Let's start with the bs shooting. I thought of three ways of doing so.

1. Introducing 3 ranges instead of 2 and giving + 1 to hit at close range
- All weapons have maximum range which is divisible by 3. Therefore the first trisect of weapon range can be a short range, the second trisect a medium range and the third trisect a long range. I would round down. So the if the distance would be 24,7 inches then it would be rounded to 24. For the weapons don't fire exactly up to a range that is stated, but theirs a slight scatter, which might be affected by the wind.


2. Increasing the range of unit on an elevated position.
- Concerns a unit on a cliff, on castel wall, a tower or any other elevated position. The range is extended by one third. In case both points 1 and 2 apply, then long range will be the 3rd and 4th quarter of maximum range while on an elevated position. 2nd quarter medium range and 1st short range.
One of the problems is that it might make warmachines more effective, but the question is in what degree. Warmachines already have a range that allows them to shoot at almost anything they want to. Additionaly if they will be weakened then it should not be a problem.


3. Penalty to Leadership for a unit that suffered more than 25% of wounds from shooting.
-1 to leadership for 50% wounds and -2 to leadership for 75% wounds.
However, this has it's problems. You don't often inflict 50% or more wounds. Same problem with warmachines appears as in point 2. Incase both bs unit and warmachine shoot at one target the wounds, would need to be resolved separately.




Detorioration of warmachines.
- They don't need to be weakened a lot, just a bit. For one Warmachine worth 100 points is often able to do more damage then a unit of archers worth 200 points. Warmachines are supposed to be better at eliminating one kind of a unit then bs shooters while worse at others. For exammple better at obliterating a unit of armoured infantry, while worse at killing light cavalry. I would make warmachines reroll a scatter dice while shooting at light cavalry or a model with a fly rule unless it's a scatter or an artilery dice unless it's a misfire. Those actions should be repeated twice when shooting to flying cavalry.

If you have any other ideas then you can post them here. I'm open for criticism, but I appreciate if you would be constructive and if a problem occurs then try to solve it yourself or give me aid in solving it. When it comes to bs shooting, which of options or combinations do you think would be the most viable?

Three ranges is more complicated than it needs to be.
Why not just remove the -1 to hit for long range, and give +1 to hit for short range. Units don't tend to be in short range very long anyway.

I like the idea of elevation giving more range. For ease, I'd say just give another 6" when firing on enemies lower then them. Or, let units in elevated locations fire with 1 more rank than normal. I liked that hills were important in 7th, and didn't think that was something that needed to be removed in 8th. Hell, 6" of bonus range makes a flame cannon almost playable.

As far as warmachines go, they need to stay a hard(ish) counter for monsters. While a cannon may kill a lot more than 13 crossbowmen, a cannon cannot take a charge from fast cav, or chaos hounds. 13 crossbowmen will.

If BS shooting gets the range modifier change and any sort of bonus from hills, they will do just fine compared warmachines.

-Matt

1,2,3=range is range. No range penalty for BS shots. I think that's fine.

War Machines, if the target of a cannon or stone thrower is a Large Target and takes the multi-wound attack, the damage is halved, to a min of 1. I'd rather it be D3 for convenience, but a lot of army books have their own values (even if they are 99% the same as a stone thrower) and then someone could argue RAW that a screaming skull catapult is still D6 because it's not a stone thrower.

DukeRustfield wrote:
1,2,3=range is range. No range penalty for BS shots. I think that's fine.

War Machines, if the target of a cannon or stone thrower is a Large Target and takes the multi-wound attack, the damage is halved, to a min of 1. I'd rather it be D3 for convenience, but a lot of army books have their own values (even if they are 99% the same as a stone thrower) and then someone could argue RAW that a screaming skull catapult is still D6 because it's not a stone thrower.

I'm ok with warmachines hosing monsters. Its that they are too good against too many targets. IMO, characters who get a look out roll should auto pass it against warmachines.
Here's why I hate warmachines.
I'm running a necromancer led vampire army. My general (master necro) is safely tucked in the rear.
Empire wins the toss and goes 1st.

Rather than firing at the terrorgiests, he fires 4 cannons (steam tank +3 great cannons) through my general. I pass 4 look out tests.
I advance.
Turn 2, empire does this again, I fail a look out roll, general dies. Vampire hero takes over, but the immediate army wide crumble takes out huge chunks of my army.
All my fast flanking units vaporize, preventing my turn 2 charges into his backfield.
My turn, I advance.
His turn 3, he now fires all 4 cannons at the vampire, killing him, forcing another round of army wide crumbles.
12 shots, 2 failed look outs.
You can pretty much always get 2 turns worth of shooting. If you can take 4 or more heavy hitting warmachines, try just assassinating wizard lords/generals and BSB's.

My fix for warmachines,
If you can take a look out, you auto pass it. Everything else they do I'm cool with.


-Matt

They'd still hose monsters. 2 shots = death is pretty hose-worthy. Not many monsters have a ward or high regen and their T and armor is useless. You're counting on a misfire or some such but even still one hit and they are at about half strength which is at the worst an equitable trade in points for the war machine.

Your example of vampires is a non-existent problem. TK and Vampires have their generals. You know that. If you don't want crumble hide behind terrain and sit there forever. Put one of your many possible monstrous_ in front of you. Or don't put 23498 points into a super general who also controls whether your entire army crumbles to dust. You have complete control over that. Even still, you don't cherry pick the worst case scenario to make a case.

Look out Sir is so unbelievably good that no one bothers shooting at characters with war machines unless they are Lord Fartwagon on a Dragon, which is the last time that poor model ever gets used. It is the best save in the game bar none. Most armies are going to be able to lay down anywhere from 0-2 templates at the most that require a LOS. And even then you're getting a ward and have all the other protections.

DukeRustfield wrote:
They'd still hose monsters. 2 shots = death is pretty hose-worthy. Not many monsters have a ward or high regen and their T and armor is useless. You're counting on a misfire or some such but even still one hit and they are at about half strength which is at the worst an equitable trade in points for the war machine.

Your example of vampires is a non-existent problem. TK and Vampires have their generals. You know that. If you don't want crumble hide behind terrain and sit there forever. Put one of your many possible monstrous_ in front of you. Or don't put 23498 points into a super general who also controls whether your entire army crumbles to dust. You have complete control over that. Even still, you don't cherry pick the worst case scenario to make a case.

Look out Sir is so unbelievably good that no one bothers shooting at characters with war machines unless they are Lord Fartwagon on a Dragon, which is the last time that poor model ever gets used. It is the best save in the game bar none. Most armies are going to be able to lay down anywhere from 0-2 templates at the most that require a LOS. And even then you're getting a ward and have all the other protections.

Look Out is good against 1 cannon. It's not good enough if you can spam the war machines. Back when I ran dwarves, I called it the broadside. 3 cannons, 2 grudge throwers with accuracy (1 has burning too).
Typically, within 2 shooting phases, I've killed a character of my choice, regardless of look out. All 5 machines would focus fire on a single point.
Dwarf armies tend to get the +1 to go first since they have so few deployments.
Passed look outs aren't a total loss either, I'm still tagging another guy in the unit.
Really though, this is pretty much limited to Empire, Dwarves and chaos dwarves. Nobody else can get enough machines to make it work

As far as my example goes, yes, it's extreme. But vampires can't just hide the general in the back behind terrain. You might not have the terrain, and if you do, then your whole army isn't going to be marching, and within a turn or two, will be out of range of your generals magic.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Look Out is good against 1 cannon.

Oh, come on. That's like saying a HKB on every attack is only good vs. one skaven slave. LoS is limited by the laws of a D6 dice but it's as good as this game offers. A 4+ ward is awesome and it's nowhere near LoS.

Back when I ran dwarves...

Okay, but here's the deal, you're throwing 500+++ points trying to kill one guy. Empire can buy 10 Witch Hunters and you would be PRAYING to face cannons again. 500points is an awful lot to go for one guy. That's like 14 trolls puking on you. Like 7 buffed-up Mournfangs. If you find a hardish counter like that, it's really hard to beat. It doesn't matter if it's war machines or a KB Bloodthirster.

But you can block cannons as much as the game possible allows. You monster meatshields. It's harder with stone throwers, but those don't seem to be as popular as cannons now that measuring is in (and monsters aren't as common).

devestator 7777777 wrote:
Let's start with the bs shooting. I thought of three ways of doing so.

1. Introducing 3 ranges instead of 2 and giving + 1 to hit at close range
- All weapons have maximum range which is divisible by 3. Therefore the first trisect of weapon range can be a short range, the second trisect a medium range and the third trisect a long range. I would round down. So the if the distance would be 24,7 inches then it would be rounded to 24. For the weapons don't fire exactly up to a range that is stated, but theirs a slight scatter, which might be affected by the wind.

As HawaiiMatt said just switching the range mods to +1 at close and no mod at long range should do the job, while keeping things pretty simple. Warhammer in all its forms has always been a short & long range game. To make shooting a little stronger you could also change stand & shoot so that it is always deemed to be at close range (making it both more powerful and getting rid of the silliness of charges from close range actually suffering more hits than charges from long range).

There aren't many issues with figuring out how to make shooting more effective (if nothing else you can just make shooting troops cheaper). The problem is with making sure that no book encourages people to take pure shooting, stand and deliver gunline armies... because those armies are incredibly boring to play with and against. That produces a balancing act, where you want missile troops to be priced well enough that they're worth taking for in reasonable numbers, but not cheap enough that you can take nothing but missile troops and just shoot the enemy off the board.

2. Increasing the range of unit on an elevated position.
- Concerns a unit on a cliff, on castel wall, a tower or any other elevated position. The range is extended by one third. In case both points 1 and 2 apply, then long range will be the 3rd and 4th quarter of maximum range while on an elevated position. 2nd quarter medium range and 1st short range.
One of the problems is that it might make warmachines more effective, but the question is in what degree. Warmachines already have a range that allows them to shoot at almost anything they want to. Additionaly if they will be weakened then it should not be a problem.

I'd like to see a variation on HawaiiMatt's option - if the shooter is higher than the target they get +1 to hit. It's fairly powerful, but then missile troops on hills should be.

I'd say 6 extra range when on elevated position is better then + 1 to hit since some units will already hit on +2 at close range like it was in 7th edition.

Can't shooters fire from three ranks when on a cliff in 8th edition? All models can fire if they are on a tower.

DukeRustfield wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Look Out is good against 1 cannon.

Oh, come on. That's like saying a HKB on every attack is only good vs. one skaven slave. LoS is limited by the laws of a D6 dice but it's as good as this game offers. A 4+ ward is awesome and it's nowhere near LoS.

Back when I ran dwarves...

Okay, but here's the deal, you're throwing 500+++ points trying to kill one guy. Empire can buy 10 Witch Hunters and you would be PRAYING to face cannons again. 500points is an awful lot to go for one guy. That's like 14 trolls puking on you. Like 7 buffed-up Mournfangs. If you find a hardish counter like that, it's really hard to beat. It doesn't matter if it's war machines or a KB Bloodthirster.

But you can block cannons as much as the game possible allows. You monster meatshields. It's harder with stone throwers, but those don't seem to be as popular as cannons now that measuring is in (and monsters aren't as common).

It's under 500 points. And it's not killing 1 model. It's getting 3-5 hits per cannon and 8+ hits per stone thrower. It kills the character and cripples the unit he's in.
The third round of firing puts the machines well over their point value in kills, and that shooting at less than ideal targets.

What do you think of my third option concerning bs missile troops?

Leadership penalties I'm not a fan of. Too many armies and too many units won't panic, and panic is an all or nothing effect. I'd rather see panic come up as often as it does now, but see more models die to missile fire.

As for cliffs and towers, towers allow 5 models per floor to fire, cliffs give no advantage at all (other than enhanced true line of sight, if that was ever an issue).

