Faction - Labrynna Regime

[Cameron Shutters]

So after some testing it's incredibly obvious that there is simply no reason whatsoever for the Gunners to have the "fires_by_rank" attribute. They perform horribly as it is, and considering they're a high tier and expensive unit that's quite disappointing. Raising their numbers to 86 and removing this attribute has done a lot to make them useful, though they still pail in comparison to many other factions comparable units. Not to mention that by the time you get them in the campaign you've pretty much won, at least that's how it was when I played.

The main drawback, besides how late game they are, of the Gunners is how many shoots they fire before enemy units close the distance. Sure, their shots are powerful, but there simply aren't enough bullets to do any real damage. Simply raising their numbers doesn't work as they require firing with two ranks (the third, fourth, and so on will never shoot) even with the "fires_by_rank" attribute removed. So the attribute absolutely must go if these are to be useful, let alone powerful. The fact that they require two ranks means they take up a tremendous amount of room on the frontline too, so even if you fill your stack with only Gunners only a few will actually be shooting because there just won't be room for all of them. Removing the attribute increases their firing abilities by decreasing the delay between shots and it just plain looks better as, once the attribute is removed, the first rank shoots and then kneels while reloading to let the second rank fire rather than dancing around and playing musical chairs.

Gunner Posts on the other hand are available from the start and absolutely obliterate everything, but they're a puzzle. Dropping their numbers to 2 instead of 3 means they have roughly a 50/50 chance of winning against two Hylian Infantry units, which are, by contrast, low tier and somewhat cheap units with a combined cost of 600 vs the Gunner Posts cost of 700. Take into account their inability to move I think it's safe to say that isn't a proper nerf. Yet at the same time every battle with Gunner Posts I played as Labrynna, except when few enemies were there, the Gunner Posts killed 200+ enemy soldiers. And I mean 200+ per Gunner Post, and 200 is the minimum. These things just can't decide whether they're UP or OP. The biggest problem with them though is that they're available from the start, unlike the Gunners who take forever to make their appearance.

To fix this I'd say make the Gunner Posts cost 900 and take as long as the Gunners to show up. This will weaken Labrynna quite a bit in the early to mid game though. I'd suggest instead making the Gunners show up a bit earlier so they're more mid game rather than late game (after making the corrections on them I outlined, as they are currently worse than Borderguards who a much cheaper and lower tier), so Labrynna can counteract their terrible start with a strong mid and late game. Plus it'll make Labrynna more fun to play as everything except for their Gunners are pretty meh and are just kinda like a weaker Hyrule without cavalry.

There's also the super weak Veran with no attack or loyalty and the incredibly OP Homeguards, but those are more of bugfixes.

Obviously these aren't very relevant at the moment as there are no plans to balance things out as of yet, but I thought I'd leave the information here for when we get to that part before I forget.

[Saria's Vanguard]

Removing the attribute increases their firing abilities by decreasing the delay between shots and it just plain looks better as, once the attribute is removed, the first rank shoots and then kneels while reloading to let the second rank fire rather than dancing around and playing musical chairs.

Thank you I hate them trying to "play musical chairs" rather than kneel fire also thank you for your hard work on the Labrynnians I like using the gunners but right now they need some help

[Apani]

To deactivate fire by rank you don't have to remove it from EDU. Just putting the unit in skirmish mode will do it.

That said, it's up to Neph to create proper firing animations for Gunners.

[Cameron Shutters]

Thank you I hate them trying to "play musical chairs" rather than kneel fire also thank you for your hard work on the Labrynnians I like using the gunners but right now they need some help

No problem. The Gunners are a really cool unit so I hate to see them made useless.

To deactivate fire by rank you don't have to remove it from EDU. Just putting the unit in skirmish mode will do it.

That said, it's up to Neph to create proper firing animations for Gunners.

They already have proper firing animations, you just have to remove the attribute and they use them. And skirmish mode isn't very good for Gunners as the final shot they fire before the enemy reaches them is lost due to them running away. I've found that final shot is usually what makes the difference between the enemy unit routing and not, and with the Gunners long delay between shots every shot counts. You're losing around 1/4 of their firing power by using skirmish mode. The running away does little to help them live longer too unless you have a way to draw the attention of the pursuing units as Gunners aren't all that fast so they'll just run until they get trapped or run out of energy and then get slaughtered. Not to mention running away disrupts their ranks meaning only a few of them will get to shoot until the player orders them to stand with 2 ranks again, which takes some time for them to get into position and distracts the player from other battlefield duties.

