nwg

Shame on me, I can't retrieve the place to download the new CB test!

So what has changed, what do we need to look out for ?.

I have it and am ready to test.......

Backed off the accuracy of shell and rockets a little bit. Its better then the original CB321 but not as good as the short lived CB321b.

Diddled the pricing of arty a tiny bit, reduced ammo to 50 for field or 70 for position/howie. I think its a good compromise now. I am hoping that in >80% of situations folks feel that roundshot is the appropriate ammo, but in those tricky games where roundshot isn't working perhaps shell will still give ok results.

Cheers, M.

GP, Gunner and I just had a rather silly but funny test game.

The silliness was by way of far far too much artillery and nearly everyone choosing to use shell. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from such a game because if it were a 'real' game the guy getting shelled would advance without delay and give you the sharp end of a bayonet.

What we do know is that receiving the shell from 3x six gun position batteries, even when you are behind a hill, is rather nasty business, but survivable. Despite the test being a strange thing I'm pretty happy with the result.

There was some concern over the range of the canister available as secondary ammunition for howitzers - this is standard 4lb canister range - its short! (smile). Anyone who has played Spanish and used a 4lb cannon before will understand that particular pain.

For those with an interest effective canister range for a 4lb cannon (and a howitzer now) is just under 200 yards, extending out to 300 yards as an absolute maximum (not many rounds will make is this far however). 6lb cannon (and licornes now) have an effective canister of 250 yards going out to 400 (again, very few rounds will make it to 400yards). By way of comparison, we've all become used to 12lb canister recently which is effective at about 350 yards out to 600 yards maximum....quite a difference.

All this boils down to your light guns and howitzer canister being effective just a hairs breadth out of the maximum range of rifled muskets. Scary stuff for the crews involved, but thats the excitement of close support I guess )

Best regards, M.

Gunner24 it looks like your wait will be very soon at an end
And you shall have your new CB release

Oh, one last thing before I give things a rest and let you lucky folks closer to GMT have a shot at things:

There is no doubt that as things stand there will be more shell used in future battles then we are used to seeing. Particularly in CB32 very few people ever bothered to buy the ineffective howitzer unit. As such it can be a bit bright and blinding to have all these balls of flames exploding all around your troops. The effect used is a little bit over the top and was originally designed to represent 'carcass' or incendiary shot and is required in order to set buildings on fire.

If we felt that all these giant fireballs were really not helping we do have the choice to move to a different graphic effect for the shell ammunition. Anyone who has tried shell in the standard NTW2 game will know what this looks like. Its a small airborne explosion but without all the red fiery stuff.

I'm quite open to this, let me know how you feel.

Regards, M.

[PS - without wanting to poison anyone's own opinion on this I think its the way to go and well worth consideration]

The graphic - with or without the red explosion, is not an issue one way or the other with me.....it's the result that's important, not what it looks like.

I have most of the afternoon free if anyone wants to get in some more testing today.....I hope you right Dougie, I'm not the best in the world at "testing" stuff, I'm too simple, if I test it and it works, then it works and that's it, if it don't work, fix it, test it again, and if it works, then it's done......I'm to impatient to test, works, change, test, works, change, test etc etc.....I want everything too quickly !......ha.

It does appear now that howitzers work better than CB32 so I'm pleased with that, I find it almost impossible to use Howitzer cannister, but that's no big deal for me anyway, my Howitzers are for long range work - before my troops close in for the kill !.

Howitzers looking ok, rockets not as good as the last one, but fine, howitzers cannister very hard to use as range is so short, but it's a big killer if you can get it right.

same here, thats why i never want to become a tester for anything as i have an impatient personality
But gents, i really admire your effort and endurance cause i know this last version will compete with Etw in 1 month and LG very soon! and ll try to remain standing.
Hope new release ll be ready by monday-tuesday good luck...

Moopere, will we have a table of weapon ranges like we did before concurrently with the new release?

Yes. Once the beta is ready to go live I'll update the Corps-Battles wiki site with all the required information.

Cheers, M.

Reply:
http://rapidshare.com/files/192052953/R ... 1.rpy.html

This is worth a look as a test battle, only poor thing here was I had the high ground advatage for arty shooting, but this looks perfect to me, no more changes needed !!!!!.

Moopere, you will not be surprised, if I protest against the immoderater use of shell.

This has no relationship with the effect graphic.

The problem is that the shells fall as a rain on an area and that there are too many shells

Therefore, almost impossible to escape as when one is referred by cannonballs.

This is what makes me sick, because that resemble more a modern war that a napoleonic war.

PS: Note that this has been translated from French to English by "Babylon 7". This is transcribed without retouching. I reread and do not believe that I could do better.
Note also that I do not touch royalties about "Babylon 7" . It is only for you to appreciate the possible ( ) quality.

Best regards, gp.

Hi GP, you really don't like these shells do you......I would say try not to worry about them so much, as the damage they do is not as bad as you think, they will not win the battle.

Also, in these test games there are a lot more shells flying around than there will be in a real game, I'd not expect to see that much shell used, as it does not do the damage canoon balls do.

Yes it was a good test today and i was keen too see if shell can be of use and yes i was happy with the results
M you are hoping for a balance which means ball will be very much the preferred choice and i believe you are not going to get much closer than we have with this beta, Shell occasionally may have a role in its present form.
GP i understand your thinking your not keen on the random fire of shell. As suggested above i don't feel you need worry to much.

I would be happy to see the fireball effect removed it doesn't look very realistic to me, but its not that important really.

My final thoughts go along with Gunner !! all looks well and we should be ready to go
PLEASE MOOPERE

Yes, I am a bit sensitive to this problem as well. There really is no effective work around to the issue as far I can determine though. If a player buys several batteries that are capable of firing shell he -may- choose to use shell with all of them for some, part or none of the battle.




I hear and understand what you are saying.

Shell -was- used in our time period though, it really was. You don't see a lot of citations in written accounts because (I suspect) the writers are either ignorant of the finer details of the war machines they are writing about or they just didn't care about it enough to make the differentiation.

So, whats wrong with our battlefield simulations? I think we are in the same predicament as most miniatures games. There is too much artillery (and cavalry) within our given battlefield space. This is a common issue in miniatures games where both sides can line up in their representation of a 1-1.5 mile battlefield with a Corps worth of batteries and more.

Still, all this pontification of mine doesn't help with the problem. I'll touch on this in another post aimed at the testing team but the only thing which comes to mind is to put some serious limits on the ammunition available to the artillery (that has shell available) in the hope that Generals will become aware of not using up all their ammunition to early by simply shooting shell in the general direction of the enemy.




Mmm, nice translator. Seems to do a better job then babelfish at Altavista. Can you give me the URL for this Babylon 7?

Best regards, M.

[Edit: One more thing I should have mentioned:

My expectation is that as using shell again after such a long time will prove a bit of a novelty I -do- expect it will be somewhat overused in the first half dozen games or so.

This 'human' effect is what makes testing these things so difficult. If, after a few dozen games the battlefield reality is that roundshot is -not- being used I'll not hesitate to whip out a point release on CB3.2.1 to reduce shell accuracy]