-Matt

Which option you think is more viable extra range or third rank?
I would go for extra range, since you can place a unit in two ranks anyway. Perhaps both of them may apply.

Range effects everyone that can shoot. Elite shooters (like leadbelchers, flamers) won't be running 2 ranks, let alone 3. You want to give as many benefits to as many types as possible.

I don't like terrain bonuses. I think they are kind of goofy and people tend to forget them. Big huge WHFB fights took place on really flat terrain because everyone was walking. Unless you're running someone down or are the worst general ever, you don't try and run into a valley flanked by a zillion archers. And you don't maneuver around an army without scouts that know this stuff.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Range effects everyone that can shoot. Elite shooters (like leadbelchers, flamers) won't be running 2 ranks, let alone 3. You want to give as many benefits to as many types as possible.

I don't like terrain bonuses. I think they are kind of goofy and people tend to forget them. Big huge WHFB fights took place on really flat terrain because everyone was walking. Unless you're running someone down or are the worst general ever, you don't try and run into a valley flanked by a zillion archers. And you don't maneuver around an army without scouts that know this stuff.

Warhammer games aren't big huge fights. A big "army" has ~300 guys in it.
Skirmishers took place over rolling hills all the time.

-Matt

The fact they have generals and princes and war machines tends to tell me those are placeholders. 10 spearmen aren't holding a line. Or carrying a banner. Or doing anything. They are a handful of chaps. If you look at terrain, only a few guys can even get on a hill. Either everyone in WHFB is a giant, terrain is really small, or we have to use our imaginations.

No one is making 50,000 men battles, much to GW's chagrin. If it was really true #'s of units fighting, you would never see anything except infantry or a few horses. No one is wheeling two cannons around the countryside by themselves.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Range effects everyone that can shoot. Elite shooters (like leadbelchers, flamers) won't be running 2 ranks, let alone 3. You want to give as many benefits to as many types as possible.

I don't like terrain bonuses. I think they are kind of goofy and people tend to forget them. Big huge WHFB fights took place on really flat terrain because everyone was walking. Unless you're running someone down or are the worst general ever, you don't try and run into a valley flanked by a zillion archers. And you don't maneuver around an army without scouts that know this stuff.

Bonuses that come from terrain still did apply. Archers that stood on hills had longer range. While the main fighting was mostly done on flat terrain, missile troops preferably occupied elevated positions. When general wanted to subjugate new lands his scouts helped him to choose battelfield, but he could not remove hills, from the mountainous areas.

Remebering about the extra 6 range on a unit located on a cliff should not be a problem.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
missile troops preferably occupied elevated positions.

No, they didn't. First off, no armies were going to clash where such a discrepancy took place. Second, volley fire is volley fire for a reason. If you're firing at 45 degrees it doesn't incredibly matter if you're in a ditch or a hill. Being on a hill just helped you not shoot your own men and get a better view. Not let you shoot more arrerz.

DukeRustfield wrote:
No, they didn't. First off, no armies were going to clash where such a discrepancy took place. Second, volley fire is volley fire for a reason. If you're firing at 45 degrees it doesn't incredibly matter if you're in a ditch or a hill. Being on a hill just helped you not shoot your own men and get a better view. Not let you shoot more arrerz.

Armies clashed where such a discrepancy took place all the time. History is full of examples of one army taking the high ground, and the other army (either because of numerical superiority or logistical inferiority) making the attack. I mean come on man... Hastings. Agincourt. These are not obscure battles.

And second up, the range of missile weapons benefitted greatly from a higher ground. Your assumption that volley fire was the only method of missile fire is miles off base, and whether volley fire or direct fire that extra distance mattered a lot. It's why hills and higher ground where constantly fought over in the first place.


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devestator 7777777 wrote:
I'd say 6 extra range when on elevated position is better then + 1 to hit since some units will already hit on +2 at close range like it was in 7th edition.

Some troops, but not many. Given the rarity of BS 5 or positive modifiers to shooting tests, I'd go so far as to say it's incredibly rare.

And when you think about what adding range does it becomes clear it's something of a mess. Basically if a target was out of range by 6" or less, it means you get a full round of attacks. In this instance, which is rare after the first turn, it pays massively. Or if a target is outside of half range by 3" or less you get +1 to hit, a nice bonus in a very specific circumstance. In all other situations it does nothing.

So, given your argument against +1 to hit as being due to many troops hitting on 2+ anyway, we can discard the +1 to hit because a shot is brought into half range... leaving us with hills meaning 'some units that can't reach the enemy of the first turn will be able to'.

I think compared to that +1 to hit looks like a far more generally useful stat.

 sebster wrote:
Armies clashed where such a discrepancy took place all the time.

Yes, and I'm sure they were statistically insignificant. Even up to our own Civil War, where I got dragged to a bazillion battlefields they weren't even 5 degree slopes. And I'm fairly certain they didn't mass bulldoze/grade the terrain after the fact. I just saw a documentary on a few really important battles that ended in massacres because one side retreated to like...a hill, and the other side thought that was a good place to charge up. For simple logistic reasons, you didn't have mass terrain because they were communicating with their army visually. Further, it's a damn hard place to fight.

Duke Rustfield. It's damn hard to charge a unit of spearmen up a hill. Do you know why castels were mostly build on a mountains? So archers that stood on the walls had bigger range, enemy could not carry siege towers to the walls.Have you heard of holes that were dug and covered, so heavy cavalry would fall and crash in to them. This happened in a battle of Tannenburg. Terrain always played a key part in historical battels.




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Sebster. + 1 to hit is better assuming that there is not already a + 1 to hit at close range. Otherwise +6 range is better.

HawaiiMatt wrote:

Really though, this is pretty much limited to Empire, Dwarves and chaos dwarves. Nobody else can get enough machines to make it work

Skaven and their ability to bring 2 cannons and 2 Stone Throwers(plus the Mortars) say HI.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
Duke Rustfield. It's damn hard to charge a unit of spearmen up a hill. Do you know why castels were mostly build on a mountains? So archers that stood on the walls had bigger range, enemy could not carry siege towers to the walls.

Castles weren't built on MOUNTAINS. Because building on a mountain is about a billion times harder than sieging a mountain. They were built on small hills. And by small I mean not even the geographic definition of hill. The cool thing about a castle is...it's a building. It's naturally tall compared to those not on it. Archers didn't get greater range by being on a castle wall that was on a hill. They got greater range being on a castle wall. An arrow has a limited range. No one was launching a volley of arrows down a mountain (or hill), they wouldn't hurt anyone. They got better visibility being on a hill and better siege protection. But it did nothing for archers. BTW a "hill" is termed as being >1000 ft tall geographically. A mountain is >2K feet. Or about a 166 story building tall.

Google image search the word castle. You can see the ones, and ruins of ones, that were put on hills. Which are in the very small minority. That's not to say there weren't any. But it's more proper to say they were on some kind of mounds. 1000 feet is really damn tall.

DukeRustfield wrote:

devestator 7777777 wrote:
Duke Rustfield. It's damn hard to charge a unit of spearmen up a hill. Do you know why castels were mostly build on a mountains? So archers that stood on the walls had bigger range, enemy could not carry siege towers to the walls.

Castles weren't built on MOUNTAINS. Because building on a mountain is about a billion times harder than sieging a mountain. They were built on small hills. And by small I mean not even the geographic definition of hill. The cool thing about a castle is...it's a building. It's naturally tall compared to those not on it. Archers didn't get greater range by being on a castle wall that was on a hill. They got greater range being on a castle wall. An arrow has a limited range. No one was launching a volley of arrows down a mountain (or hill), they wouldn't hurt anyone. They got better visibility being on a hill and better siege protection. But it did nothing for archers. BTW a "hill" is termed as being >1000 ft tall geographically. A mountain is >2K feet. Or about a 166 story building tall.

Google image search the word castle. You can see the ones, and ruins of ones, that were put on hills. Which are in the very small minority. That's not to say there weren't any. But it's more proper to say they were on some kind of mounds. 1000 feet is really damn tall.

I must disagree with you saying that range did't increase. Of course it did't increase 2 times or even 1,5 time. But it did indeed increase a bit since arrows could fall longer. They still had force. They lost kinetic energy in order to gain potential and then kinetic again when arrows accelerated falling down.

If they have lost the kinetic energy of the bow, they are travelling with momentum and gravity and drag is going to start playing a much larger part. If you shot an arrow off mt. everest it might go further than if you shot it at sea level, but it wouldn't hurt anyone, it would just tumble like a leaf.

Here is a good page of mostly modern weapons. I think a standard recurve bow was around 300fps.

http://www.excaliburcrossbow.com/content/arrow_ballistics

DukeRustfield wrote:
Yes, and I'm sure they were statistically insignificant. Even up to our own Civil War, where I got dragged to a bazillion battlefields they weren't even 5 degree slopes. And I'm fairly certain they didn't mass bulldoze/grade the terrain after the fact. I just saw a documentary on a few really important battles that ended in massacres because one side retreated to like...a hill, and the other side thought that was a good place to charge up. For simple logistic reasons, you didn't have mass terrain because they were communicating with their army visually. Further, it's a damn hard place to fight.

You can be as sure as you want, but you're just wrong. Completely, 100% wrong. And there's actually a lot of battlefields that don't exist in the form they did when the war took place - the ridge at Waterloo has eroded over time so that going there today you can't get a sense for how Wellington used it to obscure the strength of his position. And oh look, Waterloo... that's another famous battle where varying terrain heights played a crucial role.

And while I have no how you managed to get dragged to so many civil wars without ever going to Gettysburg. Unless you went there and it somehow completely escaped your notice that Little Round Top was in fact a hill? It was essential to the fighting because it would have enabled the South to move cannons on to a hill with firing lines across the Union position. Also, you can add Gettysburg to that ever-growing list of really famous battles in which height played a key role. But please, keep insisting those battles are all exceptions.

And when you want to communicate with your army visually, hills are great - they extend your LOS considerably. I mean come on dude...


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devestator 7777777 wrote:
Sebster. + 1 to hit is better assuming that there is not already a + 1 to hit at close range. Otherwise +6 range is better.

Sure, for BS4 shooters (ie the 3 elf armies).

So we're basically saying the situation in which the bonus wouldn't do anything is when you are playing one of the Elf armies, firing at close range, from a hill, when no other negative factors are in place (so it isn't a stand & shoot, the firing unit didn't move, there's no cover etc). All the rest of the time the bonus is giving you a bonus to hit.

Compare that to the limited events in which extra range makes a difference - when you are out of range where you'd otherwise be within range (so first turn, if you go first), or when you'd be outside half range except for the extra 3" given by the hill. The latter would only give the same bonus as the +1 would, so it's a wash. The former... well elves have long bows so they're in range on the first turn anyway, so it doesn't help them much. So that leaves us with Dark Elves as the only army that could, in some circumstances, benefit more from an extra 6" of range.

Unless you want to start talking about throwing axes and pistols and the like, but they're marginal cases and a pretty good example of why a range boost doesn't actually make a lot of sense for all missile weapons.

Gettysburg was actually the documentary I saw on that. And the battle was resolved via what constitutes close combat. Via wiki:

On the final charge, knowing that his men were out of ammunition, that his numbers were being depleted, and further knowing that another charge could not be repulsed, Chamberlain ordered a maneuver that was considered unusual for the day: He ordered his left flank, which had been pulled back, to advance with bayonets in a "right-wheel forward" maneuver. As soon as they were in line with the rest of the regiment, the remainder of the regiment charged, akin to a door swinging shut. This simultaneous frontal assault and flanking maneuver halted and captured a good portion of the 15th Alabama.[16]

Those are strategic hills. Actual fortified positions. You didn't get more shots, or better shots, shooting down them. And that was with guns. It was just harder to run up them then sit put behind a tree or fence or ditch at the top of a hill. And that fact is already represented in charging rules. Shooting a gun up a hill or down a hill is no damn difference because if you're in range to shoot, the elevation difference is insignificant--it's literally crossed in milliseconds.

