FKoC - Unit stats discussion

[General A. Skywalker]

As far as I'm aware a projectile only has one accuracy variable, so not possible to set logical rules like this "Over 100M's accuracy = 10%, Over 50M's under 100M's accuracy = 40%".

However, with PB's new stats and projectile data there's definitely a change for the better in regards to accuracy vs range.

Cheers

Good to hear that.

[tskhdawson]

@ AlphaDelta:
...

In most games featuring the musket-era (mostly 18th century+Napoleonic Wars though) we have negligent efficiency at long range, acceptable efficiency at medium range and murderously high efficiency at low range, which is, at least for the 18th/19th century, realistic.
This system seems to be missing in FKoC which of course may be due to the fact that we don't have such a system for archery/musketry in vanilla medieval2.

...

In the Napoleonic mod for RTW, there was a line in descr_projectile_new.txt that did exactly what you mentioned, it was called destroy_after_max_range_percent_and_variation. So a projectile entry looked like this:

projectile bullet ; * USED BY MUSKETS
destroy_after_max_range_percent_and_variation 30 90
effect firearms
damage 0
damage_to_troops 200
radius 0.1
accuracy_vs_units 0.3
min_angle -60
max_angle 40
velocity 200
bounce 0.001 1.0 1.0 0.1
display
model napoleonic/data/models_missile/bullet.cas, max
;effect_only

This meant that a bullet will be automatically destroyed after it has travelled (in this case) 30% +- 90% of the unit's maximum range. As you can imagine that means that not many bullets made it to the maximum range, but many more made it the first few yards.

It worked well, when the bullet was destroyed short of the target it even had a little animation that kicked up dust or made a splash (to make it look like it hit the ground/water due to inaccuracy).

I think this is the system General A. Skywalker is referring to.

If you could find the right person from that project they could probably tell you how to do it, I'm guessing there would be a bit of work but it would be awsome if it worked.

BTW, haven't had a chance to try this mod yet but I've dowloaded it and am looking forward to giving it a go when the opportunity arises. Well done everybody who worked on it, it looks fantastic.

[JaM]

who knows if that line is still recognised in M2TW code... if it does it would be definitly interesting improvement...

[tskhdawson]

I'm not sure it was even in the vanilla RTW since it wasn't used on any of the vanilla projectiles. There really isn't a need for it with arrows and the like. If that's the case then it had to be implemented by the people who made the Napoleonic mod, meaning you would think there was a chance it could be implemented in MTW2, but like I said, you'd have to find the right person.

I suppose it could have been in vanilla RTW, in which case it may be in MTW2 as well. If somebody feels confident in editing their projectile file just add the line in in and give it a go. If the game doesn't CTD when loading, I'd say that line works! I'd try it myself, of course, but I don't have a machine capable of running MTW2 at the moment.

[AlphaDelta]

M2TW has something very similar:

; self_explode <prob> <min sec> <max sec> [<area effect>]
self_explode 0.3 1.5 3.0

[CrayonVonCaesar]

A few things I noticed;

The hamlet pikes and muskets:
I understand they have better armour than the other foot due to buff coats, but perhaps the melee attack of the muskets and pikes should be lowered by one point to be in line with the regular regimental troops?
As it is, they are quite superior to all other foot in battle (despite their lower morale and average training).

Lifeguards:
The parlimentarian lifeguard and bodyguard have a big advantage in firepower over their royalist counterparts. Is this deliberate?

And a question:
What do you think about differing the recruiment price of infantry troops a bit to reflect their commanders fame and leadership?


Cheers!

[wjotner]

Speaking of unit recruitment costs. I was wondering if the Trayned bands should be cheaper to recruit and support, but they should have a much lower morale. Or there should be more free unit slots per city, but only trayned bands could be free in those slots reflecting their adhoc militia status.

[General A. Skywalker]

Another big difference was that muskets of 16-17century used different bullets tahn those used in 18century - they used bullets with small windage so they were harder to load in but were much more accurate than bullets used in Napoeonic Era - Standard matchlock musket would be more accurate than Brown Bess Musket,but reload time would be 3-4x slower so where Brown Bess could fire 3-4 rounds per minute with effective range against single enemy 50m / enemy formation 100m, late Matchlock would be able to fire 1 round per minute and be effective against single enemy up to 100m / enemy formation 150m ...

