Flaming missiles - What effect do they have?

[Albion Crusader]

Something that I didn't understand in RTW and still don't understand in MTW2 is WTF difference does it make if you shoot flaming missiles instead of normal??? By 'missiles' I don't just mean arrows but also siege projectiles.

Someone once told me that flaming missiles don't do as much damage but they do more damage to the morale of enemy units. However, I don't know if this is true.

Does anyone know conclusively how flaming missiles differ from normal missiles? Please, no conjecture.

[Metellus]

I can tell you conclusively that they affect morale more than normal arrows, at the cost of reduced accuracy. However I can't give you numbers.

[Maralitja]

Flame arrows affect the morale of enemy troops and damage/set fire to siege weapons. With flaming projectiles, they are less accurate than 'standard' stones, but if they hit a pile of infantry, they work wonders.

[Damocles]

Interestingly enough, they seem to do greater damage as well.

[Albion Crusader]

That's interesting. Thanks for the replies.

Yesterday I fought my first night battle and I left my longbow men and bombards on 'fire at will' and they automatically used flaming missiles. The army I was fighting had about 5 trebuchets, so maybe that's why.

It looked darn cool at night time!

[Oddball_E8]

are you sure? i turned off the flaming projectiles on my trebuchets once, whilst firing on infantry, and their casualty-rates didnt seem to go down... just as many died every time i hit (on average of course)... the only difference is that it wasnt as visual as a bunch of guys bursting into flames...

and as for area effect, normal stones have that too... just as much as the flaming ones it seems...

[jimbob]

If anything normal stones have a greater effect, because they can bounce, so they hit in 2 or 3 different places.

[Wurfspiess]

Flaming arrows
+ more damage
+ morale loss

-lower rate of fire
-more inaccurate

[XnARO]

Yep post above me is correct from my experience, even the ingame advice says that.

Good to use them on a large tightly packed formation not so good if you need the accuracy.

Basically the flaming arrows do more damage by setting alight infantry beside the one that got hit, I haven't looked at this close up to confirm yet but I'm pretty sure thats what I've seen from a distance.

[Lord Phoenix]

Yeah, anything thats flaming gives more morale loss to those it hits, does more damage and damages a larger area for siege weapons, but is much less accurate.

So, if you hit an army coming at you with fire arrows, when they reach your front lines they'll be more likely to break and run than if you used normal arrows.

[OG Grenadier]

Is it my imagination or is the rate of fire for flaming arrows in particular slightly slower?

[Darkiemond]

I tried using archers with fire/or without and the difference in number of people killed or the accuracy, is so small that I think it should be attributed to randomness.

As far as for earlier siege weapons I didn't notice any difference at all. For example, I destroyed gates and was using two ballista units to shoot through the gate at the enemy. One ballista was flamed and one wasn't. Both units kept hitting the gate until I positioned them at the right angle and they both could get both shoots through the gate and kill about the same number of enemies.

However, cannons I think are more affected. Regular cannon shot seems to be more accurate over large distances, but does seemingly less damage.

It seems that siege shots (and archers' as well) sometimes are soooo inacurate and are so far off that
'a little more damage vs. a little more accurate'
or
'a little less acurate vs. a little more moral damage'
doesn't play a big role on the background of HUGE RANDOMNESS OF INACURACY.

There are two main reasons for using flaming archers though:
1) It looks cool, really cool, especially at night.
2) When defending, flaming arrows set the siege weapons on fire. Often this is the only thing that saves my city from Mongols.
For example: My city had 5 crossbow units and couldn't destroy a single ram..........while
in another battle I had only 2 archer units on the wall and they managed to set on fire 2 rams and 1 tower that were approaching almost simultaniously.

[DrFeelgood]

I tried using archers with fire/or without and the difference in number of people killed or the accuracy, is so small that I think it should be attributed to randomness.

As far as for earlier siege weapons I didn't notice any difference at all. For example, I destroyed gates and was using two ballista units to shoot through the gate at the enemy. One ballista was flamed and one wasn't. Both units kept hitting the gate until I positioned them at the right angle and they both could get both shoots through the gate and kill about the same number of enemies.

However, cannons I think are more affected. Regular cannon shot seems to be more accurate over large distances, but does seemingly less damage.

It seems that siege shots (and archers' as well) sometimes are soooo inacurate and are so far off that
'a little more damage vs. a little more accurate'
or
'a little less acurate vs. a little more moral damage'
doesn't play a big role on the background of HUGE RANDOMNESS OF INACURACY.

There are two main reasons for using flaming archers though:
1) It looks cool, really cool, especially at night.
2) When defending, flaming arrows set the siege weapons on fire. Often this is the only thing that saves my city from Mongols.
For example: My city had 5 crossbow units and couldn't destroy a single ram..........while
in another battle I had only 2 archer units on the wall and they managed to set on fire 2 rams and 1 tower that were approaching almost simultaniously.

How do we go about modifying the unit file export_desc_unit to convert crossbow missiles to the flaming option?

[MadKnight]

Now THAT ^^^ would be insteresting. Sure I saw it in movies somewhere.

[puddingkip]

How do we go about modifying the unit file export_desc_unit to convert crossbow missiles to the flaming option?

The post you quoted is 8.5 years old. Might be a new record