Gnish! Gnash! Gni!

[Krasturak]

*opens coffin*

*creeps out of coffin*

Gah!

Krast is back, lurking in the server (or nearby) from time to time.

Nice games with Cha and Betou, and maybe Krast eats more games!

Saw ghost of Yuuki in server, which was the Monster Event of the Week for Krast.

Anyone else around from the Old Days?

[Drisos]

Don't know what's meant with old days exactly... perhaps you mean Kansuke? but I guess you heard by long that he's playing ... hmmm AggonyDuck is also around...

[Puzz3D]

I've been going to STW foyer on Sundays at 19:00 GMT. Got a few battles played this past Sunday.

[Shaka_Khan]

I'm here.

[Krasturak]

Sadly, Saturday and Sunday are work days for me ... at least until May.

[Shaka_Khan]

Can you play today?

[Boromir Of Gondor]

Hi Krast,

I would consider myself from 'the old days'.

I can certainly remember the Krast in the foyer amongst the 90-100 others at the time.

I pop into the foyer again from time to time (not tonight though). Yet to raise a sword in anger though. Only Daveo was there yesterday but seemed to be AFK all the time

I got all excited about my first game for 3 years but no luck.

Anyway if you see 1Dread1 Boromir in the foyer then give me shout and I'll sherpen my sword!

Boro...

[Trajanus]

'Old Days' means the vintage shoggy days when there was no MTW or RTW.

We managed 100 people in the server almost continuously. I remember Krast and Boro (among countless other famous and honourable taishos)

[Boromir Of Gondor]

'Old Days' means the vintage shoggy days when there was no MTW or RTW.

We managed 100 people in the server almost continuously. I remember Krast and Boro (among countless other famous and honourable taishos)

Who were you again Trajanus?



I can't place you.


Boro...

[Trajanus]

Toda Nebuchadnezzar. NoFear Nebu

[Puzz3D]

'Old Days' means the vintage shoggy days when there was no MTW or RTW.

We managed 100 people in the server almost continuously. I remember Krast and Boro (among countless other famous and honourable taishos)

That was STW v1.12. It was before Mongol Invasion/Warlord Edition was released in May 2001 IIRC. After MI/WE, the numbers online average more like 45. You can still play STW v1.12 on Shambles server, but no one does. Running STW v1.12 under WinXP can be problematic.

To address that, Krypta, Mitch, CBR and I patterned STWmod for MTW/VI v2.01 after original STW v1.12. It's uses a graphic conversion for the units made by barocca. We started with the STW v1.12 stat, and made adjustments so that the units fight for about the same length of time as they did in STW. The movement speeds of the units are as they were in STW. We had this tested online by players like Amp, Magyar and Swoosh and about 10 other vets, and made adjustments to eliminate exploits or problems that they uncovered.

STWmod is played without unit limit rules and without upgrades. However, MTW/VI has a 20% tax on more than 4 of any one unit type. All unit types are useful. The guns are Portuguese teppo (muskets) and Japanese teppo (muskets 1.5x stonger). Neither gun fires in rain just as it was in STW v1.12, and there is periodic rain in most battles that stops the guns from shooting for a short time. The mod does keep the Naginata cav, battlefield ninja and kensai of MI, and there is a new 11 man hatamoto unit that can be used for the general.

[Krasturak]

Gah! Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...

*goes to work*

*comes home*

...uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuki! Gah!

[Puzz3D]

Well Krast, since you like to use guns you probably want to play STW/MI v1.02. Rules commonly use now only let you take 4 of any one unit type, but 4 muskets is plenty to devastate your opponent. Four 60 man muskets units firing unopposed in 3 ranks will take down at least 80 men in 60 seconds. They have enough ammo to volley 60 times. At 8 volleys a minute, you can shoot for about 8 minutes which will wipe out at least 66% of the enemy army. You'll have 75% of your army left not counting the spent guns, and your melee units will be stronger than the enemy melee units because guns are the cheapest units. Frontal charge into your 4 muskets is suicide, so the enemy must either withdraw out of range or make a fast flanking move with most of his units. Of course, the good old 2 on 1 can beat you if your ally doesn't help you.

The consequence of all this is that everyone takes 4 muskets. If you are good and hunt for the edge of the firing distance, you can get the jump in the shooting. A 30 second jump will allow you to come out of the shootout with about 120 gunners left. If we estimate your remaining ammo at 50% and nominal fatigue, you'll have 4 minutes of shooting with about 40 kills per minute. That will give you about 160 kills if the enemy doesn't charge which will be almost a 3 unit advantage in the otherwise equal unit strength melee. If the enemy charges immediately upon loosing the shootout, you'll still take down a fair number of enemies since kills are higher at shorter ranges, and more importantly you'll impose a -6 moral penalty on the targeted units which are also incuring fatigue as they charge.

