Ship to Ship Musketry Simulation

[Wesreidau]

I've given this more than a little thought. My thoughts are predicated on two assumptions; that crew kills are determined by shot striking hit boxes designated for crew, and that crew hit boxes are flagged on or off depending on how men are distributed to tasks. If these assumptions are wrong this should still be adaptable.

First, we need to add a few crew hit boxes into the rigging at fighting tops and various other bits of rigging, which are enabled when men are either sailing or set to boarding, to mark the location of either crew aloft in the rigging or marines in said fighting tops. Treacherous French sharpshooters will enjoy these cowardly postings, I am sure.

Second, points around the ship need to be designated as musketry origins. Spots on the forecastle, quarterdeck, weather deck, possibly gun ports below, and our now-crewed fighting tops aloft. These musketry origins will have an orientation and a maximum angle from center. A musket on the gunwale may be oriented 90 degrees off the beam with a 90 degree maximum angle, creating a half-sphere of possible shots to starboard (90 degrees left plus 90 degrees right equal 180), but excluding firing to anything left of it. Meanwhile a musket in the fighting top may have a 0 orientation and a 180 degree maximum angle, allowing our sharpshooter to fire anywhere he pleases. Not all possible positions for a musket-firing crewman need be simulated, just a dozen or so for small ships, and perhaps as many as fifty or a hundred for a 1st rate.

Next, we need to enable or disable the musket points based on if Boarding Prep is flagged as enabled or disabled. If a captain enables Boarding Prep, his crew rushes to their musket points and starts firing. Of course, marines are always in Boarding Prep, but unless boarding prep is enabled, they hold their fire. There is thus a new level of play in that you can tell your enemy has gone into boarding prep, and your enemy may attempt to surprise you by staying out of musket range until he's fully prepared to board.

Speaking of which, we will only need to fire when in range. Until an enemy ship has closed to within X meters, the musket simulation idles. Fifty or a hundred meters from an enemy ship, the simulation moves to the next step.

Within range and with crew active in boarding prep, the crew opens fire. We need to have points operating randomly to reduce the computational overhead of plotting every musket's reload and possible shots simultaneously. We also need to have musket points firing only when they have a possible target. To accomplish this, musket points are numbered for their ship, selected as a random number, and perform a distance check from their point to a crew hitbox on an enemy ship. Only distance on the X-Y plane is calculated for simplicity and to prevent the fighting tops from being too high aloft to fire. If a musket point is in range of enemy crew hitboxes, it proceeds to the next step. Otherwise the program returns to the random number generator to select another musket point. This process continues until a musket point responds as being within range of enemy crew hitboxes.

In range of enemy crew hitboxes, the musket point performs a raycast to determine if the closest hitbox is inside of its field of fire (the orientation and maximum angle from earlier). This raycast ignores the various objects, including friendly ships or obstructions. It simply checks if the musket can point at the target. For fighting tops, this will be almost always true. For more restricted musket points along the sides of the ship, they may determine they are close enough to a ship, but that ship is on the wrong side of their field of fire.

If the raycast determines the ​closest ​hitbox is out of its field, it then checks the farthest hitbox (within the range check of X meters). This second raycast will be useful if one enemy ship is closer than an enemy ship on the opposite side, allowing muskets on that opposite side to fire at the more distant enemy, rather than all musketry checks passing or failing on the closest enemy, or firing at the bow of a ship when the closer stern isn't in the field of fire, as might happen when your T is crossed. Should both raycast checks fail, the shot from that musket point is canceled, and moved back to the RNG to pick a new musket point.

When a raycast is successful, the shot is fired. This is an individual musket ball able to kill one crewman, originating from musket point, and directed along the raycast to the center of the target crew hitbox. The individual musket ball is simply a raycast with added deviation to account for inaccuracy. Given a shot with say five degrees of inaccuracy, we have a chance of hitting gunwales, masts, crew hitboxes we didn't intend to fire on, or even friendly crew hitboxes. Plotting the actual shot will also give the proper advantage to a taller ship or a shot from the fighting tops, as shot falling down on the enemy deck has a much higher chance of hitting a crew hitbox than attempting to shoot through gun ports.

