Kaunitz Project [moved over to NTW engine!]

[JaM]

i found it while at work, so will test it immediatly when i'm back. anyway, that description is from xml database CA released some time ago.. we just missed it probably...

recent casualties penalty is also based on casualties taken in 4 second timespan, which is just way too short...

morale shock is linked with "morale shock resistant" unit trait in EDU. Units that dont have this trait will get routed if they suffer such casualties in 4 seconds, while units with this trait will hold... useful for Elite units i guess...

[Dee Jay]

I have already said to Kaunitz to give shock resistance to all the elite shock troops (Grenadiers), I guess heavy cavalry should have this trait as well, so there more effective in a charge.....

Also, its not called "morale shock resistant", its called "disciplined". And it's not called EDU any more, its the unit_stats_land table. JUST TO AVOID CONFUSSION

[Kaunitz]

Hm, indeed that's what CA "description" (if you can call it that...see fear effect range....) says. But it wouldn't make any sense. Why would we have the 6%/10%/15% etc entries, if there was another entry with customizable %-value?

The disciplined-ability does not make a unit morale-shock resistant alltogether, as far as I can remember. Even units that are disciplined will show up the "recent casualties"-malus. But my guess is that the morale shock class is reduced for them. So, e.g. they suffer no malus at 6%, the 6% malus at 10%, etc. But that's only a vague guess.

I'm still wondering if it suffices to give elite units higher morale. Do they need the "recent cas."-resistance? Basically, all factors except for the 6% and maybe the 10% entries are useless for me anyway. Can you imagine a battalion loosing 15% of its strength in 4 seconds?!! I cant!

PS: I'm so quiet lately because I'm testing out quite a lot of things. I hope I can upload a new version (this time including all major factions in the Seven Years War - or, to be correct: third silesian war) in November/December.

[JaM]

must say its a huge improvement if you use low value. I have tested it with 5, but lowered it to 3 and results are quite interesting.. units break from fire, trying to charge enemy with good morale and order is doomed to fail, as they will break your morale (unless you have very experienced unit that can overcome this.. where it works marvelously is in battles against Indian factions, who have lots of melee infantry rabble.. they no longer overrun you with their standard" running" tactics... only chance they have if they flank you.

[Didz]

must say its a huge improvement if you use low value. I have tested it with 5, but lowered it to 3 and results are quite interesting.. units break from fire, trying to charge enemy with good morale and order is doomed to fail, as they will break your morale (unless you have very experienced unit that can overcome this.. where it works marvelously is in battles against Indian factions, who have lots of melee infantry rabble.. they no longer overrun you with their standard" running" tactics... only chance they have if they flank you.

Interesting again.

I mean I know 6% works on the wargame table because I've played numerous battle using it as the flinch point increment and seen how believeable the results are, but it would be a huge coincidence of the same number produced the same quality of result on the CA engine.

But from what you say above it sounds really promising.

1) long range round shot (long range, cannot penetrate multiple models), 2) short range round shot (medium range, can penetrate multiple models), 3) canister (as usual). Grape is missing - I think it's enough to have cannister. Moreover, in an abstract way, one can imagine that "short range round shot" also represents "grape shot". It's an abstract method to simualte artillery "effectivity" at range. If I had 4 slots for artillery ammunition, I'd add grape. But as it is now, I have to use two slots for round shot: enfilades at long range make artillery totally overpowered, no enfilades at all doesn't feel right either and players could move around columns in presence of artillery without any negative effect. There is no "medium" way of letting balls penetrate only a certain amount of models. At least I haven't found one yet.

Why would you want to limit the number of models a roundshot penetrates. They didn't get lodged in people bodies to my knowledge, adn even when spent and rolling along the ground would still take off a man's foot and keep rolling.

As for enfilade fire, its meant to be devastating so given that this was the goal of every artillery officer it seems a bit mean to snatch success away from a battery that achieves it by artilfically limiting the effect. I thought the whole idea of your artillery mod was to get aretillery working the way it should.

