Slingers broken or is this just a weird bug I'm getting?

[xsithspawnx]

Quick disclaimer, I'm literally just fighting my second battle on RS3, so if this has already been addressed or is just some weird thing I'm getting in this one battle then feel free to disregard this. That being said, I'm running into something very strange in RS 3 right now. I've got multiple units of levy pikemen engaged with my own infantry and I brought a couple units of slingers onto the pikemen's flanks. They're standing a few dozen yards away at most, basically point blank range, and when I look at the pikemen's unit "health" after a few volleys they're only down to 115/120 men . This seems strange to me, but I know there's been some re-balancing done to some units so I zoom in to take a closer look. What I see frankly astounds me. My slingers look like they've never used a sling in their life. 90% of the stones are so off the mark it's ridiculous. A sizable portion of the projectiles are going straight over the top of the pikes , and at best 1-3 levy pikemen are going down per volley to 2 slinger units from point blank range simply because they aren't even being hit.

I'm just curious if this was an intentional nerf to their accuracy? I know slingers were really powerful in previous versions of the mod, but if this is intentional this seems like some serious overkill from my admittedly limited exposure so far. I'm using greek slingers. Are Rhodian and Balearic slingers better, or are all slingers this bad? I don't mean this to sound overly critical as I know the thread for RS 3 clearly states that it is still in beta and I'm looking at a ridiculously small sample size here. I'm just trying to get my bearings back after having been away from Roma Surrectum for about a year and a half probably and this threw me for a loop.

Thanks in advance for any help here.


P.S. - Despite this oddity I'm immensely enjoying my return to Roma Surrectum. Keep up the great work as always!

[Searry]

You really need to position slingers and archers well to have an effect on the enemy.

[xsithspawnx]

Thanks, but that doesn't really tell me anything. I've played RS 2 since it first came out and have never had a problem placing my ranged units in such a way that they were effective. Now my slingers can barely hit a target 40 feet in front of them and are shooting at such a broad area that I seriously doubt there is a "right" way to position them where it would be very effective. I wasn't having any trouble with the archers either. The slingers just shot in about a 60 degree cone horizontally (even just a single unit's distance away half of the volley was going uselessly past each side of their target), and the vertical trajectory was just as bad. I'd think that moving them farther back would just compound the problem with such a diffuse area being targeted.

[Alavaria]

The slingers got a massive accuracy nerf.

It's especially noticeable if you had experience using them on flanks or (even more) in the rear. They will miss point-blank shots very easily now.

[Saul Tyre]

Thanks, but that doesn't really tell me anything. I've played RS 2 since it first came out and have never had a problem placing my ranged units in such a way that they were effective. Now my slingers can barely hit a target 40 feet in front of them and are shooting at such a broad area that I seriously doubt there is a "right" way to position them where it would be very effective. I wasn't having any trouble with the archers either. The slingers just shot in about a 60 degree cone horizontally (even just a single unit's distance away half of the volley was going uselessly past each side of their target), and the vertical trajectory was just as bad. I'd think that moving them farther back would just compound the problem with such a diffuse area being targeted.

As Alavara say's they got a massive nerf, they can virtually sling right across the ing map but suffer in accuracy, that's as much as I can tell you laddie I think what searry is trying to say is that you need to use them from a greater distance than close up, there should be a slight increase in kills one thing to be aware of from my experience is that the nerf does not seem to affect the AI to the same degree. As you have only just returned to RS, if you are not yet aware, in the launcher interface/edit RSIII preferences/RSII parameters you can change the AI battle formation, I use Sinuhet who imo represents the best challenge, by all means experiment but remember to choose according to which exe you are using, I leave the player at default as I set up my own. There is also a garrison script, I have set mine up as less emergency & less garrison DO NOT use the 5 Emperors it's bugged Finally, on the launcher interface is a tab labelled "click to change vege quality" under no circumstances touch this as you get an instant ctd. Hopefully you will enjoy many a good campaign, and start your LP's again

[OverLORDY]

Waaaaaaaait. Do you mean that AI slingers are MORE ACCURATE?

[Saul Tyre]

Waaaaaaaait. Do you mean that AI slingers are MORE ACCURATE?

[Alavaria]

Waaaaaaaait. Do you mean that AI slingers are MORE ACCURATE?

No, just that you'll always remember the one time the AI decided to shoot your generals bodyguard and it hurt. Most of the time, all that happens is the AI wastes all its ammo at long range, accomplishing nothing.

In the past, shorter slinger range meant it was hard for the AI to use them properly.

