Missle Fire Rate:

[Rhedd]

It's not inappropriate. Catapults and trebuchets are huge wooden machines in which you have to add the potential energy by hand.
For cannons, the potential energy is prepackaged in the gun powder. Also, the barrel is at a convenient height for reloading.

Sounds logical, but that's certainly not the fact of the matter.

Honestly, I've always wondered why some medieval cannons could only achieve fire rates of like, four shots per hour, but it's still true.

Heck, some that would be classified as "great bombards" in the game were reported to fire three or four times a day.

Sure, it takes a good long time to crank down a trebuchet and load it, but oddly enough, not nearly as long as it takes to load a medieval cannon.

They sure weren't dropping a shell in the breach and firing away, like you see in WWII footage!

Oh, and Kobal, I think the "reloading" delay with javelins comes from them having to pull yet another spear out of their bums, as if by magic. That's gotta take some time. ^_^

[SadCat]

Cannon 20
Culverin 20
Basilisk 20
Monster Bombard 26
Mortar 23
Serpentine 21.5

I thought Serpentine was small caliber cannon, should it not reload faster? SadCat

[Didz]

Honestly, I've always wondered why some medieval cannons could only achieve fire rates of like, four shots per hour, but it's still true.

Heck, some that would be classified as "great bombards" in the game were reported to fire three or four times a day.

Sure, it takes a good long time to crank down a trebuchet and load it, but oddly enough, not nearly as long as it takes to load a medieval cannon.

You need to be a bit careful about these sort of figures.

The fact is that it can't possibility take that long and so we need to look elsewhere for an explanation. My guess is that the figures your quoting are based upon shots fired during a seige, which means that the first important factor is that there was no real pressure to maintain a high rate of fire in the first place. The second possible factor is that the seige guns were being paced to maintain a steady rate of fire which conformed to the speed at which their local ammunition supply could be replenished.

For example: if you have enough powder and shot to fire 30 rounds and your next powder train is not due for a week you can only fire 4 rounds a day without running out of ammunition.

I suspect in truth that trebuchet were similarly constrained, but they obviously had a wider range of potential missiles.

Its worth noting that black powder was an extremely rare commodity over the period depeicted in MTW2. Even in later periods there were problems producing and acquiring enough. In London for example there was a city ordinance banning anyone who kept stables or pigeon lofts from clearing the floors because animal and avian dung was a valuable source of saltpetre and a vital supplement to the supplies being purchased from India. 'Saltpetre' men would periodically call at your stable or pigeon loft and carefully scrape off the top layer of dung soaked earth for processing into powder. That was still going on as late as 1656.

[econ21]

Good work, Miracle. I'm quoting you in the FAQ.

I assume the 11/22 entry for bows refers to normal/flaming ammo?

[Bulawayo]

Is Jezail the rifle of those Moorish camel gunners?

[Flavius Merobaudes]

So why did medieval cannons fire at such a slow rate?

To say they fired 4 rounds a day because they took so long to reload is obviously ridiculous. I'd grant a monster bombard 10 minutes to reload. If its barrel has to cool down, you could shorten time by cooling down with water. This would damage the metal if done very often, so let's say we wait. Anyway it would be ready to fire after 30 minutes.

The reason for the low RoF must be looked for in the task cannons had in renaissance battles:
With the exception of serpentines and the like, cannons were used to bombard enemy strongpoints and demoralize the defenders. They were not intended to inflict many casualties by themselves but they should work out a small advantage that could be exploited by other troops. So although actions on the battlefield are dominated by tactics the cannon's task was mainly strategic such as: blow up the enemy ammo depot, take down that watchtower, destroy that ballista and the like.

One must bear in mind that cannons and their ammo were very expensive. Generals were more willing to sacrifice some peasants than that precious ammo. Cannons were only fired when an opportunity occurred or when "it was worth it". Furthermore, these large old cannons like bombards and basilisks had restricted mobility. They were only used when it was safe, for example in sieges.

So late medieval use of cannons is very different from later eras like the napoleonic wars.

[Didz]

So why did medieval cannons fire at such a slow rate?

