Pike and Shot

[Nefaro]

WTF is wrong with you people   

Do you want a list?  Or just a general overview?

[Gusington]

This forum isn't big enough for either.

[Grim.Reaper]

For those interested, they recorded a live stream of the gameplay here....

http://www.twitch.tv/slitherinegroup/c/5259142

[jomni]

Is there something strange with the scale?  Looks like rifle ranges are quite far relative to the graphical representation.

[Gusington]

Thanks for posting that, Grim.

[bobarossa]

Is there something strange with the scale?  Looks like rifle ranges are quite far relative to the graphical representation.

I read a post from the developer somewhere that explained that.  It had to do with gameplay issues.  Range was too low to differentiate from melee in the scale chosen for movement purposes.  So they extended it so there was a difference between melee and shooting.  Something like that.

[Philippe]

If that's the explanation it just moved this game from my must buy column to my might buy at some point down the road column.

17th century musket fire was a very short range and innaccurate affair.  The only thing worse was pistol fire from reiter cavalry.  Next  you'll tell me that artillery pieces can zip around the map.

I watched a few minutes of the video and was disheartened when I heard the commentator talking about taking cover in what looked like a wooded area.  Then he moved a cavalry unit into the woods without experiencing massive disorder.

I really hate video games that are [fill in name of period here] period games, only because the developer dressed them up in [name of period here] costume.  Combat in this period was unique, and a dressed up WW II squad-level combat engine isn't going to be able to show why.  The scale is wrong, for one thing. 

Somebody please tell me that I'm wrong.

[bobarossa]

See quote from Byzantine Games at bottom of 2nd page in this thread from July.

http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=10612.15

"We are aware that the shooting ranges in the game are somewhat overgenerous. However, experience has shown that gamers do not like very short move distances, nor very short shooting ranges - however realistic they might be. In order to give the opportunity for several rounds of shooting against advancing enemy, the long musket shooting range needs to be equal to the mounted movement speed and double the normal infantry movement speed. To achieve this without reducing the infantry move to 1 square and cavalry to 2 squares, we have had to be generous with shooting ranges. Note, however, that shooting at long range is at half effect, so units will generally want to get closer to shoot effectively.

The LOS algorithm assumes that units in chequerboard have gaps between the units  through which shooting can occur.

Units cannot shoot at targets more than 45 degrees from straight ahead. At targets more than 22.5 degrees from straight ahead, they shoot at half effect, because not all of the front rank can bring their muskets to bear.

So, a unit shooting at long range at a target more than 22.5 degrees from straight ahead would shoot rather ineffectually at 1/4 effect."

[MengJiao]

If that's the explanation it just moved this game from my must buy column to my might buy at some point down the road column.

17th century musket fire was a very short range and innaccurate affair.  The only thing worse was pistol fire from reiter cavalry.  Next  you'll tell me that artillery pieces can zip around the map.

I watched a few minutes of the video and was disheartened when I heard the commentator talking about taking cover in what looked like a wooded area.  Then he moved a cavalry unit into the woods without experiencing massive disorder.

I really hate video games that are [fill in name of period here] period games, only because the developer dressed them up in [name of period here] costume.  Combat in this period was unique, and a dressed up WW II squad-level combat engine isn't going to be able to show why.  The scale is wrong, for one thing. 

Somebody please tell me that I'm wrong.

  Alas, I think you are all too right about this.  It's just hard to make the Thirty-years-war as popular as WWII, though for sheer bloody primitive horror they are probably in the same horrible ballpark.
  This is one reason I generally prefer WWII games over other games -- WWII is well-documented (as is the Thirty-years war) and if shown in a roughly realistic way -- a bloody mess, but a bloody mess that is comprehensible at least by convention.  The Thirty-years war if shown realistically would be an extraordinary bloodbath -- so much so that armies declined pretty rapidly over the course of the war in terms of actual combat power (vs say -- troops in garrisons that could not really go anywhere).  Muskets may have been inaccurate, but at 50 paces with twice the muzzle velocity of an American Civil war rifled musket, firing into a dense formation -- they were pure murder.
  But you aren't going to see anything like that in Pike and Shot.
  In effect, people have been trained to imagine warfare that resembles WWII -- so games on that topic can rely on that.  Most people have no training at all in imagining the 30-years war so games really can't quite get to it in terms of what it would have really been like.
   So, to get at the 30-years war in a game that reflects what it might have been like -- you are probably going to have to look elsewhere.
   I'm thinking Kingdom Come (a fantastic name for a game by the way) will get my 30-years war funds for the next year or two.  Sure it is set more than 200 years before but it is set in the cockpit of the war and should have a reasonable amount of point-blank murders.

