Missile fire effectiveness question

[Doug-Thompson]

You might want to be careful about categorizing people so broadly; there is a difference between people on a rant about how the game sux and those who point out where and how the game can be improved.

You're right. I remember complaining of being categorized myself a few times. Sorry for the broad brush.

[dopp]

No problem.

I've noticed several complaints about the very high fire arcs of M2TW not quite matching the firing animations, especially for crossbows and such. I think that it's necessary to prevent a repeat of the RTW friendly fire bug.

I thought missile units stopped firing on their own when the enemy routed. I have relatively few friendly fire incidents these days, but then I use gunners mostly.

[Ars Moriendi]

@Katank & Doug-Thompson :
thanks for the tips, guys. I always felt I'm a little "raw" when it comes to using my archers, just letting them fire at whatever's in front of them then pulling them back behind the line and forgetting they exist. Discussions like this make me appreciate the finer points in the M2TW battle engine.

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@the_foz_4 :
Your theory is probably true when it comes to missiles, but I doubt, however, that frame-by-frame collision detection computations come into play in hand-to-hand combat. They're necessary in missile fights because you cannot know in advance if the arrow trajectory will connect to its predicted impact point (target moves, obstacle gets in the way, etc.). But in h2h, the attacker and defender are connected already, all you need to do is roll the results based on att/def ratings and display the animations accordingly.
About the bugged units : it is my impression that the animations themselves are okay, it's the AI triggering the attack that is queer. The effectiveness of units is of course lower if the animations take more time (delaying the next roll / combat round).
But I'm straying off-topic here, let's get back to archers :).

[katank]

You are quite welcome. Don't be afraid to pitch archers into melee. Due to the nerfing of spearmen, peasant archers can actually beat spear militia in a melee. Certainly don't be afraid to use them in a flanking capacity. Fire arrows are also darn useful.

I believe someone did a test with 2h units and concluded that triggers against cav are removed. DEKs would not attack cavalry nearby, thus not scoring any kills. However, once an enemy spear unit was mixed into the enemy cav, the DEKs went into action and attacked, killing cav along with spears in their frenzy. Hence, this also supports the idea that physics and collision detection comes into play, not merely rolls. After all, the spears were the intended target, not the cav.

[dopp]

You can see this when a unit upslope tries to swing at a unit downslope and constantly misses.

[Doug-Thompson]

Top, so I can find it when I have time to make the post I want to make.

[Doug-Thompson]

Getting some raking or crossfire makes all the difference in infantry battles, not angles and such.

I spent a whole evening refighting the same fight between three armored sargents vs. 3 Saracen infantry, with three peasant archer units on each side. Green fields, average difficulty.

I won all the battles except the ones where I tried something truly goofy. However, he only ones I won crushingly — causing 30 percent more casualties (excluding prisoners) than I suffered — where ones where some crossfire or raking fire was acheived.

Even in defense, the only way to win decisively was to push out a "bulge," get around a flank or draw the other guy into a situation where he had arrows ripping down his line or where he had a unit that was put under fire from more than one direction.