Throw a football (baseball, whatever) up a hill that you can reasonably walk up. Throw it down. You can get more range throwing down, but it's not a hell of a lot. And that's not a bow. But you can't throw more times or are more accurate.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Gettysburg was actually the documentary I saw on that. And the battle was resolved via what constitutes close combat. Via wiki:

On the final charge, knowing that his men were out of ammunition, that his numbers were being depleted, and further knowing that another charge could not be repulsed, Chamberlain ordered a maneuver that was considered unusual for the day: He ordered his left flank, which had been pulled back, to advance with bayonets in a "right-wheel forward" maneuver. As soon as they were in line with the rest of the regiment, the remainder of the regiment charged, akin to a door swinging shut. This simultaneous frontal assault and flanking maneuver halted and captured a good portion of the 15th Alabama.[16]

Those are strategic hills. Actual fortified positions. You didn't get more shots, or better shots, shooting down them. And that was with guns. It was just harder to run up them then sit put behind a tree or fence or ditch at the top of a hill. And that fact is already represented in charging rules. Shooting a gun up a hill or down a hill is no damn difference because if you're in range to shoot, the elevation difference is insignificant--it's literally crossed in milliseconds.

Throw a football (baseball, whatever) up a hill that you can reasonably walk up. Throw it down. You can get more range throwing down, but it's not a hell of a lot. And that's not a bow. But you can't throw more times or are more accurate.

First up, whether that charge actually took place is highly debated. It was popularised by the film Gettysburg and so amateurs around the world have assumed it was true, but the actual evidence for that action, or any similar action is scant at best.

Second up, Little Round Top wasn't a fortified position. As part of the general chaos that was Gettysburg, the Union more or less stumbled on to the hill, and a junior officer realised its importance. It was covered in granite rocks and so suited defense nicely, but it wasn't fortified at all.

Third, yeah infantry held the hill, and it was denied to the Confederates. But none of that changes the basic fething reason that the Confederates wanted the hill in the first place - to put cannons on it because it had a commanding position over the Union line. Which it wouldn't have had if it wasn't a hill.

Fourth, the range difference for a weapon launched 100 or more yards is very different to a weapon thrown a third of that or maybe less. And in warfare, it isn't the total distance that matters, but having more distance than the other guy - when you outrange you force him to move to your deployment.

And lastly, you're moving your goalposts all over the place. First it was that uneven ground wasn't used for battle - they all preferred open terrain. When I pointed out that was nonsense you just stopped mentioning it, and now are trying to make some sort of argument that hills were nice, but only to help melee, it doesn't meaningfully aid ranged troops.

I can't wait to see what you make up to try and argue that the basic tactical doctrine of putting ranged units on the top of the hill didn't exist.

If +1 to hit would benefit unit on a hill at a long range as well then it is better then +6 extra range.

First, I didn't see Gettysburg, so I can't comment.

Second, k.

Third, doesn't have anything to do with discussion as this is about bows, not cannons. You already have TLOS issues with cannons. That is already taken care of and it's a reason for high ground. But even in the age of gunpowder, no one is shooting over their own troops to target enemy troops just beyond them, because they tend to shoot their own men in the backs. At least not with muskets.

Fourth, the range of a bow of the WHFB universe would drool at being able to hit anything at 100 yards. It would never remotely happen. Indoor pistol ranges, glocks and all, generally top out at 50 yards and that's a hard shot to make. Just a wiki says their effective range is about that, which means pushing further and they won't even penetrate (though paper targets are pretty wussy). Most rifle ranges are 50-100 to start and if you're shooting more you're doing it at a bench/prone with a scope and with a non-wussy caliber. I can speak from many years experience as a bad rifleman in that regards. So yes, if you are in range of any WHFB ranged weapon, even if you're shooting straight up, the elevation doesn't make much difference.

I stopped mentioning hills because i don't want to go over the maps of every battlefield that ever existed. I actually started looked at some and I was like, you know, this isn't that interesting. I'm sure I could come up with a thousand really flat battlefields and you could come up with a thousand or maybe three thousand, I don't know--but it would take us a year or so of research. From my understanding mass, multi-thousand assaults in the pre-pre-modern era were not primarily fought among hills and dales. The hills and mountains being a good place to retreat to when you DIDN'T want to fight. I think it was maybe even you who argued this when I said chariots weren't used too much because terrain was too rough and you said no way, terrain is flat the world over. If it makes you feel better, I will say that every battle that was every fought was on nothing but hills.

There is no viable reason to have a guy with a gun or a bow on a hill except to make people run up at him in angry defiance of gravity. It's a pretty big reason, however. And it's covered under charges. That and visibility. But that applies to everyone, melee or not, you want to see where your enemy is and a hill gives you the most movement options, because it's easier for you to run down in any direction than them to run up.

Range still increases a bit. Furthermore you can shoot more precisely.

You can't shoot more precisely. It has no effect whatsoever. The adjustable sights on a rifle (or scope) have settings you can change depending on the range, which accounts for bullet drop; windage, which accounts for wind. There are no calculations for...hillage. Find any site that details that info and post it.

Altitude has an effect on drag and pressure, but that's not going to change shooting up or down unless you're shooting a cruise missile.

Shooting Uphill/Downhill

Bullet drop does not change very much when shooting uphill/downhill. But the rifle will appear to shoot high. In fact it shoots high by almost the same amount whether you are shooting up or down. Therefore you must adjust your hold or change your scope when taking shots at high angle, especially as range increases. If you know what the drop (d) is for your bullet at any given range, you can use the following table to calculate the amount your bullet will shoot high, in inches.

Think about a 600 yd shot downhill at 40 degrees -- Instead of a 50" correction we are talking about a 40" correction. Check your tables or ballistics program for your rifle. If you would like to know what it is right now, then try JBM's online ballistics calculator!

 sebster wrote:

DukeRustfield wrote:
Yes, and I'm sure they were statistically insignificant. Even up to our own Civil War, where I got dragged to a bazillion battlefields they weren't even 5 degree slopes. And I'm fairly certain they didn't mass bulldoze/grade the terrain after the fact. I just saw a documentary on a few really important battles that ended in massacres because one side retreated to like...a hill, and the other side thought that was a good place to charge up. For simple logistic reasons, you didn't have mass terrain because they were communicating with their army visually. Further, it's a damn hard place to fight.

You can be as sure as you want, but you're just wrong. Completely, 100% wrong. And there's actually a lot of battlefields that don't exist in the form they did when the war took place - the ridge at Waterloo has eroded over time so that going there today you can't get a sense for how Wellington used it to obscure the strength of his position. And oh look, Waterloo... that's another famous battle where varying terrain heights played a crucial role.

Add Austerlitz, the Crimean War and the Siege of Sevastopol in WWII to that list (amusingly enough using the same battlefield twice).

DukeRustfield wrote:
You can't shoot more precisely. It has no effect whatsoever. The adjustable sights on a rifle (or scope) have settings you can change depending on the range, which accounts for bullet drop; windage, which accounts for wind. There are no calculations for...hillage. Find any site that details that info and post it.

Altitude has an effect on drag and pressure, but that's not going to change shooting up or down unless you're shooting a cruise missile.

Shooting Uphill/Downhill

Bullet drop does not change very much when shooting uphill/downhill. But the rifle will appear to shoot high. In fact it shoots high by almost the same amount whether you are shooting up or down. Therefore you must adjust your hold or change your scope when taking shots at high angle, especially as range increases. If you know what the drop (d) is for your bullet at any given range, you can use the following table to calculate the amount your bullet will shoot high, in inches.

Think about a 600 yd shot downhill at 40 degrees -- Instead of a 50" correction we are talking about a 40" correction. Check your tables or ballistics program for your rifle. If you would like to know what it is right now, then try JBM's online ballistics calculator!

That's true for a bullet, but a projectile that fires in an arc (or a steeper arc anyway) is going to be affect by hills. An arrow fired down a hill is going to cruise on an ideal lethal path longer than an arrow fired up a hill.
Math to follow, toddler has to go potty.

-Matt

All projectiles file in arcs. Go pythagorean theorem on it to see how miniscule the height difference is.

DukeRustfield wrote:
All projectiles file in arcs. Go pythagorean theorem on it to see how miniscule the height difference is.

But the steepness of the arc is more extreme the slower the projectile becomes.
Firing down hill is much more effective with a bow than it is with a gun, and better for a primitive shortbow than it would be for a modern compound high performance bow.
If you think of the sweet spot of a target, center mass, or a strike zone from stomach to chest, then the longer the distance a projectile can cover in this zone increases the likely hood of a hit.
A slope that declines with the natural drop of a projectile is ideal.
A unit of archers firing down on an enemy formation advancing uphill is going to be measurable more effective than the reverse.

-Matt

Nope. If you are lobbing something, it no longer has kill power. You are merely trying to get distance. A gun trying to get distance has to be fired at the same arc as a bow, that's just physics. And it will be several miles of range vs. hundreds of yards. The reason anyone can hit anything at those "extreme" bow angles is because they can still see it. You can't see something 2.5 miles away to try and angle your rifle and shoot it, but that's what you're doing with a bow.

You didn't do the Pythagorean theorem like I said. The olympics use 70m using the highest quality modern bows. That's pretty damn far, about 200 feet. A castle wall is say 50 feet or 15ish meters (or being elevated up a hill 50 feet)--pretty damn high up, about 5 stories. Using Pythagorean, that flat 70m shot turns into a 71.58910531638176m shot. The difference is negligible and that's at the very very very far end of what any WHFB archer could put killing force behind.

If you are making volley shots down a hill, you can't shoot anything nearby cuz you have to arch it over them. You have a double decline going (triple, if you want to be a douche and count the curvature of the earth but only missiles and layz0rz worry about that stuff). Killing shots are fired straight. You are aiming literally inches at max range over your target. If you have to aim more than that higher, your arrow will not have the power to hurt your target when it arrives. Volley shots are a different animal. But to volley shot to someone on a hill, you'd have to aim at some insane angle like 80 degrees. The hill makes it massively worse because they are too close.

I didn't use Pythagorean, because it isn't an angle, it's a curve. If you're shooting in an angle, you're going to miss, unless you are firing near point blank.

Ideally, the only thing that effects how much an arrow drops is how long it's in the air. That amount of time (t) in seconds goes into the following formula...
(t x t x 32.2) x 6 = drop in inches
All you need to do is figure out the time of flight and plug it in the formula.

Reading on bows and ancient bows, most fired at the 150 to 200 feet per second. A very powerful bow firing at 200 feet per seconds is in the air for half a second firing on a target at 100 feet. Plugging in a half second of flight time, you'll find that gravity has pulled my arrow down 48" (4 FEET) is half a second. If I aimed at your heart, I'm striking your shin.
Firing on a target 100 yards away, gravity has a 32 foot pull on the arrow during the 1.5 second flight.

The the ground your advancing on drops 32 feet over 100 yards (~10% grade), my flat shot starts at heart height, and 1.5 seconds later, is still at heart height.
By being on higher ground the flight path of my shot is in the kill zone. If the guy 10 feet in front of you ducks, it's still on a kill path.
Using height of the shooter to counter the drop of the shot, the shooters is left dealing more with right to left corrections and less with up/down. That's an increase in accuracy.

A 10% grade over 100 yards isn't an impossible hill.

Now, compare that to a bullet (600 to 5,000 fps) and you're seeing significantly less drop; because the bullet reaches the range in a fraction of the time.

I'm not sure where you're getting your stats from, but most of them are wrong.

This is how bows work: a straight line. That's how you shoot. A bow is just a slow gun. Take all the parabola stuff and throw it away because you can't hit anything doing that unless you got 1000 guys raining arrows on 1000 guys.