Well, the main reason why loading a matchlock musket takes longer than loading a flintlock musket because of the lock itself: You have to be much more careful with a matchlock! (Often the burning match did set off the charge while still loading.) You also have to take the match off while loading, then blow at it and then put it back and you have to be careful so the burning end of the match touches the gunpowder. All that wasnÄt necessary with a flintlock musket! Besides the ramrods were all wooden, not iron, so they could easily break when loading quickly.

About windage: I didn't know that 17th century projectiles had less windage than in those used in 18th century. (I thought it was the other way round!)

However, I do know that in the course of the 18th century windage was reduced, so early 18th century musket balls had more windage than late 18th century musket balls.

That would mean that with the introduction of the flintlock musket in the early 1700s windage was increased but later on became smaller again.
Probably they noticed that it was crucial to keep windage as low as possible. I've never heard that early 18th century were faster to load than late 18th century muskets though.

I don't really think that 17th century muskets were more accurate than 18th century or Napoleonic muskets.
If you have a look at the widely known shooting tests done in the 18th century/Napoleonic time (with regular ammo), you'll see that they've absolutely reached the maximum (for smoothbore weapons) with their flintlock muskets.
I don't think any smoothbore muskets can be much more accurate than that.

[JaM]

All depends on projectile - with minie bullets even smothbore could be accurate up to 250-300m. Renaisance muskets used lower windage than 18th century weapons - rate of fire was 1 shot per 2 minutes vs 3-4 shots per minute - that is not just caused by match itself - raming down low windage bullet was time consuming thing. Another thing that helped with accuracy a lot was resting fork - musketeers were able aim better, fork also helped a lot with recoil - elite spanish arquebusiers used forks even when their weapons were lighter than 18th century weapons (about 4kg). And another interestig fact is that where 17th century weapons had simple sights, 18th century weapons like Brown Bess didnt had sights! Accuracy was no longer interesting for them - rate of fire was more important (at least they thought)

18th century muskets didnt reached their acuracy maximum - their accurate range against single man target was reported 80m - everything beyond that was lottery. For heavy spanish musket accurate range was reported around 100m. Why were those supperior weapons abadoned? because of their much much slower rate of fire, and their much higher weight (8-10kg).Truth is,that they were balistically supperior to almost any muzzle loaded smothbore weapon firing round ball of 18th century. For Example Spanish didnt abadoned their heavy muskets even when everybody else was already using calivers. One of the reasons was higher effectivity of heavy spanish musket, another was a price - Spain didnt had money to replace all arquebuses with lighter muskets, therefore they still used their standard firearms. and btw, in the far east, where few of those muskets ended, they were considered more like siege weapons than normal field weapons... .90 bullet had its punch...

[General A. Skywalker]

All depends on projectile - with minie bullets even smothbore could be accurate up to 250-300m. Renaisance muskets used lower windage than 18th century weapons - rate of fire was 1 shot per 2 minutes vs 3-4 shots per minute - that is not just caused by match itself - raming down low windage bullet was time consuming thing. Another thing that helped with accuracy a lot was resting fork - musketeers were able aim better, fork also helped a lot with recoil - elite spanish arquebusiers used forks even when their weapons were lighter than 18th century weapons (about 4kg). And another interestig fact is that where 17th century weapons had simple sights, 18th century weapons like Brown Bess didnt had sights! Accuracy was no longer interesting for them - rate of fire was more important (at least they thought)

I'm a smoothbore shooter myself (flintlock muskets), so you don't have to tell me the obvious things.

And you're wrong about the Brown Bess. It has a front sight and that's perfectly allright, as you can aim over the long barrel, you really don't need more than a front sight.
Matchlock muskets surely didn't have more than front sight, I don't think they had rear sights, did they?

So, how much windage did "Renaissance muskets" (17th century isn't Renaissance though) have?

I'm quite sure that in the early 18th century 2 mm was common, while most armies reduced it to 1 mm and less in the course of the century.

