Not just a few of you...all of you, fire!

[Raawr]

So Spain asks me for an alliance to which i agree and yep, you got it, within 4 turns they march a full stack and siege one of my castles. So i have a handful of spearmen keeping them busy when they charge into the gate while i wait for my few squads of meagre reinforcements. 3 of those squads were peasant crossbowmen which i set up outside the gate to shoot the enemy in the back. What i noticed was at times ( i repositioned them a few times) only a handful of the bowmen were firing while the rest were simply standing there. I watched them for a while to make sure of this.

Is this a display bug where they are still actually firing, or are ranged units just very picky about which circumstances they'll actually let loose their bolts/arrows from? IE: do they have to be in perfect formation, have direct line of sight etc.

Input appreciated, thanks

[Pyrebound]

I havent had any trouble with archers, exept when theyre on high ground, and would be able to shoot and hit the enemy (from atop a mountain) and they have 'firing missiles' showing on their unit cards, but they just stand still or play the shooting animation without actually shooting the arrows. When they get to the distance from which you could shoot them on flat ground, they start barraging the enemy.

[Captain Spanky]

I havent had any trouble with archers, exept when theyre on high ground, and would be able to shoot and hit the enemy (from atop a mountain) and they have 'firing missiles' showing on their unit cards, but they just stand still or play the shooting animation without actually shooting the arrows. When they get to the distance from which you could shoot them on flat ground, they start barraging the enemy.

I noticed this as well. It seems to me that they start firing when they are out of range, so they just pretend to until they actually get close enough, just a bug to do with high ground methinks. As soon as the enemy get closer then they will fire as normal.

[Kratos]

Only time I know this happens is when there is a risk they will hit their own troops.

[Tiroth]

Happens very often for me, i'm a bit of an observer so i like to watch my troops do their stuff, so i notice these little problems a lot. They seem worst on walls, where units are terrible at passing around each other, until they're all together again and can all fire at the target i'm asking them to, only a few fire.

Had it just yesterday, when defending against Byz, crossbow unit on the walls was only firing about 10 or so bolts rather than 50-60. Maybe it is when they risk hitting their own troops, but in M2tw missile units like crossbows/archers can fire straight up anyway.

I can only suggest making sure your units are in good formation!

[N3rull]

Putting missile units in loose formation helps in some cases. That way, the archers standing in the back of the unit can fire at the enemy, because they have some line of sight. In close formation, it sometimes happens that the first lines obscure view for the third line of archers, and so they have to lob the arrows or don't shoot at all.

[Razbojnik]

I had a similar problem yesterday,I was defending Naples from Venetians(it was huge city),and a unit of Venetian Archers had entered the city and stood to fire at my archers that were at the walls,i could not attack or fire at those archers,and i lost more than 200 men because of that bug.

[Zadith]

I had that problem defending a city from the mongols the other day. I won but it would have been a lot easier had they all fired...I also noticed that when I put rifles on the walls...even when I spread them out so no one is behind anyone I still only get 2-3 people actually firing their rifles and the others just stand there....

[N3rull]

What else can be said - that's just another screwup on CA's account. And they dare ask people if the quality of their games is increasing (in the polls that show up in M2:TW launcher screen). Yeah, increase my ass.
No no no, I'm not ungrateful. I just think that when you're going to use a great idea for a great game and plan to collect cash for it, at least do it RIGHT. S:TW was done RIGHT, M:TW was done RIGHT, R:TW was done *quite* right, and M2:TW is done on crack.

[Pontifex Maximus]

they might be tired, if they are exhausted only a select will fire

[Tiroth]

they might be tired, if they are exhausted only a select will fire

I've never noticed this? :hmmm:

[Raawr]

That might explain why it happened this one time as they did all run half the length of the map. But not the other random times they refuse to shoot, maybe they require direct LOS+perfect formation+other random crap that i don't see how it can stop someone drawing a bow string.

Oh and firing into friendly ranks shouldn't stop them firing as would that not stop all of them firing, not just 1/2 -3/4 of them when they're all on the same terrain.

[Pontifex Maximus]

That might explain why it happened this one time as they did all run half the length of the map. But not the other random times they refuse to shoot, maybe they require direct LOS+perfect formation+other random crap that i don't see how it can stop someone drawing a bow string.

Oh and firing into friendly ranks shouldn't stop them firing as would that not stop all of them firing, not just 1/2 -3/4 of them when they're all on the same terrain.

I once thought it was about formation, but it isnt its the level of exhaustion

[Raawr]

Hmm, has anyone tested this? Sounds like it makes sense apart from when defending, and your archer/crosbow units on the wall refuse to all fire because a few of them got stuck somewhere behind a pillar, so they stand there waiting for them to fall into formation on the wall beside them.

[Pontifex Maximus]

never happened to me

[Zadith]

well that still doesnt explain when my rifles start off on the walls and only 3 of them fire even though they are in a single row on the walls and have nothing in front of them...or even when I was attacking and they had retreated to the center so I put rifles on the walls in the center single file and obviously had absolutely nothing in front of them since they were firing backwards away from the front of the walls....but for archers I guess it does kind of make sense...maybe the defending problem is just another IA mess up from CA....

[spooksman]

I've encoutered this various times before and it seems to affect all sorts of Missile units, including, crossbows, musketeers, archers, even mounted ones! Heck even Artilleries.

There was one point when I brought a ******** of cannons to besiege a small city and they have that "firing" thing on the unit cards but not doing a damn thing. Even when I ordered them to take down the walls. At first I thought its just a mod bug (I was playing Stainless Steel) but I realised that I'm having the same problems on Vanilla. These had never happened before so it must have been the new official patch...

Its really irritating and had been sort of the main factor why i'm not playing MTW2 much these days, if hardly at all.

[Raawr]

I had a whole squad of very tired archers all firing yesterday, they were even firing at troops right next to mine so were killing my own troops. I'm just going to put it down to "Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, bugger all we can do to fix it"

I agree with you there spooksman, i stopped playing vanilla mtw2 because of all the bugs, only thing that brought me back was the SS mod. I'm still getting peeved at the dozens of tiny but ever so annoying bugs though.

[Red Von Hammer]

Yeah same here, They dont fire because one of them is standing behind some insignificant object, and none of them fires through the arch holes of the wall, so why are the archholes there in the first place???
they are all aiming straight up into the air and let their arrows land all over the map! And several times my archers have fired entire volleys into my units, and especially in my general unit so my general dies and enemy suddenly wins because of my stupid archers killing off more of my men then the enemy`s..

Best thing to do is to just put all units exept a few smaller ones, within square.
When inside square, ur men fights alot harder, and if ure lucky, the enemy concentrates all their men on the main approach, that way you can concentrate ur archers fire for maximum effect


S!

RvH

[simplicissimus]

I believe it may also have something to do with experience.

I had two units of some pistoliers (can't even remeber the faction, sorry), and once they got a chevron or two, they were firing volleys - i.e. firing at the same time, which they didn't do as a green unit. It was rather cool as they mowed down lines of advancing Papal HA.

Still, they were certainly not firing as a whole unit, otherwise they would become too powerful.