I've also got rid of the big shrapnel-throwing cannon ball-ground impacts (replaced with "musket ball ground impacts"; the sound remains the "cannon ball-ground impact" though). I admit it's a bit hard to see where batteries are firing now, but it's better than those giant WW1-like shrapnel-kabooms! The reduced impact-effects give a bit more the impression that the cannon bals are "rolling" now, instead of "bouncing". I'd really like to have earth-shrapnel, but it would need to be much more subtle than the vanilla impacts. I lack the skill to do it myself.

I was reading yesterday that someone thinks they've managed to stop the NTW bowling ball effect by swapping the bounce effect with an shell explosion with zero radius or something. Which sounds promising.

[Flikitos]

Great work guys! Keep going!

[Kaunitz]

Hey JaM, I run a short test but I couldn't reproduce your results. I've set the recent casualties threshold to "1" but noone ever routed due to "recent casualties", even though the unit suffered much more than 1% casualties in 4 seconds (artillery enfilade; more than 6% and 10% in fact...but the recent cas. effect never kicked in...). Quite to the contrary, I have to say that I still believe in my theory, that the threshold determines the time in which the casualties have to be inflicted in order to trigger the morale shock. If you set it very low, a morale shock will become "less" likely. I've set it to "50" and my units rout very happily....

[JaM]

thats strange, this description was directly from CA released XML XSD files for ETW/NTW. In both there is the same description.

[Kaunitz]

Well I don't trust CAs explanations anymore.

Just some small updates:

Localisation file

I've managed to get the "localisation" file working, so it now shows "cohesion" instead of fatigue. However, I had to create a seperate movie-pack file. Does anyone know if I can get it to work as an ordinary mod-pack file? I was tempted to use some contemporary 18th century "french"-german terms, like: "chargirt" for "firing", "avancirt" for "walking", "repoussirt / retirirt" for routing. But then I can't do this to my anglophone players . Are there any suggestions? I've now called it unimaginatively: "perfect cohesion" (fresh)/"good cohesion"(active)/"medium cohesion"(winded)/"low cohesion"(tired)/"very low cohesion"(very tired)/"disintegrating"(exhausted).

EDIT: The bad thing: The stupid move-pack seems to overwrite some of my mods' soundfiles! For example my musket sounds - even when I add them to the movie-pack instead of the mod-pack, they don't show up in game! That's a price I don't want to pay for the cohesion-display. Does anyone have an idea how to get both?
EDIT II: It works when I set the packfile that contains the localisation-file to "patch"-type instead of "movie"-type! Hurray!

Chevrons

What I didn't achieve yet are my customized experience-chevrons. For some reason they don't show up ingame (I only found them in ui/common ui/skins). I've tried a mod, a patch and a movie type already - no success. Basically I've replaced the vanilla ones with green (low experience) --> yellow-->orange-->red-->black (high experience) chevrons, as they give mali in my mod, representing "battle fatigue"/blown horses. It also works quite well for artillery by the way, which reloads slowlier if you let it shoot for too long (=inflicts casualties and gains experience), especially cannister (more casualties --> faster experience). I'd like to have seperate experience effects for different unit types though.

PS: My custom experience-chevrons work now! I found the right ones in "ui/frontend ui/skins".

Customized artillery

Minor success: I've "rearranged" and customized the artillery buttons to match my mods artillery system (also note the tooltips!). From left to right: 1) long range round shot (long range, cannot penetrate multiple models), 2) short range round shot (medium range, can penetrate multiple models), 3) canister (as usual). Grape is missing - I think it's enough to have cannister. Moreover, in an abstract way, one can imagine that "short range round shot" also represents "grape shot". It's an abstract method to simualte artillery "effectivity" at range. If I had 4 slots for artillery ammunition, I'd add grape. But as it is now, I have to use two slots for round shot: enfilades at long range make artillery totally overpowered, no enfilades at all doesn't feel right either and players could move around columns in presence of artillery without any negative effect. There is no "medium" way of letting balls penetrate only a certain amount of models. At least I haven't found one yet.