If you are the defender on a hilly map, the attacker can just forget about winning if the players are otherwise evenly matched. The attacker will loose the shootout badly, and, if he takes all melee units, they won't compensate for 4 cheap muskets. The most he can get is one good melee unit for the cost of 4 muskets, and at least 60 men will be lost in the uphill charge effectively removing his melee advantage. He still has to fight uphill against units that get a combat advantage and morale boost from being on higher ground, and the muskets will still be shooting his units imposing the -6 morale on them.

STW/MI v1.02 is played at 10K so that the average morale is higher due to upgrades and the guns don't rout units as easily. However, since the melee morale penalties are of fixed magnitude, playing at 10k reduces the effectiveness of flanking which means taking hills is more difficult since outmaneuvering the defender with a single unit isn't as effective in routing the enemy army and that exposes the attacker's battleline to more volleys of fire from the guns. It's a moot point if the opponents are equal, but I think what it means is in order to win the attacker has to be relatively better than the defender than he had to be in STW v1.12 on the same map.

[Just A Girl]

IIRC the origional shogun manual "i have it here somewhere"
Said Muskets DID fire in rain. but arq's did not.

I seem to remember wondering why the book was lying to me.

So IMHO the fact that the muskets faild to shoot in the origional was atributable to a programming error that needed to be fixed.

[Just A Girl]

one more comment..
"no edit sorry"

If you are the defender on a hilly map, the attacker can just forget about winning if the players are otherwise evenly matched.

was that not true in real life?

[Krasturak]

Well Krast, since you like to use guns ... blah blah ... If we estimate your remaining ammo at 50% ... etc ... etc ...

This sort of analysis is why Krast has *always* admired Yuuki.

Desipte all this, there were people who could beat Krast's ten- or twelve-gun armies.

Not many, though. Heh.

[Trajanus]

LOL I remember the Wet-Gunnie-Wedgie. Was it not your most famous tactic Krast?

[Shaka_Khan]

We should put away the rules to allow more variety in the games.
It's too bad that we can't fight against the ashi, monk, naginata cav and nodachi rushes these days. Only people who have seen them know the fun in seeing them.

[Trajanus]

I did always enjoy defending against the Super-Ashi or Monk-Rush, but I think the rules we play by are beneficial to make the game fun for everyone. There was always problems when people used rush armies as unfair and bad sportsmanship, which led to many a confrontation in the foyer and later in forums.

[Puzz3D]

So IMHO the fact that the muskets faild to shoot in the origional was atributable to a programming error that needed to be fixed.

Yes it was a mistake in the stat, but I wouldn't say it needed to be fixed. The game played fine with that error. Fixing it so that muskets fire in rain is fine as well. The game would still play ok.

What wasn't fine was increasing the kills per volley by a factor of 3x in STW/MI v1.0. That was done by people at CA who didn't understand it would unbalance the game. Other problems were present in the stat as well which expose this lack of understanding. For instance, the naginata cav had the exact same stat as the warrior monk but was cheaper. The battlefield ninja had 100 ammo and ran too fast. Mongol heavy cav was a super unit. There was a hidden +5 morale added to all units. CA tried to fix the game with a v1.01 patch, but it only made some cost adjustments, and removed the hidden +5 morale which actually made the guns more of a problem.

CA allowed a community beta team to rebalance the stat. The mandate of the community was for this beta team to reduce the kills per volley of guns. The beta team failed in it's mandate because the gun stat finally selected did not reduce the kills per volley on the target unit at all. All it did was reduce the back kills which I've come to realize in itself hurts the gameplay. A lot of things were changed in v1.02, but the one thing that most players wanted changed wasn't.

The 4 max rule clearly indicates that there is something wrong with v1.02. When Krast talks about his 10 and 12 musket army and how he would sometimes loose, he's talking about original STW v1.12. No one complained about that army because it was beatable, and on top of that, if it rained, that army was completely useless.

The v1.02 was carefully balanced for 7k and no rules. The guns and the reduction of infantry movement rates are the big problems with that stat.

[Just A Girl]

well why dont we just reduce musket power in the stats?
would that not be ebough to reduce the morrale penalty?

I mean the people who get shot will still get a morrale penalty.
But less deaths per volley "or not?"

and also (becoming a bit of a stuck record here) make people use h0 muskets.

Would this not help the musket probs..

[Puzz3D]

well why dont we just reduce musket power in the stats?
would that not be ebough to reduce the morrale penalty?

I mean the people who get shot will still get a morrale penalty.
But less deaths per volley "or not?"

and also (becoming a bit of a stuck record here) make people use h0 muskets.

Would this not help the musket probs..

Yes, reduced kills per volley reduces the morale penalty. The total morale penalty from guns is - x - y - z where:
x = -6 morale from being targetted by a gun
y = -8 morale when the unit drops below 50%
z = temporary morale penalty proportional to the percentage of the unit lost in that combat cycle.

