Reisman17 Posted July 6, 2014 Posted July 6, 2014 I am still noticing strange artillery behaviour where a artillery unit will end up advancing towards the enemies front. I can put a "hold" order but this does not seem to work . I can put them on a hill in the perfect firing position and next thing I know they are moving towards the enemy. I suspect this may have to do with selecting units (e.g if you select a target then the target falls back the artillery tries to follow it). I also suspect this is related to not detecting dangers around the unit. A fews things come to mind in fixing this. 1. Make sure the "hold" order means you hold until given another order or your morale breaks. 2. Make line of sights better for all units. For instance if I select a unit of artillery I want to see only those units that the artillery can see and fire upon. I should not be able to see an enemy if they are behind a hill and I have a unit flaking them that can see them (e.g. infantry), Those enemy and friendy units should all be grayed out when they cannot be seen. If you want to see all the enemy movements then you should have the general selected. All other times it should only show the selected units line of sight and no more (e.g. the cone that extends out should angle of fire). The nice thing about this system is it makes flanking manovoevers much more dangerous if you are not paying attention (e.g. you may miss a flanking manoever just like in real life - the unit may be too preoccupied with whats happening in front to notice flaking movoevers for instance. This would also give a good reason to select your general from time to time instead of only clicking on him to move him to a better location. This gives the general more purpose in my opinon. (just like in areal battle the general is very important). This should apply to all units (artillery, infantry, skirmishers and cavalry). 3. Make clearer when a unit have no target or what target is selected. I think it should be possible when you select a unit (any unit) that it should show what enemy unit it is targeting (e.g. a bullseye over the head of the unit being fired upon). It should also give a warning when it loses it target (e.g. target routs). Maybe something along the lines of that the friendly units flag flashes to signal that there is not current unit being engaged until a new enemy is aquired automatically (via AI) or selected manually. 4. Any infantry or artillery unit that is behind enemy lines should loose morale repeatedly to signify that they have no support and they are 'on their own'. This would also cause a certain amount of desertion (e.g. should loose men) again that would be dependent on how long the unit was behind enemy lines. It should start off very small but get steadily worse and worse. It the unit breaks it should be considers completely lost as most the men would disappear into the countryside to maybe reappear the next day (at greatly reduced strength). This should not apply to cavalry however as their purpose was quite often to raid the enemies lines. This should apply to enemy AI as well as us. 5. How about introducing an ability to bring in reinforcements at different times/ different parts of the map. This was from my old wargaming days (with 15mm figures). Reinforcements have a certain chance to appear at a certain point during the game. This would be dependent on several factors below :- a) You have a small chance that they appear at the beginning of the map (e.g. 5%) and the chance increases with each minute (e.g. 1 minute 10%, 2 minutes 15% etc...as an example only) until its certain they will appear (e.g. 100%) . This would give more suspense as you could not know for sure when the reinforcements will appear. Will you be able to hold out until they arrive or will you take a chance with an early push and hope for the best. I think this would be a great way to make the battle feel different each and every battle. This would apply to the AI's reinforcements as well so you may be able to push the enemy early and get win because their reinforcements did not show up in time (or at least too late to have an impact on the battle/ save the day). If the AI's reinforcements arrive before yours you may have to play a stalling action until your reinforcements arrive (which could be very challenging like some players are requesting ) You have the choice before the battle if you would like to do an flanking attack on the enemy army with your reinforcements. This will usually add additional time to when the reinforcements arrive (e.g -5% for every minute as an example) however for your reinforcements appearing on the enemies flanks may be enough to cause major problems for the enemy if you can hold out that long. It again gives some flexability and makes the battles more interesting. This of course would apply to the AI as well and would be dependent on the play style of the AI. 6. As stated in another post if a unit gets surrounded it should be destroyed / remove from that battle and maybe reappear the next battle at 25% or less strength to show that some of the men were able to escape the trap. This unit should also have extremely low morale unless the general spends some serious time with them (which would not make much sense with their lack of strength as well). Probably would only be good for guard duties at the rear of the lines. 7. Give generals more things to do. For instance the general should have the ability one time during the battle to do a "rally call" and all units within his radius that are routing he is able to rally them and give them half of their morale back. This does not recover men however. I. Another ability might be "fevor" this would allow all the units within his radius to do extra damage (e.g. getting his men worked up into a fever so they can shooter faster etc...). Just a couple of ideas that I could come up there are many more (live movement bonuses etc....). All of these should be able to be used by the AI also. Obviously some kind of symbol/color would need to be used to show which ability is being used at that time. Certain abilties could be given to certain AI / picked by the player at the beginning (e.g. at aggressive AI would probably want the "fevor" whereas the defensive AI might want the "rally call" ability. They player should be able to pick the type of strategy he wants to follow (will the same as the AI example for instance). These abilities are only for a short period of time (e.g 5 minutes) and might make the difference between victory and defeat if done at the right time. Well thats all I can think of for now. I hope you like my ideas. Obviously some will take more work than others but I hope you will consider these. Please let me know what you think . Thank you for the great game. Reisman17
Zelekendel Posted July 6, 2014 Posted July 6, 2014 I cannot, for the life of me, figure out the artillery. I can't figure out where to deploy them so they can fire (for example, they cannot fire from Seminary Ridge to Cemetery Hill). So, I usually use them to either guard my rear victory locations - or I simply make a Grande Battery and order them to attack a target -> they'll crawl to attack the target at close range, so I might as well have them with canister all the time. The AI seems pretty adept at their artillery use. The line of sight needs to be made, still, a LOT clearer.
