Muskets and fire....

[gary]

What is wrong with my musketts.... so anoying everytime they fire, they run aback about twenty metres and always seem to be out of position. i have to keep constantly watching them in the battle or they will end up off the battle field all-together. Also they have a nasty habit of turning to face a enemy i have not orderd them to, to fire there muskets.... its is very anoying as i just do not trust them... some times they will just stand and do nothing,, like i will say .FIRE look there's your enemy Fire damn and blast you cowards fire.....but they just stand there.

[AlphaDelta]

they run aback about twenty metres and always seem to be out of position.

The running back is a strange bug and I dont know what causes it.

i have to keep constantly watching them in the battle or they will end up off the battle field all-together.

This is known as routing. It's caused by morale dropping too low.

Also they have a nasty habit of turning to face a enemy i have not orderd them to, to fire there muskets...

Turn off fire at will.

Some times they will just stand and do nothing,,

I did some research into this and found that there's a simple reason. There is a hardcoded timer that dictates the amount of time it takes for a musketeer to reload. It's something like a minute. The ranks rotate faster than the first rank can reload, hence once the first rank comes back to the front you'll have to wait for them to finishing reloading. It can take 20 or 30 seconds.

For example:

0 sec: First rank fires, starts reloading. One minute timer starts.
10 sec: Second rank fires, starts reloading.
20 sec: Third rank fires, starts reloading.
30 sec: Forth rank fires, starts reloading.
40 sec: First rank is now back on the front rank but must wait another 20 seconds while it completes its reload.

Cheers

[Teutonic Joe]

is it possible to drop the reload time to 40 seconds to even it out?

[Gwyn ap Nud]

He said it was hardcoded.

So, no.

[AlphaDelta]

Yeah I presume it's hardcoded. The length of time it takes is actually pretty accurate. Check the documentaries thread for a video that shows the loading time of a matchlock.

cheers

[TBR001]

Actually you can increase firepower by removing the "fire_by_rank" attribute in the EDU, now the first rank fires, kneels to reload, the second rank fires over their heads, and the first rank will rise and fire once they have reloaded. Yes, the rear ranks don't do anything, but the whole regiment stays in place and overal rate of fire increases a bit without the need to touch the reload animation. (Funny how this makes the "thin red line" of two ranks and a later age the optimal formation in theory, though I prefer deeper formations so that losses don't shrink formation width)

The "fire_by_rank" attribute did work tremendously well in Shogun and MTW (because they were sprite based) but in MTW2 the individual soldiers and thus the regiments don't seem to be able to pull of "smart" rotations of ranks. It's a design feature that remains bugged to this day and most mods I know did simply get rid of it. Otherwise you often see the whole regiment waiting to continue with the firing animation because a single trooper is stuck in his own formation and can't reach the firing rank.

[xan0therxnumberx]

TBR001 i want to remove the "fire by rank" attribute.. how do i find it haha i dont know what the EDU is thanks!

[TBR001]

The export_descr_unit text file in the fkoc/data folder, search/remove fire_by_rank, save the original first though.

[Condottiere SOG]

You can always try spacing regts as such;

1.4,1.0, 3.0, 3.0, 3, square

[Ragerancher]

Another annoying bug is if you are in a city and have fire at will turned on they will go through the sequences of firing but will never actually fire (due to the enemy being on the other side of the walls). They also have a habit of starting to fire when they are actually out of range. I tend to just use pikes and cavalry in this mod. Musketeers don't seem to have the damage output even when they are working.