Hekko
Master Knight
Since I don't want to derail the ILC thread further I will take the discussion here in order to allow that thread to focus on issues around the championship and discuss why shooting on the charge is a necessary bit of a competitive linebattle.
For some reason all my arguments and standpoints seem to become economy/finance based, but here goes:
Shooting while charging is essential to maintain a balance between regiments prefering shooting and regiments prefering melee:
First a few basic ceteris paribus asumptions:
1) Both sides have an equal number of players
2) Both sides are equally good at shooting, melee and pointblanking, formations, manouvering etc.
3) The map is entierly flat (removes the option of reverse slope camping the enemy into moving)
These basic asumptions mean that any difference in shooting casulties between the sides are caused by the overall desicion of either going straight into melee or starting shooting immediatley.
We also assume that it's a 1v1 linebattle. Thus we have two agents A and B, they have the following option 1 (Shoot directly) 2 (Get into melee directly). This gives us the following matrix of possible outcomes:
A1B2 and A2B1 are the same for all intents and purposes, since A=B when it comes to performance.
Now lets just start adding values to different scenarios, these numbers are by no means exact, but they are correct relatively speaking so while the magnitude is off they certainly are right when it comes to ranking which scenario is best.
First we have the option of both sides shooting it out from begining to end at long range: in this situation all casulties are shooting and and as such it will gain the number of 7 just in order to give it a number, this scenario is a bit uninteresting at this point since the equal shooting skill means that the outcome of this scenario is purely down to luck though.
The second scenario regarding shooting is when you are pointblanking the enemy during a charge where they are not allowed to fire back, this I will give the number of 3 since in my experience if the stationary line is firing at will sees the charging line reduced into some sort of borderline permanent state of strafing which means very high casulties from shooting.
The third scenario is pointblanking where both sides are spread out charging eachother, in this scenario melee at large commences alot quicker and as such the shooting kills will be lower than when shooting at chargers that cannot fire back, thus this gets the number 2
The fourth scenario is when the stationary line is shooting at the column advancing towards melee before the charge, this generally results in quite few shooting kills, but they do exist, also these shooting kills means less muskets on one side in the third scenario and thus I allocate these shooting kills the relative value of 1
Then we have the final scenario where you go for melee directly and you are not allowed to shoot back at the enemy when they are pointblanking you during the charge, this gets the value of 0, since you will not be getting any shooting kills.
Lets now make the matrix for the different scenarios using no firing on the charge, remember the important part is not the absolute number of shooting kills but the largest absolute difference in shooting kills. First ruleset, no shooting on the charge:
As you can see, in this case the clearly largest difference is between someone charging at someone standing still. The main question is though, is there a strategy that maximizes the difference regardless of what the opponent picks? The answer is yes, standing still and shooting is better, because if the enemy charges you will get the longrange shooting kills as well as the substantial pointblanking kills and if the enemy halts you are atleast not worse of you're at equal numbers of shooting kills which is as good as the best possible outcome of the other option. Thus you want to stand still and shoot under this ruleset if you're playing in a fashion to maximize your chanses at victory.
Second ruleset, with firing on the charge (remember the absolute difference is still the important thing):
As you can see, the scenario with the largest difference is still the one where one side tries to close to melee while the other starts shooting immediately, howver, the difference in absolute terms is alot smaller instead of 4 and 0 it's now 3 and 2. Nevertheless, the same reasoning as above applies, which means that if you are playing to maximize your chanses of victory you will still utilize shooting.
So we have now proven that all other things equal shooting will be the dominant tactic regardless of the ruleset, and since the the matrix is symetrical it means that if both sides are going to be shooting, which means that melee does not have any place as a competiteve strategy. This isn't true, as can be observed in competitve linebattles.
The explanation why melee is used at all in linebattles (other than as clean-up) is quite simple, the skill ceiling is higher with melee than with shooting, which means that the possibility and probability to have a sufficiently large gap in skill in melee to bridge the gap of the extra benefit static shooting gives as well as winning comfortably, is alot higher than the chanses of being good enough shots to win shooting comfortably every time.
So the problem where linebattles become melee fests does not lie with charging being overpowered, on the contrary, it's underpowered (even with shooting), but with the fact that the regiment being charged not being good enough in melee. This also illustrates why it's beneficial to be good at shooting, since it forces the enemy forward giving you an advantage, which is determinal between two almost equal opponents.
I base these findings to a large degree on our linebattles against the 8Lr as well as our linebattle against the 51st which is where I fully realised the devestating power no shooting on the charge exercises over getting into melee. Since our melee has been sufficiently equal to that of the 8Lr and 51st meaning that shooting and pointblanking played a very visual role in the outcome of many of the rounds.
Accordingly my bottomline is that playing it with a no shooting while charging rule breaks down almost all usage of melee and kills of a variety of playtyles pidgeonholing it into shooting first until the round is already decided, after which one may or may not charge to speed things up slightly.
Thanks to Evan for the graphics (as per usual)!
P.s.
Alot of people are using some sort of realism argument here, but I will point out that due to the lack of morale and other similar things charging at the moment lacks the real life benefits it actually had, which means that ingame a charge is alot weaker than it would be in real life, thus, to allow for a playingstyle that is faithful to the era, i.e. charging, one has to allow shooting on the charge as some sort of compensation. However, I do not think these or other realism based arguments have a place when discussing a competitve situation.