You do not angle fire to hit. That's something that shows up in movies a lot. And it's represented by volley fire. But you don't "aim" at a 45 degree angle to try and hit a soldier, a deer, or a target. You'd have to be godlike to make that happen.

No bullet is ever going to go 600-5k fps. My shotgun, which is a ridiculously slow firearm, still travels over 1k FPS and a 5.56 (like an M4) travels about 3K fps, which is ridiculously fast. Nothing on earth travels 5k fps. Maybe a railgun.

I've been shooting and hunting for about 3 decades now. Mostly on hills. Because the untapped nature areas are ones that are so hilly they couldn't develop them into anything else. My shotgun is about 4-5x faster than a bow, but it has vastly worse max range. Elevation is meaningless.

You're not shooting a bow at someone 100 yards away. The Olympics don't do that. Drag is the enemy, not gravity. You're shooting a solid object through air. That's what stops an arrow. Or a baseball. Or a soccer ball. Not gravity. A mosquito can defy the gravity of the entire planet earth by merely flapping its wings. That's how weak it is. But if there's a 10mph wind it is helpless.

Break out of whatever you're trying to concoct and find an actual hunting or archery site where people are worried about elevation. There's many thousands of sites on hunting and shooting and the dynamics behind it. There is no difference.

http://forums.bowhunting.com/archive/index.php/t-10777.html

Physics.
9 meters per second per second is gravity.
Convert that to feet per second and drop in inches and you'll get what I posted.

Drag may slow the arrow, but it's gravity that brings it to the ground. A mosquito is a speck, so the lift to weight ratio is easy to meet. A mosquito has a bigger problem, viscosity. If you make a mosquito 100 times bigger with 100 times the strength and 100 times the weight, it won't fly. Viscosity greatly affects very small objects and flight.

Olympic shooting isn't the end all be all of archery, nor does it represent a warbow firing a war arrow.

When you look through a scope and use mil-dots, you're aiming in an arc, not strait.

As for speed of bullets:
.220 Swift - 4213 fps with 40 grain bullet.
.22-250 - 4,224 fps with 40 grain bullet.
6.53 Lazzeroni Scramjet - 4000 fps with 85 grain bullet.
7.21 Lazzeroni Firebird - 3900 fps with 120 grain bullet.
7.21 Lazzeroni Tomahawk - 3563 fps with 120 grain bullet.
7.62 Lazzeroni Warbird - 3775 fps with 150 grain bullet.
8.59 Lazzeroni Titan - 3550 fps with 185 grain bullet.

Most of these are ~30 years old, so I'm guessing that 4,224 isn't the top end right now.

http://margo.student.utwente.nl/sagi/artikel/longbow/longbow.html
A bow of the strength described by Stayner and Paterson would project a war arrow a long distance. But here again, no one is sure how far: Stayner believes the war arrow had an effective range of 180 yards;11 Paterson maintains a slightly further distance of 200 yards;12 and Bartelot estimates a useful range of 249 yards.13 Captain George Burnet, Secretary to the Royal Scottish Archers, notes that the members of the Queen's Body Guard for Scotland, who still shoot, use six foot long self yew bows of 55 to 60 pounds draw weight. The range of these modern bows is 180-200 yards shooting light target shafts.14

What's more, firing at an steep angle, I've seen archers hit man sized target and very long ranges. Due to the time in the air, all the target need do is change the direction he's walking in to be missed, so not knowing your being fired upon is key.


What's interesting is an ancient atlatl replicated and tested at University of Iriving had a surprising range of ~150 yards by an untrained test subject (my archeology professor and me). With practice, shots out to 280 meters have been recorded. In the test we did, we hit and penetrated a leather target (1.5 meter diameter) at 90 meters. The leather was 3cm thick. The test was to see if we thought it possible for early natives to hunt the local elephants. 2 hours of practice (and a few beers) let us score a couple of hits that would do serious to lethal damage (20cm of penetration through 3cm of skin).

The issue is ranges. If you're shooting your bow at ~30 to 40 yards, the range is so short and the time in the air so little, that odds are good you're barely noticing drop. Double the range, and you quadrouple the drop. 3x the range is 9 times the drop.


-Matt

You can come up with custom ammo that will blow apart a gun and say, zomg it's 4000fps. But no one uses it. That ammo is more expensive than target .50 cal rifle rounds by about 2-300%. If you put that ammo in a modern FAL, which is 7.62, it would simply destroy the chamber. You can always make a tungsten(!) or somesuch gun and load it with as much gunpowder as you like.

--hmm, guess i can't hotlink that image--

The problem with your gravity issues you aren't taking into consideration how insanely fast these things are going. You write it in your last sentence but seem to have forgotten it in everything else you wrote. Even a sucky medieval bow is going like 140mph. M4 ball ammo is going about 2K mph. That's why you get the crack from the ammo even if it's suppressed, because it's breaking the sound barrier. They cross the point of them becoming non-lethal extremely fast.

This video, which isn't that interesting, shows a modern pistol round dropping 3-4 feet after ~300 feet in distance. But at that point it merely skims paper on the ground, rolls a foot and comes to a stop. It might not even break skin at that range.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9wQVIEdKh8

So the point is, if you can hit something, and it be lethal, it's going to be crossed incredibly fast.

Single bows firing at steep angles aren't going to hit anything unless there is no wind. Wind changes direction with altitude and (ir)regularly at distance. Which is why in long range shooting competitions they set up flags every 10 feet so you can see the wind and try and make some calculation. But a bullet is a lot faster and smaller than an arrow.

But I think we're getting off the point of hills. Hills still don't matter. Altitude does not change gravity. If there's a windage change you still have to compensate for it both ways. You aim at what you're trying to kill, the further out it is compared to your "zero" you aim higher. That works whether you're shooting up or down or sideways or along a hill.

That;s a good video. So ~3-4 feet in drop over 300 yards.

Here's how down hill is more accurate.

Think of it this way:
Hold a sheet of paper at arms length.
Now hold the same sheet at a 30 degree angle.
See how it looks smaller?
This is what's happening at long range. Gravity is pulling the arrow down. If you could put a camera on the tip of an arrow, you'd see a smaller target profile the higher you have to aim. You have to aim above the target to arc it down to the target. Instead of coming right at the target, you're striking it at an angle. This makes the target smaller.
If you're shooting the same arrow down slope, you're flight path is following closer to the ground line, making the target "full size".
Firing uphill is worse, the angle of attack is much steeper, and the strike zone appears much smaller.

On a bullet, that angle isn't much of a difference due to the speed at which it reaches the target. On an arrow, it is.

-Matt

DukeRustfield wrote:
Fourth, the range of a bow of the WHFB universe would drool at being able to hit anything at 100 yards. It would never remotely happen. Indoor pistol ranges, glocks and all, generally top out at 50 yards and that's a hard shot to make. Just a wiki says their effective range is about that, which means pushing further and they won't even penetrate (though paper targets are pretty wussy). Most rifle ranges are 50-100 to start and if you're shooting more you're doing it at a bench/prone with a scope and with a non-wussy caliber. I can speak from many years experience as a bad rifleman in that regards. So yes, if you are in range of any WHFB ranged weapon, even if you're shooting straight up, the elevation doesn't make much difference.

I don't think you realise how many arrows were loosed in order to score a hit. Yeah, at 100 yards you were stretching your effective range and you won't be inflicting many kills for all the arrows you loosed, but that's how it is. Point being to demoralise the opponent, to disrupt his formation, and to force him in to advancing on your position.

I stopped mentioning hills because i don't want to go over the maps of every battlefield that ever existed. I actually started looked at some and I was like, you know, this isn't that interesting. I'm sure I could come up with a thousand really flat battlefields and you could come up with a thousand or maybe three thousand, I don't know--but it would take us a year or so of research. From my understanding mass, multi-thousand assaults in the pre-pre-modern era were not primarily fought among hills and dales.

Now you're just being lazy. It's inane to just go 'oh this guy disagrees with my claim that battles were always on flat ground, therefore he must be arguing that they were always on hilly ground'.

My point, if you'd care to actually, like, read, is that battles have been fought on all kinds of terrain for all kinds of reasons (the ancient Greeks did fight on ground that was very even, as their culture for war was highly ritualised), and when hills were a feature, they were a critical piece of terrain as they offered significant advantage to all kinds of troops, especially ranged troops.

The hills and mountains being a good place to retreat to when you DIDN'T want to fight. I think it was maybe even you who argued this when I said chariots weren't used too much because terrain was too rough and you said no way, terrain is flat the world over.

Nope, you got that wrong. I never said terrain was rough the world over, I simply pointed out to you that chariots were very common where terrain could be expected to be flat, and that in some other places allowances were made (the Celts having chariots light enough that they could be carried by men over rough terrain).

You unfortunately don't remember any of that because, like here, you've set your mind to avoid learning because that would mean admitting you don't know what you're talking about.

If it makes you feel better, I will say that every battle that was every fought was on nothing but hills.

What would make me feel better would be if you listened and learned something for a change. It obviously pains your ego to have this pointed out, but you really know very little about historic warfare, and that's a problem when you just make stuff up. It means when you come across people who know a little about the subject then it's going to annoy them, especially when you then try to stop them explaining how it actually worked.

Just... please listen. Please learn. Please stop this happening over and over again, like it already has. None of us were born knowing everything we'd like to. We actually acquired knowledge by listening to people who knew more, and asking them questions. You can do this too, and when you do this goddamn arguments will stop happening, and you'll end up smarter.

There is no viable reason to have a guy with a gun or a bow on a hill except to make people run up at him in angry defiance of gravity. It's a pretty big reason, however. And it's covered under charges. That and visibility. But that applies to everyone, melee or not, you want to see where your enemy is and a hill gives you the most movement options, because it's easier for you to run down in any direction than them to run up.

You are simply and utterly wrong. Firing ranged weapons from a high point has a basic and undeniable impact on the effectiveness of the weapon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DukeRustfield wrote:
You can't shoot more precisely. It has no effect whatsoever. The adjustable sights on a rifle (or scope) have settings you can change depending on the range, which accounts for bullet drop; windage, which accounts for wind. There are no calculations for...hillage. Find any site that details that info and post it.

Trying to claim the same effect on arrows fired in volley and super-sonic direct fire rifle rounds is inane.

Seriously, stop this.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DukeRustfield wrote:
Nope. If you are lobbing something, it no longer has kill power. You are merely trying to get distance. A gun trying to get distance has to be fired at the same arc as a bow, that's just physics.

Not when the deacceleration of the projectile varies. Your understanding of physics is woeful, and you should stop using it to second guess millenia of established military theory.

If you are making volley shots down a hill, you can't shoot anything nearby cuz you have to arch it over them. You have a double decline going (triple, if you want to be a douche and count the curvature of the earth but only missiles and layz0rz worry about that stuff). Killing shots are fired straight. You are aiming literally inches at max range over your target. If you have to aim more than that higher, your arrow will not have the power to hurt your target when it arrives. Volley shots are a different animal. But to volley shot to someone on a hill, you'd have to aim at some insane angle like 80 degrees. The hill makes it massively worse because they are too close.

You don't seem to understand that arrows are not at all like bullets. The arrow is bigger and heavier, and as such when fired in volley operate entirely differently. Unlike a bullet, they actually regain significant velocity on their downward trajectory.

I mean,,, for feth's sake, that's why they were used in indirect fire in a way no-one would ever bother to use a firearm.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Reading on bows and ancient bows, most fired at the 150 to 200 feet per second. A very powerful bow firing at 200 feet per seconds is in the air for half a second firing on a target at 100 feet. Plugging in a half second of flight time, you'll find that gravity has pulled my arrow down 48" (4 FEET) is half a second. If I aimed at your heart, I'm striking your shin.
Firing on a target 100 yards away, gravity has a 32 foot pull on the arrow during the 1.5 second flight.

Good point, and one made stronger by considering the arrow deaccelerates massively over the first few yards after release. Travel time therefore isn't half a second but in fact much longer, allowing the shot to alter considerably.

