Siphonatores

I was trying to make siphonatores more historically accurate and I came up with this Attachment 261908 Attachment 261909 . Please note that you must remove bp value for siphonatores in units EDU and optionally their ammo should be increased up to 10. I would like to know your opinions, should the AOE effect be even more reduced, should the DOT AOE tick for shorter or for less dmg? Currently known issues: AOE effect does not work on walls for some reason, greek fire cant or almost cant ignite siege tower. As a counter measure, greek fire now deals more dmg to siege towers.
Now why I changed them in a first place. In real life hand held siphons had approximatelly range of 10 metres not 30 like in game, additionally they were able to shoot 10 times but they were not able to shoot continuously (only naval/big greek fire throwers were able to do this). Since range of 10 metres is for various reasons useless in MTW2 and because I dont believe that single burst of fire could penetrate 30 ppl but would more likely disperse/explode after hitting the fist guy I changed them to cause small AOE effect.

Yeah, I'd have to test them but in general I agree with your path you are on. Some things due to engine are hard to show so javelin and siphonatores range are more than in reality otherwise would be useless while smaller AOE is good. Siphonatores are overpowered as currently. I don't use them along with stakes at gates or mangonels in SS because its just weird and not very fun for me. However to make sure siphonatores have some in game use they probably need to be a bit OP. Usually used to control portions of walls/breaks in sieges (where usually shoot from behind walls or from a tower along a wall) such uses can't be replicated with current engine so having smaller AOE but more ammo might be as close as possible. (they need protection at ground level gate or sneak up behind unit on wall).

I was able to fix certain issues. Siphonatores now got regular firing mode and fire arrows mode. Regular is this new AOE + no BP mode, fire arrows mode is vanilla BP mode with reduced velocity and firing angles so its range is effectivelly reduced(to like 15 metres) and it can be used only on flat terrain such as walls. The AOE dot now ticks longer but its size is reduced qradually over time.Attachment 262153Attachment 262154

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Originally Posted by Philozoraptor

I was able to fix certain issues. Siphonatores now got regular firing mode and fire arrows mode. Regular is this new AOE + no BP mode, fire arrows mode is vanilla BP mode with reduced velocity and firing angles so its range is effectivelly reduced(to like 15 metres) and it can be used only on flat terrain such as walls. The AOE dot now ticks longer but its size is reduced qradually over time.Attachment 262153Attachment 262154

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That is interesting idea- never thought of that. Do fire arrows naturally take more ammo or do you have to edit that?

They dont seem to lose more ammo when using fire ammo though I will test it. Only problem currently is the AI, its using short ranged attack vs heavy armored targets (knights mostly) which makes siphonatores useless in hands of AI. Only way to deal with this would be either changing their behavior to using close range attack only at the walls or at the range of some 15-10 metres or switching both attacks so they will use longe range attack most of the time given their nature of short range unit that is most likely to encounter heavy units.

So it seems AI can use the longe range attack properly at least in 1v1 battles. Fire arrows apparently dont take more amunition. Please note that I increased dmg of siphonatores from 7 to 30 in EDU for the sake of autoresolve battles. (They 1 hit kill everything anyway) I also increased autoresolve HP of siphonatores and naffatuns from 3 to 10 to represent their ingame capabilities. (in vanilla SS siphonatores mostly killed some 10 foes and lost 20 man in victorious autoresolves even vs much smaller armies.)

Just to clarify, anyone is free to use this files as a part of submod, mod or whatever.