For some reason all my arguments and standpoints seem to become economy/finance based, but here goes:
Shooting while charging is essential to maintain a balance between regiments prefering shooting and regiments prefering melee:
First a few basic ceteris paribus asumptions:
1) Both sides have an equal number of players
2) Both sides are equally good at shooting, melee and pointblanking, formations, manouvering etc.
3) The map is entierly flat (removes the option of reverse slope camping the enemy into moving)
These basic asumptions mean that any difference in shooting casulties between the sides are caused by the overall desicion of either going straight into melee or starting shooting immediatley.
We also assume that it's a 1v1 linebattle. Thus we have two agents A and B, they have the following option 1 (Shoot directly) 2 (Get into melee directly). This gives us the following matrix of possible outcomes:
A1B2 and A2B1 are the same for all intents and purposes, since A=B when it comes to performance.
Now lets just start adding values to different scenarios, these numbers are by no means exact, but they are correct relatively speaking so while the magnitude is off they certainly are right when it comes to ranking which scenario is best.
First we have the option of both sides shooting it out from begining to end at long range: in this situation all casulties are shooting and and as such it will gain the number of 7 just in order to give it a number, this scenario is a bit uninteresting at this point since the equal shooting skill means that the outcome of this scenario is purely down to luck though.
The second scenario regarding shooting is when you are pointblanking the enemy during a charge where they are not allowed to fire back, this I will give the number of 3 since in my experience if the stationary line is firing at will sees the charging line reduced into some sort of borderline permanent state of strafing which means very high casulties from shooting.
The third scenario is pointblanking where both sides are spread out charging eachother, in this scenario melee at large commences alot quicker and as such the shooting kills will be lower than when shooting at chargers that cannot fire back, thus this gets the number 2
The fourth scenario is when the stationary line is shooting at the column advancing towards melee before the charge, this generally results in quite few shooting kills, but they do exist, also these shooting kills means less muskets on one side in the third scenario and thus I allocate these shooting kills the relative value of 1
Then we have the final scenario where you go for melee directly and you are not allowed to shoot back at the enemy when they are pointblanking you during the charge, this gets the value of 0, since you will not be getting any shooting kills.
Lets now make the matrix for the different scenarios using no firing on the charge, remember the important part is not the absolute number of shooting kills but the largest absolute difference in shooting kills. First ruleset, no shooting on the charge:
As you can see, in this case the clearly largest difference is between someone charging at someone standing still. The main question is though, is there a strategy that maximizes the difference regardless of what the opponent picks? The answer is yes, standing still and shooting is better, because if the enemy charges you will get the longrange shooting kills as well as the substantial pointblanking kills and if the enemy halts you are atleast not worse of you're at equal numbers of shooting kills which is as good as the best possible outcome of the other option. Thus you want to stand still and shoot under this ruleset if you're playing in a fashion to maximize your chanses at victory.
Second ruleset, with firing on the charge (remember the absolute difference is still the important thing):
As you can see, the scenario with the largest difference is still the one where one side tries to close to melee while the other starts shooting immediately, howver, the difference in absolute terms is alot smaller instead of 4 and 0 it's now 3 and 2. Nevertheless, the same reasoning as above applies, which means that if you are playing to maximize your chanses of victory you will still utilize shooting.
So we have now proven that all other things equal shooting will be the dominant tactic regardless of the ruleset, and since the the matrix is symetrical it means that if both sides are going to be shooting, which means that melee does not have any place as a competiteve strategy. This isn't true, as can be observed in competitve linebattles.
The explanation why melee is used at all in linebattles (other than as clean-up) is quite simple, the skill ceiling is higher with melee than with shooting, which means that the possibility and probability to have a sufficiently large gap in skill in melee to bridge the gap of the extra benefit static shooting gives as well as winning comfortably, is alot higher than the chanses of being good enough shots to win shooting comfortably every time.
So the problem where linebattles become melee fests does not lie with charging being overpowered, on the contrary, it's underpowered (even with shooting), but with the fact that the regiment being charged not being good enough in melee. This also illustrates why it's beneficial to be good at shooting, since it forces the enemy forward giving you an advantage, which is determinal between two almost equal opponents.
I base these findings to a large degree on our linebattles against the 8Lr as well as our linebattle against the 51st which is where I fully realised the devestating power no shooting on the charge exercises over getting into melee. Since our melee has been sufficiently equal to that of the 8Lr and 51st meaning that shooting and pointblanking played a very visual role in the outcome of many of the rounds.
Accordingly my bottomline is that playing it with a no shooting while charging rule breaks down almost all usage of melee and kills of a variety of playtyles pidgeonholing it into shooting first until the round is already decided, after which one may or may not charge to speed things up slightly.
Thanks to Evan for the graphics (as per usual)!
P.s.
Alot of people are using some sort of realism argument here, but I will point out that due to the lack of morale and other similar things charging at the moment lacks the real life benefits it actually had, which means that ingame a charge is alot weaker than it would be in real life, thus, to allow for a playingstyle that is faithful to the era, i.e. charging, one has to allow shooting on the charge as some sort of compensation. However, I do not think these or other realism based arguments have a place when discussing a competitve situation.