Matt, you're talking visible.

Pistol rounds are subsonic. As are musket rounds. A 38 special, probably the most common gun in the world, shoots 3-4x the speed of a bow. Though the bow has a much greater effective range.

Remember that it is gravity working on the bullet during its flight time that causes it to drop. If you were to shoot straight down, say from a tethered balloon, the bullet would have no curved trajectory, it would travel toward the earth in a straight line, just as if you simply dropped it. Likewise, if you shoot straight up, the bullet travels up in a straight line until its momentum is expended. Again, there is no curved trajectory.

http://www.longrangehunting.com/forums/f17/long-range-incline-declined-angle-shots-66782/

was surprised to hear one of my bowhunting buddies say that you have to aim low if you are shooting uphill. That doesn’t seem right. What is the truth?
Answer:
He was right! Whether you are shooting uphill or downhill you have to aim low. Many newcomers to bowhunting think that you have to aim high when shooting upward. It would seem to make sense intuitively, but actually whenever the force of gravity acts in any plane other than perpendicular to your in-flight shaft, trajectory will be flattened, and you’ll shoot high. For example, with a 30 degree upslope, a 40 yard shot will actually shoot like a 35 yarder. So, even though you know the distance is 40 yards you have to aim as though it were 35. That was a very good question!

http://www.edersbow.com/how-do-you-aim-when-shooting-up-hill/

Just remember that gravity is working on the arrow over the horizontal distance to the target not the actual distance. It would be the base of the triangle not the hypotenuse. You are shooting less distance and need to hold accordingly but you also have to hold lower on the animal to angle the arrow up through the vitals from below and higher to angle down through the vitals from above.

http://sportsmansnews.com/forum/hunting/bow-hunting-shooting-uphill-or-downhill-and/#.UYdVALWG2So

really long one:
http://www.archersadvantage.com/TipSheets/UpDownHill.htm

DukeRustfield wrote:
This is how bows work: a straight line. That's how you shoot. A bow is just a slow gun. Take all the parabola stuff and throw it away because you can't hit anything doing that unless you got 1000 guys raining arrows on 1000 guys.

For much of warfare that's exactly how it worked. I mean, come on man, think a little.

You do not angle fire to hit. That's something that shows up in movies a lot. And it's represented by volley fire. But you don't "aim" at a 45 degree angle to try and hit a soldier, a deer, or a target. You'd have to be godlike to make that happen.

And now you're doing everything you can to think around the issue. No-one is talking about one guy aiming for one guy with an angled shot lik it was a movie. We're talking about mass action against mass targets. You know, formations of archers firing on enemy formations of troops. Why you'd start speculating about any other nonsense is one for the ages.

You're not shooting a bow at someone 100 yards away. The Olympics don't do that. Drag is the enemy, not gravity. You're shooting a solid object through air. That's what stops an arrow.

The Olympics don't do that because they're target firing and scoring individual arrows. Compared to ancient warfare, where they were loosing hundreds or thousands of arrows and expecting only a few effective hits. Once again, you obviously know what volley fire is, so stop making up stupid nonsense to pretend it doesn't exist.

Just fething accept that you used knowledge you do have (firearms) and tried to apply it something you didn't know anything about (the importance of terrain in historial warfare) without considering all the ways in which the two differ (the difference between arrows and bullets, the number of battles in which terrain was a crucial factor).

DukeRustfield wrote:
I'm not sure where you're getting your stats from, but most of them are wrong.

This is how bows work: a straight line. That's how you shoot. A bow is just a slow gun.

I was reading this debate with interest until this point. This is where it became clear that you are either trolling, clutching at straws, or just stubbornly refusing to concede that you are wrong in this argument.

On Topic: I think +1 for under half no modifier for over half would be a positive change, seems weird that these weapons are penalised for being used at the ranges they were designed for.

Just google the word "trajectory".

-Matt

Or read the actual archery sights I linked that detail in excrutiating detail the facts of bow use on hills. I was wrong in that old pythag doesn't matter because the bullet/arrow drop is over the horizontal distance, not the hypotenuse distance. But it holds then that hill shooting is irrelevant other than correcting for visual, because you think it's further than it is, which is why you have to aim low.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Or read the actual archery sights I linked that detail in excrutiating detail the facts of bow use on hills. I was wrong in that old pythag doesn't matter because the bullet/arrow drop is over the horizontal distance, not the hypotenuse distance. But it holds then that hill shooting is irrelevant other than correcting for visual, because you think it's further than it is, which is why you have to aim low.

You aren't aiming low, you just aren't aiming as high as you think you should. That's a result of the curved flight path.
You're also still quoting information with very short ranges. I did glance through your links. They don't represent flight time of ancient projectiles on battle fields.
The shorter the range, and the faster the projectile, the more strait the path becomes. It's why sniper rifles use such high speed rounds. It's more accurate.

You're links are for 30 yard shots from a 150 fps bow, or 200 yard shots on a 1,700 fps bullet.
Going from 30 yards at 150fps to 150 yards at 150 fps generates a very large drop.
You're looking at .6 seconds of flight to 3 seconds of flight.

I'll try and dig up the atlatl publication. I'm pretty sure we had projectile speed and range, and it would be interesting to see. From memory, we were throwing in a 30 degree up arc or so.

-Matt

MarsNZ wrote:
seems weird that these weapons are penalised for being used at the ranges they were designed for.

This is Wisdom, pure and simple.

At first, I thought a point-adjustment was what really needed to happen to most missile troops. But this? This just makes sense . It's much easier to understand, remember, and employ than the current rules. Addition > subtraction, every time.

HawaiiMatt wrote:

You're links are for 30 yard shots from a 150 fps bow, or 200 yard shots on a 1,700 fps bullet.

A medieval longbow was 200fps. That's from the sites I've seen. They said max range was 150-250y. As for 30y, I don't know if you're going to find a lot of data on 200y shots because not a lot of people are doing 200y shots. Certainly not hunting, which is where you're going to encounter up/downhill concerns. Competitive shooters aren't often going to stand on hills (or valleys).

DukeRustfield wrote:

HawaiiMatt wrote:

You're links are for 30 yard shots from a 150 fps bow, or 200 yard shots on a 1,700 fps bullet.

A medieval longbow was 200fps. That's from the sites I've seen. They said max range was 150-250y. As for 30y, I don't know if you're going to find a lot of data on 200y shots because not a lot of people are doing 200y shots. Certainly not hunting, which is where you're going to encounter up/downhill concerns. Competitive shooters aren't often going to stand on hills (or valleys).

Yeah, hard to find, unless you look in say, England.
It is also well known that no practice range was allowed to be less than 220 yds by order of Henry VIII
Oakeshott, R. Ewart (1960). The Archaeology of Weapons. London: Lutterworth Press.

-Matt

MarsNZ wrote:
seems weird that these weapons are penalised for being used at the ranges they were designed for.

This wasn't the range bows were designed for. You didn't hunt a deer by angling your bow at 45 degrees. You'd never hit it unless you had 500 other hunters doing the same. It's an ACCURACY penalty. Which totally makes sense. If you have one archer, gunman, discus thrower, whatever, they are going to be less accurate at long range. I don't know of any projectile on earth where that isn't the case other than like a satellite guided missile. But this is fantasy. Volley fire rules and mass archers weren't accurate. They made up for the innacuracy by throwing a bazillion shafts of wood into the air. Just like early musketeers made up for their innacuracy by having a huge gunline. That stuff didn't change until at least the late 1800s, maybe after.

A bonus at short range still means your worse at long range.
You're just adding a blanket +1 to hit.
Might as well say, take every unit in the game. Add 1 to their ballistic skill.
There, done. Exact same effect.

Anyhow, I've been reading up on velocity and drag, specific to arrows. It's really interesting. Drag isn't constant through the shot, and unlike most modern projectiles war arrows hit harder at the far end of the flight then they do at the apex.
The low trajectory of bullets doesn't allow for much acceleration downward compared to drag.
The higher trajectory of arrows does allow for more acceleration.
You're more likely to survive being shot at 75 yards out standing on top of a 10 story building than you are standing on level ground 150 yards out (if you're hit that is).
Reading reports of the effect of impact of war arrows is a bit scary. Arrow strikes a mounted knight from 180 yards, goes through his leg armor (both sides) through his saddle and kills his horse. Ouch.
If arrow technology was a little better, or if bow training wasn't such an expense, we'd never had seen guns.



-Matt

DukeRustfield. If you want game to be realistic then perhaps we should add +1S for all bows at long range
HawaiiMatt. This sounds interesting. What's the source of the web page assuming you got from web page.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
perhaps we should add +1S for all bows at long range

You know, there's actually some logical appeal here. An arrow fired from a bow is going to hit a lot harder than a guy swinging a mace or sword.
Generalizing all the different types, crossbows and bows have about equal penetrating power. The benefit of the crossbow is that it's much easier to use (and that it's more compact and doesn't require as much physical effort to use). But I guess the only way to represent all that would be to make bows S4 and significantly more expensive. Not worth the effort, but still.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
DukeRustfield. If you want game to be realistic then perhaps we should add +1S for all bows at long range
HawaiiMatt. This sounds interesting. What's the source of the web page assuming you got from web page.

Pulled it out of a university paper when I was looking for the atlatl experiment I was part of.
The paper was measuring drag on an arrow. Because the initial shot compresses the shaft, you get shaft wobble early in flight, which has much higher drag.
Later in flight the shaft wobble has evened out and drag is less.
Since the early part of the flight is up, and the later part down, you end up recovering lost speed. Terminal Speed is higher on the way down due to the reduced drag, and gravity lets you recover some of that speed.
This makes the flight of an arrow a very strange curve.

In all likely hood, it wouldn't make a difference. If you aren't in heavy plate, the arrow at either speed is going to mess you up.
The process of removing the arrow is likely to kill you:
Tie honey and wine soaked cloth to the back of the shaft, and push the shaft through. The honey is reported to act as an antiseptic , as is the wine. In 21 days, the wound will be free of infection, or you'll be are dead.

Some of the reports on pull of the ancient bows is crazy. Most are putting it in the 70-90 point pull. Some bows recovered from an ancient ship wreck put the pull at 160 pounds. Compared to modern bows at ~40-50 pounds, a 160 pound draw seems nuts. Don't know if the research is wrong, or if the life time of training made those guys super human archers.
What does seem to be agreed upon is an archer packed 60 to 72 arrows, and ammo runts would bring them more. Arrows are expensive and limited and it seems like getting your opponent to blow his load too early was a valid tactic. Worst job was to be arrow fodder.

I can't believe anyone is pulling 160. That's probably humanly impossible. Esp for those dinky little humans back then and their malnourished, non-steroided meat. That's a lot of tricep, back, some chest. I did some tricep pulls at the gym Sun and I was using like 70lbs and that's a lot for me. You have to realize that most people at that time couldn't dead-lift that, i.e., stand between the string and bow with the string on their shoulders and lift with their legs. That was probably like the wood petrifying or something.

I wouldn't mind S4 bows. The new HE book has it. And a bunch of other rules. But it's also shorter range. It's just a matter of balance. I'm not sure who all has bows, but some of the units are really cheap. S4 is an ogre punch. Unfortunately, in a D6(10) world, a little boy is S2 and a 10 foot flab monster is S4.

I think if anything the BS penalty is a better fix. If there was no half range long range crap. Then whatever the ranged weapon is would remain unchanged/balanced.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
A bonus at short range still means your worse at long range.
You're just adding a blanket +1 to hit.
Might as well say, take every unit in the game. Add 1 to their ballistic skill.
There, done. Exact same effect.

Sure, same effect, but given the reality of the game re-writing every army book is not practical, while changing the list of mods in the BRB from -1 at long to +1 at short is a practical rule change.