All of these calculations occur server-side. Client side, clients are merely informed that they have lost a crewman and which musket point on the enemy ship should render a puff of smoke and a retort. The result is a robust simulation of musketry occurring where it belongs, the battle server, while server-to-client traffic is only marginally raised. There is no need to inform clients of any details of the shot, unless effects beyond gunsmoke are requested. Hearing musket balls patter against my hull may be nice, and watching little black dots fly is entertaining with grapeshot, but given the volume of fire I expect it would be expensive.

Speaking of volume of fire; the rate of fire will be determined as a function of how many muskets your ship has, if you have enough boarding mode crew to fire all of those muskets, and what percentage of your crew is marines. Lets presume you have 100 crew, no marines, and 20 muskets. You open fire with boarding prep active. As crew move into boarding prep, the number of muskets in use increases until 20 crew are in boarding prep, when all muskets are now being used. Each musket fired by a crewman has a base firing rate of once every thirty seconds. Twenty muskets, firing once every thirty seconds, comes to 40 shots a minute, or one shot every 1. 5 seconds. The musket simulation attempts to fire a musket point every 1.5 seconds in this situation, graphically there is a puff of smoke every 1.5 seconds, and depending on the luck of the shot raycast, the enemy crew starts whittling down.

Now lets say you have gold marines, and 50% of your crew is marines (IIRC). A marine can reload and fire a musket much faster than an untrained crewman, and gold marines almost certainly reload faster than grey marines. Accordingly the fire rate is increased by the marine crew percentage, 50% for gold, less for less expensive marines, but peaking at one shot every fifteen seconds per musket. This creates a blistering 80 shots a minute from the 20 muskets. But wait! The number of muskets has increased as well! We have to add the additional however many muskets to the rate of fire calculation. The fire bonus from your marine percentage will continue down to the last man as well; the simulation need not track how many marines are manning muskets to how many crew are manning muskets. It is presumed either the marines will be prioritized with the musket distribution, or the crew will have received some drill themselves if the captain had planned to perform boarding enough to invest in marines. However heavy casualties will still reduce the rate of fire as the total number of active muskets falls, or if muskets are lost under the bloodied bodies.

So what is the result of all this?

Going gunwale to gunwale and exchanging musket fire will now be a useful way to gauge the enemy's ability to repel your boarding, and make point-blank fighting much bloodier. No longer can you exchange broadsides into each other's hulls and coolly calculate who will win by who's losing armor faster. You will now be exposed to his fighting tops and muskets on the gun deck, and will suffer casualties among your weather deck gun crews and sailors.

It is now very, very clear when someone has a gold marine boarding setup, if they leave their crew in active boarding prep mode. It may be desirable to not tip your hand by keeping boarding prep disabled while approaching and keep your marines from firing. A ship that hasn't fired its muskets either has no-one on hand to fire muskets because the captain intends to focus on gunnery, or has a marine build he intends to conceal. Once you begin firing muskets, you tip your hand as to your marine and musket levels and your enemy can react. There's a possibility for trickery in this mechanic.

It is also possible for a ship disabling a gun side to use all their needless extra crew in Boarding Prep with Extra Muskets and Pistols, giving the appearance of having marines but still maintaining full manpower for gunnery and sailing otherwise. It is also possible to defend your Gros Ventre or other trade ship with your crew in boarding prep and firing muskets, and one of these ships with full musketry builds will be dangerous to pull alongside in a lower-hulled vessel. Barricades can also have a new bonus; a flat 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25 percent chance to cancel a raycast musket ball hitting a crewman, as your crew enjoys extra small-arms cover. With the right build, muskets could be an effective defense for an otherwise unarmed trade ship!

The actual boarding minigame will lose some of its importance. A close quarters fight may be determined entirely by hauling alongside and unloading muskets into the enemy. The captain who finds himself running alongside a boarding-modded enemy will no longer simply keep his speed up and negate his adversary. He will also find that if he cannot break away, then he needs to force a boarding and hope for better swordsmanship than musketry. Or pray to the gods of grapeshot.