So all in all skirmishing is not a good idea for the Gunners except in special situations.

[Apani]

If you just take Fire By Rank away from them, everyone will shoot at the enemy when he wants with no coordination whatsoever. Althought this alone is an improvement from Fire By Rank, I think we should keep it, just without that "play musical chairs" thing. Firing at random really contradicts their "elite" status (they take 3 turns to train and are one of Labrynna's most costly units, when gunpowder's real advantage is cheapness, so they better be elite, or else we give firearms to tokays).
Many mods gave their gunners a fixed fire by rank:



Anyways, I've tried to boost Gunners as well, and the results are quite satisfying:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

So yeah, there are many factors at play: accuracy, shooting delay, damage and animation. Sadly the latter exceeds my grasp.

[Cameron Shutters]

If you just take Fire By Rank away from them, everyone will shoot at the enemy when he wants with no coordination whatsoever.

No they don't. Some in the second rank fire, but that appears to be a bug. For the most part only the first rank fires, then kneels and reloads while the second rank fires. I tested this four or five times to verify. That's closer to how real soldiers fired their weapons in the Napoleonic Era btw, unlike the musical chairs approach they currently use.

What exactly did you do to boost them? Their damage and accuracy should already be high enough to kill almost anything with one or two shots and there is a 0 for delay. The only thing that causes trouble in my tests is the animation, which is partially fixed by removing fire by rank. Unit size is another possibility, but as I outlined that doesn't really work because they require two ranks to function thus taking up massive amounts of frontline space.

Here, imgur album with screenshots to verify what I'm saying is correct and what you're saying isn't. Note how the first rank fires and second rank waits, first rank kneels and the second rank fires, second rank kneels and first rank fires and so on. The only exception is the two bugged soldiers who are not firing properly because the one in the first rank was stuck in the taunting animation when firing began, thus is delayed. To solve that you'd just have to removed the taunting animation.

http://imgur.com/a/ZWyqQ#0

[Apani]

It's not the vertical column to be uncoordinated, it's the horizontal one; every man on the first row should fire at once, kneel and let the row behind shoot.

Anyways, here is my EDU for them:

type             Gunners
dictionary       Gunners      ; Arquebusiers
category         infantry
class            missile
voice_type       Light
banner faction   main_none
banner holy      crusade
soldier          Gunners, 60, 0, 0.625, 0.35
officer         lab_flagman7
attributes       can_withdraw, gunpowder_unit, fire_by_rank, start_not_skirmishing, gunmen, command
formation        1.4, 1.4, 1.4, 1.4, 3, square
stat_health      1, 3
stat_pri         34, 1, elite_late_arquebus_bullet, 140, 16, missile, missile_gunpowder, piercing, none, musket_shot_set, 25, 1
;stat_pri_ex      0, 0, 0
stat_pri_attr    area
stat_sec         1, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, melee_blade, blunt, none, 45, 1
;stat_sec_ex      0, 0, 0
stat_sec_attr    no
stat_pri_armour  2, 5, 0, flesh
;stat_armour_ex   0, 5, 0, 0, 3, 0, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour  0, 0, flesh
stat_heat        1
stat_ground      1, 0, 2, -1
stat_mental      12, disciplined, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay  1
stat_food        60, 300
stat_cost        3, 5190, 660, 65, 50, 2595, 4, 2595
armour_ug_levels 0
ownership        labrynna
era 0            labrynna
era 1            labrynna
era 2            labrynna
info_pic_dir      labrynna
card_pic_dir      labrynna
;unit_info        6, 14, 3

[Cameron Shutters]

I don't see why that's a big enough issue to justify them playing musical chairs. Not firing at exactly the same time looks better than them dancing around trying to figure out who should stand where, and it seems like it'd be more practical too. But if it's fixable than it should be fixed. I almost wonder if the taunting animation may have something to do with it, as it delays many of the soldiers getting their guns pointed when their fellows do.

