue hostages, the worst SAS team or the best bombsquad?
Who would you like to detonate the 1,000 lbs WW11 bomb in your backyard? Seals?

While I can agree that a well trained YA should be more dangerous to a nod than a low honor one, he shouldn't be able to destroy the nod so easily. The YA is ment to stop cav, to mob up, provide body to an army.
When properly trained he'ld have better confidence in his skills, would operate faster, would master the techniques to stop charging horses, but he would still not be suited to kill a nod in 1 vs 1.

If we stick to the current system of +1 combatpoint for every honorupgrade, than at least 75% of it should go to the yari vs cav bonus and only 0.25 to the normal combat (this is also arbitrarily and simplified).

The difference in ranged kills as displayed should be of an H0 and (about) H2 Lsam, they shouldn't become (much) stronger in hth).

Power of cav lies in charge, speed and manoeuvrability. Parameters used in the stats. Make them upgradable, a mounted knight isn't just a warrior elevated above the ground, it's a trained man and horse. Better training means that the knight/horse combo can turn faster, make better use of momentum {without falling out of the sadle ;-)}.

A naginata/halbert is an anti cav weapon too, while the long pike is good to block charges, the halbert is an efficient close combat weapon vs mounted warriors and or the horse.

To keep the rock paper scissor we should either skip the entire upgradesystem (I wouldn't vote for that), or make it more diverse.

As online play reveils errors quicker/are more appearant there, it's important that every stat is customisable by the players themselves, and that any stat can be played any time (like custom maps can be hosted and played as long you have it. Even better would be an autosend as seen with games like UT, RA, OF). To protect unaware newbies you could list online games using custom stats with YELLOW/BLACK CAPITALS. It's up to the players to decide wether they fight games with AK47 equiped gununits. To stop irregularities, a filecheck before the game will be played is required.

Allow me to raise another issue: ladders. Wouldn't it be great to have your own laddersystem? At this moment results of comp games are sent to the EA server and processed there (I guess the same logfile as copied into your logfolder). I'm sure the ladder processes them fully automated. A community of fans could agree how the game should be played, make/tweak stats for it, enter the url of the server in those stats, and any comp game played with those stats will cause a logfile to be sent to the fanserver (I don't represent the Org Staff right now!).



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Ja mata
Toda MizuTosaInu
Daimyo Takiyama Shi

http://www.takiyama.cjb.net

[Puzz3D]

If the cost of upgrades was fixed regardless of unit type, then low cost units could never become more powerfull than high cost units because I could upgrade my WM just as many times as you upgraded your YA.

Even if the upgrades were changed to a fixed cost, there is still a problem as TosaInu points out. All of the situational combat bonuses are fixed in size. Allowing a relatively large 15 point increase in the attack/defend combat stat with the honor/weapon/armor upgrade system can swamp out the effect of these bonuses. I've come to believe that the 0 to 9 range on honor is too great for the online game. Magyar is using a ceiling of H5 in his online campaign, and I think that's a very resonable thing to do. Can you actually train anything higher than an H5 unit in the single player campaign?

The WE/MI is balanced at 7000 koku. You stand on shifting sands as you increase or decrease the koku amount. My 8000 koku army isn't competetive at 10000 koku. At 1500 koku, everything I know is wrong. I guess it's like having a whole bunch of different games in one.

MizuYuuki ~~~
Clan Takiyama ~~~

[Gothmog]

In single player, there is no way to train anything with base honor higher than 3.

With general's bonus, 5 is usually what you see on those "elite" soldiers, 6 is the reasonable ceiling in single player campaign. (You see more on those hatamoto, but that doesn't count and they don't get updates either).