1.2 My Grenadiers are doing the Platoon Fire dance.

[Lucius Tiberius Vorenus]

Updated from 1.0 to 1.2


Just tried my first trial custom battle using 1.2 DM, and TGOTRE mod. (Always play VH/VH)


I was rather shocked when all my grenadiers started spreading out laterally, intermingling between other friendly units, and were doing the platoon fire drill. Lots of my own units shooting each other because of the Platoon firing cluster .

I thought Darth got rid of this several versions ago? Can we please say goodbye to Platoon Firing once and for all, it's such a bloody pain in the ass, in every way imagineable.
This could have something to do with the TGOTRE mod in 1.2, but in 1.0 this sub mod worked fine. I have taken a great deal of time to ensure all TGOTRE units have the exact same stats as Darthmods Russian Units.


On a side note, the custom battle was Russia(me) versus Prussia. Same exact units for both sides, 5 Grenadier units, 5 Cavalry Units, General's bodyguard, and 6 Line Infantry units. I modded the unit numbers, so Prussia Line Infantry was 350 men, Prussian Grenadiers 300. Same exact unit sizes for Russia(350 Line, 300 Gren). I thought for sure with Prussia's supreme reload and accuracy stats, I would be crushed. I held my cavalry mostly in reserve, and only used my cavalry to fight off flanking enemy cav. I ended up winning.

Several questions arise... even though I was constantly having to reshuffle all my bloody grenadiers, because they were intermingled doing the platoon fire, the Prussians should have been shredding my line, but this didnt happen. On my flanks, 2 Prussian Line units faced off head to head versus 2 of my Russian Line units. The Prussians ended up routing??? Makes no sense. Why didnt the Prussian's clear advantages in reload and accuracy have more of an impact?

My poor quality Russian Line Infantry held the Line, and even routed several Prussian units. Again, the unit sizes were exactly the same, 350 vs 350 Line Inf, 300 vs 300 Grenadiers. Is AI really that completely inept? I'm at a complete loss.


I can see now if I'm going to play as Russia, I'm going to have to dumb down the Line Infantry unit sizes to 300. By all means, Prussia should have crushed my Ruskies. It seems AI just cannot pull off a "sure thing".

[akinkhoo]

anyone else seen this?
i don't use Grenadiers so i wouldn't know.

[Lucius Tiberius Vorenus]

It may only be with custom battles, I havent got far enough in a campaign in DM 1.2 to see if it's disabled or not.

Perhaps I'm confused, the more I think about it, the more I think I recall Darth removed Fire and Advance for AI, because they actually do better just using Fire by Rank.

Regardless, Please do something about Platoon Firing, having my grenadiers spreading out to do the Platoon fire Drill is driving me nuts in custom battles, and I imagine will do the same in campaign.

I'd be fine with researching Platoon Firing, but having it disabled for all my troops. Too bad Darth cant just totally cut Plt Firing totally out of the research tree.

[Herr Shimmler]

I just checked that and... Well, the guards are now grenadier's partners in this dance of insanity. I've put them near each other, then they spread out among themselves and start shootin' things up. Horrible. And they're supposed to be elite troops, lol

[Lyrics]

I have posted about this way back in 0.8

[sdomi_cabsav@Hotmail]

I can see the potential in platoon firing. To make it way better than fire by rank the soldiers should fire as soon as theyve reloaded instead of waiting for hte volley to reach the end of the line.

[joreto]

Well in my campaign I faced up with that problem too.

[Razor]

I agree, platoon fire sucks compared to fire by rank.

[TWmadman]

platoon fire should be a moral breaker IMO. darth should rework it (if it is possible) in order to make elites moral breakers, even it still less powerful than fire by rank since elites are still far better in close combat.
this is my opinion : fire by rank = dmg, platoon fire = huge moral breaker

[MoonPolice]

I actually like Platoon Fire, except of course for the Line ruining dance they do.
Perhaps all units that use Platoon Firing could be made more accurate to make for their terrible behavior.
Reduce unit cohension for them so they don't spread out as much during firing.
The Best Solution would of course be to let them Platoon Fire without spreading out, but I'm not sure that's possible or I would guess it would have been done by now.