“Old school Javelins” – Fire At Will for all javelin-armed units.

[Ahiga]

DOWNLOAD LINK: http://www.mediafire.com/download/9g...oldschool.pack



This mod re-introduces the standard Rome 1 and MTWII era system of fire at will (With no skirmishing) for certain javelin armed infantry - I mainly went with higher end Barbarian units, all Romans/Italics, most Greek infantry with javelins, having fire at will. Lower end barbarians have fire on the charge, and cavalry have only charge and throw. Fire at will (Henceforth "FAW") has a -5 marksmanship bonus penalty and a faster reload, but also a spread to make it a bit less accurate. There's also the disadvantage that you are stationary and receive the enemy's charge - it's not certain you'll be able to charge them before they charge you. I also raised the calibration distance by 5 so that in theory they should 'calibrate' (get ready to/throw) right as soon as the enemy enters their target zone.

Evidence:

http://i.imgur.com/HYXhf5z.jpg & http://i.imgur.com/27KtLzb.jpg
Notice the primary weapons drawn, no fire at will button and compare it to the fire at will button & javelins drawn here: http://i.imgur.com/3O84i3H.jpg

See a brief combat example:
http://imgur.com/nkq74RG
http://imgur.com/lTR4ziZ
http://imgur.com/dURtMxo
http://imgur.com/HGZLFoF


If you want to make a unit use fire at will javelins in your own mod:

You need to keep the animation table and the missile weapons table named as they currently are. You can rename the projectiles table, however.

Standard to unit entries, all non-skirmisher units will behave in vanilla format: they will charge and throw. All Roman units using a pilum will automatically FAW. If you wish to change them back to the vanilla system you need to enable precursor as "TRUE" to pilums in the missile_weapons table, and then copy the vanilla pilum settings in javelin_projectiles (projectiles table). If you wish to make a unit FAW, change their primary missile weaponry entry to either rome_javelin_precursor_fire_at_will or rome_iron_javelin_fire_at_will or rome_pilum - there is no real difference between the first two except cosmetic, I think. I am not going to downsize the number of projectiles from 2 to 1 because not everyone would be happy with that. If you wish to do so yourself, go into the land_units table and downgrade all infantry with 2 in their ammo spot to 1.


[b]Do not give fire-at-will to cavalry. It makes them misbehave if they aren't skirmishers (able to retreat, like numidians).



Installation: You will need to edit the user script to load the mod, or the mod loader. It isn't a drop in and play sort of package. Have it load at the top of your list as I can't testify to its compatbility. I had to remove mods I normally play with to have it work. For some unfathomable reason I could rename tables in my own version of this mod, but cannot in this.

Add the following to your user script, or via the mod loader:

mod "ahiga_mod_javelin_oldschool.pack";

[Micromoron]

I love you man. Will immediately test this. *brofist* EDIT: I tested it now and it seems that when units are taken off fire at will and put in melee mode, the spears are still there sometimes and they don't switch to swords. Also, how do you throw spear then charge? I already put them in melee with fire at will and charged, in melee without fire and will, doesn't seem to work quite as planned.

[Magnar]

Ah you just released this before me, congrats

I have also just finished adding the same feature to my mod, though ive actually edited the man sword shield animation table rather than what you have done, though i have the same bug with them holding the pilums though im still looking for a solution

[Magnar]

nvm ive solved the problem. in ranged mode they carry pilum and in melee mode they carry swords (its not a bug, its a feature )

Im also going to make the pilums slower reloading than javelins but by a bit more as the pilum is quite a bit heavier than the javelin by design.

keep up the great work

[Haikka]

Wow great mod thank you very much!

[Aethyr]

So would I have to edit my chosen battle mod I have downloaded to make this compatible? I am quite unfamiliar with modding...

[dom385]

Yeah that's what I was going to ask too, I'm using radious' battle mod currently. I got a bit confused too, is it just a download the file and drop it in the data file or do we have to do anything else?

[Ahiga]

Using Radius' battle mod as an example:

He has a projectiles table already - mine does too, so you either need to delete his and use mine, or edit his and delete mine.

If you do the latter, load Radious Battle Mod with the Pack file manager, go to the projectiles table, click category and on the arrow down thing specify javelins. That will make it just javelins. Locate the lines for javelin_prec & javelin_iron & pilum_normal, scroll horizontally to base reload and drop it from 40 to 9-10.


Alternatively, bug Radious to just include my pilum/javelin changes.

[helmersen]

So this actually work? Are the legionaries behaving like in Rome, where they can stand still and defend and then throw spears before the impact?

[Ahiga]

As far as my tests went, yes.

They are stationary and throw the javelins until they are out. I forget if they automatically charge for the player after they are out of ammo - I don't think so. The AI however, once they have fully exhausted the javelins will charge at you.

But with this your javelin armed troops should not be forced to throw their javelins on the charge, but may stand and receive a charge - throwing at the advancing enemy and remaining stationary.

[Krasnaïa Zvezda]

Does this mean that the AI will come at you, stop and then throw all its javelins and then charge at you ?

If that's the case, not sure I'm liking it even though my troops could do the same and counter the effect, but it would make for battles with heavy losses.

[Ahiga]

I love you man. Will immediately test this. *brofist* EDIT: I tested it now and it seems that when units are taken off fire at will and put in melee mode, the spears are still there sometimes and they don't switch to swords. Also, how do you throw spear then charge? I already put them in melee with fire at will and charged, in melee without fire and will, doesn't seem to work quite as planned.

