Question about projectiles

[Puzz3D]

And I'd say improving accuracy while reducing lethality would just make it more difficult to balance. In the end its about overall fire effect (number of kills from x number of arrows) Increasing accuracy doesnt really have any special effect in the game except producing more hits. I dont recall seeing any noticable difference against say loose ordered or moving targets.

No, but higher accuracy would increase the effectiveness against targets the arrow could penetrate while not against targets it couldn't penetrate. It would also make longer range shooting more effective, but might increase short range effectiveness too much. In STW/MI v1.02, there is no lethality parameter. We only had accuracy and power (armor penetration) parameters. That's a good observation about the increased difficulty of balancing, and we never did get this unit, Mongol Light Cavalry, properly balanced in STW/MI v1.02. Even simply giving a unit longer range introduces a difficult balancing problem. Since Mongol Light Cavalry was the fastest cav unit, there was no way to counter it and we ended up having to make the effectiveness of their bow very weak especially since we had given them so much ammo. That's why in Samurai Wars all ranged units have the same open fire range. It's a playbalance consideration.

Of course bow stats could be used to reflect archers of different skill and strength but apart from that one has to remember that most things comes at a cost: composite bows with light arrows have further range but long range shooting is pretty inaccurate and have less energy for damage and penetration. So I would say you have to increase the AP multiplier as lighter arrows dont penetrate armour as well as heavy arrows at max range. And even a reduction of lethality might be in order too for the same reason.

That's a problem with the ballistic model in Total War; projectiles do not loose energy because drag isn't modelled, and inertia isn't modelled either so it doesn't help to give a projectile higher velocity except that it's more likely to hit a moving target. This forces you to make projectiles less effective at long range than they should be so that they don't become overly effective at short range.

If one wants one bow to be better then its simpler just to increase lethality as you can control precisely how much better the bow/archers is supposed to be.

Yes that's true. It has a linear effect on kill rate independent of distance. It's much harder to predict the effect of a change in accuracy.

[CBR]

In STW/MI v1.02, there is no lethality parameter. We only had accuracy and power (armor penetration) parameters.

Ah yes I forgot about the lack of a lethality stat in STW.


CBR