Way to make cannon balls actually kill people?

[wangmaster1219]

Is there anyway to make it so that when a cannon ball hits someone, they actually die? It's so ridiculous when a cannon ball knocks back 10 people, and they just stand back up like nothing happened. They should be dead 5 times over! It would put cannons in line with howitzers I feel, which at the moment are far more powerful.

[Roberticus]

I think, if you slow-motion it and watch really closely, that what is happening is the cannon ball IS hitting and killing two or three men, and the others are not hit by the cannon ball, but are knocked down by the bodies of their unlucky friends. In real-life I imagine this would even happen with a musket shot on occassion. If you and I were standing shoulder to should in line, ready to volley fire, and I took a bullet to my shoulder, I'd probably spin and drop, knocking you over too. You'd get back up and resume your position...I'd be dead or too badly wounded to get up!

I've also noticed this 'ten-pin-bowling' effect is more pronounced when the unit is hit by cannon balls which have already travelled beyond their official range, you know, the red line inside which the mouse pointer turns green if you hover it over an enemy unit. If you target the ground right at the furthest edge of the cannon's range, the balls can bounce or over shoot, giving you an extra bit of range. But when you do this, it doesn't seem to kill, just knock over. Still useful to destabalise their formation, making them more vulnerable to cavalry attack.

Just a note, in real life, soldiers in the American civil war reportedly watching cannon balls flying towards them bounce a few times, then start to roll along the ground. Once the roll had become very slow, so that the cannon ball had almost stopped, some instinctively put their foot out to stop it like you would a stray football - only to find that the immense momentum of even a slow moving, but VERY heavy ball (momentum=mass X speed) was sufficient to take their lower leg clean off!

[richardsharpe]

Increasing cannonball damage in the projectiles table may work.
For what the other poster was talking about, set the column that is set to "high" to ap. This should make it so that the cannon balls retain their full damage despite long ranges (not quite sure about that though).

Hope that helps.

[newt]

Are there any new discoveries in this? Increasing damage doesn't work.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

Cannonballs don't kill infanry beyond maximum range, but can kill cavalry or destroy artillery. I tried to change that but with no success.

[newt]

I'm talking about knocking people over well within their range. I shot a unit with an 8-lbr, the ball went straight through it at full force because it didn't hit the ground yet, 12 people were hit. 5 men were killed, and seven got back up.

The same battle I shot at point blank range (with round shot) as they were charging me, 7 went down and only 1 was killed.

Altering projectile_damage_distance_multiplier doesn't solve anything either.

[The Hedge Knight]

The simplest way to do this is to give the ball a zero radius shrapnel explosion.

[Yarkis de Bodemloze]

The simplest way to do this is to give the ball a zero radius shrapnel explosion.

But then the balls won't bounce. I tried all kinds of ammunition with no good solution.

[The Hedge Knight]

It depends what you think is the lesser of two evils then.

[newt]

Does anybody know what these do?

missile_xholds_knockdown_0
missile_xholds_knockdown_1
missile_xholds_knockdown_2
missile_xholds_knockdown_3
missile_xholds_knockdown_4

[Hawkeye74]

I feel the same way about canon, I thought to channge the canon balls to explode on impact.
However, there are too many unknown values in the projectile tables and I just don`t have the know-how.

If you try this and are successful please let me know.

[JaM]

there is one possible solution how to do it. you have to edit db/battle_entities table. every unit has a spacing defined there, where infantry have value 0.35 (if remmember correctly) cavalry has 2. If you increase that value for infantry to 0.5, cannon ball would kill more soldiers.

in my mod i use values below 1 for everybody (infantry 0.35-0.4,cavalry 0.7-0.8) even for cavalry which makes them less vulnerable to artillery (no longer one cannon ball kills 10-12 cavalry men...). btw, this value also makes unit less a target for muskets as well... I'm using 0.15 to 0.2 for skirmishers so even with small number of men they are hard to kill - in reality skirmishers would use terrain for their protection so even full battalion salvo would not kill them off...

[Krieglord]

Why dont you try increasing the accuracy?

I did that with Congreve rockets, it works very well.

[JaM]

because it mean other undesired side effects, plus, as i mentioned this way, cavalry wont die as flies from just near miss. remember - only direct hits should count, so why should artillery die 6x more than infantry, when their height was just 2x larger? Infantry profile is set to 0.35, cavalry should be larger than 0.8 not 2 as it is in vanilla game...

[BrodY]

I'd suggest not to pay attention to such small details. IMO, the game is practically flawless. Maybe not in its vanilla state, but there are several mods out there that changes the projectile "configuration". I agree with you that artillery (except howitzers) feels somewhat inadequate against infantry, however does wonders to take out enemy cavalry. I'd recommend you trying out the La Montee de L'empire mod. It changes sooo much, and still challenges you strategically.

[Chips96]

I think if you could make the cannonballs bounce lower it might help - they seem to fly wayyyy too far above infantrymen's heads after they bounce, to the point where it looks higher than the cannonball would have sat in the barrell.

[weirdoascensor]

1> Increase The Collision Radius to High Numbers (normally its 0.1; Increase it to as high as 2.0-3.0. The Round shall Punch bigger Holes in Formations, as it Hits more men)
2> Make an Effectless Explosion (with small concussion radius, Just 1, so it don't make men fly around - The damage will be dealt by shrapnel - give a generous amount of small-damage fragments for it in projectile_explosion) set blast_effect to impact, and can_bounce to 1; (Don't change the projectike into explosive shell, just keep it a round shot; so The round dont explode, but keep bouncing; dealing concussion and kicking shrapnel every time it ricochets from the ground)

[JaM]

what exactly is concusion radius? which file you need to edit for this?

[weirdoascensor]

what exactly is concusion radius? which file you need to edit for this?

I mean the explosion radius in projectile_explosion...I just don't remember the exact column header name...

[JaM]

thanks, will definitly try it, i'm trying to portray realistic artillery behavior with NTW, but with those knocked out flying men its very hard if not impossible...