[Philippe]

I guess I'll have to stick with GMT's Musket and Pike series and take another look at Vassal.

[jomni]

Then that means they are using the wrong engine for the game! Panzer Corps engine would have been better. LOL!

If they have no choice but to use those ridiculous ranges, the solution for this is to make each unit occupy more than one square to make them look larger while retaining the ranges.  But can the game engine handle that?

I am also one of those put off by that video...
Not a must buy any more.

[Nefaro]

Is there something strange with the scale?  Looks like rifle ranges are quite far relative to the graphical representation.

I read a post from the developer somewhere that explained that.  It had to do with gameplay issues.  Range was too low to differentiate from melee in the scale chosen for movement purposes.  So they extended it so there was a difference between melee and shooting.  Something like that.

That's quite understandable. 

One of my complaints about Empire TW was that it's vanilla firing ranges were right up against the range at which the Unit AI would automatically charge.  So musket volleys often ended up being a very brief volley at each other, when coming into range, quickly followed by a charge.  Little standing about volleying when someone was moving.

The mechanics may be completely different between the games but it shows that differentiating the ranges in a strategy game is sometimes needed to retain the tactics of the period.  If standing & volleying ends up being bypassed for the more immediate results of a melee charge, just because their ranges are practically the same at the game's scale, then something has been lost in the translation.

If anything is amiss, it would possibly be a lack of formation cohesiveness modelling, as mentioned earlier. 

[MengJiao]

Then that means they are using the wrong engine for the game! Panzer Corps engine would have been better. LOL!

If they have no choice but to use those ridiculous ranges, the solution for this is to make each unit occupy more than one square to make them look larger while retaining the ranges.  But can the game engine handle that?

I am also one of those put off by that video...
Not a must buy any more.

  They could change the scale and add a layer of command and morale so that infantry formations do some shooting at close range.  We know that muskets were effective, but that they had a pretty short range and that there were all kinds of methods for deploying musketeers and all kinds of different ways of timing their fire -- though by the end of the Thirty-years war infantry was a rapidly decreasing proportion of field armies -- suggesting that the more expensive cavalry was far more cost effective and/or that infantry tactics were not working very well.

   Of course how do you model that?  I mean tactics that were fairly useless?  You can't if you just plug in better ranges to sort of fix everything.

[Cyrano]

What I do not understand is why anyone would bother to accommodate "popularizing" sensitivities in a TYW game?

Does any developer honestly think there's cross-over appeal in a title like this?

I've loved the era since reading Robert's bio of Gustavus Adolphus a long time ago, and would love to believe that there's a budding generation of Wallenstein fans just ready to be born, but that's unlikely.

In the game's defense, fire is more disruptive than destructive (reminds me very much of the TYW folio from SPI in that regard), melee takes roughly the length of the Bible to resolve, and disruption from terrain is pretty brutal.

I dunno.  I still think it bears watching -- how many TYW games you think we're going to get? -- but historical compromise in a game of this sort doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  And it made N:TW legitimately awful.

Best,

Jim
"Cyrano"
:/7)

[Jarhead0331]

I dunno.  I still think it bears watching -- how many TYW games you think we're going to get? -- but historical compromise in a game of this sort doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  And it made N:TW legitimately awful.

OK, but doesn't this beg the question? If it doesn't play like a TYW game, is it really a TYW game?  I mean, at least N: TW was enjoyable.