Ballistas versus elephants... Won't kill

[Oaty]

Well first of all I know I posted in another thread they will kill elephants but apparently it does'nt work very well. And the only reason I mentioned that they will kill elephantsis because a dev said they are great for killing the elephants.

I was just messing around last night and decided to give the comp 20 repeating ballistas and me 1 general so I could watch the caption camera of my general being impaled....... does'nt work either the bolt moves to fast or is'nt showing up in the caption.

First of all not a single mod running
Anyways I then went on to the comp 20 repeaters and 4 units of elephants. After 5 minutes 1 dead elephant and 4 units running amok. and I was just standing still taking a hammering. Well I figured repeaters were'nt as strong as plain ballistas. So 20 ballistas and 4 elephants, same deal. Armoured elephants can ignore the ballistas, where as the plain ones do suffer some casualties but only 2-4 a unit while I'm just standing there.

Just to see how the comp does with the elephants I give the 3 armoured war elephants and 1 plain against my 20 ballistas, they make it to my front line without a death and in every battle I lost and they either had 1 dead or none. That is just plain wrong 40 ballistas firing at 96 elephants should wreak havoc and have them routing or running amok before they even touch my frontlines with plenty of casualties.

[Kraxis]

Hm... that is odd... But perhaps the ballistas don't have the same property as the artillery in MTW (it was clearly visible how many hitpoints they could deplete in one shot). So a Ballista might only take away a single hitpoint each time, and that will make it take some time.

[Red Harvest]

The repeating ballistas do seem to suck vs. elephants, even my elephants with half as many hit points, and half as much armour (5 and 5, vs 10 and 10 for forest elephants). So that is an elephant with 1/4 the level of total missile defense of the "vanilla." I lined up 10 repeaters and could not kill a single one of the pachys before they reached my line. I did score some hits visually, but no kills. The repeater gets an attack of "only" 33 vs. the regular ballista's 53. Its AP should cut the effective armour in half. I suspect that a single repeater's hit is not enough to kill even my very weakened beast. So you have to score at least two hits on the same animal. So if you have a X% chance of scoring a hit, then you have to wait for the X% again on the 2nd hit on the same beast, etc. For a unit of twelve elephants it will take awhile to get two successive hits in on one beast.

The regular ballistae do kill, although probably not as rapidly as one would anticipate. My first or 2nd volley with massed ballistas usually kills one of the beasts.

I'm not sure how the chance of an elephant kill is scored, but the high hit points seem to foul it up immensely for most projectiles. I think it is just another manisfestation of high hit points making projectile units nearly impotent.

Vs. the AI with ballista it of course used flaming projectiles. These made the animals run amok somewhat easier.

[Sam Adams]

what about scorpions?

[Mr Frost]

what about scorpions?

I imagine Balistas would kill those just fine

I mentioned this problem quite a long while ago in other threads , all seige bolt weapons have the same problem which appears to be simply : they don't shoot at the huge rampaging beasts but rather the tiny little men sitting on them .
The issue becomes obvious at point-blank range as almost all shafts fly right over the top of the beasts in a very high angle .

I believe C/A stated the mounts don't actually have a used armour stat , but rather the armour of the rider is the only one taking into consideration by the code {that's why Katatank horses stats don't show horse high armour numbers} , and this might be somehow influencing the code that handles missiles to only target riders .

It's as good a theory as any

[Mr Frost]

The Fix

Just got an idea , tested it and Ballistas now one shot Dumbos !

The file is descr_projectile_new.txt

The stat to change is highlighted in red :

projectile ballista

effect large_arrow_trail_set
end_effect large_arrow_explode_set
damage 24
damage_to_troops 5
radius 0
min_angle -30
max_angle 70
velocity 60
;bounce 0.5 0.6 0.5 0.4
display aimed particle_trail invert_model_z
model data/models_missile/missile_ballista_bolt_high.CAS, 40.0
model data/models_missile/missile_ballista_bolt_med.CAS, 80.0
model data/models_missile/missile_ballista_bolt_low.CAS, max



I changed the Damage_to_troops stat to 50 and one shot kills result . Still not as many hits as I might think realistic {bloody big targets} , but good enough

The actual number can be played with by trial and error . Shouldn't matter Vs infantry and normal cavalry etc given the bolts typically blow right through a whole unit already {I've seen vanilla ballistas punch out 5 Silver Sheild pike from their unit at a time} and Vs buildings have their own separate stat .
I'm gonna have a drink and a smoke now to celebrate .



You may now worship me

[Blitz]

LOL

[Kraxis]

Ah, so part of the problem was indeed a lack of hitpoint depletion.

[Red Harvest]

That is very interesting. It makes me wonder what that stat is doing in comparison to the stat_pri in the units file. It looks like an over ride or multiplier of some sort. Multiplier fits, because the higher attack of the base ballista seemed to do a better job than the repeater in my tests. If it was an over ride, then they kill rates should be the same for each.

I also concur with the assessment that the ballistas target the riders. I think the same is happening with archers, etc. And the riders don't seem to have an independent hitbox. Otherwise you would see a lot of elephants wandering about with dead mahouts or dead/missing archers. I never seem to lose archers from the backs of my elephants despite a hail of missile fire.

However, the armour stat is definitely being pulled from the elephant, not the rider. I've tweaked the elephant armour and can see the difference.

[Kraxis]

I never seem to lose archers from the backs of my elephants despite a hail of missile fire.

I have seen them get hurled from the tower when the elephants panics.

[Wishazu]

[QUOTE=Mr Frost]The Fix

Just got an idea , tested it and Ballistas now one shot Dumbos !

The file is descr_projectile_new.txt

so if i cjanged this stat would that also affect multiplayer? would i have to change the stat back to its original value before playing online to avoid "cheating"?

[Oaty]

@ WISHAZU

You do'nt have to do a thing when you go online as the game overwrites all files, Of course when you go back to single player you need to throw the modification back in.

Thanks Mr. Frost will have to throw in that stat as ballistas should have a high kill rate against paccy's.

[Wishazu]

cheers for clearing that up for me