Archers in combat

[roland.walters@abbott.com]

Currently an archer unit is not allowed to fire at any unit that is "engaged" in combat.  This results in these types of units being highly ineffective when the opposing force contains little or no archers as they have no targets for most of any battle.  In real life, archers would not just stand around watching their fellows fight and die but would engage with a more careful use of their weapons. 

I would suggest that instead of requiring archers to just sit back and watch the battle, that they be allowed to fire into melee with reduced effectiveness due to the care needed to target the "rear" of the enemy units or individual men.  This would be most appropriate when the target is a large unit is engaging a small unit.  This would allow a more realistic battle.

[Anaris]

Actually, allowing archers to fire into melee would be most likely to create a lot of friendly-fire casualties.

However, we have some other ideas about how to make archers more effective—the devs were actually talking about exactly this problem just the other day :)

[vonGenf]

Actually, allowing archers to fire into melee would be most likely to create a lot of friendly-fire casualties.

Re-watching Braveheart can help to convince you of this.

[Zakilevo]

I am pretty sure archers fired in the beginning of a battle and once the close range battle started, they pulled back. No one would want to worry about being hit from the behind.

[roland.walters@abbott.com]

Try reading a little medevial history.

Archers in this time period were trained by shooting at white sheets laid out at varying distances for long distance shooting.  It was called clout training.  They also had knight leaders that called out ranges and targets. At closer distance archers were trained to shoot at individual targets and could easily target individual enemies.  Only if they outnumbered by more than 2 to 1 nearby knights, would they engage in hand to hand combat and primarily used their weapons to try to knock knights down in hopes of taking captives for ransom. 

Braveheart was a movie with little actual historical accuracy and if that is what you rely on for your your history and tactics, then you will be poorly informed.

Roland

[songqu88@gmail.com]

What is meant here is probably that archers don't fire into a crowded melee. That means when your fellow soldiers who are part of the infantry start fighting in close combat your archers generally don't want to fire off into the melee because that risks friendly casualties. Hostile casualties usually would not be great enough to justify sacrificing those friendly casualties. Of course, there are exceptions, but for most sane tacticians, having the archers fire into a melee when your infantry was engaged was probably not the desired tactic.

However, in the case explained by Roland, it appears to be about archers in isolation, or without any serious melee in front of them. Of course, if the enemy is charging unhindered, go fire into them. The current system in BM does have archers fire at enemy forces that aren't engaged in melee with your forces. The current system also has archers fight in close combat even. They aren't very good at it, but they do in fact have the ability to fight in melee.

What people were talking about was the inability of archers to fire into the melee. This might be true for mixed infantry and special forces as well.

[MaleMaldives]

The current system in BM does have archers fire at enemy forces that aren't engaged in melee with your forces.

Does this mean that archers can fire on unit that have this "First Cori Manticores (13), Freya's Wolves (14) and 1st Taran Chargers (2) cannot join the melee, as it is too crowded." happen to them? Where they are in the same row as the enemy just their side massively outnumbers them.

[roland.walters@abbott.com]

Does this mean that archers can fire on unit that have this "First Cori Manticores (13), Freya's Wolves (14) and 1st Taran Chargers (2) cannot join the melee, as it is too crowded." happen to them? Where they are in the same row as the enemy just their side massively outnumbers them.

This is precisely what I was trying to convey, perhaps not as clearly as I would have liked.  Thank you.

Roland

[songqu88@gmail.com]

According to a recent battle in Nahad: http://battlemaster.org/ShowScribeNote.php?ID=222919&Hash=fef4914a22063cb8

It appears that archers do fire at enemy troops so long as they aren't participants in some close combat line.

[Sacha]

Well, you could give troop leaders the option to 'turn' friendly fire on or off. It would be interesting to see how many people would use it.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Ha, wonder how much easier it would be to double up in an enemy realm and subvert the military. Maybe not a lot, since they are archers, and it might only matter in large nearly even battles.

[Darksun]

Well, you could give troop leaders the option to 'turn' friendly fire on or off. It would be interesting to see how many people would use it.

That would be interesting.. FF could be swagged by the size of the engaged infantry forces.

[fodder]

Well, you could give troop leaders the option to 'turn' friendly fire on or off. It would be interesting to see how many people would use it.

would depend on whether infantry actively bypass engaged units. Instead of having a few odd ducks charging into and holding up 20 units. you would think those crowded out of melee will just flank them and hit the lot behind that.

(no idea how combat is done nowadays... haven't seen a big human human battle for a while...)

[MaleMaldives]

I know this thread is about archers, but an interesting thing happened with my Mixed Infantry(that was actually good for once).

[Scribe:161295|faba03fa59e61483]   (Dwilight)

After doing the typical charge in instead of shooting, they broke through the front lines. After that they kept moving forward and shooting backwards as the undead tried to catch them like a skirmish tactic.

[egamma]

I know this thread is about archers, but an interesting thing happened with my Mixed Infantry(that was actually good for once).

[Scribe:161295|faba03fa59e61483]   (Dwilight)

After doing the typical charge in instead of shooting, they broke through the front lines. After that they kept moving forward and shooting backwards as the undead tried to catch them like a skirmish tactic.

THIS. THIS IS WHAT I LOVE ABOUT BATTLE MASTER.

Glorious battle, tough enemies, combat units that do things that might make sense in the real world (well, except for leaving those poor archers undefended...), it's all great.

So...what settings were they on? aggressive/normal/defensive, block/line/skirmish? It would be really cool if setting them to skirmish actually did something like what you just saw.

Also...what was their weapons range? I think they would have won if their range had been 4 rows.