(0.632) Too much friendly fire

[godot]

I've always suspected that the probability of my missiles striking a friendly unit is too high. Whenever I shoot at a group of enemies mobbing one of my infantry I nearly always end up hitting the friendly unit. I understand that it's difficult to distinguish between a bug and what may simply be bad luck, however I believe I've found some evidence.

I've just shot an arrow at an enemy on horseback who was attacking one of my infantry. According to the feedback, I delivered damage to the horse as well as some regular damage. This was followed by the usual red warning that I've struck a friendly unit. I don't understand how my single arrow could have struck both the enemy horse and the friendly unit standing in front of the horse. Next time I see something like this happening I'll try to grab a screenshot.

It might be worth mentioning that Rome: Total War had a problem with excessive friendly fire that had to be adjusted in a patch.

 

[Sina]

After I have shot my men thrice in a single battle I have stopped using ranged weapons. Ofcourse that might be my lack of skill to use them
I would suggest throwing weapons, which are more fun to use.

 

[armagan]

Nope. It must be bad luck. There's no "friendly fire" concept in the game code. There's just "fire". It just gives a warning when the victim was friendly.

 

[Vaerraent]

Heh. Mabye you should make a toggle button for inept shooters (Friendly Fire on/off) in the options, having FF off would lower the difficulty %.

 

[godot]

Now that I'm watching for it I've seen it happen again 3 more times in the past few hours, exactly as I've described above. I also grabbed a screenshot showing the target horseman no where near any friendly units, yet the game reported horse damage as well as friendly fire damage. I'll try to find some place to host the image so you can see for yourselves.

On one of the other occasions, the friendly unit was a large distance behind the target horse and I could hear two very distinct arrow strikes a fraction of a second apart. It was as though the arrow passed through the horse and then struck the friendly unit.

@ Vaerraent I admit I'm a lousy shot and I've probably killed more of my own units than the hostiles have.
But I also know when my friendly units are completely out of my line of fire and the game is issuing a false report.

 

[Wanderer]

Is it possible the guy on the horse was friendly? It doesn't care if the horse is friendly or not, so it just reports it as 'shot horse for damage', but if you hit a friendly on the horse, you can damage both at once, and get a 'friendly fire' and 'Valkarye shot the horse!' message all at once.

 

[godot]

Is it possible the guy on the horse was friendly?

No. The horseman is a Steppe Bandit. In fact, he's immediately below me and halfway across a river, all by himself. So there's no way that anyone could have been running past him or caught an arrow passing through him. I hope to have the image hosted tomorrow.

By the way, the only reason I may be noticing it now is that my entire team have been playing on foot lately and it's been odd to see friendly fire and horse damage from the same arrow. I know very little about the software behind all of this, but I suspect this may be caused by some sort of missile path tracing error. The easiest way to find out would be if I could activate a debugging console that might report such discrepancies during gameplay.

 

[godot]

I would suggest throwing weapons, which are more fun to use.

I think I might be one of the few crazies who plays on foot with only a bow and throwing axes.
In other words... Mount & Blade without a mount or blade.

 

[Rando]

Put the screenshot on www.imageshack.us

All I can think of that might be wrong is you wait to long to shoot your arrow so it shoots sraight to the left and hits one of your own guys or something.

EDIT: I can't read.

 

[Vaerraent]

Upload to imageshack.us - free and no signing up

 

[Owynvan]

Heh. Mabye you should make a toggle button for inept shooters (Friendly Fire on/off) in the options, having FF off would lower the difficulty %.

That's a good idea!

 

[Ingolifs]

I think i've seen that before. I susually have an all-infantry army, and i shot some horsed bandit in the middle of my mob. It said i had shot a friendly and also damaged the horse.

 

[armagan]

Hmm. I guess I understand what is wrong. Hits to horses do not consume the attack therefore it is possible to hit an enemy's horse and your own troop with the same arrow. (But it is not possible to hit both an enemy and your friend with one arrow) I'll fix it now. Thanks for reporting.

 

[godot]

Here's the odd situation I've described. The target horseman is directly in front of me. Note that the report in question has the following 3 lines that appeared at the same time:

Delivered 36 damage to horse.
You hit a friendly troop.
Delivered 36 damage.

None of my troops were near the target.

 

[Quietus]

No, no. Please keep friendly-fire AS IT IS! Just don't shoot indescriminately. Don't turn this into an arcade game now

Friendly-fire is an excellent feature of the game!

 

[godot]

No, no. Please keep friendly-fire AS IT IS! Just don't shoot indescriminately. Don't turn this into an arcade game now

Friendly-fire is an excellent feature of the game!

I agree completely.

However, the screenshot and this thread are not about friendly fire resulting from shooting indescriminately. It's about friendly fire resulting from a possible projectile trace or collision bug. That's why I've posted about this in the bugs forum rather than the suggestions forum.

Friendly fire is an important part of the game. I don't even want it to be optional. I just want it to work correctly.

 

[godot]

Hmm. I guess I understand what is wrong. Hits to horses do not consume the attack therefore it is possible to hit an enemy's horse and your own troop with the same arrow. (But it is not possible to hit both an enemy and your friend with one arrow) I'll fix it now. Thanks for reporting.

Ok, the only cases I've noticed since taking that strange screenshot are where a friendly unit is situated somewhere behind a target horse. In other words, whatever happened in the screenshot is probably too rare to be considered a problem.

Having a horse-hit consume an attack should consume this bug.