Quote Originally Posted by Husar
I think the issue here is that when the unit is under fire, they will sooner or later lose parts of their third rank and that messes up their rotation cycle because they cannot properly rotate a full rank anymore. Haven't tried with more than three ranks yet but the bug before was that they wouldn't fire anymore at all, now they just fire less often which seems normal considering that they are missing some men who would be able to fire in the gaps. The remaining musketeers simply won't reload faster so I guess they rotate until the entire frontline has loaded muskets and then fire a volley. If you don't like it, put them on skirmish which ends the rotation completely, they will now kneel to reload and then fire again, but not in volleys(you can imagine the men from the rear give their muskets to them men from the front and play reloaders, maybe it's even meant this way).
Gruessen Sie Herr Husar

I only tend to use gunpowder units in two ranks, as they don't suffer from depth/rank penalties and hence kill rates improve. There doesn't seem to be much sense to the way they operate when under fire anyway, if the status given in the mouseover and their animations are evidence and accurate. When functioning normally and not taking hits, they'll fire and rotate as intended. Once under fire, they'll seemingly randomly switch between reforming, reloading, and idle and very rarely get a shot off. Skirmish and fire at will don't seem to make any differences in this. /shrug