Realistic Missiles
This mod changes bows, slings, and javelins to make them more realistic.
– Archers fire upwards in an arc so they can fire behind infantry and over/onto walls.
– Horse archers still fire in a stright line.
– Flaming javelins have been removed* and horse archers no longer have fire arrows.**
– Velocity for all missile types has been increased.
– Damage has been standardized across all bows, bows maintain variety by having different ranges, arrow velocity (which affects accuracy), and availability of different ammo types.
– Horse archers with the same bow type as foot archers will have the same range.
– Reload times have been drastically decreased. Archers will now be able to use all their ammo in a battle (especially siege battles) before becoming useless. Legionaries will be able to throw both pila at a charging enemy.
– Missiles arn’t perfectly accurate. Against a loosely spaced formation a large portion of arrows will miss.
– Range has been reduced. For example, non elite peltasts have the same range as precursors so it is much more important to use flanking.
– Arrow towers have had their damage nerfed significantly to be the same as an ordinary arrow (was 40 dmg +15 AP) and I lowered the ignite value to that of a normal fire arrow, but I increased the fire rate significantly.
I made this mod because I was tired of arrows having heat seeking properties, now it looks more like rain. It also annoyed me how useless skirmishers were as they couldn’t fire up at walls (all the projectiles would just bounce off), they couldn’t fire behind the front line unless the AI was four units deep and even then it was a toss up, and their rate of fire was so slow they never used more than half their ammo during the early part of the battle when skirmishing was supposed to take place.
Projectiles types and details:
– Recurve and composite bow: High velocity, high range. Belongs to Eastern and Steppe factions
– Longbow: Average velocity, above average range. Belongs to Germanic factions
– Normal bow: Average velocity, average range. Belongs to factions that don’t give a sh1t about bows
– Heavy arrows: Lowered velocity and range, average damage, high armor piercing
– Flaming arrows***: Below average velocity, average range, double inaccuracy, slower reload, average damage, no armor piercing
– Whistling arrows***: Average velocity, average range, no damage
– Javelins and precursors: Low velocity, low range, average damage, very high armor piercing
– Elite javelins****: Low velocity, below average range, average damage, very high armor piercing
– Stone sling: Average velocity, average range, low damage, no armor piercing
– Lead sling: Average velocity, average range, low damage, average armor piercing
Incompatibilities:
This mod edits the missile weapons to projectiles table and the projectiles table, so anything that edits arrows, bows, arrow types, etc.
Notes:
* Yes flaming javelins were used in a limited number during naval warfare, but to distinguish the two I would have to edit an additional table so I prioritized fixing land combat instead of being more incompatible.
** CA decided to give a handfull of horse archers from the steppe factions (Amazonian riders mostly) composite bows instead of composite horse bows, so they get fire arrows and shoot in an arc. I could change this but I would have to edit the land units table making my mod much less compatable with other great mods so I decided to let it be.
*** CA has a blanket fire arrow and whistling arrow for all units that have them. This is in contrast to heavy arrows which are unique to each bow. The result is that I can base the stats of heavy arrows on the normal arrow counterparts, but the fire arrows are based off the normal bow arrow. This is why a composite bow firing a fire arrow and a normal bow firing a fire arrow will have the same range.
**** Some peltasts wrapped string to their javelins in order to impart a spin on the javelin when thrown giving them more range.
