For those of you who like fire by rank, and especially the act of the first three lines kneeling to shoot, I have created this little mod to enjoy a fast paced shooting session with FBR in a way that resembles, at the very least, normal mass shooting.
The reasoning: the first two to three lines of men shoot, and the others receive their muskets in turn, as soon as they finish firing, to load them properly and then pass them again to the first line. This was common practice from my understanding, to help the shooting process and make it faster. Since FBR in Empire (and Napoleon) is completely fubar, I have studied the way animations work to better represent constant shooting.
(follows technical stuff)
The facts: the COMBAT_READY stance in the animation tables uses several variations, alt1, alt2 etc, but what is interesting is that only the first animation mentioned is used during FBR and ranged combat. All the other alternate animations are used only by melee fighting stances.
Therefore, modifying this had no impact on melee combat and makes for a nice transition during FBR.
What this mod does:
- Introduces FBR;
- Reduces reloading time by 2/3 to permit FBR to become a fast paced shooting process similar to Shogun 2, but not as unrealistic;
- Changes the "combat ready" stance making soldiers in the farthest lines actually do something (reloading muskets for the first lines);
- Does NOT disable skirmish attribute, therefore soldiers not in line can shoot freely even if the formation is not fully complete;
- Changes the animation for "misfire" so the soldiers dont stand up like idiots, instead, they will have the "kneel aim" animation, therefore the whole line will stay knelt and nice looking
Known issues (unsolvable):
- When in square formation, the second row will reload indefinitely
- Even with the animation change, the game thinks the combat_ready stance must be used anyways, so you will see soldiers who misfire stand up for a split of a second before returning in a kneeling position.
Enjoy