'sureshots' [accuracy of men not weapons]

[Amorphos]

sureshots [accuracy of men not weapons]

i think a must feature for this period is soldier accuracy as this is very important especially when you have inferior units like amaricans Vs british.

in all previous tw games we only have stats for the accuracy of the given weapon, but his one must surely have stats for each unit type and by their experience.

[D.B. Cooper]

Maybe their accuracy can increase as they gain experience, and unit accuracy stats can be designed to be higher than other unit accuracy stats.

[Kinjo]

sureshots [accuracy of men not weapons]

i think a must feature for this period is soldier accuracy as this is very important especially when you have inferior units like amaricans Vs british.

in all previous tw games we only have stats for the accuracy of the given weapon, but his one must surely have stats for each unit type and by their experience.

I agree to a point, not all American units where inferior. One such unit was The Continental Marines.

[Reiver]

Yeah. Experience should affect accuracy, rate of fire and morale imo. Possibly even movement speed. That'd all be pretty accurate and reflective of reality.

[Empress Meg]

I don't see them being more accurate per se, since men where not trained to aim muskets, but I can see them becoming more rapid and effective in combat. The ablity to level the musket to the correct height in order to inflict the most damage was key.

Devoirs The Empress

[Reiver]

I think things like using the correct amount of powder (the start of the game) and generally better loading procedures, keeping eyes open when firing, being more resistant to the kick among other things that come from practise and generally composure in battle would all affect the accuracy and would all improve with experience.
Although generally it's probably not going to vary a massive amount between the accuracy of a relatively raw unit and veterans due to the failings of the firearm there will be and should be a noticeable variation.

http://www.scotwars.com/html/textonl...e_musketry.htm
A nice short history of smoothbore muskets. The relevant section is about halfway down (Mueller experiment 1811).

[schoenkoenig]

Really and truly, morale was the most important factor that mattered. Casualties from musketry weren't going to be massive either way, but what really mattered was when the disciplined troops kept advancing, unnerving the untrained troops, who would probably proceed to turn tail.

[Dulce_et_Decorum_Est]

It would be nice to specify what experience affects. I do not, however, think that it should change the accuracy of musketry.

Rifled-bore firearms were the provenience of master gunsmiths experimenting until the late eighteenth century. They did not become common until the middle of that century.

Have you ever fired a smoothbore weapon? If you consistently measure your charge and use high quality ball, both conditions that would almost never be met on the battlefield, you can keep all your shots in an 18"x18" area at 50 yards max. In other words, under ideal conditions, it is impossible to aim at a specific human target beyond 150 feet with period weaponry!

There is no way to improve accuracy beyond that point without drastically altering the weapon. If you clamp a musket to a completely immobile table, you won't get any better accuracy.

Spherical musket balls are slightly more aerodynamic than bricks, and are subject to a large amount of random aerodynamic buffeting. They have nothing to keep on course other than inertia. There are plenty of things throwing them off course, though. Wind, pockets of microturbulence, and the fact that musket balls are often transonic, which is the worst speed possible for projectile accuracy.

In short, as long as your soldiers are aiming their fire towards a lump of enemies, that's as good as it gets.

[zerathule]

Some tests on M2TW made it clear that experience on range units improved accuracy, even if the range attack level wasnt improved with experience and no mention of it was made in game.
I suppose the game mechanisms will change in ETW, after all, no more shields, armor is minimal and only for a few very specialised units, so the unit characteristics should be really different in ETW.

[Amorphos]

ok so moral is the most important, yet i doubt if bows were any more accurate at distance?

with experience comes moral but also when the aiming does come into it i.e. at the shorter distances, then surely that final round before the charge is very important.
i would think accuracy comes into in some degree and increases as the tech evolves. it is more important in the next century, however all factors are important generally.

[schoenkoenig]

ok so moral is the most important, yet i doubt if bows were any more accurate at distance?

with experience comes moral but also when the aiming does come into it i.e. at the shorter distances, then surely that final round before the charge is very important.
i would think accuracy comes into in some degree and increases as the tech evolves. it is more important in the next century, however all factors are important generally.

Yes, but after the first volley or two, you were only shooting at your general impression of where the enemy is, due to the massive amounts of smoke. . .

[Dulce_et_Decorum_Est]

ok so moral is the most important, yet i doubt if bows were any more accurate at distance?

My experience with non-firearms weapons is limited, but from everything I've read bows are actually more accurate than early smoothbore guns, and in many cases, longer ranged too, with the caveat that arrows are more affected by crosswinds than bullets are. At fifty yards, for example, a well tuned composite bow can keep target arrows inside of six inches, or so I am told.

with experience comes moral but also when the aiming does come into it i.e. at the shorter distances, then surely that final round before the charge is very important.

If your enemies are standing shoulder to shoulder, no, aiming doesn't really matter.

Look at a brown bess some day. There's only a front sight which is really a fortuitous accident since that piece is mainly intended to be used as a bayonet lug. Thus, even if it is technically feasible for a smoothbore weapon to hit individuals at, say, thirty or less meters, the weapon was not equipped to do so nor were troops trained to do so.

i would think accuracy comes into in some degree and increases as the tech evolves. it is more important in the next century, however all factors are important generally.

Rifled bore, breech loading guns existed by the late eighteenth century, but they were incredibly rare. The British actually fielded one such weapon, the Ferguson rifle, but only on an extremely limited basis. With such a weapon it was possible to aim for individual targets, like officers, but the value of such a thing seems to have been lost given the mindset of the time, and the Ferguson never caught on.

In the Americas, rifled bore, breech loading weapons did not become the norm until necessity forced them to during the War of Northern Aggression.