I've also got rid of the big shrapnel-throwing cannon ball-ground impacts (replaced with "musket ball ground impacts"; the sound remains the "cannon ball-ground impact" though). I admit it's a bit hard to see where batteries are firing now, but it's better than those giant WW1-like shrapnel-kabooms! The reduced impact-effects give a bit more the impression that the cannon bals are "rolling" now, instead of "bouncing". I'd really like to have earth-shrapnel, but it would need to be much more subtle than the vanilla impacts. I lack the skill to do it myself.

Bayonet charges

I think that this approach is a good one for multiplayer battles: an infantry unit that has been ordered to charge will charge from a distance of about 20 ingame-yards. The crux is: I've given the "charge"-fatigue a negative value. This means that charges reduce fatigue and let the unit gain "cohesion" against all logic, thereby increasing its morale as well. As grenadiers are "fatigue resistant", they're better at bayonet charges than other troops. Now, the unit that stands and fires will have low cohesion (as soon as it has opened fire), whereas the charging unit will gain momentum "on the charge" - "extended casualties" will not be enough to stop them, you'd need to inflict "recent casualties". Once contact is made, the higher cohesion of the attacking unit will rout the defender very soon (even though there are still way too many casualties - there seems to be no way around that).

This is the only method I can think of to represent the momentum of bayonet charges. If you fiddle with "charge" boni only, the whole affair will be decided in melee (whereas my method puts emphasis on what happens "before" contact - i.e.: cohesion) and there will be even more casualties. Moreover - and this is a big problem - the defending player could just keep on firing and counter-charge in the last moment. With the "gain momentum on the charge"-method, the attacker has an advantage.

Btw: Cavalry will probably use a different charge-mechanism, which gives all advanatages to the unit with the better cohesion - which is unrealistic as well. But I don't have any means to simulate the "intimitation" effect of a charge. The best way to use cavalry against other cavalry is to let it "walk" into the enemy cavalry right now... Against infantry, the success of a cavalry charge will depend on finding the right balance between cohesion and speed (i.e.: When do you let your troopers loose?) - which is quite good, I think.

[JaM]

Didz: i believe different results are caused by different morale settings we use. While i use low morale values, Kaunitz prefer high values. Anyway, tomorrow i will be releasing ER3 with those effect implemented so you can check. Anyway i will try raising it to high values to see the difference.


Kaunitz: How did you managed to edit those artillery buttons? Is there a way how to make canister button available for Howitzers? i Had to do a workaround with this, where i just changed solid shot for howitzers into canister but icon is still for solid shot...



btw, about those charges, its probably the easiest to set high morale penalty for "being attacked from front" units routs upon contact with very low melee fighting if any. You just need to balance it by charge morale bonus a little.. In my latest files, it takes time to get close with Line Infantry, while enemy is firing at you salvo after salvo, if unit wont break from casualties taken, and it will charge, defenders last hope is to break it by close range volley, otherwise charging unit will rout the defenders once they touch. I think this is as close as it could get.

[Kaunitz]

@ Didz: It is not possible to get 100% believable results with artillery. Do you consider it realistic if a battery of only 2 guns (=1 gun model) takes out 12 men (3 soldier models) with only one discharge on an infantry battalion deployed in three ranks at a distance of 800-1000 yards? And if the ball strikes the formation only slightly obliquely, there will be even more havoc, because casualties come in "steps of 4". It's a problem of scale and formations. Given the scale, we should have infantry deploy in 1 rank only. But this would in turn mean: less models (the frontage needs to stay the same) and thereby also less detailed casualty/morale effects which is unacceptable. So I have to stick with the 3 ranks infantry and 2 ranks cavalry formations.