Also, it's simpler mechanic to add than it is to subtract, and therefore +1 at close range works better than -1 at long range (though its a really, really minor benefit in this instance).

If arrow technology was a little better, or if bow training wasn't such an expense, we'd never had seen guns.

Well, we'd still have seen guns. It was cannon that made archers obselete, not guns. And there's no possible improvement to archery that would make it compete with cannons.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Warpsolution wrote:
You know, there's actually some logical appeal here. An arrow fired from a bow is going to hit a lot harder than a guy swinging a mace or sword.

There's also the massive difference in circumstance. Standing a 100 yards or more from the enemy and struck with an arrow, a guy is going to go ground and stay there. Wounded men very rarely keep on marching towards the enemy.

But struck with a similar wound in melee combat, well your opponent is still right in front of you and still trying to smash your face in. Even with a very serious wound you're likely to keep on fighting as best you're able - pure self preservation demands it.


I think +1 to Str within close range would simulate that quite well. My only concern would be game balance - bumping up the Str of all those ranged weapons would increase the armour save modifier, and that'd mean heavy cavalry and the like, which already have a fairly marginal role in the game, would struggle even more.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I can't believe anyone is pulling 160. That's probably humanly impossible. Esp for those dinky little humans back then and their malnourished, non-steroided meat. That's a lot of tricep, back, some chest. I did some tricep pulls at the gym Sun and I was using like 70lbs and that's a lot for me. You have to realize that most people at that time couldn't dead-lift that, i.e., stand between the string and bow with the string on their shoulders and lift with their legs. That was probably like the wood petrifying or something.

I wouldn't mind S4 bows. The new HE book has it. And a bunch of other rules. But it's also shorter range. It's just a matter of balance. I'm not sure who all has bows, but some of the units are really cheap. S4 is an ogre punch. Unfortunately, in a D6(10) world, a little boy is S2 and a 10 foot flab monster is S4.

I think if anything the BS penalty is a better fix. If there was no half range long range crap. Then whatever the ranged weapon is would remain unchanged/balanced.

One of the description of drawing a bow said it wasn't pulling with the arms, but with the body. It gave a description that didn't really detail the process all that well.
What is different than a casual shooter is the daily training for years and years with ever increasing bow strengths.

When I ran in college, I was doing a 4:20 1500m. 4 minutes was being done, and broken by a second or two. It was generally agreed that faster than that was humanly impossible.
3:43 is the current world record.
I have a lot more faith in what 10 years of daily training does than I used to.

-Matt

You can look around and try and find a bow anywhere near 160lbs. I haven't seen anything half that weight. A recurve bow increases weight throughout the pull, a compound bow has that gap where it gets like 20-30% less and you can hold it longer. I've shot some compound bows ages ago and they were probably only 50#. 160lbs is nearly 4 45# plates. Most people can't lift that in any shape other than bench press or squat. A significant portion of that draw is your triceps and back and upper shoulder.

http://www.huntersfriend.com/bow-review-400-fps-bow/400-fps-compound-bow.htm

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100722232851AANmiUG

http://www.keystone-sports.com/sizing_guide.html

http://www.huntersfriend.com/traditional-bows-archery/traditional-bow-selection-guide.htm

http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/showthread.php?t=1681711

DukeRustfield wrote:
You can look around and try and find a bow anywhere near 160lbs. I haven't seen anything half that weight. A recurve bow increases weight throughout the pull, a compound bow has that gap where it gets like 20-30% less and you can hold it longer. I've shot some compound bows ages ago and they were probably only 50#. 160lbs is nearly 4 45# plates. Most people can't lift that in any shape other than bench press or squat. A significant portion of that draw is your triceps and back and upper shoulder.

http://www.huntersfriend.com/bow-review-400-fps-bow/400-fps-compound-bow.htm

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100722232851AANmiUG

http://www.keystone-sports.com/sizing_guide.html

http://www.huntersfriend.com/traditional-bows-archery/traditional-bow-selection-guide.htm

http://www.archerytalk.com/vb/showthread.php?t=1681711

I don't disagree with all that. And yet, they recovered a bow from a sunken ship with an estimated 160 pound pull.
It's so far outside of normal, something is very wrong with our understanding of ancient bows, and how they were used.
Or for some reason, the exact replica they made to scale and components came out stupidly stronger for some unknown reason.

-Matt

Like I said, that might have been the wood ossifying. It could have been a prank. It could have been some siege bow they tied to the deck and pulled back with a winch. It could have been made by the suckiest bow maker in the world.

I was also think-joking about this earlier. You're right in that we are continually stunned by how advanced our modern athletes have become. But it doesn't generally work backwards. Modern athletes have super diets and tech (tracks, shoes, braces) and high altitude training, and...despite them being clear 3 months later, performance enhancing drugs can have very long-term effects.

Bah, left this open. My joke was, maybe all those medieval guys were dying at 35-45 because their muscles were simply ripping their bodies apart. But I'm guessing near-starving, bread-eating peasants weren't cranking out bow shots that could pierce armored cars.

Highest paid sportsman of all time was a Charioteer in Rome, unbelievable performances in races.

Not on topic, but then most of the discussion seems not to be...

I am obviously biased, but I wouldn't like BS shooting to get much stronger, especially since the new HE book cranked up their shooting again.

Shooting is supposed to be about thinning numbers a bit, maybe turning back an opponent if they are faint hearted / you are awesome. It is not supposed to destroy an entire army. Extending the range a bit for elevation would be fine, but they need to keep the - at long range.

All over Europe there are castles & battlefields where the majority of the types of battles modeled in WHFB took place. Hills / Castles on hills / fortifications on mountains played a massive part in these, where the extra shooting range of the bowmen with elevation (and the greatly reduced range of those trying to shoot back) played a massive part.

I would suggest that shooters who are higher than their target get an extra 6" and shooters lower than their target can only shoot in close range.

As for War machines, I would like to see them be slightly less powerful against monsters (because I like monsters...) and quite a bit less powerful against units. I would do this by replacing 10 with 0 on the artillery die and making them max Multiple wounds (D3).

I had to awaken the dad from his promordial retirement and get his take on this. (And that was news on fireworks, which makes sense. When we broke off the sticks they'd go crazy.)

The Dad wrote:I have not launched an arrow lately. But an arrow is a projectile and would be classified according to the means used to stabilize it in flight. Projectiles are stabilized by spin, fin, or drag. A spinning bullet is an example of spin stabilization. A feathered (fletched) arrow is fin stabilized. Rockets as in fireworks are usually drag-stabilized by having a stick attached, the stick being several times the length of the rocket tube. It appears to me that an arrow is stabilized by a combination of fin and drag stabilization.

I would think that the shortest distance covered by the arrow would be when launched straight up. The aerodynamic drag would slow the arrow to zero speed and then it would fall back to earth. If launched straight down into a deep well it would drop until it reached a maximum speed determined by the aerodynamic drag and continue at that speed until the bottom of the well was reached. If shooting up- or down-hill the pull of gravity will be reduced and the arrow will drop less on its way to the target. If the target is on level ground and far away, the archer would aim high above it. In addition, if the target is uphill or downhill, the arrow would fly too high (because of the reduced effect of gravity), perhaps going above the target. So I would guess that the arrow will travel a little farther when launched either up or down hill.

I agree the defender in the castle has the advantage, not only from the protection of the fortress but also from the slight boost in speed imparted by gravity to the arrow. This will result in a flatter trajectory and greater striking energy for the arrow shot downward. But the effect would be small, perhaps unnoticeable.

So if you are shooting an arrow at a deer either uphill or downhill, aim a little lower. But at a range of about 30 to 35 yards, it will not make much difference.

Niteware wrote:
Highest paid sportsman of all time was a Charioteer in Rome, unbelievable performances in races.

Not on topic, but then most of the discussion seems not to be...

I am obviously biased, but I wouldn't like BS shooting to get much stronger, especially since the new HE book cranked up their shooting again.

Shooting is supposed to be about thinning numbers a bit, maybe turning back an opponent if they are faint hearted / you are awesome. It is not supposed to destroy an entire army. Extending the range a bit for elevation would be fine, but they need to keep the - at long range.

I agree that we need to be very careful of making shooting so powerful that people can take whole armies of ranged troops (because gunline is boring to play, and boring to play against), but the problem here is that right now in many armies shooting is too expensive to do even that. There needs to be a balance so that shooting plays an important supporting role (clearing a rank of troops to aid a particularly crucial combat, clearing chaff and targeting specific enemy units vulnerable to shooting) without being so effective that they can wipe whole troop blocks from the board.

The problem is that right now, with the dominance of very large infantry blocks, the first job just doesn't make sense. Instead of knocking a rank off the enemy with missile troops, you're better off leaving the missile troops home and just adding another two or more ranks to your combat troops and claiming the advantage that way. And the second task also doesn't really exist, with the reduced importance of flanking we aren't seeing fast flanking units that once would have been a prime target for missile troops.

As such, I think either making shooting more effective (via making it +1 at short range, or no mod at long range, or both, or having hills give a bonus, or whatever) would drag ranged combat back towards the balanced position it needs to have. But, as you rightly point out, the new High Elf book has given the ranged troops a considerable boost. Just reworking ranged troops to make them better in each army book revision will also do the job, though that method will take a long time (especially for Empire and Daemon players who just got a new book).

Why I like the bonus from hills is that it won't boost a whole army. Some shooting gets a little better, but you can't run a gunline and think you'll have enough hills to get the bonus for everyone.

Likewise, having hills give the bonus means that shooters are more inclined to clump up on them, which isn't really what you want to do with your shooters.

Math/Physicis aside, +1 to hit for being on a hill makes BS shooting better, but doesn't make me think a gunline will dominate.

-Matt

True. I think +1 to Hit on a Hill is a cool idea.
The "problem" that BS5+ troops don't perform any better is non-existent as far as I'm concerned, because that's already the case for BS6+ models vd. BS5. That, and other ranged penalties are so common anyway.
If I've got a block of Sisters of Avelorn on a hill and they have +1 to Hit, I'd consider shooting through my opponent's fodder into the unit they're trying to protect. Even with a -2, they'd still be hitting on 3's.

Just wanted to throw this out there: I've read about tribes in the Amazon (probably) that use huge bows to shoot game out of the canopy. They lie down, hold the bow in the arch of their feet and pull with both hands. I'd imagine their bows are quite a bit bigger than the norm?

Arrows fly in parabolic arches (when not subject to drag, so very slightly off). This means hat the hugher you are, relative to your target, the further you can shoot. The vectoral displacement is even greater, making it harder to hit. Conversely, when shooting up hill, the distance you can sjoot is greatly reduced, although the vectoral displacement is only slightly reduced, meaning that tarhetting is similar to hitting something on a level.

That is why I would go for range increase and reduction for shooting from / at hills. The fact tuat accuracy is harder from a height at long distance leads me ti believe that an additiin to bs is not a good way to model this.

If the "solution" to BS shooting is hills, you are screwed at pre-deployment if you roll no viable terrain for you to use. Or precious little. That's really lame for your army to be either good or not based on terrain.

I think extra range is better. You can get one extra round of shooting which is worth more then +1BS


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DukeRustfield wrote:
If the "solution" to BS shooting is hills, you are screwed at pre-deployment if you roll no viable terrain for you to use. Or precious little. That's really lame for your army to be either good or not based on terrain.

Terrain is just an addition. If you want to rely on it, then there are higher chance you gone get one cliff then chances of lvl 4 wizard geting one particular spell that he want's from his lore. Just 52%. Not 66,6%.

A lvl 4 gets +4 to cast and dispel. Likewise if they miscast and lose a spell level, they have one more to give. They are much better than a <4. And none of this has anything to do with BS shooting and terrain.

DukeRustfield wrote:
If the "solution" to BS shooting is hills, you are screwed at pre-deployment if you roll no viable terrain for you to use. Or precious little. That's really lame for your army to be either good or not based on terrain.