Hyzoran Posted July 6, 2014 Posted July 6, 2014 Artillery is extremely weak in general. A volley of canister at rifle range upon a unit with 2% cover = 9 casualties.... what. Though I do believe that artillery fire greatly reduces the morale of units under fire I think they should still have a bit more power beneath them. and they drain wayyyy too much condition when firing. I think Artillery should receive a universal increase to kill rate at all ranges by atleast 60%, and have their condition drain when firing cut by 75%. EDIT: Offtopic sorta, but I think Skirmishers should also receive a slight increase to durability to rifle fire, and cavarly increased charge lethality.
David Fair Posted July 6, 2014 Posted July 6, 2014 Hyzoran, The artillery of both sides were virtually intact on day 3 and 4 at Gettysburg so I agree the artillery fire drains way to much condition and morale from firing. I'll disagree on the artillery kill rates. ACW artillery inflicted between 6% and 8% of battlefield casualties. The ACW was predominantly an infantry war. The more you increase the power of the artillery the less effective the infantry will be. The further you get artillery from historical attributes the further the game balance will shift in favor of the Union (because they have both a better mix of gun quality and 100 more guns). Currently I've never been able to get beyond day 2 in the campaign. Primarily this is because of the anachronistically high artillery casualties inflicted by artillery in the current implementation. The AI runs out of infantry long before day 3.
David Fair Posted July 6, 2014 Posted July 6, 2014 At some point the design team will embrace a target in addition to a move arrow for the artillery. When they do the game will be dramatically improved. Even with the "m" key to provide the topography it is difficult to figure out the line of sight because you need to follow contour lines to targets. I find myself trying to follow the lines across the map to a target looking for the numbers on the topographical map to see if an artillery unit can see a target or not. I love the game but this is painful.
Reisman17 Posted July 6, 2014 Author Posted July 6, 2014 Following up on the artillery situation and I think it is related to how you currently select targets as David described above. The only way to tell your artillery to shoot at a target is to click on the enemy. Unfortunately this is also the way to tell the artillery to move so sometimes it will think your changing targets (and correctly so) and other times thinks you want to attack the enemy unit so they move towards the enemy. We really need a separate control for selecting targets for artillery as opposed to moving. Maybe left click once to move and twice to select a target to engage. This obviously would apply to all units not just artillery. The cursor would need to change from an arrow to a cross-hair or something similar to show switching between modes and have it so if I click 3 times by mistake it goes back to movement mode, 4 times it goes to aim mode. I personally think that artillery are very underpowered. Not so much as to how many casualties they caused (which with shot did very little, shell better and cannister the most) the most important part of artillery was crushing the enemy's morale. Artillery was very effective at frightening the units it was attacking (providing it could hit on a regular basis - e.g veteran vs rookies). This is still way off in my opinion. In previous battles I have concentrated 4 batteries of artillery onto one unit of infantry and they marched all the way to a couple of the artillery units (and routed them) before finally breaking. This is not how it should be. The artillery should be more effective at breaking the enemies morale especially the closer the enemy is (e.g. bigger morale loss along with slightly more casualties). At short ranges it should not matter as much if your artillery is rookie or not as the chance of hitting goes up as the enemy get closer. I understand that it is a fine line in making artillery somewhat effective but not too effective. I hope the developers can come up with a solution. The good news is with the latest patch the main line infantry seem to be much more effective a killing artillery so this is a big improvement although they still seem to take a long time to whittle down the artillery crews (In my opinion this takes too long still) but I have been able to completely wipe out enemy artillery units now. Thanks for the hard work and the replies guys. I hope we can get this fixed in the future as I love artillery and the possibilities it gives on the battlefield. Reisman17
rommel22 Posted July 8, 2014 Posted July 8, 2014 Artillery is really weird. On the one hand they can waver even though they were at the rear the entire battle. On the other hand they will dual against a unit of 1000 men only taking 10-20 casulties.
Nick Thomadis Posted July 8, 2014 Posted July 8, 2014 Artillery fixes will be available in next patch. Targeting of artillery needs some fixes so as not to chase around undesirably when you manually target + its endurance against rifles will be balanced better.
rommel22 Posted July 8, 2014 Posted July 8, 2014 Is there an explanation why almost all of my artillery have 1 morale? they are all wavering even though they were the whole time behind the front line. some of them werent shot by enemy artillery at all.
thekev506 Posted July 8, 2014 Posted July 8, 2014 I can deal with the morale/condition stuff and their love of charging across terrain; we're still in early access after all, but for me the artillery really need some line-of-sight tweaking. I find time and again that despite putting my units in defilade they come under cannon fire, or that my guns can't fire across a valley to a marginally higher hilltop where the enemy is clearly visible.
Reisman17 Posted July 8, 2014 Author Posted July 8, 2014 I am at least glad to hear that you are giving some love to the artillery. Definately appreciate it. Thank you. Reisman17
David Fair Posted July 9, 2014 Posted July 9, 2014 It would really be great to have an "eye" symbol on the unit (next to the KIA?) Red when the unit is visible to an enemy unit. White/Black when the unit cannot be seen by an enemy unit. This way you know when you hide a unit on a reverse slope it is out of sight and can recover morale and condition. Alternatively have some kind of bar on the unit that shows when it is visible to an enemy unit - background behind the stars - whatever just so you know when a unit is seen/not seen. Also a target should be used to target artillery rather than a move arrow. Red target on a unit means you can shoot the target from the current location. Pink target means your artillery is blocked by a friendly unit. No target means you need to move your artillery to a better location. When you move artillery you get the arrow so you know you are moving vs. targeting and enemy unit.
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