All of this was posted elsewhere in the wrong forum under a related discussion, so do pardon the double post. I don't want to take over someone else's thread.

[Sgt.Barnes]

I do hope that this gets implemented, it gets boring going around with marines, who have muskets, and are trained to shoot the enemy, just to have them stand there and look pretty.

[Wesreidau]

Okay, someone give a lousy, thoughtless reason why this is a bad idea so we can argue and keep on the front page.

[Jack Nastyface]

If there was one thing a Marine in the 1800s was, it was NOT pretty!  

[James Cornelius]

I have a suggestion to build upon this, as I agree with the OP. My suggestion is the effect marines have on this, and a proposal to solve the current issue of ahistorical marine/crew percentages.

 

Currently, higher grade marines yield a larger portion of the crew is classified as marines, up to 50% for the gold level. When used on, say, a Victory or equivalent, the result is 500 or so of your crew are marines - hardly historical. But, compare this to other "crew" type perks such as powder monkeys or charismatic bosun - this does not give you more (or less) crew, but rather indicates the quality of the crew. I propose the same with marines.

 

Therefore, I would suggest higher tier marines yield two improvements: first, an increase to morale in boarding operations. Having a squad of marines on board would certainly have an effect on the morale of the sailors in question, in addition to the raw improvement in numbers.

 

Second, in line with the OP: higher grade marines would have an improvement on the RNG effect of ship to ship musket fire. Better marines yield more hits and greater likelihood of killing the enemy crew.

 

As far as the numbers are concerned, I would suggest all men of war carry a certain minimum number - it was unheard of for any respectable man-o-war of the time to not carry any marines. Having the marine upgrade onboard would perhaps slightly increase the numbers of marines, but they would not become an excessive portion of the ship's crew like they do now.

 

This has several advantages that I think negates the current desire to have some "negative" balancing aspect associated with having the marine upgrade.

 

First, it lends historical accuracy: nearly every engagement of the time had the ultimate goal to capture instead of sink an adversary wherever possible. This promotes this, as where it stands currently if you do not have a boarding load out, you avoid a boarding action even if you outnumber an enemy because of the fear they are using this loadout.

 

Second, it provides a clear and better advantage in standard practice for higher grade marines. Right now, many captains find grey marines more useful as a general rule because you are still protected, but don't have to sacrifice half your crew to be idle numbers until a boarding commences.

Third, it eliminates the gross inaccuracy of the current marine system, where they make up a portion of the crew that does little else.

 

Note that this does not necessarily relate to the numbers of muskets as the OP did - for boarding involving the regular ship's crew it would still be dependent upon the muskets and pistols upgrade, and this would only essentially affect the effectiveness of the marines: so grey marines might be basic soldiers with little training and experience, who might have difficulty hitting enemies on a ship moving next to them, but gold marines would be crack troops and very effective.

[Sea Archer]

In addition ship officers would be great. Not the one you can give the perks, but dependent on ship size a number of small hit boxes shall be distributed over the ship for the officers. When one of them is killed the efficiency of the crew in that area shall be decreased.

[Wesreidau]

Mm. Trouble with adding officer hit boxes is that I'll quickly learn where to put my grapeshot. "Crew shock" is pretty much the same effect I'd expect from an officer being hit.

[saltiestraccoon]

Made a post to similar effect some time ago, and I still think we need musketry. This gives the devs an idea on how to implement it as well. Agree 100%, hanging out close to a ship overloaded with marines should be a very unpleasant thing.

[James Cornelius]

Yes, but it's not realistic for a ship to be overloaded with marines. At Trafalgar, for example, the Victory had a crew of 821 and 135 marines. Considering its normal complement was about 850, that doesn't square with how marines would make up over 400 crewmembers under the current system with the exceptional quality upgrade.

[maturin]

Yes, but it's not realistic for a ship to be overloaded with marines. At Trafalgar, for example, the Victory had a crew of 821 and 135 marines. Considering its normal complement was about 850, that doesn't square with how marines would make up over 400 crewmembers under the current system with the exceptional quality upgrade.

