Wondering about projectiles

[Alpedar]

I was surprised that my bombards and even culverin (I get first time to them) could not hit enemy army (not unit, they fired themselves dry killing around 30 men each).

So I looked into descr_projectile.txt. Did not found answer there (I found some accuracy there, but what it means?)

And i'm wondering, whether bouncing works for cannons (would be great, but everyone has commented out bouncing or min&low tresholds 0.01).

And why cannon_shot has area 12 (exploding has area 15) where culverin has 2/15 and basilisk 8/18. Is it bug or it has some reason?

[FactionHeir]

Hiya.
This is probably better off in the modding questions forum. Hopefully a moderator will move it there.

As for your question, accuracy vs units basically means how accurate a projectile is when fired against a unit, which means soldiers and siege equipment.
Note that this accuracy is displayed as a chance of drift per movement unit rather than hit percentage, so 0.05 means there is a 5% chance that over a given distance unit a projectile will go off target and the amount it goes off target by. So the smaller the accuracy (closer to 0) the more accurate it is overall. However, more accurate arrow projectiles often are worse against units performing the cantabrian circle.

As for bounce, many artillery projectiles do bounce, but only if you use the plain rounds, not the flaming or explosive ones.

Regarding area, this is not actually the area of effect. The area of effect is defined by radius. The higher the radius, the larger the impact and killzone. At too high a radius however, the firing unit will kill itself or its mates rather than the intended target (imagine a huge ball with a given radius emerging from the shot and anything strafing it is hit)

[CannonBall]

Regarding area, this is not actually the area of effect. The area of effect is defined by radius. The higher the radius, the larger the impact and killzone. At too high a radius however, the firing unit will kill itself or its mates rather than the intended target (imagine a huge ball with a given radius emerging from the shot and anything strafing it is hit)[/QUOTE]

You're wrong on this, I've found not to touch the radius or you'll kill your own loaders, in order to see a difference in the area, you have to change the area # to 100 or higher, I've modded the explosive area to 240 and that will take out 1/3 to 1/2 of unit if it is tightly packed in sqr formation and if it hits at all.

This is what I did in order to make cannons fun (for me that is) and worthwhile to have on battlefield, and this is to offset the relatively few shots cannons can make before enemy rushes your cannons, and inaccuracy of projectiles as enemy units move on battlefield:

left the accuracy unchanged
changed area to 240
changed # cannons to 4

even w/ these changes the effects are not a significant compared to seige situations where units stand still for a clean shot.

[FactionHeir]

Since you have not touched the radius, how can you be sure that I am wrong?

Changing radius certainly works wonders for making artillery more effective. As long as you keep it below 0.6 (you can go up to 1.0 for monster bombard though), you won't be killing your own loaders frequently and inflict a relatively large area of kill on the target.

It is of course good to know that changing area does have some kind of effect, albeit a very negligible one (since 240 is about 100x the base area of most artillery projectiles)

[Alpedar]

1) Can artilery in vanila M2TW be used efectively in non-siege battle on flat terrain (so no specialy advantageous terrain)?
2) If not, how best to mod it to make it efective but not too good.
3) What mods already does it?

[FactionHeir]

I just tested out the area vs radius theory and this is what I found:

Area increases the area of effect of the projectile when it hits the ground, and throws enemies that are in that area into the air or back a bit. All of those unless directly hit by the projectile survive however and stand up again.
What this basically means is that area is nice for show and to possibly slow the enemy down a bit and break their formation, but increasing it will not result in more kills even though you see more flying soldiers if those are at the exploding zone.

Radius on the other hand will increase the killzone of the projectile proper, so anything hit by the projectile proper will be killed. It does not really increase the explosive zone much (only a bit) but anything within the radius zone can fly or be thrown back and those that area stay dead and do not stand up again. However, radius has its limits, so at too high a radius, you will kill your one person in your crew when shooting too, but the impact will be greater resulting in more kill.

Conclusion is that radius results in more kill up until a certain level (usually 0.6/0.7 for cannons except monster bombard) while area results in larger explosive zone but without any effect on kill.


As for your questions, artillery can indeed be useful on flat terrain (which is where I run my tests and balancing). All you need to do is adjust the radius properly and the projectile accuracy. So yes, it requires modding.
As for which mod already does so, I'm not sure, but my own mod works fine in that regard in my opinion. Its not posted anywhere though so if you want it, you'll have to give me your email address.