[xsithspawnx]

As Alavara say's they got a massive nerf, they can virtually sling right across the ing map but suffer in accuracy, that's as much as I can tell you laddie I think what searry is trying to say is that you need to use them from a greater distance than close up, there should be a slight increase in kills one thing to be aware of from my experience is that the nerf does not seem to affect the AI to the same degree. As you have only just returned to RS, if you are not yet aware, in the launcher interface/edit RSIII preferences/RSII parameters you can change the AI battle formation, I use Sinuhet who imo represents the best challenge, by all means experiment but remember to choose according to which exe you are using, I leave the player at default as I set up my own. There is also a garrison script, I have set mine up as less emergency & less garrison DO NOT use the 5 Emperors it's bugged Finally, on the launcher interface is a tab labelled "click to change vege quality" under no circumstances touch this as you get an instant ctd. Hopefully you will enjoy many a good campaign, and start your LP's again

Thanks. I'll give it a try for a bit, but I may also try to switch their stats back to the RS 2.6 version if it gets to me. As for the formations and script options I haven't been gone thaaaat long. I played quite a bit from 2.0 - 2.6. I just went without a computer for a few months then after getting a new one I lost all of my new saves somehow (honestly don't remember how) and kind of took a break.

I wasn't aware of the vegetation quality option causing crashes now though. Does it crash when you start up a game, or during battle? Just curious since I did click on it (then hit cancel I believe, which I know also sets one of the options). My game was running perfectly then crashed at the end of that battle where I discovered the slinger nerf. I know end of battle crashes have hardly been a rare occurrence for RTW, but I was disappointed to run into one so soon.

[Saul Tyre]

As for the formations and script options I haven't been gone thaaaat long. I played quite a bit from 2.0 - 2.6. I just went without a computer for a few months then after getting a new one I lost all of my new saves somehow (honestly don't remember how) and kind of took a break.

You would be surprised at how many queries from people on the forums, who have been playing RS longer than me, who don't know this

I wasn't aware of the vegetation quality option causing crashes now though. Does it crash when you start up a game, or during battle? Just curious since I did click on it (then hit cancel I believe, which I know also sets one of the options). My game was running perfectly then crashed at the end of that battle where I discovered the slinger nerf. I know end of battle crashes have hardly been a rare occurrence for RTW, but I was disappointed to run into one so soon.

iirc it was when the loading bar finished and the campaign map came up but I'm not certain, all you have to do is reinstall 3.1 again if that is what caused the problem.

[xsithspawnx]

You would be surprised at how many queries from people on the forums, who have been playing RS longer than me, who don't know this



iirc it was when the loading bar finished and the campaign map came up but I'm not certain, all you have to do is reinstall 3.1 again if that is what caused the problem.

I think I'm fine. I played a for a few hours today with no crashes.

[Saul Tyre]

I think I'm fine. I played a for a few hours today with no crashes.

That's good news, no excuses now for not putting out a Let's Play I only have a small channel but I believe I'm the only English speaking RS III LP'er on YT, there is someone doing a 2.6 but that's it, he comes to me for advice sometimes, but I'm not really that good, I mean I do ok and as I play for enjoyment not ego it does not bother me too much, but I try to learn and improve as I love the mod and want to put out better content. For my purely selfish reasons if you put out an LP, then I can then get some gameplay tips from you as you have been playing this since the beginning, I can tap into your wealth of knowledge and experience

[Mamlaz]

I believe that if you think their accuracy is off, you should test their effectiveness first.

Perhaps the damage their stones deal still nulls the issue with the accuracy being low.

[xsithspawnx]

I believe that if you think their accuracy is off, you should test their effectiveness first.

Perhaps the damage their stones deal still nulls the issue with the accuracy being low.

I definitely noticed a sizable drop in their overall effectiveness. If they had been getting kills at anywhere near the rate I was expecting from my previous 5 or so years with this mod then I wouldn't have been so worried about the change. Either way, I edited the projectile file in my game so that the sling stones are back to their 2.6 state, so it's a moot point. Personally, it's just a small aspect of the mod that I wanted to keep the same while still enjoying all the other great new changes.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Just remember - any army that has more than a single Slinger unit is wholly unrealistic - so you know there's something wrong. Most would have none.

[Ovidius Empiricus]

If anyone can help, I'd like to understand how some of the stats work, so I could find some happy medium between the 2.6 and 3.0 versions. It's not clear what combination of range, lethality, attack speed, and attack value (plus the AP bonus) would give the right effect.

From the EDU guide:

Chance_to_kill (missile): [not 100% thoroughly tested, but a very good approximation] Code:

const2 * (ATK - DEF - RNG/10 + MDF + DLF*10)
ATK is (missile)attack, DEF is the sum of all applicable defences, MDF is the sum of all applicable bonuses and penalties, RNG is firing range.

DLF is the difficulty lever factor. It's 0.7 for Easy, 1 for Medium, 1.5 for Hard and 2 for Very Hard. This factor is what produces the AI combat bonuses for Hard/Very Hard and the AI combat penalty for Easy.

Let's assume medium difficulty to keep it simple. I don't know what "const2" is, but if it is just a constant number, apparently it's only there to normalize everything to give a correct amount for a probability (or something approximating the actual chance). I'll call it C instead.