I think that in the 17th century common windage was slightly more than 1 mm.

18th century muskets didnt reached their acuracy maximum

No weapon on earth does. There's always a huge gap between theoretical and real in battle-accuracy of weapons! If theoretical accuracy would have been achieved in let's say the Napoleonic Wars, a single musket volley shot from 300 metres distance would have averagely resulted in 20% hits!! ... hardly suitable for line versus line fighting, eh?

[Kyrre]

Matchlock muskets surely didn't have more than front sight, I don't think they had rear sights, did they?

Many of them had!

[JaM]

Average salvo of average soldiers in Napoleonic Era at 150m barelly caused more than 10% casaulties. Some English officer said that no man was ever killed (in Napoleonic Era) at distance larger than 200m by musket ball. How much it is true, i'm not sure, truth is, speed of loading was more important than accuracy - drill was get close to the enemy, fire few salvos from close range and then charge with bayonets - French in later years when they no longer had more experienced soldiers preffered column attack - they moved fast, and charged with bayonets,sometimes they fired just once or all shooting was done by more experienced light infantry and line infantry just charged. It was a painfull for those big columns if they had to face English in 2rank formation firing 3-4 rounds per minute - such a firepower was albe to stop such attack.

[General A. Skywalker]

Average salvo of average soldiers in Napoleonic Era at 150m barelly caused more than 10% casaulties.

Which is a lot! I don't think an average salvo of the 30 years war or English Civil War caused more casualties at that range!

Some English officer said that no man was ever killed (in Napoleonic Era) at distance larger than 200m by musket ball.

Oh, that quote is mistaken very often. He just said that he is convinced and able to proof, that no soldier was ever killed at that distance by a shooter aiming at him. Which is only logical due to the variance of the projectile. This counts for earlier muskets, too.

Of course many men were killed by balls shot from distances 200m+. A musket ball is still lethal at 300 m.

I would also like to add that the average variance of a projectile (French 1777 musket) shot from 150 metres was 75 centimeters in height and 60 centimeters sidewise. (Not in battle, of course it was a test!)
This isn't too much, is it? Well, it makes it difficult to hit the man you're aiming at, but you might hit the man standing beside him.

How much it is true, i'm not sure, truth is, speed of loading was more important than accuracy - drill was get close to the enemy, fire few salvos from close range and then charge with bayonets -

This tactic is more an exception than a rule. Swedish and Russians liked it, especially in the early 18th century. The British were fond of close combat in the American Revolution. And Napoleon of course was famous for his shock-tactics. But in most armies of the 18th/19th century the firefight was more important than the bayonet charge. At the beginning of the 7-years-war in Europe, Frederick the Great was fond of bayonet charges, but after suffering terrible casualties against the Austrians, his doctrine became "avoid the bayonet!". He also ordered to open fire at 200 m and then get closer and closer.

French in later years when they no longer had more experienced soldiers preffered column attack - they moved fast, and charged with bayonets,sometimes they fired just once or all shooting was done by more experienced light infantry and line infantry just charged. It was a painfull for those big columns if they had to face English in 2rank formation firing 3-4 rounds per minute - such a firepower was albe to stop such attack.

Exactly, you say it yourself here! The British in the Napoleonic Wars were aware of the fact that firepower was their only chance to win! They played a very defensive part in the Napoleonic Wars, they never would have made big bayonet charges after just havong fired one volley from close range.

So one can hardly say that "fire and rush" was the general tactic of the period.

However, I don't think we need to discuss about this. Actually we don't disagree that much, do we?

[JaM]

nope, i'm just saying that renesaince muskets were more accurate than 18th century pieces. I went through long discusion on myarmoury about this toppic. whole point was that loading - ramming ball down the barrell was time consuming process with 16th-17th century heavy spanish musket because windage was very small. it was the reason why those weapons had such slow rate of fire. Together with supporting forks, this resulted in supperior accuracy.