It does sound a bit strange, I know, but from the games I had, artillery seemed to be really overpowered (in terms of what I consider realistic, including your expertises on artillery). A unit hanging around on the outer fringes of a single gun models' maximum range is reduced to shreds in a matter of 10-15 minutes (1,5-2 shots per minute & "at least" 3 dead infantry models per shot --> ca. 60 dead models=240 dead men) if we keep up the long range penetration. It doesn't feel right.

With the 1 model per ball restriction at "long range", artillery is still powerful in my opinion. Two guns will take out 4 soldiers (1 model) per discharge, which is a bit underpowered for infantry formations in line (ideal: 1,5 models=6 soldiers) and spot-on for cavalry deployed in two ranks. Of course it will be "underpowered" against deep formations, but only at "long range". And you also have to consider that there are hardly any small bumps and obstacles on ETWs maps that could deflect a ball, especially when it travels just below the ground or is already rolling.

Right now, I've set the "short range" for round shot to slightly over 150 ig-yards (600 real yards), but its still open to debate, of course.

@JaM:

1. Enable button slots (no idea!)
First, I think you'd have to enable the shot types for the gun. I haven't fiddled around with that so I don't know how to do that. I just rearranged those three ammunition/button-slots that were already existing for "ordinary" (not howitzers, mortars, etc.) guns: round shot/canister/shrapnel. So the following explanations all refer to the ordinary gun types with three ammunition/button-slots.

2. Link ammunition/projectiles to button slots
The second column in the "projectiles table" ("shot type") links the characteristics of the projectile to a button-slot. The button-slots are labeled (from left to right as they appear in game): round_shot/canister/shrapnel. So I rearranged the buttons by categorizing the projectiles differently. For example: I set the line that included my "short range round shot"-projectile to "canister" as I wanted it to show up as the middle button. And I set the line that included my canister-projectile to "shrapnel" so that this kind of projectile was linked to the right button.

3. Link button-symbols to button slots
The button-symbols never change themselves if you don't rename them to fit your button-projectile assignment. E.g. I successfully linked my canister-projectile to the right button in step 2., but the right button still showed the "shrapnel"-symbol and tooltip. Basically you have to rename the buttons (to be found in the ui.pack: ui/battle ui/buttons) to fit your assignments. The symbols for the left button slot are called: button_shot_x; the symbols for the middle button are called: button_cannister_shot_x; the symbols for the right button: button_shrapnel_shot_x. So once I renamed all the canister-symbols to "button_shrapnel_shot_x", the left button was linked to the canister projectile (=step 2) and to the canister-button-symbol. (Of course you can also edit the button themselves to your liking by using gimp or any other similar program)

4. Link tooltips to button-slots
Last but not least, you have to adapt the tooltips, which are also linked to "button slots" rather than ammunition types. If you link your canister-projectile to the right button (whoose slot is still labeled "shrapnel"), the tooltip will still refer to "shrapnel" ammunition. Similarly to the button-symbols, you have to switch tooltips until they fit your button-projectile-assignment.



Phew, I'm sure that there are pros out there who know better ways to rearrange buttons.

[Didz]

@ Didz: It is not possible to get 100% believable results with artillery. Do you consider it realistic if a battery of only 2 guns (=1 gun model) takes out 12 men (3 soldier models) with only one discharge on an infantry battalion deployed in three ranks at a distance of 800-1000 yards?

But the problem there is not the effect of the shot, but the lack of syncronisation in the figure scales. I think if you're going to go with the figure scale of 1:4 for soldiers, then the same scale needs to be applied to guns. That way it you don't have the problem of one shot hitting 3 men represented 12 men, but one shote respresenting 4 shots hitting 3 men each.

Having said that, a shot passing directly along a line of infantry would indeed take out all of them, that was the whole principle of enfilade fire. There are stories of a single ball taking out a dozen or more men when passing along a line from the flank.

