Fire by Rank; Zone of Control

[JaM]

same thing was happening in M2TW... they didnt fix it for years, i doubdt ETW will be different...

[Quixote07]

I haven't experienced the single man affecting the whole unit as game breaking. generally once my infantry start firing, they don't stop if something happens or such. If they don't start right away to dress their ranks, all you have to do to get them to start firing is hit the halt button. They'll get into position quickly and open up.


Some interesting things about Platoon Fire I just found out.

1) It does not work behind cover, like Rank Fire. (If you have seen rank fire work behind cover, please take a screenie and note your current techs for us and post it!)

2) The jump in firepower from Rank Fire to Platoon Fire is as great if not greater as the jump from Volley Fire to Rank Fire. As far as time taken for every unit to fire twice (not once, so we can account for reload), Platoon fire is miles faster than Rank Fire. It seems almost that units who Platoon Fire get some magic reloading bonus. It takes about as long for the whole unit to fire in Platoon fire as it takes for a whole unit to Rank Fire, depending on the size and file depth, but then while the Rank Fire infantry are reloading (up to 30 seconds, according to my highly unscientific one Mississippi guestimate), the Platoon Fire infantry open up again immediately.

3) It only fires two ranks at a time. Now this one is confusing, but I'm pretty sure that I'm right. The animation for firing plays for all three ranks, but if you look closely you don't get a burst of flame and a puff of smoke from the third rank. Even more damning, if a second rank infantryman dies, then you DO get a burst of flame and a puff of smoke from the third rank guy. To test this further I did a custom battle between two units of Guard infantry from the same nation. The AI by default has theirs in a three rank formation, I put mine in a two rank formation. Though the AI did do some funky things like charging into melee after a bit, I always timed my Fire At Will correctly so that both sides opened up at the same time. And up until the AI started to charge my unit, my unit was always beating the other unit in the shootout.


I also tried Fire and Advance a few times. It's pretty buggy, but if it were fixed (and combined with an exponential accuracy dropoff mod, so accuracy at max range isn't so damn high) it would work quite well, I think. The biggest problem now is it only seems to cycle once. Example (assuming a three rank formation) First rank fires, second rank advances and fires, third rank advances and fires, then the first rank advances and fires a second time. Then it seems to stop to wait for the first rank to reload again. Even after they reload, they don't seem to reengage this behavior. If that gets solved, we're in business.

Another interesting thing is that it seems as if the wider spacing they take with Fire and Advance seems to reduce the damage they take. That could be false, but that's my reaction after testing it a half dozen times or so compared to a half dozen other stand and shoot tests.

We REALLY need the firing behind cover bug fixed. It's actually quite game breaking. The whole joy of the new battle map is incorporating cover and such. With that taken out of consideration, the game is a lot less fun for me, at least.

Final Tangent - Anyone else wish that infantry would actually crouch behind trenches? They just kind of stand there like rubes, so they take a lot more damage than if they were behind a wall. I understand there might be a bit of a problem, considering the reversability of cover and the decidedly one sidedness of the earthwork, but why not just add a third script for taking cover behind an earthwork? With that in place you could add all sorts of other battle map cover types. Plus you could encorporate taking cover like that into sieges, so you don't have to hope and pray for fire at will to direct your troops to cover all the cannons and such.

[stupiddk]

I got the game semi-stable and all I can say is BRITISH LINE, AIM, FIRE!!!!! and watch as the French Line withers and dies!!!! GOD I LOVE THIS GAME