You have to tell them to charge, they won't do it automatically - the AI does that, but for you I don't believe they will charge automatically after they are out of rounds.

As for the switching of weapons that's out of my area of expertise, hopefully it's a minor issue and is quickly solved by them exhausting their javelins or switching to melee after the initial crash.

Krasnaïa Zvezda: Yes. Cannot make it so it only works for the player and the AI does the old fashioned method, it's applied universally. Either the unit charges > throws > charges, or the unit stops > throws > then charges when out of ammo. Lethality can be adjusted with various attributes of the projectiles - I am generally going to avoid messing with that as that will make it more incompatable with various battle-adjustment mods so I'll leave it to whomever wants to integrate this system into their own battle mods.

Like the title suggests this is a beta, and I welcome others with more expertise in the number crunching to solve some of the issues of lethality and so on.

Edit: I tested 2 reload speed (Skirmishers have 9(!!) and it is definitely the best choice. The unit quickly and almost seamlessly throws the first volley then however many are necessary to throw until they are out (or you order them to attack in the case of the player). Naturally the lethality is super high and needs some serious adjustments, but I am going to work on that later today.

[JaM]

Ahiga: is there any way how to adjust how many ranks should throw the javelin? in reality, max throwing distance of Pillum was short, so if century was in 8rank formation, men in last rank would be throwing pillum into own first rank, while ranks 4-7 would be wasting javelins - its one of the reasons why military historians think only first two ranks actually thrown javelins, while others kept theirs and used them during luls, when they exchanged the first two lines.

[thorvald89]

Thank you very much for your effort, I`ve really missed this feature. Sadly I have to report a major bug.I was messing around with factions in custom battle, when I found out that the Iberian cavallery could not attack any more.It`s a melee unit, but also capable of throwing javelines, so I guess there is some conflict with the horses.Haven`t tried any other units in the same class though

[Ahiga]

Jam, unfortunately it's not possible to do that. The best we can do is either limit them to one pilum or limit the range, but I am cautious about either - 35-40m seems to be the perfect distance in my experience. It's close enough that you can do a direct charge (and keep formation! :O) after exhausting the volleys.

Thorvald89, thank you for the bug report. Definitely a big issue and troubling to figure out why. I'll focus on that now.


Edit: Bad news. It is fixable - that's good. The bad is that it requires a more comprehensive approach. I was hoping the mod could work with just a single (non land stats) table and animation folder, but the solution requires more work.

Pretty much (What I would need to do, you could approach this another way):

1) Create a new projectile
2) Make it a precursor (thrown on the charge)
3) Assign it to cavalry that are meant to throw during the charge (They'll be forced to do it on foot too, but c'est la vie that's not a big deal).

Very easy to do. Problem is that puts the kibosh to this being an easily applied universal mod that any battle package can use - I'll need to edit the land_units table, which is what most of those battle mods like Radious' need to edit. I'm not going to create a variant for every such mod, so the best I can suggest is for them to integrate this system into their own.


In the mean time I will do what I noted above based on Radious' land_units table (since I'm using it for my own game), with the fixes to reload speed and so forth. If you want to apply it to another battle mod you're using, you'll need to do what I listed above.

[Magnar]

In my mod the iberian cavalry work as normal.

But i edited the animation fragment rather than the land_units table

[thorvald89]

Thanks for the workaround, but the Iberian Cav now also refuses to use the javelines while charging, really odd. I added a projectile to the missle weapons table, named it "rome_javelin_fixed", set the projectile to "javelin_prec" and added "true" to precursor.Then I set the default missile weapon of the Iberian Cav to "rome_javelin_fixed"Did I miss any steps ?

[Ahiga]

Magnar, what did you do to get them to work? When I had them with fire at will enabled the AI wouldn't use them properly - since they could throw javelins but not skirmish they kind of floundered when they should have just thrown on the charge. Did you just add a javelin throwing animation to the fragment file and that alone was enough (along with the precursor change)?

Thorvald89 - I don't think you missed anything, that is what I was going to do. But it's weird that they are refusing to use the javelins when charging since that should have fixed it. I'll be looking at this tonight shortly.


Actually Thorvald, are you using the PFM 3.02? Because that one has a bug where the precursor table in the missiles_table is actually meant to be the "can fire at buildings" and vice versa. So you should set "can fire at buildings" to True for the javelin_fixed.

[Ahiga]

Magnar, what did you do to get them to work? When I had them with fire at will enabled the AI wouldn't use them properly - since they could throw javelins but not skirmish they kind of floundered when they should have just thrown on the charge. Did you just add a javelin throwing animation to the fragment file and that alone was enough (along with the precursor change)?

Thorvald89 - I don't think you missed anything, that is what I was going to do. But it's weird that they are refusing to use the javelins when charging since that should have fixed it. I'll be looking at this tonight shortly.


Actually Thorvald, are you using the PFM 3.02? Because that one has a bug where the precursor table in the missiles_table is actually meant to be the "can fire at buildings" and vice versa. So you should set "can fire at buildings" to True for the javelin_fixed.

[thorvald89]

Thanks for the hint, actually I am using PFM 3.01 but i will try this tomorrow none the less, have to go to bed now.Thank you again for making this mod, had the most awesome battle this evening together with my own attempt for a realistic ancient battles mod (took a look at the battles available and merged/tweaked them to my likings)