The real issue at 800-1,000 yards would be whether the shot hit, not whether it would pass through the bodies of those men it did hit.

In the same battle where one shot killed eleven Austrian infantry, that same battalion stood for a further hour under artillery fire without suffering another casualty. If artillery in the game is regularly killing three figures per shot at extreme range then there is something wrong with the way terrain is affecting the bounce of shot.

[Dee Jay]

Kaunitz I like your ideas, and would be glad to do some test whenever

Also JaM, I think it is better to have higher values with stats, if you have higher values then you can have more intervals between them all, making it more detailed.

[JaM]

Kaunitz: thanks a lot for tutorial

Dee Jay: Depends on preference. Personally i think its very hard to get any sort of information to make unit stats for such details, therefore I rather go with less is more approach... Plus this also allow me to adapt better to CA hardcoded morale penalties better once identified.

[Kaunitz]

btw, about those charges, its probably the easiest to set high morale penalty for "being attacked from front" units routs upon contact with very low melee fighting if any. You just need to balance it by charge morale bonus a little.. In my latest files, it takes time to get close with Line Infantry, while enemy is firing at you salvo after salvo, if unit wont break from casualties taken, and it will charge, defenders last hope is to break it by close range volley, otherwise charging unit will rout the defenders once they touch. I think this is as close as it could get.

Have you already tested this or is it hypothetical? My morale penatly for being "charged in front" doesn't do nuts, regardless of how high I set it. I think it's because it doesn't stay long enough - even though I've reduced the waver base timeout to 1. If I remember correctly, I think it shows up (only a split-second!) as: "concerned: melee contact" or something like that. Surely it would open up possibilites for me, if it doesn't come at the cost of very low morale values for all units (no finetuning* possible, plus you cannot knock out the hardcoded factors, as I've mentioned before - see post 102).

* I don't refer to differences in unit stats here, rather to the fine-tuning of morale mali.

[JaM]

for example in my files i set -8 for being attacked from front, -16 for being attacked in flank and -32 for being attacked in rear. In game, every time unit touches enemy from rear, they break. Thing is, those values might not be big enough for elite units with high morale and general nearby. therefore its always best damage enemy with ranged fire before closing in.

From Gaming standpoint, i think we cant just port realism things blindly into game.it wont work. you have to imagine soldiers being like robots that have no emotions, and you have to create rules for them so they will act like they had some. Therefore if you put two units against each other and order charge, they will clash together in melee. something that would not happen in the open. But it didnt happen because battle is not a lab rat scenario and other things come into play. So, while you can get unrealistic results from in game tests 1 on 1 battles, it would look completly different in campaign play with tons of background stuff in play - enemy artillery fire, skirmishers, form of attack, fatigue, general in the vicinity etc...all those little things make the difference...

For example, in my games, i never ordered charge against enemy, that i see with steady status. instead, i always try to lower it to at least shaken before sending men to charge him. And i'm getting very good and realistic results with this approach...

[Kaunitz]

Well, yes, I think we are trying to achieve very similar things, but that was not my question. I'm trying to figure out what individual morale factors do, and I had the experience that the "being attacked in front"-morale malus does not work as we would like it to work - in contrast to the flank and rear factors that work nicely. I've set the "being attacked in front"-malus to -100 and still noone routed. But I will do some more tests this evening as my former tests were undertaken quite some time ago.

[JaM]

be careful with values of 100, they might be ignored in game, for example in M2TW highest value accepted was 64... who knows how it is with ETW engine,but I would guess it could be similar...

[Kaunitz]

I've tried it out with -50 now, but to no avail. I will keep on trying with lower and lower values. Are you sure that it is this factor that leads to the results you're getting, JaM?

[JaM]

what else it could be? that is the only thing that effects the close combat in KV_morale.. i was checking the number of men killed and no big drop was there upon the contact so i was definitly not some of those...