I think you could make the gameplay better by changing the gun stats, but that would mean playing a modded stat. If you are going to do that, you might as well put the infantry movement speeds back to their original values so that hammer and anvil infantry tactics would work better than they do in v1.02.

The muskets in original STW v1.12 cost 175 koku and got approximately 1.0 kills on a target YS unit at max range with a 20 gun volley. Reload time was 21 seconds, and ammo was 40. In STW/MI v1.02, the cost of muskets was raised to 250 koku. This means they should be stronger than original STW muskets, and in developing STWmod for MTW/VI, which admittedly has a somewhat more complex morale system, we found the system tolerated muskets of 1.5x the effectiveness of original STW v1.12 muskets at average morale levels close to what exist when STW is played at 5k koku or slightly higher. We made the Arquebusier equivalent to the original STW v1.12 muskets. Arqs were probably the least used unit in STW. I'd leave the ammo at 20 (musket) and 15 (arq), but have muskets fire in the rain. That could be used as a starting point if you really want to investigate this. You then have to run test battles online to verify the gameplay. Archers will become more useful. Since they can shoot uphill, they were preferred over guns in STW v1.12 when attacking uphill and their melee capability is better.

Other things to consider regarding guns are the range of the back kills and the defend value. Back kills may have had too much range in original STW v1.12, but they also might have too little range in STW/MI v1.02. If affects how far out in front of the army the guns have to be placed to skirmish which exposes them to cavalry attack. This is easily adjusted with one of the parameters in the projectiles.txt file.

The defend value of guns should be lowered if you want them to break faster when hit by cav. This was actually an oversight in v1.02. If they hold too long, then spears can come from greater distance to kill the cav, and, if infantry movement speeds are returned to their original values, the spears will move about 15% faster. You'll also have YA on the field which are quite fast.

[Just A Girl]

I think i see what CA were thinking.

Now in the most basic layman way of explaining what i see. i will say

Back kills kill to many people. and to compensate you haft to moove your men futher back.

Moving your men futher back leaves your muskets unprotected.
So they increase musket powere and fire speed to make muskets not get totaly out classed.

but then they had to slow down unit speeds so as the infantry would not arive to protect the muskets as quickly as they used to.

to me this means.
You simply cannot just reduce musket fire power and speed.
Without re-instating foot unit speed.


Becous weak powerd muskets + slow reload + slow mooving infantry forced to be far way = Muskets die fast to cav.

i believe that ca saw this problem as a Big picture and not just Muskets vs a single unit.

So i guess the best way to fix it all.
would be to reduce fire power and increase reload rate Both of which would be done in tandem with increasing infantry speed.

This should allow people to avoid the back kills.
Allow others to charge Muskets.
AND allow the defenders to get there infantry in to the battle before all of there muskets rout due to a cav rush tactic.

[Puzz3D]

CA didn't reduce the back kills or slow down the infantry. Those were changes made by the v1.02 community beta team. All CA did in STW/MI v1.0 was increase the power of guns from 4 to 16, and add +5 morale to every unit. I have no idea why they increased the power of guns so much. No one was asking for that. I think CA put in that hidden +5 morale boost because the guns were too strong. The +5 morale boost made every unit fight too long as though the morale feature was turned off. Then in STW/MI v1.01 they removed the +5 morale, increased the cost of muskets from 175 to 250 and increased the cost of monks from 500 to 550 which were all community requests. They also made cost adjustments for the Mongols. The right thing for the v1.02 beta team to do would have been to put the guns back to STW v1.12, change the no-dachi from a 6/1 back to the oriinal 5/2 melee stats, and try to do something with the naginata cav, battlefield ninja and kensai so that they fit in with the original units better. The Mongol units were a lost cause because CA had skewed the costs in v1.01 in an attempt to compensate for their extreme stats.

The guy who made the STW battle engine and balanced it didn't balance MI. He wasn't working for CA at that time. He came back and did MTW. STW/MI v1.02 was balanced by eight community players who couldn't agree on what to do. That's why it's messed up.

[Just A Girl]

is the +5 morale thing still there now?
or could we simply change muskets to 8 power and arqs to 12?
Without needing to increase unit speeds drastically?

Would that help prehaps...

[Krasturak]

LOL I remember the Wet-Gunnie-Wedgie. Was it not your most famous tactic Krast?

No, that's Vanya, who *stole* Krast's 'Gah!' and always gets Krast confused with himself.

[Krasturak]

Do we not still have the 1.03 stat set available, Yuuki?

As I recall you put a lot into that to 'correct' these issues.

[Papewaio]

Krasturak-sama

He Lives!

Gah, Faint.

[Orda Khan]

Do we not still have the 1.03 stat set available, Yuuki?

As I recall you put a lot into that to 'correct' these issues.

103 Mod still exists but people always seemed to stick with v1.02

........Orda

[Shin-GaiJin]

Hi Orda good to see you again mate!! Oops Im stealing the thread
*sneaks out the door*


ShinGaiJin