Point is,that way was not followed - Sweden army instead came with lighter musket, bullets with larger windage and paper cartriges. Swedish musketeer was able to load bullet into barrel by simply letting it fall down the barrel - such thing was not possible with spanish heavy musket and their bullets.
with swedish light muskets bullet was fixed in barrel by remnants of paper cartrige rammed down the barrel so bullet would not fall off. Spanish musketeers didnt used paper cartriges as those were swedish invention and came much later (heavy musket started apear around 1530, paper cartriges were first used around 1620.(or so)

Heavy musket was considered a skirmish weapon primarilly used to outrange other gunpowder weapons. Where arquebuse was mostly used up to 70m, heavy musket was often used at harrasing fire at twice that range. and ofcourse there was also a huge difference in penetration power.

[JaM]

oh, and that statement about casaulties - i didnt ment 10% casaulties to enemy - i ment 10% of hits of all bulets fired in that salvo.

[General A. Skywalker]

oh, and that statement about casaulties - i didnt ment 10% casaulties to enemy - i ment 10% of hits of all bulets fired in that salvo.

Yes, I know.


Allright. About loading: You certainly agree that windage alone wasn't the only reason for the slower fire rate of matchlock muskets. Even with a very high windage a matchlock musket would take much longer to load than a flintlock musket.
As I've said before: "You have to be much more careful with a matchlock! (Often the burning match did set off the charge while still loading.) You also have to take the match off while loading, then blow at it and then put it back and you have to be careful so the burning end of the match touches the gunpowder. All that wasnÄt necessary with a flintlock musket! Besides the ramrods were all wooden, not iron, so they could easily break when loading quickly."


btw, I'm sure 17th century muskets had something around 1 mm windage too, which is pretty much the same as mid-late 18th century and Napoleonic muskets.
If they had less than 1 mm, it would become very hard to reload the weapon after a few shots, due to the occlusion of the barrel.

[JaM]

they were hard to reload. how big was the windage is hard question. Regarding loading sequence, match cannot set the powder if it is not attached during loading, which was one of the procedures during reloading. Anyway still there is a support fork - item that greatly helped with recoil and accuracy - forks were normally used even with light arquebuses (4kg) - they helped with faster aiming, together with aiming sights (rear and front) it resulted in better accuracy.

t
There is a plenty of mentions in 18-19th century literature about weak accuracy of muskets, historians normally expected weaker accuracy of 16-17th century weapons as well, but opposite was truth. (atleast for muskets, arquebuses had much shorter barrels, they were more like carabines)


btw, Point Blank once posted a link for some staticstics from Napoleonic Era where normally a salvo fired from close range caused less than 10% casaulties, i will try to find it.

[General A. Skywalker]

There is a plenty of mentions in 18-19th century literature about weak accuracy of muskets, historians normally expected weaker accuracy of 16-17th century weapons as well, but opposite was truth. (atleast for muskets, arquebuses had much shorter barrels, they were more like carabines)

You know, battle-performance of weapons is always very low. Always was and always will be.
Concerning the gunpowder era reasons were nervousness/fear/stress, lack of training, smoke, moving targets etc...
You have to examine training-results of musketry to know anything about the actual accuracy of muskets.
Battle-accuracy was that much lower so, they didn't reach the theoretical accuracy of their weapon at all. From that one can conclude that the accuracy of a weapon hardly mattered these days. Even with rifled weapons they would have achieved bad results fighting line vs line. The reason was human failure and the bad battlefield conditions, not the smooth bore of the musket or the high windage.

So if 17th century musketry really was more efficient than 18th century musketry, then only because the soldiers weren't constantly under as heavy fire as their 18th century successors, meaning they were able to perform under less stressful circumstances. Because comparing theoretical and real accuracy of muskets proves that the human factor is much more important than actual accuracy.

The following has actually not much to do with our discussion, but I'd like to add it.
If you look at the number of hits that time, you'll see that they are higher than in modern conflicts! (Something like 5% hits of all rounds fired in a battle is far from being reached today.)
Does that mean muskets were more accurate than modern weapons? Certainly not!
So percentage of hits doesn't reveal much about weapon accuracy.

btw, Point Blank once posted a link for some staticstics from Napoleonic Era where normally a salvo fired from close range caused less than 10% casaulties, i will try to find it.

