[REQ] Decrease musket lethality

[TheBlobThing]

Hi all!

Well, muskets are an absolute killer, even at long ranges. Musket engagements are quick and dirty. I see my fresh 160-man regiment start to engage an enemy, a quick look at my other flank, back to my freshly engaged regiment and BOOM 50 guys left. This is a bit too much I think.

Anyone thought of decreasing musket lethality a bit?

[Lord_Lotz]

I was just about to make my own request/proposal when I saw this post!!!!

What I would love to see is a mod that makes musket volleys more realistic in their lethality.

According to my trusty source "The Sharpe Companion" by Mark Adkin, there should be a steady decrease in musket lethality as the target range increases with the maximum effective range being about 100 yards. To put it more accurately:

"A soldier aiming and firing his musket at an enemy over 100 yards away in a battle situation would hit his target once in every thirty shots. If his target was 50-70 yards away the chances dramatically increased to one in three. At less than 50 yards, firing his shot as part of a volley from his company or battalion, the results were likely to be devastating" (pg 27).

This could be modded to an extent in Empire, so once people have a go at the projectiles tables they should be able to make it so at close range there are devastating casualties but at long range, very limited casualties. This, combined with a unit reload time mod that is scaled according to troop experience would be amazing.

Source: Adkin, Mark. The Sharpe Companion: The Early Years. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003.

[Lord_Lotz]

Looks like JaM has posted a realism mod... this should hopefully provide some more realistic musket fire!

[TheBlobThing]

Hi Lotz!

There are lots of resources for historical research on musket accuracy on the Empire mod forums.

I looked at the realism mod posted by JaM but it's not really to my liking. I believe he added the old firing drills which I don't like (or rather, I completely understand CA's reasons for removing them) and what I'd like is just a small mod to reduce musket accuracy all-round. Sort of a place holder mod until a decent super-mod comes along.

[Daergar]

Hi Lotz!

There are lots of resources for historical research on musket accuracy on the Empire mod forums.

I looked at the realism mod posted by JaM but it's not really to my liking. I believe he added the old firing drills which I don't like (or rather, I completely understand CA's reasons for removing them) and what I'd like is just a small mod to reduce musket accuracy all-round. Sort of a place holder mod until a decent super-mod comes along.

You are thinking of the Tyrant mod. JaM's only enables everyone with LoS in a unit to fire at the enemy, while using tighter formations. No fbr or any other drill added.

[TheBlobThing]

You are thinking of the Tyrant mod. JaM's only enables everyone with LoS in a unit to fire at the enemy, while using tighter formations. No fbr or any other drill added.

Ah, thanks for the correction. I'll look into it.

[Kuh111578]

If you did look into it, how quick were the mod's engagements?

Now that the pack file manager is out, I would encourage everyone to try their own modding :x (and tell us the results!).
Most of this information may be buried somewhere in the forum, but
You can find this in the patch.pack file, and extract a copy for your own modding...
In db/projectiles_tables the important columns for musketry are

shot grouping(?) (unknown column 9 on the left of "Damage"): default 0, changing this number to, say 5, will cause a 5 meter-ish drift in where the bullet strikes at the maximum range as set in column ("Range"). Setting it to an extreme of 12, will cause most shots to fly way over the heads of the approaching enemy or into the ground, even if the are standing 5 feet in front of the shooters. The default of 0 will let accuracy be solely determined by the "accuracy" value of the actual firing unit (in unit_stats_land_tables).

range: self-explanatory, but I don't know what would happen if you set musketry range to 1000.

damage: default values 0.75 or 0.99, 0.99 seems to more or less kill the soldier struck by the musket ball, and lower values like 0.5 *roughly* seem to increase engagement duration to twice that of standard.

There are essentially 2 ways to increase firefight duration: lowering accuracy or lowering actual lethality of being struck by a musket ball. I think the hit detection is rather generous to the musket ball at the moment, so why not decrease both! That can simulate grazing shots and other non-lethal contact by fired shots in addition to poorly aimed fire that was more common in the day.

I still constantly change these values to test the effects, but generally use 110 for range, 5 to 7 for shot grouping, and 0.5 to 0.8 for damage.

p.s. restrict column 1 to "missile" and column 4 to "projectile_mustketball" to see only the man-held longarms like muskets/rifles/carbines