Gnish! Gnash! Gni!

[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?

[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...

[Puzz3D]

make people use h0 muskets.

If players aren't using H0 muskets, they are going to be at a disadvantage in the melee units against someone who does. Take all of your ranged units at H0 and nurse them so that you can have the maximum power in the melee units.

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.

The v1.03 is available, but it never did replace v1.02 as the STW/MI standard. It has slightly weaker guns with longer reload and less melee, longer combat resolution, higher morale monks and cav with more of its power shifted to the charge value. It's not ideal. I'd rather play something closer to original STW.

It is possible to set up STW/MI with a stat that's the same as original STW. If you didn't use weapon and armor upgrades and played at 5000 or 6000 koku, it would play the same as original STW except the maps can be larger and the monks cost is raised from 500 to 550 koku, the arq from 100 to 150? koku and the musket from 175 to 250 koku. I think converting the arq to the musket, and the musket to musket 1.5x would work ok. We did that in STWmod for MTW/VI. You also might consider lowering the ammo of the musket from the original 40 down to 20 or even 15 so that conservation of ammo becomes a factor.

The naginata cav, battlefield ninja and kensai could be eliminated or an attempt made to integrate them into the Sengoku units. I haven't been fully sucessful in doing that with the battlefield ninja and kensai in STWmod for MTW/VI, but the naginata cav is no problem.

The thing is STW/MI v1.02 is going to seem fine for returning players for a while, but eventually the problems with it that caused players to quit will become apparent. There was a mass exodus of players when the game moved from STW to STW/MI, and v1.02 didn't bring them back.