Firearm Range is always the same

[TBRSIM]

Unlike in UG:CW the, somewhat hidden, range stat for firearms does not do a thing ingame for land units. Rifled weapons such as the Baker have the same range as smoothbores. But also within the smoothbores there should be differences, a fusil, with its lower windage, should have more range than a musket etc. In result, weapons such as the Baker, with a long range that does not work, high accuracy and long reload (as well as worse melee than other firearms) do not have a spot in the game, they are always a worse choice than high ROF and good melee weapons...

The skirmishers are affected most negatively by this since, while they may have an accuracy bonus, theycannot gain a range advantage any more. Also, skirmisher behaviour as it is now (one fire and then disengamgement to the rear) needs to be chooseable, i.e. we need to be able to choose skirmishers to "hold the line" or "skirmish".

Edited March 10, 2020 by TBRSIM
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[pandakraut]

If you hit space twice when a unit is selected they will hold position. This should be working for skirmishers as well.

[TBRSIM]

33 minutes ago, pandakraut said:

If you hit space twice when a unit is selected they will hold position. This should be working for skirmishers as well.

Yes, that kinda works for defense, but when I have the skirmishers chase down a retreating unit it is annoying that they retreat themselves after each salvo. The same is problematic in a moving battle when you got them on a flank and they simply will not keep firing and advancing even if the enemy is engaged to their front. In the current default, in moving battle and/or on the offensive, the skirmishers are only truly of benefit as scouts for field guns. In all other cases any larger "normal" infantry unit is more useful.

[pandakraut]

You do eventually get used to it and can make it work on offense, but it would be nice to be able to turn it off. If there were differences in weapon ranges it would probably help. In UGCW if the retreat behavior triggered based on the respective ranges of the skirmisher and its target. So once you equipped skirmishers with long range rifles the skirmish behavior rarely triggered.

Arguably, skirmishers armed with long range rifles were incredibly overpowered in UGCW, so having skirmishers limited to scouts that can only provide minor fire support or delaying actions might not be the worst idea.

[Dixie]

My overall experience in land battles has been horrible.  I'm amazed how bad it is compared to UGCW.  I keep hoping they just threw some garbage out there to tide us over until the game is finished and then put something in there that is worth doing.  I really wish you could just skip the Land Battles,  they are too tedious and so broken.  Again compared to the masterpiece that was UGCW

Its not about difficulty they are just bad.  Everything moves clunky.  flanks are difficult to figure out.  Units retreat straight forward often.  Sound doesn't really help as you can't tell who is firing or hear cannons sometimes.  Even just trying to move troops is very awkward.  Hate to complain but its really bad. 

Has this been addressed at all?

 

 

Edited June 15, 2020 by Dixie

[piotreh1]

I also had rather disappointing experiences with land battles. As long as I brought all possible slots to the land battle, I managed to annihilate enemy on both easy and normal difficulties with 20:1 kill ratio. Most of the times without even one reload. I have something like 600 hours in UGCW, so I assume it helps. Still without challenge land battles are just time sink with little reward in terms of fun.

EDIT: As previous poster stated - I'm not trying to bash the game here. I hope it will be taken as constructive criticism and can be fixed with some balancing of the battles.

Edited June 26, 2020 by piotreh1

[Navalus Magnus]

Just for the record:

I like landbattles at normal difficulty!

But I deem myself a rather casual player and haven’t played UG: CW yet.

[JaM]

 

Quote

Unlike in UG:CW the, somewhat hidden, range stat for firearms does not do a thing ingame for land units. Rifled weapons such as the Baker have the same range as smoothbores. But also within the smoothbores there should be differences, a fusil, with its lower windage, should have more range than a musket etc. In result, weapons such as the Baker, with a long range that does not work, high accuracy and long reload (as well as worse melee than other firearms) do not have a spot in the game, they are always a worse choice than high ROF and good melee weapons...

The skirmishers are affected most negatively by this since, while they may have an accuracy bonus, theycannot gain a range advantage any more. Also, skirmisher behaviour as it is now (one fire and then disengamgement to the rear) needs to be chooseable, i.e. we need to be able to choose skirmishers to "hold the line" or "skirmish".

 

Skirmishers did not fire at longer range than ordinary infantry... Muskets had very similar ranges.. even ordinary musket could fire the same range as any specialized skirmisher weapon or rifle... One of big problems of that era was that commanding officers did not assess the situation and range of enemy properly and wasted their ammo at distances musket fire was ineffective... Similarly, soldiers in combat tend to shoot back at enemy who is firing at them, be it other Line infantry or some skirmishers hundreds of meters away...

18.century combat was not about musket barrages at 30m killing hundreds of men per salvo... it was about musket exchanges at ranges beyond accurate range.. after all, while musket has maximum accurate range against man sized target around 50-70m, accurate range against battalion size unit would be longer - average distance Line Infantry usually opened fire was around 200-250m...

 

So, to make this a bit more realistic, ranges should stay the same for every musket or rifle, but actual accuracy should be more varied.. where muskets should be only effective around 75m against skirmishers (single men target), skirmishers should be able to deal casualties at much longer ranges (firing at battalion size target, not particular men). And of course, when line unit fires at other line unit, effective accurate range should be slightly higher due to size of units firing each other..

 

 

Oh, and in terms of pure musket vs rifle technology - muskets tended to have longer (maximum) range than rifles - rifling slowed the bullet down a bit, therefore muzzle speed was lower, where muskets without any rifling fired the bullet a lot faster.. Charleville musket for example had muzzle speed around 400m/s as it was using lighter bullet than Brown Bess or Baker Rifle... One of advantages of Charleville musket was its much flatter trajectory compared to other muskets...