That's a ridiculously strong attack though. Unless I'm mistaken (and I could be as I haven't tested yours) that would cause them to be able to defeat multiple Ruby Guard units easily but two Gohma Larva units or two Bokoblin units would defeat the Gunners because the issue is not having enough bullets flying at the enemy, not the power of the bullets.

[Apani]

Have you watched the video I posted above? Here they fire perfectly coordinatedly, without musical chairs. But the taunting animation is unlikely a notable cause.

Well, isn't that a realistic outcome? RL Muskeeteers might as well stop a manipole of Elite Armoured Knights charging at them but get swarmed by peasants. Anyways, Bokoblins should break in fear much sooner than Ruby Guards, while Gohma Larvae could prove effective reasonably, since their speciality is Zergrushing.

[Cameron Shutters]

Have you watched the video I posted above? Here they fire perfectly coordinatedly, without musical chairs. But the taunting animation is unlikely a notable cause.

Well, isn't that a realistic outcome? RL Muskeeteers might as well stop a manipole of Elite Armoured Knights charging at them but get swarmed by peasants. Anyways, Bokoblins should break in fear much sooner than Ruby Guards, while Gohma Larvae could prove effective reasonably, since their speciality is Zergrushing.

You don't find it a tad unbalanced that a 50 rupee low tier cannon fodder unit easily destroys a 700 rupee high tier elite unit? And yeah, the video is what it should be; I assumed that was without fires_by_rank.

[Apani]

I guess it's a good thing Labrynna and Misery Mire are located on the opposited edges of the map, then.

Anyways, I've been aiming a bit more on realism and logic over balance. Real Combat specifies that missile units are two quality level in melee inferior in melee (in this case, theirs is Average), combine that with the fact that they have no secondary weapon nor armour whatsoever, and you can see why they should be weak in melee. But I'll probably add myself a secondary weapon for them, now that I learned.

[Sir Aroun]

If you just take Fire By Rank away from them, everyone will shoot at the enemy when he wants with no coordination whatsoever. Althought this alone is an improvement from Fire By Rank, I think we should keep it, just without that "play musical chairs" thing. Firing at random really contradicts their "elite" status (they take 3 turns to train and are one of Labrynna's most costly units, when gunpowder's real advantage is cheapness, so they better be elite, or else we give firearms to tokays).
Many mods gave their gunners a fixed fire by rank:



Anyways, I've tried to boost Gunners as well, and the results are quite satisfying:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

So yeah, there are many factors at play: accuracy, shooting delay, damage and animation. Sadly the latter exceeds my grasp.

this is really good, have you shown it to UN?

[Apani]

I had made a thread about it, but it was ignored. I really don't think Neph has much time to do this right now; I think he really needs a developing team.

[Drazule]

Could the game support a sort of gatling gun for the regiem? I'm not gonna lie, I don't know if they even need something like that, but it could fill the role to kill those larva and bokoblins through sheer volume of fire over the more precise, higher powered rifles?

[Apani]

Well, the vanilla game had ribaults, and CoW has repating handguns. There is even a tank in there.

[Cameron Shutters]

Gunner Posts already pretty well fill that role. They're absolutely devastating against any enemies and have a decent rate of fire. If the Gunners glitch with firing was fixed they'd operate much the same way. Sure they're best against fewer armored enemies than many unarmored but I'd say the Posts need to be toned down first and then we can consider adding something new like that.

[Sir Aroun]

It be nice if the Labrynna had a "Public School" building, both as its religions building and something (I don't know this game well)

[Eldren]

I Think Labrynna should get Gunner Towers. Like so....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

They are using Siege towers with Gunners on and in them as a war machine.
What do you all think?

The Tower could be altered to look more like this.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Aleatorio]

Brilliant, just brilliant. Since they aren´t supposed to be good in melee (not having mechs in count of course) something like that would give then a nice advantage to compensate that in ofensive sieges. Jus imagine putting that just in front of the wall, let the gunners do their business and whe the wall is clear putting regular gunners there to shot down at the rest of the enemy. It would be glorious.

[Drazule]

Those are badass, but wouldn't they just be mobile gunner posts?