Suggestions

[Garnier]

Despite my mile long to-do list, suggestions are welcome. If I see something I really like I might stick it at the top of my list. There are infinite possibilities, for me it's just a matter of deciding what will do the most good with the least time investment at this point.

[Michael Slaunwhite]

Howdy doo Garnier!

I was wondering something, I have the program running...so I am wondering if you can put something in there to allow me to see who is online, and also a very basic chat feature for people like myself who are lazy, and could possibly be inbred

Cheers Garnier, and take it easy!

[Michael Slaunwhite]

Hi Garnier.

Just to add, perhaps for the chat that you may wish to put mibbit on your wesbite. I don't know if you have ever used this but it's really easy to do. Just go to http://www.mibbit.com

I have three sites that directly connect to my mibbit server. I just thought I would mention mibbit as it's the eastiest choice.

Cheers, and take care!

[SouthernSteel]

Hi Garnier,

Just thought I'd mention (and you may well have heard it by now) that the ammo wagons are not carrying enough ammo (and/or the units as well). We had a battle last night that was cut quite short because every single unit on both sides ran out of ammunition in a very short period (maybe 30 mins?). It did add an interesting element to the battle, to be sure, and I was even able to get a unit with no ammo to charge and beat an enemy unit that did have some left, but it would be nice if we could keep fighting, perhaps.

Also, we were trying to figure out if there is an issue with cannons. Despite being in cannister range, I never once saw a gun fire cannister. I recall that their stats are intentionally set quite low, but I wouldn't think it would make them entirely ineffective. I wholly applaud the 250 yd range rifles, but if a unit presses up into cannister range, they should still get their fill.

[KG_Soldier]

In the games we played Friday night or Saturday testing Garnier's Campaign, one of Garnier's or perhaps Rich Mac's batteries canistered my boys good (while they were engaged in melee no less), so they will fire canister; I'm still picking BBs from my face.

I like the 250 yard rifles as well, but I wish there were a 200 yard choice.

[Garnier]

Yes, the infantry are carrying 40 rounds apiece and the wagons have almost nothing right now. I'll give the wagons more for sure. I like the infantry starting with less since they pretty much never had to resupply before.

Once modding is allowed I intend to make wagons move really slow so you must both protect them, and send your men (and particularly your artillery) back to the rear to get ammo instead of racing the wagons along the front line.


Canister itself isn't different, except that everyone has low experience so the damage is slower across the board. But that's something I probably will change. I can raise/lower experience across the board or for inf/art separately without much effort.

I haven't played enough with 250yd rifles yet to decide on that. I do like that your infantry don't get eaten up by canister while being completely helpless at 200 yards. But cannons should do more damage in general. Perhaps upping artillery stats a lot with 250yd rifles would make them effective even outside canister range, while being brutal if the infantry get close. I imagine with this situation, canister would be used as a deterrent to charging rather than a front line support weapon. You could always bring the guns up, with infantry in front to mask them, then shift the infantry aside and blast away. Don't know if that's realistic. Of course there's still counterbattery fire to stop that.

The problem with canister shooting farther than muskets is that the tactics it causes are (I think) silly: wheeling the guns up just so far that they can't be hit by rifles, but they can kill 10-20 men every shot. Now counterbattery fire from rifled guns at under 400 yards using solid shot can quickly knock out guns near the front line, and that may be enough deterrent if everyone knew how to use it. But some unlucky folks don't have rifled guns, and suppose they get taken out, then you get stuck entirely helpless against canister at 200yd.

It's surely complicated. Artillery always is.. in HDN it took me a full year of trying a huge variety of approaches before settling on the one that we've used now for a year. You can't simply set the numbers to match real life and expect realistic tactics to evolve, because real life has infinitely more variables than are used in game. A better approach is to determine what tactics you want to work, and then try lots of different approaches to see which cause those tactics to actually work.

[SouthernSteel]

Yeah, it was quite odd - it seemed like some guns were not firing at all. I believe Gordon had one that fired a single shot for the entire battle. All of Baylor's guns were routed in the first 5-10 minutes and inflicted few casualties. Of course that negated any chance to observe the guns over a longer period of time.

If all of my units started at 40 rounds, I surely didn't notice it. It seemed like they were down to less than 20 rounds per regiment in maybe 10 minutes? All I can say is that it seemed like they ran low wuite quickly, which I wasn't expecting.

And yes, I believe your idea about upping the stats of the cannon is a good one. More effective at long range (which I feel is fully realistic) and then only having cannister to use as a deterrent, not a major offensive weapon. And yes, something less than 250 on the rifles might be nice, but I do like it as the only effective deterrent from front line shotgunning. It will at least keep the tactics a bit more honest. I'd still love to find a middle ground where we can have skirmisher units again, but I don't know what that would be for now.

To the best of my knowledge, the gun(s) were not blocked, but I'll certainly play more games (just for testing purposes, naturally) to see what happens.

[Garnier]

You do have to watch the guns and make sure they are not blocked from firing for whatever reason. Sometimes the game thinks they should be blocked when it doesn't look like they should. If they are at <200 yards, are not showing the icons that they are blocked from firing, and they have canister ammo, I've never seen them not fire.

[Michael Slaunwhite]

Hi Garnier.

I am wondering if this can be used for Sandbox? OR, would it be better if you just hosted your own private sandbox mp game which of course would allow you to carry on?

[Garnier]

It makes a sandbox OOB and you just start a sandbox MP game with it.