That's exactly the point. We don't want an army of shooters.
-Matt


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Niteware wrote:
Arrows fly in parabolic arches (when not subject to drag, so very slightly off). This means hat the hugher you are, relative to your target, the further you can shoot. The vectoral displacement is even greater, making it harder to hit. Conversely, when shooting up hill, the distance you can sjoot is greatly reduced, although the vectoral displacement is only slightly reduced, meaning that tarhetting is similar to hitting something on a level.

That is why I would go for range increase and reduction for shooting from / at hills. The fact tuat accuracy is harder from a height at long distance leads me ti believe that an additiin to bs is not a good way to model this.

The true flight of an arrow is actually not much of a parabolic curve. Initial drag is huge, and drag drops off during flight. Between this and the significant relative acceleration on the downward path makes the flight an interesting curve.

As for in game effect, +1 to hit some of the time seems like a good idea. +1 to hit all of the time is too good. +6" of range on a bow isn't a big deal, but +6" of range on a chameleon skink is too much of a bonus.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote:
Why I like the bonus from hills is that it won't boost a whole army. Some shooting gets a little better, but you can't run a gunline and think you'll have enough hills to get the bonus for everyone.

That's a really good point - it's a helpful bonus but limited to a single unit (or at most two units across an army). Helps justify including a unit of ranged troops, without risking it being taken army wide.

HawaiiMatt wrote:

That's exactly the point. We don't want an army of shooters.
-Matt

Why? How is that better or worse than an army of melee units? In a perfect game of exact same dice rolls and the same army and same deployment, Army X which used all its points in shooters should have a 50:50 chance against Army Y which put all it's points in melee. Or as close as possible (which isn't very close). They already penalize shooters by making them sucky at CC for cost. If shooting phase simply didn't exist, you would never buy archers, because they are lousy compared to generic swordsmen or whatever. But the question is, is their lousiness compensated for what they do in the shooting phase on average. I don't think some extra hill rules are going to make that true. But it shouldn't be the goal to make all CC or all Shooter or any combination inherently better or worse. Players should be able to field what they choose to field. If you don't like it, don't field it. If you don't like playing against it, that's rough, but there's lots of stuff you might not like fighting.

DukeRustfield wrote:
If the "solution" to BS shooting is hills, you are screwed at pre-deployment if you roll no viable terrain for you to use. Or precious little. That's really lame for your army to be either good or not based on terrain.

It isn't the one and only solution to all issues with ranged troops and terrain. It is a rule that will give a moderate boost to some ranged troops and probably just as importantly bring some meaning back to at least one piece of terrain.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Players should be able to field what they choose to field. If you don't like it, don't field it. If you don't like playing against it, that's rough, but there's lots of stuff you might not like fighting.

There's a difference between facing a list that's going to offer me a tough fight and one that's going to try and prevent me from playing the game.
Example: I took my Skaven to a 1000pt tournament. I had Clanrats, Slaves, Gutter Runners and Rat Ogres. I went up against a Warriors army that had Khornate Warriors, Trolls, and a Chariot. I had ways to counter each part of his list, but not enough to tackle more than one at a time. It was a brutal game where I lost almost everything and took next to nothing. But I got to try. I struggled and plotted and rolled and hoped. And lost. But it was okay.

In a 2000pt tournament, I faced a Dwarf gunline, with an Anvil, tons of Thunderers, Grudge Throwers, Cannons, and a unit of Hammerers. His sole goal throughout the game was to keep me from getting into combat with anything that mattered. Worse, he deliberately played painfully slow. He ran down the clock on Turn 3; so our Victory Points were almost purely from magic and shooting, which he was better at.
I know it's an extreme case, but it doesn't change the fact that an all-shooting army is boring and frustrating to play against.
If I bring a nice, friendly, weird list to the table, and you bring a no-nonsense, go-for-the-throat list and destroy me in four turns, that's (mostly) okay. Just let me play. You can foil me in every combat, counter me at every move. Just let me participate in the game. Otherwise, why am I here?

Shooting should not win the day all on its own. That's just terrible design as far as I'm concerned.

Shooting is "playing the game." So is magic. So is everything else that you see a phase header for in the BRB. Unlike army compositions, you are not limited to 25% shooting or 25% close combat or any such thing. If you rely on nothing but magic you can do that. If you have zero wizards you can say you're being prevented from playing the game cuz the enemy won't stop dropping Final Transmutation on you, but that's your choice when you made your army.

Likewise an all archer army that's hit belly-first with nothing but ogres can say they've been prevented from playing their game.

I mean it's not fair to assume that just cuz I make an army with 90% bloodletters that anything that prevents me from walking up and grinding the enemy to oblivion is somehow not giving me a chance. Sometimes you're going to face armies you can't beat.

Your turn 3 slow player is something you should have brought up with the TO.

Shooting should not win the day all on its own. That's just terrible design as far as I'm concerned.

A model is a model. Just because it is active in one phase does not make it inherently better or worse game design. You could rattling gun and warp lightning cannon and a zillion other things and have melee armies crying into their shields. That's party of what's cool about it.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Shooting is "playing the game." So is magic. So is everything else that you see a phase header for in the BRB.

Basically your argument there boils down to "It is in the game and therefore it's fine". It's basically the non-statement of game design.

Just because it appears you hadn't noticed, but this is the Proposed Rules forum - it's here to talk about ideas that might make the game more fun, and maybe even bring in some more tactical depth.

And that means when something that's no fun and involves no tactical depth behind one player leaving his units standing still and the other player advancing his as fast as he can... is a bad idea.

In case you hadn't noticed, he didn't propose a rule. He said the current game is broken in that it is possible for him to face armies that can beat him.

Basically, I'm arguing that all units should be valid. He's arguing that all units must be equal. That's a very large difference. Because there's nothing in the world stopping you from spending all your points on swarms and losing horribly. Then you can come here and post that swarms need a buff (and maybe they do). Or whatever unit that beat him, cavalry(?) need to be nerfed cuz they are ruining fun.

The whole concept of all comers lists is to deal with everything. Skaven easily have units that could have put the enemy in the exact same situation if he had been lucky enough to bring them.

The only proposed rule I'm hearing isn't regarding BS and warmachines, it's that stuff beats other stuff.

A gunline isn't going to work against everyone. In fact, it will fail horribly vs. a number of lists. But that goes for just about everything that is one-trick.

DukeRustfield wrote:
In case you hadn't noticed, he didn't propose a rule. He said the current game is broken in that it is possible for him to face armies that can beat him.

Basically, I'm arguing that all units should be valid. He's arguing that all units must be equal. That's a very large difference. Because there's nothing in the world stopping you from spending all your points on swarms and losing horribly. Then you can come here and post that swarms need a buff (and maybe they do). Or whatever unit that beat him, cavalry(?) need to be nerfed cuz they are ruining fun.

The whole concept of all comers lists is to deal with everything. Skaven easily have units that could have put the enemy in the exact same situation if he had been lucky enough to bring them.

The only proposed rule I'm hearing isn't regarding BS and warmachines, it's that stuff beats other stuff.

A gunline isn't going to work against everyone. In fact, it will fail horribly vs. a number of lists. But that goes for just about everything that is one-trick.

No, he said some builds are very boring to play against.
We want to make BS shooting a little bit better, but without making a pure gun-line viable as a take all comers list. I'd say that giving high/dark elves a blanket +1 to hit would allow them to make a pure gunline that would do very well against 12 out of 13 armies (with 13th being skaven). I'd call that type of list, "The Hobby Killer".
Lists like that should be in Fantasy... that's what 40K is for.

-Matt

He said some builds are boring FOR HIM to play against. One of which had lots of shooting one of which had...lots of cc. So let's nerf everything that isn't all comers?

It's nice you gave it a name. But when the number of threads crying about steadfast, stars, megaspells exceed the number of threads crying about gunlines, that's when you can worry. None of those things have zomg killed the hobby and his horse.

If movement suddenly becomes more important, and thus fast movers, the game won't break. Nor if cc does. Nor magic. Nor shooting. MC came out of nowhere in 8th and got buffed up to its eyeballs. The hobby didn't die. 40K isn't about phases, it's about a meta and general casualness. They got plenty of power swords and fists and chainsaws and such.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Shooting is "playing the game."

I should clarify: the real problem is that, on its own, missile troops will never win a fight. So some people try to build lists where they re-direct, block, and stall me from coming to grips with their shooting. Which is totally, absolutely, 100% fine, until that's the beginning and end of what your army does, and it stands a decent chance of success.

DukeRustfield wrote:
He said the current game is broken in that it is possible for him to face armies that can beat him.

Either a mistake or an outright lie. Case and point:

Warpsolution wrote:
It was a brutal game where I lost almost everything and took next to nothing...But it was okay.

Obviously I'm okay with losing. If I'm facing off against an army, and despite all of my movement/shooting/magic/close combat shenanigans, I still get crushed in one or more of those phases, that's fine. It's when my opponent's one and only plan is to shut down one or more of my phases entirely. If you bring some anti-magic, or some re-directors, or whatever, that's great. But if you bring enough to take all the wind out of my sails, that's not cool.
A Bloodletter horde is okay. I shoot/magic/stall them for a few turns, we get into combat, they roll dice, I roll dice, and somebody wins. But an army like 7th Edition Wood Elves, that stands a decent chance of dancing around me the whole game, is not okay. Because now, the only dice I'm rolling are for Armour and Panic. I don't get to participate.
Do you see what I mean?
I don't think magic or shooting should be able to kill an army's worth of points before combat happens.
Another one of those 1000pt games was versus some High Elves. Lvl3 wizard, Banner of Sorcerery, Phoenix Guard and Sea Guard. And the whole time, he was dropping comets and chain lightnings and hiding behind a mess of impassible terrain, the two blocks side by side, with one flank against more impassible and the other flank and their rear against the other table edge. In the end, all I could do was charge into his units head on with severely depleted blocks of Clanrats and Slaves. I ended up winning the game, but it didn't feel like I'd won. I felt frustrated.

At the end of a game, I want to be able to shake my opponent's hand, laugh at our misfortunes, and have a good day.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Your turn 3 slow player is something you should have brought up with the TO.

I did. His response was essentially " *shrug* That's what you get for playing Skaven and not having any cavalry". The same response as when I asked if we could tone down the terrain a bit. A baker's dozen pieces of impassible does not a happy horde-army make.

Warpsolution wrote:
despite all of my movement/shooting/magic/close combat shenanigans, I still get crushed in one or more of those phases, that's fine. It's when my opponent's one and only plan is to shut down one or more of my phases entirely. If you bring some anti-magic, or some re-directors, or whatever, that's great. But if you bring enough to take all the wind out of my sails, that's not cool.

Those are mutually-exclusive statements. When is a dwarf anti-magicing you fine and shutting down your magic phase not cool? Should they stop throwing dispel dice at some point to make your game more fun? To me it seems like you're taking issue when someone is either too good at it or concentrating on it too much. A double slann army may not shut down your magic phase, but they will dominate magic to a vast degree. If someone wants to build an entire Ethereal army, and you don't bring any magic, you're going to lose. That is a one plan/trick to shut you down--but you can always counter it. Your issue is you can't counter it using whatever army you feel like bringing. Well, yeah.

Your example of the dwarf could have been countered by some of the best ranged weapons in the game, which Skaven possess. You didn't bring them, which is your choice. If he had faced a nurgle flying doc army or hexwraith army or khalida army, he would have lost. And it wouldn't have been because he was out-maneuvered, it's because he took an army that can't compete with them.

One trick armies are fine. It's only when a one trick becomes all-comers. Gunlines aren't remotely all-comers. They suck. That's why this entire thread was created.

DukeRustfield wrote:

Warpsolution wrote:
despite all of my movement/shooting/magic/close combat shenanigans, I still get crushed in one or more of those phases, that's fine. It's when my opponent's one and only plan is to shut down one or more of my phases entirely. If you bring some anti-magic, or some re-directors, or whatever, that's great. But if you bring enough to take all the wind out of my sails, that's not cool.