First of all we should make clear what "long range" or "close range" actually means. What do you consider as "close" range?
Well, there are tons of quotes about stuff like that. There are also statements about close range volleys "killing hundreds" and making a charge stop or even "killing every single attacking cuirassier".
Again we have to be carful: Even if every single bullet fired would hit (which is impossible due to misfires), that wouldn't be recorded as significantly more than 1/3 hits of all bullets fired. Why? 1 casualty counts a 1 hit, it doesn't matter if he's hit by more than 1 bullet though. Well, if a 3 rank line fires at an attacking force, the front rank of the attackers acts as a human shield for the following ranks. So even if all bullets would hit, only the front rank would go down, hardly anyone of the following ranks. This would mean that only 1/3 of the bullets fired would be counted as hits, even though most men of the front rank would have been hit by several bullets.

If you want to I can list all the contemporary shooting tests (Scharnhorst, Müller, Piccard), presenting surprisingly high results of even long range musketry!

[JaM]

if you have any links, please post them, would like to read them out, i'm big fan of that era


and regarding that comparation to modern weapons - situalation is different now - enemy dont form themself into lines and they dont attack lined perfectly and walking against muzzles. modern weapon would be able to anihilate such formation at 3x longer range than smothbore muskets...

[General A. Skywalker]

and regarding that comparation to modern weapons - situalation is different now - enemy dont form themself into lines and they dont attack lined perfectly and walking against muzzles. modern weapon would be able to anihilate such formation at 3x longer range than smothbore muskets...

You really don't have to tell me that. I was just saying that percentage of hits doesn't tell us much about accuracy and you certaionly agree with me, don't you?

I don't know any link, but I have presented the tests (which I know from books and the internet, too) in other threads here already. I'll copy/paste them. You're welcome.

Here they are:

This is a part of the widely known Scharnhorst test from 1810 . 200 men fired at a formation sized target from different ranges. However, I'll only show the results for 300 metres, as that is a very long distance for a musket.

Prussian Musket 1780: 21 %
Pruss. Nothard 1805: 33,5 % (!)
New-Pruss. 1809: 16 %
French 1777: 27,5 %
Brown Bess: 27,5 %
Russian 1809: 24,5 %

They used contemporary muskets with standard windage for the time.


Or this one:


"Another experiment described by Mueller (1811) involved the use of aiming versus no aiming. Infantrymen in the aiming group were encouraged to aim their muskets as hunters would instead of just pointing it roughly ahead and pulling the trigger. Each group fired 1,000 rounds against a cavalry target. The results of this experiment are shown below:


Range (yd.).............. Aimed shots.............. Unaimed shots

100............................ 53,4 % .......................40,3%

200............................ 31,8 % .......................18,3 %

300.............................23,4 %........................14,9 %

400............................ 13,0 %........................ 6,5 % "



(Interesting: I have a book where this test by Müller is stated, however there it's said, that the good results were achieved by well trained soldiers and the worse results by normal soldiers. Nothing said about "aiming vs. no aiming there" and I don't know which one is right.)



"Hanoverian experiments in 1790 showed that when fired at various ranges against a representative target (a placard 6 ft high and up to 50 yd long for infantry, 8 ft 6 in high for cavalry) the following results were achieved at the ranges show:
...........................Target type
Range (yd.)...Infantry....Cavalry
100...............75.0%..........83.3%
200...............37.5%..........50.0%
300...............33.3%..........37.5% "

^^ "Infantry" means a target type, as big as an infantry-formation and "Cavalry" one as big as a Cav-formation.


I think I have even more results in one of my books, but I would have to look for them before I'd be able to post them.


EDIT: Here's some more highly interesting information:

It's an issue about musket-firing and aiming for the Westphalian army from 1810:
900 paces(549m) are considered "very very incalculable" and of course one wouldn't hit anything but one would have to aim 3 feet above the target, 600 paces(366m) as "incalculable" and one should aim 1,5 feet above the target, 450 paces(275m) as "slightly exaggerated" and one must aim for the enemie's hats , and 300 paces (183m) as "appropriate" and one should aim for the waistline. (When firing at an enemy-formation)
At 150 paces (90m) one has to aim at their knees.

Note: here 1 pace = 0,61 metres. ^^