I thought I just suggested the answer to that in my last post.

As you say the 4 rounds a day is obviously ridiculous and is probably based upon the actual shots fired in a day during a specific seige somewhere.

Even during the Napoleonic wars guns were not fired as rapidly as they could be fired continuously. Firstly to do so would cause the barrels to overheat, secondly it would completely knacker the gunners, and thirdly they would run out of ammunition before the battle had hardly started. Like their medieval forebears they paced themselves and varied their rate of fire according to the situation they were in.

When under extreme pressure they were able to increase their rate of fire significantly for what they called 'a mad minute' where shot or cannister was shovelled into the gun and fired at an extremely rapid rate without relaying the gun or even sighting. However, they could only keep that up for very short periods and then took quite a while to recover.

[Flavius Merobaudes]

Sorry Didz! It must be the occasional neglect I get when not sleeping enough and playing all night. That's why I kinda over-read your post.

Nevertheless, medieval and napoleonic artillery strategy differed quite a lot. In the timespan we're talking about, cannons were fielded as single pieces of equipment. A considerable army had perhaps 10 cannons hardly deserving to be called artillery.

Napoleonic armies fielded artillery in large numbers, from 50 up to 200 or even more - forming huge batteries with devastating firepower. In many battles these batteries were use to support your own attack or disrupt the enemies advancing forces. They were intended to inflict massive casualties, not just gain some marginal advantage that had to be exploited.

[Kobal2fr]

More on topic, it IS rather weird that serpentines actually fire slower than all other cannons when they're supposed to be anti-infantry pieces and even their flavour text insists that they could be fired faster...
Any idea if there's a variable somewhere that controls this ? A way to speed up the loaders' animations maybe ?

[Didz]

Nevertheless, medieval and napoleonic artillery strategy differed quite a lot. In the timespan we're talking about, cannons were fielded as single pieces of equipment. A considerable army had perhaps 10 cannons hardly deserving to be called artillery.

Agreed but that isn't the point being discussed. We were talking about rate of fire, and given the nature of the beast a cannon is a cannon and the rate it could have been loaded and fired would not have varied significantly over the period. Certainly, not to the tune of 6 hours difference. Likewise people don't change that much either, and nor does the issue of logistic's, the former would have got just a tired in 1315 as they did in 1815 and the latter were just just as much of a headache to manage.

My point being that actual rates of fire are unlikely to match potential rates of fire and so reading that a specific seige gun only fired four times a day at a specific seige probably bears no relationship to how fast it could have been fired had the circumstances required it.

[John_Longarrow]

The slow rate of fire in siege for medieval cannon had to do with several factors besides how quickly you could pour powder and shot down the barrel.

First was the powder itself. Often this was mixed on site just before use. Very seldom was it transported as "Powder" due to the difficulties of keeping it dry and preventing it from separating. Both would cause it to be useless and require you to then unload the gun before use. Due to its expense and short "Shelf life", the poor fellow who's lot in life was to make this stuff (and risk blowing himself up in the process) often didn't start mixing up a batch until after the gun had fired.

Second is the problem of recoil. Medieval guns didn't have a recoil system, so they tended to move themselves when fired. This would require the gunner to relay the piece after each shot, a process that could take a minute or more for a smaller piece. To be effective the gun had to hit the same spot over and over again, so being accurate was much more important that being fast.

Third was the nature of siege warfare. If I were to fire my guns as quickly as possible at one spot on the walls, the enemy would have a good idea when and where I'd be coming through. If I lob a shell every hour at the same spot, the enemy tends to get lax in their guard. This is human nature. You can only stay on a high degree of alert for a limited time before you get tired, and much less efficient. This is the reason that guards should be rotated every two hours.

Fourth is morale. Reducing enemy morale takes days. As such a slow, continuous bombardment works better than a quick attack. During the time they didn't have the ability to truely mass fire the way we can today, so a quick "Shock" bombardment wasn't an option.

[Doug-Thompson]

Outstanding stuff.

Yes, a jezail is the Moorish camel gunner's musket, though it's not a rifle.