Those are mutually-exclusive statements. When is a dwarf anti-magicing you fine and shutting down your magic phase not cool? Should they stop throwing dispel dice at some point to make your game more fun? To me it seems like you're taking issue when someone is either too good at it or concentrating on it too much. A double slann army may not shut down your magic phase, but they will dominate magic to a vast degree. If someone wants to build an entire Ethereal army, and you don't bring any magic, you're going to lose. That is a one plan/trick to shut you down--but you can always counter it. Your issue is you can't counter it using whatever army you feel like bringing. Well, yeah.

Your example of the dwarf could have been countered by some of the best ranged weapons in the game, which Skaven possess. You didn't bring them, which is your choice. If he had faced a nurgle flying doc army or hexwraith army or khalida army, he would have lost. And it wouldn't have been because he was out-maneuvered, it's because he took an army that can't compete with them.

One trick armies are fine. It's only when a one trick becomes all-comers. Gunlines aren't remotely all-comers. They suck. That's why this entire thread was created.

I'm not sold that gunlines suck. Dark elves do a very effective pure gunline. Lizardmen do a brutal skink swarm. Giving either of those armies a blanket bonus is a bad idea.

-Matt

I don't know DE but everyone says their xbows are golden. Either case, they are both 7th armies. You might see a slight skink pt increase.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Basically, I'm arguing that all units should be valid. He's arguing that all units must be equal. That's a very large difference.

I'm not sure that's what he's saying, and if it were it would only make both of you wrong.

Units shouldn’t all be ‘valid’, or ‘equal’ or any other nonsense. They simply have to have scope to play a specific tactical role, and that role to be more or less equal to their points value.

A gunline isn't going to work against everyone. In fact, it will fail horribly vs. a number of lists. But that goes for just about everything that is one-trick.

Right now a gunline barely works against anything, outside of a few gunlines in which the troops are good enough to pull double duty as effective melee troops (Dark Elves, Dwarf Quarrellers). And that's a good thing.

The problem is the other way, we've gone much too far the other way to the point where very few armies take meaningful shooting at all. Sure, you see war machines, but decent sized blocks of missile troops are almost non-existent. When seen it’s typically in minimum size, taken as much for the cheap drop as anything else.


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DukeRustfield wrote:
He said some builds are boring FOR HIM to play against. One of which had lots of shooting one of which had...lots of cc. So let's nerf everything that isn't all comers?

No. Let's design a game in which the underlying ruleset encourages diverse armies by providing a number of unique roles that work best when supporting each other. This will mean tactical considerations will become something along the lines of 'well unit X does this job very well and I'd like to take a second unit and use them both to provide hard flanking charges, but that means dropping unit Y, meaning I'd have no unit capable of holding a powerful enemy unit in place for multiple turns...'

If movement suddenly becomes more important, and thus fast movers, the game won't break. Nor if cc does. Nor magic. Nor shooting. MC came out of nowhere in 8th and got buffed up to its eyeballs. The hobby didn't die.

And now you're setting the standard for rules changes to 'okay if it hurts the game as long as it doesn't kill it completely', which is a stupidly low standard. And, given your constant complaints in other threads about how changing the level 6 spells will cripple the rock/paper/scissors match up and let deathstars dominate the game... something of a ridiculous double standard.

DukeRustfield wrote:
I don't know DE but everyone says their xbows are golden. Either case, they are both 7th armies. You might see a slight skink pt increase.

It's 24" S3 armor piercing with multiple shot 2 and BS4; for 10 points a guy (move and fire).
So basically, for every 5 points, you get a S3 AP shot.
Pair that with a lore of metal wizard lord, who gets an item that makes a bonus power die at all (kills a 6 point model to do so), and gets a bonus spell that makes D3+1 power dice (5+ to cast), and you've got the anti-heavy armor that the shooting lacks.
Then you get the skirmishing BS5 scouts with repeater crossbows for 16 points.
Anyhow, the list shoots the snot out of most things, and have very offensively strong magic. Also gets flying core that doesn't panic anything for the best blockers in the game.

-Matt

Seb, I don't know if you go off meds at some point during the week or not, but if you ever wonder why I stop responding it's because you stop making sense and start attacking random things and go on long rants about how the entire game should be remade from the ground up. You seem to just come up now and then and seem incredibly angry that you still like this game and are on a gaming forum. Just put me on ignore, I'm going to put you on ignore. And it's kinda sad, cuz out of all these useless posts and silliness, I've never ignored anyone. But I just don't think you're trying.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Seb, I don't know if you go off meds at some point during the week or not, but if you ever wonder why I stop responding it's because you stop making sense and start attacking random things and go on long rants about how the entire game should be remade from the ground up.

You don't even read what I type, do you?

I've never said the game needed to be rebuilt from the game up, I quite like the game as it is now and that's because at its core the game has very solid fundamentals. I have explained to you, many times, that changes need to keep in mind those basic fundamentals, and not to screw them up in some failed attempt to fix a minor part of the game. So, for instance, a desire to improve ranged troops would need to keep in mind that ranged troops work as a supporting element, and if they were made so powerful that army could dominate purely with ranged troops you'd see a lot of really boring games.

Somehow you read that as me saying the game needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. I don't know how to help you with that. Maybe just read the actual words that are typed out, maybe? Whatever. Probably best for you to ignore me, and then we can ignore these stupid games of 'DukeRustfield makes an outrageous claim and then I spend a week in a teeth pulling exercise trying to get him to stop playing stupid rhetorical games and accept he said something that wrong'.

 sebster wrote:
Probably best for you to ignore me, and then we can ignore these stupid games of 'DukeRustfield makes an outrageous claim and then I spend a week in a teeth pulling exercise trying to get him to stop playing stupid rhetorical games and accept he said something that wrong'.

I give everyone permission to call me stubborn. Often I am and pointed it out to me will make me take another look at my logic.
Anyhow, on the shooting, I kind of think that you need a working knowledge of strong shooting armies (empire, dark elves, now high elves) to discuss shooting rule changes.
A blanket +1 to hit would make the empire long rifle army pretty stupid.

-Matt

DukeRustfield wrote:
Those are mutually-exclusive statements. When is a dwarf anti-magicing you fine and shutting down your magic phase not cool? Should they stop throwing dispel dice at some point to make your game more fun? To me it seems like you're taking issue when someone is either too good at it or concentrating on it too much.

Okay, I see why you might get that idea. I'll try explaining: an army with a super-mega-ultra-strong magic defense is a poorer choice in game design than an army with good magic defense and offense. Because if all you're doing is preventing me from casting spells, you're making the game have less stuff in it.
If you take away some of my spells and then try to get some of yours through my magic defense, that's better. Because now we've got more stuff going on, and even more interaction between us.

The more I think about it, the more I like that; a decent way to start measuring a game's quality is the number of actions and counter-actions the players take. Game A, where Player 1 takes an action, Player 2 counters, then takes action, then Player 1 counters, is a better game where one player is taking all the actions and the other player is just countering them.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Your issue is you can't counter it using whatever army you feel like bringing. Well, yeah.

My issue is that some lists have the purpose to deny me a chance to counter. Let me attack, and then be thwarted by your defense. Let me prepare my shield wall, and have it smashed aside. Just let me try. A list that revolves around doing everything but this (the Double Slann Skink Cloud comes to mind) isn't fun to play against. Even if I win. It's just frustrating.

DukeRustfield wrote:
Your example of the dwarf could have been countered by some of the best ranged weapons in the game, which Skaven possess. You didn't bring them, which is your choice.

I brought two Cannons, two Weapon Teams, and a team of 5-7 Gutter Runners. And I took the Storm Banner. He cannoned my cannons, Anvil'd my Teams, and the terrain and his deployment made my Gutter Runners obsolete.

DukeRustfield wrote:
If he had faced a nurgle flying doc army or hexwraith army or khalida army, he would have lost. And it wouldn't have been because he was out-maneuvered, it's because he took an army that can't compete with them.

Oh, overall he got stomped. Let me emphasize once more that I couldn't possibly care less about winning or losing. But the fact that his list was designed to do its thing and keep me from doing mine, and that he abused the crap out of the tournament's rules? That is the stuff I care about. His list was a detriment to the game. Everyone said so, even the people who stomped him flat.

DukeRustfield wrote:
One trick armies are fine. It's only when a one trick becomes all-comers. Gunlines aren't remotely all-comers. They suck. That's why this entire thread was created.

Agreed; they are generally pretty terrible. But I don't think it should be a viable tactic. It's not dynamic. It doesn't offer a whole host of tactical options. It doesn't lead to crazy-awesome stories later on.

DukeRustfield wrote:
He said some builds are boring FOR HIM to play against. One of which had lots of shooting one of which had...lots of cc. So let's nerf everything that isn't all comers?

Okay, here you're just absolutely dead wrong.
I mentioned the first army (the Warriors with the trolls and the chariot), because I knew I was beat before we finished deploying, and the whole game was one big downhill slide towards total annihilation. And that it was okay.
I got to roll my dice, he got to roll his. He had more of them, and need much lower numbers than I did, but I still got to try. I got to use my magic, and my shooting, and my re-directors, and my combat units. None of that changed the fact that I didn't stand a chance, but I got to play the game.
I had more fun getting crushed by that list than I had beating the High Elf Avoidance/Comet list.

@devastator7777777: adding 6" to a unit's range is going to be problematic. Add 6" to a longbow, that's okay. Add 6" to throwing axes or blowguns, that's not okay. +1 To Hit Benefits everyone to the same degree, except those rare units with BS5 or more, of which there are...what, 3?
And even those would still hit on a 2+ at long range, or in a Stand and Shoot, or shooting into some light cover, etc. There's plenty of ways to take advantage of it.
But those units aren't the ones that really need the boost, anyway.

HawaiiMatt wrote:
I give everyone permission to call me stubborn. Often I am and pointed it out to me will make me take another look at my logic.

I can't recall ever getting that impression from you. We've disagreed some times, and while I don't recall ever changing your mind, I never felt you were sticking to your guns just because.

Anyhow, on the shooting, I kind of think that you need a working knowledge of strong shooting armies (empire, dark elves, now high elves) to discuss shooting rule changes.
A blanket +1 to hit would make the empire long rifle army pretty stupid.

The long rifle army still wouldn't be that impressive, as you'd still be paying 9 points per handgunner, and then another 20 points per unit for the champion and long rifle. The unit that would become frightenly good would be the helblaster. In fact, that one change is such a big deal that it's making me reconsider moving the range penalties.

Especially with High Elves becoming a much stronger shooting army just through army book changes. Maybe the best option is just army book by army book reforms.

Well, army book reforms and a rule for +1 for shooting from a hill. I really do like that rule, it's minor, but it might mean more armies including just one unit of shooters.

Why not extend the range of each unit on a elevated position by 1/3 or 1/6? Every range is divisible by 3 and most are by 6. If the range is 9 or something not divisible by 6 then you can have 1,5 inch of extra range.


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A part from 9 inches, I think there is no weapon with range not divisible by 6.

Because 1/3=33%, which can be huge. Wood Elves with 32" bows, and--more importantly--16" short range?
But it can also be nothing. Longbeard Rangers go from 6" to 8". Woo-freakin'-hoo.

But more over, it's just more math and more complication. Give 'em a +1 to Hit. It's good. It's simple. I state once again: who is this ability not helping? Waywatchers, Sisters, and Shades. That's all I know of. And that's assuming their not shooting at long range, or moving, or into cover, or through an active Stormbanner.

Instead of listing an alternate way to extend units' range, tell me why you think it's necessary, given the evidence above.

I think 50% is as much fractioning as should be done. Though I guess they have 25% core. And there's nothing stopping them from having odd number ranges or ones not cleanly divisible.