C[A - D - (R/10) + M + 10]

The attack was 10 (or 12 for better slingers, but let's stick with 10). The max range was 80, so only 8 "points" would be subtracted at that distance. I know the normal slingers could kill just fine at max range, although I do always play on Hard instead of Medium. So far, that's C(12 - D + M), which if this equation works for a reasonable range of values, is supposed to end up as at least zero, in order to be some minimal chance of killing or hitting or doing anything, since probabilities must be non-negative. I'm assuming C can't be negative (along with everything inside the parentheses), because that would be crazy. But people have done crazier things.... I just need to have this one thing, to keep what remains of my sanity for the day....

Armor-piercing should help somehow. That might be included in M here, for "special bonuses and penalties," but my interpretation has always been that it makes the target's D a smaller (negative) number for these kinds of calculations, just dividing it by two and rounding one way or the other. What other bonuses and penalties might be applicable, to give us some idea about M? I don't think slingers have anything else -- no "bonus vs. cavalry" or anything like that. Nobody has a penalty vs. slingers.... If that's correct, M should always be zero, and the equation now reads C(12-D), which should end up somewhere between zero and one for all targets, bearing in mind that armor is divided by two when calculating the total D.

It's not clear how lethality finds its way into this problem, since that's not even mentioned here. But depending on what the mystery C is, armor-piercing (if that does in fact make D a smaller negative) seems to do a lot to ensure they're going to hit at a smallish range like 80, unless the target has a very high defense rating.

However, when the range is very big like 360, that's a pretty drastic change, since it means we toss in a -36 instead of a -8 (at max range of course). Even somebody with no defense at all will probably be okay, because all of the positives will not outweigh that. Presumably, that equation doesn't work for all values and is only roughly correct otherwise, and the game actually just makes the chance of a hit/kill zero if something like that comes up negative. Still, if it's mostly on the right track, there's no point to having a stat like that, if no (or extremely few) kills can actually be made at that range. The targets (your troops) at that range will usually be abundant, and because the AI is stupid, they probably have no way to check whether or not they're wasting ammo. So they will be wasting ammo.

[xsithspawnx]

Just remember - any army that has more than a single Slinger unit is wholly unrealistic - so you know there's something wrong. Most would have none.

I'm aware that skirmish units in general tend to be a much larger part of an army proportionally in this game than in real life, and I'm okay with that. I usually have maybe two-four units of skirmishers (rarely more than 2 of one type) because I don't like making 80-90 percent of my army melee infantry. I prefer a more varied composition for gameplay reasons, since while I do love the military history aspects of these games, they are games first to me and so I play them in the way that brings me the most enjoyment. Emulating history can be plenty of fun, but locking myself strictly to an exact army composition or strategy all the time is not my personal priority.

[Alavaria]

Currently, what works best is to use archers. However, it isn't because archers are any better, only that the slingers are worse.

Sadly, that means you need even more missile units. While 4 good slinger units might be enough to wipe out a stack of Romans, you might have to consider other missile "arm of decision" options to avoid having too many light units and not enough melee.

Cavalry archers are a great option, they can still be used to catch routers and are of course, effective at chasing routing enemy cavalry (like generals) because they can shoot them in the back. Your choice if you also want heavy ones who can charge/melee well...

[OverLORDY]

All ranged units suck. You can usually leave your shielded units in the open and watch enemy archers and slingers waste all of their ammo, getting only 5 or 8 kills in the process. Archers are only effective against unarmored and unshielded targets which are enemy skirmishers while slingers can cause damage to anything without a shield but most of the time they are too busy missing their targets and instead launching those rocks into the backs of your own troops.

One place where all ranged units are useful is when they fire into the backs of the enemy units. Thing is, missile cav thanks to its mobility is the better choice for such a tactic. Especially if it is also a heavier variant with high charge bonus and melee combat ability.
I still try to get one or two units of archers or slingers for each army just in case though i will swap them for artillery pieces ASAP. You might also find foot missile performing better insides the cities due atrocious pathfinding which s up the cav. All in all, there is little reason for slingers or foot archers in an army.

[Alavaria]

Heh, in cities, the foot missile units are very good due to being able to properly make use of shooting through holes in walls made by siege weapons.

I find mounted archers a bit annoying to use because the unit takes up so much space. The Scythian Foot Archer is an excellent choice since the slingers got nerfed. A compact unit is much more easily guarded** if you intend to shoot people in the back a lot.

Potentially the AI pays less attention to foot skirmishers than mounted ones, could also just be that the horses get messy and tap enemies when you're trying to get them really close for the amazing point blank back shot.


**If you intend to make an AI Roman army disappear by shooting them in the back, you really need to know how the AI responds to your attempts (to shoot them in the back) so that you counter it perfectly.