collision_damage_modifier and collision_damage_normaliser

[Cesco]

As the title says, i'd like to know what these two entry affect

[Sheridan]

The collision damage entries affect how deadly charges are basically. The higher, the more casualties you'll see on either side depending on the situation. If configured the right way and if you do some needed changes in the battle entities file, you can have horsemen dying as a result of impact for example. In other words the collision entries can be used with great effect to create a more dynamic battlefield.

[Cesco]

Interesting! Did you know if collision system is applied to pikes' impact too? and, in paticular, in what collision_damage_normaliser consist? does it set the variation that a collision damage can have?

[Sheridan]

To my understanding the separate entry, impact_velocity_bonus_damage_modifier, serves that purpose. So basically it's one (and perhaps the most) important factor in deciding how deadly a charge into a pike wall will be. It appears to have some sort of correlation with the entry above, the final damage modifier, though, so they are perhaps best used by staying roughly in the same value range. So if you put the final damage modifier to 1, you probably want to keep the bonus damage modifier pretty close to that figure or pikemen will feel unbalanced in one way or the other, as in either the charge being too deadly but the combat phase too prolonged, or vice versa. Best thing to do here is to experiment.

The collision damage normaliser is a bit confusing. In modding terms, you basically use it to reduce or increase casualties in a charge much like the other collision entries. On a theoretical level it's a bit more complicated. It's basically a constant that ensures that the area under a graph equals 1 (in lack of a better explanation). In other words in some way, it determines the probaility of a certain damage value. For example, say you set the max damage to 100, min damage to 0. If I understand the normaliser's purpose correctly, you can increase (or decrease) the probability of a certain damage to be resolved in a charge between two entities. In other words it's not so much there to cause variation - for that you have the min and max damage modifiers - but rather to redefine/manipulate the probability range in a normal distribution curve e.g. making a certain damage resolution more frequent (for example 80) instead of 50 which is normally placed in the center of the probability range. Yet in a way you're really correct, adjusting this factor could add variation in the sense that it'd be rare having such an extensive damage applied that a soldier dies to a charge, or the other way around of course. I hope that helps a bit!

[Cesco]

Well i'm a bit lost in the second point

The proble is i'm noticing how pike units are, basically, broken: in any way you balance the game, when two pike units clash they will slaughter each other much faster than in a pike vs sword or pike vs spear fight...in other words pikes are much more lethal against pike units than against non pike units...and i don't know how to fix this. Pike's damage seems to be similar to a collision damage: for example, i gave to pikewall ability a X100 (!) melee attack bonus and the result was...none! then i increase the impact damage modifier values and there was more casualties...but there is that sperequation between pike and non-pike units that i'm not able to understand...maybe increasind shield wall's bracing ability...

Any way thanks for your advices, +rep to you

[Sheridan]

Thanks!

Achieving a good pike balance is a delicate matter. On one hand you want them to be vulnerable to rear and flank attacks, on the other almost impenetrable but not meat-grinding in the front. In order to best do this, what you want to do is to first make sure all pike units have low melee defense values compared to other melee-orientated units. This will make them less prone to fending off attacks, but won't make the pike wall in the front any less effective. That should help making any pike versus melee troop more balanced.

The next step is making sure pike on pike engagements work well. Why exactly these engagements are so much faster is rather strange. There is a solution to it however, but it's going to affect the lengthiness of combat where pikemen are involved generally speaking. Try reducing the velocity_bonus_damage_modifier to like 0.5. As a matter of fact, now when talking about it, I think this does correlate with the collision damages as well. In vanilla you can typically notice a sword or spear unit charge right into a pike wall, but without taking any casualties until first after the combat has been going on for a few seconds. So you can try and increase the min and max collision damage modifiers, while reducing the velocity bonus damage modifier somewhat to comepensate. Actually if you want you can hit me up for a chat on steam, my ID there is philipebast1. Easier to explain in a chat window I suspect.

[Cesco]

Easier to explain in a chat window I suspect.

So do i, but i think that discusing of this matter in a public forum could achieve more contributions from different people...because having a broken phalanx it's really annoying.

Decreasing velocity bounus damage modifier should increase the time before pike start to inflict damge, shouldn't it?

Another things i noticed are:
-if you have, let's say, ten pike units against ten pike units ,only some of them get slaughtered , while other have more balanced fights..i think this may depend on the variation of collision damage: when two units meet and start a fight, all the hits they inflict have the same value, value which is automatically set at the start of the fight...so you'll have some units inflicting high damage, while other units inflict a normal or a low damage...this is only an ipothesiys, of course.

impact REFLECTION damage modifier: does this value depend on the hit rate of the unit wich id hitting...or on the hit rate of the stricken one ( as the word reflection may suggest)? Some experiments i did seem to confirm the second hypothesis.

PS: i apologize if my poor english grammar makes my posts hard to decipher...it's a bit tricky to me speaking about this matter, wich is pretty complex of his own...

[JaM]

impact REFLECTION damage modifier increases amount of damage dealt by Pikemen towards enemy, based on his speed at the impact. Cavalry with higher speed will be more damaged than slower moving infantry, but if this is set high enough even infantry will be impacted. Personally, i keep this low, because nobody would tend to run directly into pikes, while pikemen hold pikes in both hands, if a horse ran into such pike, it would impale horse, but also it would push the phalangite back or would force him to drop the pike (simple rule of physics, rule of action and reaction - force applied against the charging horse would go other way against the grip. so if phalangite is not able to hold the pike, a lot of force will be neglected.)

[Cesco]

The principal question (still) is: why then pikemen tend to be more deadly against other pikemen then to non pike units? (And this is a problem present even in the best mods)?

[JaM]

I didnt experienced it in R2TR actually, so not sure.

[Sheridan]

It might have to do somehting with the HP system and how some pike units have relatively low armour and defense. On a unit scale you can notice a draining effect in combat pretty often, especially when projectiles are involved. Basically the initial stage, or the initial volleys, deal damage but not enough to kill many if any soldiers. Then as their health has been lowered significantly, they start dropping very quickly. As long as a pike unit is in contact with another unit that is directly attacking it, it's not going to move. So you might be looking at a "normal" combat pace (relative to pike vs sword combat) when two pikes are directly facing each other, and a slower pace when one unit is getting flanked. It might not be the full explanation, though.

[Cesco]

Unfortunately i don't think this problem depends on hp getting drained by hits...i mean, yes this draining surely has an effect, but not so decisive: in my submod pike and non pike units have all the same amount of hp (100) and there isn't much difference beetween armour values...so the origin of this problem must be different.

[Sheridan]

The collision damage modifiers should not have any prominent impact in how pike on pike engagements play out. Can you give us some more background information on the observations you made? There are a couple of things that may have been different from example to example, one of them being the angle of attack as mentioned before. Did both sides attack each other with lowered pikes each time, or did the AI not lower its?

[Cesco]

Did both sides attack each other with lowered pikes each time, or did the AI not lower its?

On thing i noticed about this: when a pike units does't have pikes lowered, it doesn't suffer casualties...or at least i'm sure that this problem manifests itself when both pike units have their pikes lowered.

[Cesco]

By now I've been able to achieve a good balance by lowering pikes' hit frequency and melee attack (not armour damage) in this way phalanges have a low probability of inflict damage in melee. If you are interested you can try my two submod:
The one for Cac: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...819-12-2014%29
And the one for vanilla: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...listic-battles