Funny you should mention Trafalgar, since many of the French and Spanish ships had enormous proportions of regular infantry on board. Of course, this was desperation, not an advantage.

[James Cornelius]

Funny you should mention Trafalgar, since many of the French and Spanish ships had enormous proportions of regular infantry on board. Of course, this was desperation, not an advantage.

 

Indeed, and that is, in my opinion, the exception that proves the rule. 

[maturin]

 

Hodo, have you ever read anything about naval combat ever?

 

Musketry was extremely dangerous and effective in ship-to-ship actions, and not just in calm seas.

 

You mention distance twice in your post, so I don't see what prevented you from reaching a conclusion that isn't pure nonsense...

 

Sharpshooters and marines only came into play at very short ranges, for the reasons you mentioned. Now, guess where most single-ship actions were decided?

 

 

 

And even if in-game musketry were restricted to 25 yards, it would still be quite useful in certain situations, such as large ships being stern-camped by light vessels.

 

If you don't want it in-game, that's fine, but kindly refrain from spreading historical misinformation.

[OlavDeng2]

My point is at the speeds and ranges musketry becomes dangerous you are in a boarding situation.

 

Which I would not mind if they boosted Musket Volley options damage if you have marines.   Or when you prepare for boarding and you are with in 50m then it starts to take shots at the crew.

 

But when you are just sailing along no.  

Seen plenty of situations where frigates hug ships of the line to get hit as little as possible, or stern rakes with the raker being within 5 meters of the enemy(with both larger 1st rates and smaller 7th rates), Close enough with out boarding is actually something that happens quite a bit.

[OlavDeng2]

I can site a historical example of where even marines were ineffective at those ranges and angles.

 

HMS Speedy 14gun brig vs Gamo 32gun Xebec frigate.

 

 

The thing is I am not against it happening.  I am against some arbitrary RNG casualties being inflicted because someone got close.

 

The last thing I want to see is a fleet of cutters sailing beside a Santisma killing its whole crew because they have gold marines and no cannons.

 

You should have to give the order to prep for boarding thus taking men away from other tasks so they can fire musket fire at the enemy ship when it is close enough.  

1. What is for you a fleet of cutters? if we say we have 10 of them, thats 400 men... a santi does 1050, if we do a close range firefight with say 25% marines...(ignoring the height difference which gives santi even more advantage)... clearly santi should win.

 

2. Its marines doing the firing... marines only job historically IIRC(someone like maturin correct me if im wrong) would be to fight in boarding and use their muskets to fire on enemy ships

[maturin]

 

Seen plenty of situations where frigates hug ships of the line to get hit as little as possible, or stern rakes with the raker being within 5 meters of the enemy(with both larger 1st rates and smaller 7th rates), Close enough with out boarding is actually something that happens quite a bit.

 

And in ordinary situations neither ship has any chance of boarding the other. When two ships in NA both have a decent amount of momentum and undamaged sailing, boarding is unlikely to take place in NA.

 

 

2. Its marines doing the firing... marines only job historically IIRC(someone like maturin correct me if im wrong) would be to fight in boarding and use their muskets to fire on enemy ships

 

And any other sharpshooters stationed in the fighting tops. There were often swivels or even small howitzers mounted up there.

 

 

 

 

 

The last thing I want to see is a fleet of cutters sailing beside a Santisma killing its whole crew because they have gold marines and no cannons.

 

How it a man with a musket supposed to hit anything on the deck of a lineship thirty feet above his head?

 

Only level and plunging fire is possible for musketmen. Firepower would be assessed based on the ship's fighting tops, (cutters have none), and the rest according to the marine complement.

 

Luckily the game already tracks the relative heights of ships for boarding purposes, so a cutter would be largely helpless to harm a large ship using small arms. On the other hand, the currently-helpless SoL could force a stern-camping cutter to keep its distance.

[Hethwill]

Speedy versus Gamo has as much of courage and daring as it has of deceit and fog-of-war. It is a spectacular example of a complete success using everything that could be used at the time, indeed a great extreme example but it wasn't that simple as you well know for sure.

