does two rank firing beat fire by rank?

[carson1482]

Is it just me or does takeing of the "fire by rank" option and useing a two deep line of muskets allways beat a unit useing "fire by rank" with about five ranks
or is it just wishfull thinking

i love this mod CA sould pay attention to it

[hitokiri2486]

It's not just you, removing the "fire by rank" option makes muskets much more effective.

The problem with "fire by rank" is the extra time it takes for the men to shuffle around, plus the fact that the first rank that fired isn't done reloading until well after the second rank has fired its own muskets. Plus, if you're using a square (i.e. more than two rows) you are limiting the volume of fire since only one line can fire at a time.

A two-rank line of musketeers without fire by rank is fearsome because the second line can fire immediately while the first line is kneeling and reloading; there is also no shuffling around, so both lines can fire faster. Additionally, the two rank line allows maximum firepower in exchange for increased vulnerability. I don't think squares are a good idea with musketeers without fire by rank, but then again I'm not sure how they would behave in a square--might want to check that out and find out.

[CrayonVonCaesar]

If I remember correctly, the reason why fire by rank was included was to simulate the loading times for civil war muskets.

[hitokiri2486]

You could be right, but then out of curiosity why is fire_by_rank only in the EDU for muskets and arquebuses? If I remember correctly, there is no fire_by_rank attribute for handgunners or calivermen in vanilla M2TW and Kingdoms, and you'd think they'd take just as long if not longer to reload...

[AlphaDelta]

Fire by rank is slower which simulates the loading time of a 17th century musket (1 minute at very BEST).

Also with 1.5 the unit stats are such that muskets kill with almost every hit. If you take away fire by rank battles will be over very very quickly.

Cheers

[MoToM]

I don't know if any of you have tried Banzai's AOR for Stainless but part of the rather complex install is an animations pack that, imho, greatly improves the behaviour of musketeers.
I put the anim files into vanilla anims folder and the effect is remarkable.
The entire front rank fires as one and the loading times remain about the same, it really gives you the benifit of a mass of gunmen, mass firing.
I have had much higher kill rates for musketeers yet it doesn't seem to have unbalanced the game at all.