Back rank archers firing as in RTW.... (merged thread)

[Duke John]

Penalties for archers beyond the first few ranks is good, but are you still able to let a whole unit of 20 ranks fire?

And from the Demo impressions thread:
If a missile unit is on guard and in melee, are you still able to fire missiles? Or is the missile unit forced to melee?

IceTorque:
A small number of the back row will fire, the rest stand their with their hammers out and only go into their combat animations when struck.

Does that mean that when a missile unit is in 20 ranks that the back rows can still fire while the front get into their combat animations?
This is a major problem in NTW2 where people abuse this exploit to have deep columns on guard firing away and only the front rank being engaged in combat.

[IceTorque]

Does that mean that when a missile unit is in 20 ranks that the back rows can still fire while the front get into their combat animations?

Brief test, In pavia I ordered the musketeers to engage in melee with some french pikemen, then ordered them to fire on same pikemen. For the most part they did'nt react and stayed in their melee animation. Some units in the back rows briefly switched to their guns before switching back to swords. Unit numbers are small and combat don't last too long, but they did'nt even look like getting a shot off. I think that with the first rank being the only rank that can fire this won't be an issue/exploit.

I ran the archer test again, this time ordering them to fire on the unit they were engaged in melee with and NOT a distant target. The entire unit very quickly switched to bows and fired one volley at a distant target, then quickly returned to melee. With the penalty being very quick death for most of the missile unit. Definately not a good thing to do and is definately not something that could be described as an exploit.

[Puzz3D]

I think the proper way to reduce the effectiveness of archers or other high trajectory weapons when in deep formation or standing close behind another unit is to reduce the accuracy of the men whos view is obstructed rather than have some of the men not shoot. Obstructed view means the man can't see the enemy. Not shooting should happen when the trajectory gets so low that they will likely hit their own men or when they are on auto-fire and shooting into melee or when fatigue is so high that some men haven't reloaded. This is how STW/MTW worked.

[Orda Khan]

Spot on Puzz3D
The concern would then lie with the player, as to allowing less effective archer fire that will in turn empty their quivers

.......Orda

[Puzz3D]

The concern would then lie with the player, as to allowing less effective archer fire that will in turn empty their quivers.

That's what I was thinking as well. That reminds me of a change made to how ammo was distributed from STW to MTW. In STW, unused ammo was retrieved from the dead men in the unit by the living men in that unit. In MTW, unused ammo stayed with the dead man. In theory, the way STW handled it is more realistic, but it sometimes lead to very small units having a huge amount of ammo. They could be very effective if in a position to shoot without return fire hitting them which diminshed the disadvantage of the unit having lost most of its men. In Samurai Wars for MTW/VI, we compensated for this change by increasing the ammo for archers from 28 to 36 arrows per man. This actually makes an uncountered archer more dangerous in Samurai Wars than it was in STW, but it's also more costly to the unit to loose men. I think RTW/BI retained the per man allocation of ammo.