 

The musketry were one of the reasons why most sea rovers in small fast ships didn't dare to take or stay and fight, big ships. They would get slaughtered.

 

On the other hand they themselves made extensive use of musketry to dismantle prey vessels.

 

For the game, and speaking against my own love for the schooners, this suggestion of automatic musketry is golden for the man'owars to keep the unrated and 7th rates in check.

[Sella]

A question to the devs:

 

Would it be possible to have in NA, something similar like in Empire/Napoleon Total War naval battles in terms of musketry? Probably in a smaller scale.

 

 

5:47

 

 

[blakdog]

I think the idea of marines firing muskets from various points of the ship is a great idea!

 

This could also solve problems with stern camping.  If a frigate tries to sit closely behind a Victory with marines and the Victory decides to slow down, I'd imagine the marines on the Vic would be able to clear the deck of the frigate if the frigate chose to slow down and stay back there.

 

I think as much research on actual instances would be good to provide a precedent for any game implementation ( and I've heard great stories from actions like HMS Shannon vs USS Chesapeake for example)

 

A quote I just read (at a range of 35 meters...):

As the distance closed, the Shannon's gun crews and topmen kept up a relentless fire, and the unprotected quarter-deck became as uninhabitable as the surface of the moon.

— Ian W. Toll ^[27]

There wouldn't be any need to animate any of this... maybe just hearing the pop-pop-pop of muskets going off would be enough.  But I think it would be a brilliant feature, both historically evocative and potentially solving some game mechanic issues at same time.

[maturin]

 

 

There wouldn't be any need to animate any of this... maybe just hearing the pop-pop-pop of muskets going off would be enough.  But I think it would be a brilliant feature, both historically evocative and potentially solving some game mechanic issues at same time.

I think that puffs of smoke from the fighting tops would be plenty, in terms of visualization. Especially if the models were adjusted to display the canvas screens that should be providing concealment up there.

[admin]

I think that puffs of smoke from the fighting tops would be plenty, in terms of visualization. Especially if the models were adjusted to display the canvas screens that should be providing concealment up there.

 

 

i does not work without the models.. does not connect in the brain))

it just feels like you sailed into some AOE zone and your crew started feel sick dropping like flies))

 

its already done btw.. but for some reason plays weird.

[Hethwill]

i does not work without the models.. does not connect in the brain))

it just feels like you sailed into some AOE zone and your crew started feel sick dropping like flies))

 

its already done btw.. but for some reason plays weird.

 

can you add the musket size puffs of smoke along the rails for a test run ? No idea if it will impact the fps much though

[maturin]

i does not work without the models.. does not connect in the brain))

it just feels like you sailed into some AOE zone and your crew started feel sick dropping like flies))

 

its already done btw.. but for some reason plays weird.

Really? Most of my cannons are reloaded by phantoms. They don't traverse, change elevation or recoil, but people are used to it.

 

Maybe visible swivel gun models would provide the mental link.

[Sella]

i does not work without the models.. does not connect in the brain))

it just feels like you sailed into some AOE zone and your crew started feel sick dropping like flies))

 

its already done btw.. but for some reason plays weird.

 

It;s definetely worth a test and i am sure people wont mind the lack of models. Hell, just place a couple of dudes consantly reloading a musket and done,

[admin]

Really? Most of my cannons are reloaded by phantoms. They don't traverse, change elevation or recoil, but people are used to it.

 

Maybe visible swivel gun models would provide the mental link.

 

well - the thing with cannons is that they are there.. they fire .. you see them. particles come out of the barrel etc.. 

they connect

[akd]

i does not work without the models.. does not connect in the brain))

it just feels like you sailed into some AOE zone and your crew started feel sick dropping like flies))

its already done btw.. but for some reason plays weird.

Add one or two crew members (marines) with muskets per fighting top along with crew hit box in that location. As long as crew hit box is not reduced to zero, one crew member is shown firing musket from this position. Sounds can be added for invisible portion of crew to capture volume of fire better.