Artillery/Siege weapons - a rationalisation

[Ben Hussey]

Well, as we all know there has been a lot of talk of siege weapons and artillery in M&B, and how it would be absolutely kickarse.

Originally I thought, yeah it would be funky and I really hope Armagan implements it, along with the secondary attacks/missile weapon attacks and perhaps formations idea's it would make the combat absolutely awesome to play.

The real point of what I'm rambling on about is that I have found no non-strategy game that allows the use of cavalry, infantry and artillery by the player, their are some that have two - like M&B, but none have all three (That I know of - I'd be pleased to hear of one if there was). Surely having a full compliment of standard military troop types would not only make the game miles better, but also bring in a substantial amount more customers?
Just my 2 pence worth.

 

[JHermes]

Well it would be nice but implementing splash damage would require a major re-code. Although creating a new weapons class for artillery would be pretty easy...heck, if I had the sourcecode I could even do it.

I agree though, the game gets awfully boring after you've played it for even two weeks. Fighting on foot with some rudiments of tactical planning makes it slightly more fun, but adding formations and heavy missile weapons would make it a great deal more fun.

 

[Amman d Stazia]

I'm in favour: for artillery, surely there must be a simple way of triggering a 'multiple attack' ? I mean that when you fire an artillery weapon, it is for the game AI the equivalent of four pistols or crossbows being fired - obviously a canister weapon.

Currently my best approach is this:
steal the castle 'place-ladders' script.
if encountered party has artillery, run the 'place-ladders' casualty calculation.  The text says "Your troops are met by a barrage of artillery fire (etc)"
when you finally close in on the guns, they are LIMBERED (horse adaptions) and unable to fire.  The gunners on the horses have pistols only, to discourage the possibility of a gun 'charging' anything.

If the player-party has artillery, the place-ladders calc is inflicted on the encountered party.
but I WANT to see my guns lined wheel to wheel, spouting raspberry flames..... or even just raspberries.

 

[The Pope]

I'm not sure it would need splash damage - just preventing the projectiles from vanishing after hitting someone should be enough. After all, rocks don't explode.

 

[Amman d Stazia]

yeah... but how????

I tried making huge projectile sizes, in the hope that they would hit a few people at once.... no avail.

So far as I know, there is no weapon class which hits more than one target for every release.  Even the old Ctrl-F4 cheat kills individually.

 

[The Pope]

Mod wise, I guess it could be done by adding a script that copies the projectile (including location, direction, speed etc.) after it causes damage. Still, this board is for suggestions and I'd say armagan could add something like that quite easily without needing to mess around with scripts.

 

[Amman d Stazia]

I'll say!  (good old fashioned expression)

All that is really needed is a 'duplicate projectile' command for simple triggers: thus when you fire the pistol, you add to 'pistol_smoke' 'duplicate_projectile, 3' and you have a blunderbuss with 4 projectiles.  Due to the inaccuracy of the pistol (65% ?)  they spread nicely.

Or, for grazing cannonballs etc, a 'follow projectile' which is essentially what you suggest, Pope, that when a target is hit, a second projectile appears behind it and continues on the original vector.

You could also have 'follow_projectile, 3' which would allow up to 4 hits with one shot.