Chakram?

[eschelar]

So I'm seeing that the Pack files under projectiles has chakkar. It actually looks like it it's implemented too. 50 Range.

Has anyone tried to unlock this? Might be pretty amazing to make a Sikh honor guard of some sort that was equipped with one or two chakkar, similar to the tomahawks of the natives. Historically, they weren't used a whole lot during this era, but they were there and apparently they were carried as a type of sidearm. Looks like there are two types - steel chakri (range 40-60 meters) and brass chakri (range up to 100m). Lighter chakri could be carried in packs of 7 or 8, while practically, it would make more sense to treat the weapon in ETW as a low quantity projectile.

They were used thrown from a run too..

While they were outdated by muskets in later years, they were heavily used at times and it's not beyond the scope of imagination to think that Sikh Warriors might have one or two of these on their belt to be thrown during a charge.

Has anyone ever experimented with this?

So I tried this and discovered that Sikh_warriors (not east_sikh_warriors) actually have this set up to use. There doesn't appear to be any graphics or animations on it, but oddly, I tried it in a battle and a pike unit was "concerned, under missile attack" and had 113/120 men without having gotten close... odd.

The skins on this Sikh unit are different from the ones I am used to in campaign, so I have a feeling this is actually the correct unit that goes with the chakram, but it too isn't finished. they don't have a weapon and it says that they have "chakram and sword" but have neither. They are definitely firing though.

I substituted a bit with the tomahawk and was able to see projectiles and projectile animations, but still seems a bit buggy. I tried to increase it to 120 range, but I have a feeling that there's a physics conflict there because when I got them at full range, there were no projectiles coming out, but their ammo was depleting. Definitely has something to do with range. I guess there might be something hard coded in the way the tomahawks work that limits them to 40, even if their range is beyond that. If the range is above what the hard limit is, the projectiles don't fire. They appear to be decreasing in ammo, but nothing is coming out and the enemies aren't under missile attack. When I get closer, the enemies feel they are under missile attack.

UPDATE:
From what I can tell, the problem has something to do with the throwing axe at very high range. The axe is thrown in an arc, with a certain elevation. I noticed that the elevation on the tomahawk is 30, but the default for chakkar is 24. I wonder how far they got with that... Anyhow, I might twiddle this unit up for my next campaign using the Tomahawk. A range of 50 is OK and while it's a tiny bit cheezy to use tomahawks instead of round rings, the fact is that the Chakram was thrown typically overhand, not like a frisbee, so from above, it wouldn't look much different.

Also, I needed to change the unit equipment theme from x_east_chakkar_sword_shield to x_east_sword_shield. There was neither a sword nor a shield on the unit on the battlefield.

I'm a bit confused as to why there are two Sikh Musketeers and I have a suspicion that the second one isn't finished either, but no time to work on that right now.

For me, I'm going to go with:
east_sikh_infantry_musketeers (stock)
east_sikh_warriors (stock)
sikh_warriors (which come with the stats: primary missile weapon: chakkar, accuarcy 35, reload skill 15, ammo 3)

and chakkar projectile with primary stats: Range 50, max elevation 30, muzzle velocity 24, base reload time 10

I'd probably change a few things. I would change the muzzle velocity to 35 (a more aerodynamic weapon would fly faster, and it has higher range than tomahawk), min range of 5 (similar to grenades). I'm probably going to change the accuracy on my axe throwers along with these guys. Both of these weapons can be very accurate in the right hands and those warriors who did use them, used them well.

FWIW, 6lber chain shot also works as a thrown projectile. Scale is a bit wrong, but kind of interesting potential as a Bola type weapon...

Still trying to understand why the base misfire rate of all land cannon is 0...

Tried it with the higher muzzle velocity. Yeah, it makes the axes a bit harder to see, but it all feels buggy. Watching with freeze frame and slow motion, I can clearly see that only a tiny number of them are throwing their axes. With around 90 men, 3 deep, they throw out around 5 per volley. They actually do kill around 3-4 guys per throw, so it's actually not terrible and they were able to outgun units like Colonial Militia toe to toe. Mostly because they don't fire in volleys, just piecemeal.

Wanting to do some more research on the mechanics of throwing axes because I haven't used them before and I always imagined that they threw their axes while charging... but these guys just line up like line infantry and throw a volley (usually at just a few men on the corner too because of bad geometry).

Looks like these are just a bad idea. I'm curious to see how Darthmod implemented them since he's mentioned chakkar in his changelog... although quite some time ago and it looks like his comment was to remove them because of the poor performance in practical terms.

I think the way I like them best is with the muzzle velocity around 30, elevation around 24 and range around 40-50, ammo at 1. You basically need to micro them and they really aren't recommended to fight at range with anyone except maybe pike or horses... and horses are too fast for them. Rather than strong range, they are meant to just run in and throw axes while they charge... since they don't appear to be able to do that for some inexplicable reason (horses can!), this is little more than a novelty... It's probably recommended to use no throwing axes at all 70% of the time.

On the upside, I think I've figured out a way to delineate the different types of bows. Maybe if I'm lucky, I can get this "firing while running" thing working on that at least!

[Lugie]

It must be some unfinished content then. There might be some unused throwing animations in the files you could use. I remember some units in rome1 and medieval2 could throw stuff while moving, and im pretty sure empire has a fire_on_the_move ability or stat somewhere?