Matchlock units' friendly fire issue

[Pyramid Head]

The point is - they deal no damage to moral when dealing friendly fire.
This leads to situations that tend to lead to gaining tremendous advantage. most common use of this, I would call it exploit is positioning matchlock units behind a meatshield. When opponent engages meatshield matchlock still can fire, killing both your and enemy soldiers. We all know that friendly fire in STW2 is far less deadly and dangerous that it was in MTW or ETW. So you get small advantage here too. But enemy sufferes from gunpowder morale penalty when your units does not. This could seem like minor effect but in fact it is tremendous. At some situations it could lead to complete inability to break through enemy dormations even with vastly superior force and if you have no place to maneuver then it's almost assured losst for the attacker.
Adding morale damage from friendly fire will force players to add more tactics to matchlock units positioning and overall strategy, not just placing them behind main army body.

[Cinnamon the Hun]

This applies not just to matchlocks, but arrows and other projectiles as well. I think special skills like whistling arrows and blinding bombs affect both armies already but one of the main reasons why I thought that fire rockets were unbalanced was that if they were fired into a melee then the other side would get a big morale shock despite it often doing more damage to their own side. I didn't try them again after annoying the hell out of a level one ladder player who I used as a guinea pig for that tactic. Combined with their effect of scaring the general out of the radius they are/were crazy. Maybe this sort of morale system works for single player, helps the AI and new players out a bit, I guess, but in the multliplayer it's just begging to be exploited.

I just did a google search to find out about matchlock tactics and effectiveness in the period of the game and found an interesting article, if making it the game more realistic makes it fun and the link is reliable.

http://www.samurai-archives.com/ste.html

On battlefield deployment.

"On the battlefield teppo squads found a home in the front ranks of the army, alongside the archers. The missile troops had their flanks, front and rear flanks protected by spearman positioned behind them. As noted above many spearman and archer squads were changed to rifleman. Dr. Stephen Turnbull notes that in the “Matunara Kakemono” teppo soldier outnumbered archers almost 13 to 4. And a majority of these teppo squads consisted of ashigaru (Turnbull p.g. 114-115)."

So a gunpowder era shogun 2 army might be more have many more matclocks than bows, makes me think that we should be complaining more about how imbalanced bows are. And they didn't fire through spearmen, lol, of course not, though they did have them close by for support.

And a note about the arms race between armour and ranged weapons that was still going on at the time.

"“At the end of the battle Tokugowa Ieyasu removed his armor only to have a handful of bullets fall out.” This demonstrates that even though the bullet impact may pierce the armor, the force could be dispersed in the process, still protecting the wearer” (Bryant p.g. 34-35)."

Matchlocks are a sure fire way of general sniping in this game right now, I don't think that Shogun 2 models the loss of piercing force at longer ranges that both matchlocks and longbows suffer from.

"Though the teppo may have many advantages it does still have an equal amount of disadvantages. The most noticeable problem with the teppo was it’s slow reloading time. Due to the steps required to load a matchlock, it could take a gunner anywhere from 15 to 20 seconds to load and fire the teppo. One way to counteract this on the battlefield was to use archer units to support the riflemen while they reloaded. The Japanese also developed pre-made cartridges, these packets of bullets and powder lowered reloading time significantly (Turnbull p.g. 137-138)."

Been there, read the patch notes.

"The second disadvantage the teppo carried was its moisture sensitive mechanisms and powder. Large amounts of moisture and water could potentially render the teppo inoperable. The only way to get past this disadvantage was to keep the teppo and powder covered and dry, and also waterproofing the ignition match (Turnbull p.g. 138)."

No weather in matchmade battles...

[Klaus The Prince]

No weather in matchmade battles...

Thanks God, I might say, as having a 1000+ koku unit suddenly become useless is kinda of annoying.

[Knowing Crow]

Thanks God, I might say, as having a 1000+ koku unit suddenly become useless is kinda of annoying.

This.

[Cinnamon the Hun]

Thanks God, I might say, as having a 1000+ koku unit suddenly become useless is kinda of annoying.

You can the see the check box for rain on the army select so that wouldn't be as much of a problem. Matchlocks still work when wet in this game anyway, I guess those big ashigaru hats keep them dry or something.

I like bringing matchlocks to battles but I think that the tactics of responding to more different conditions with different armies would also be good.

[Pyramid Head]

Weather will not solve problem with friendly fire, alas.