Shooting ranges

[whitehorses]

Cool - can some Artillery still fire over friendly troops, or do they have to be on a hill to do so now?

They have to be on a hill.

We are trying to avoid representing Roman carro-ballistae as some sort of super-weapon.

Can XBows/Longbows shoot at long range over friends if on a hill?

Is Heavy Artillery still affected by weather?
I never could understand why in DBM, why a Stone thrower or a Bombard would be affected by wind, being both v. heavy to move & difficult to be affected by wind, strong or otherwise.
Rain made more sense since it would affect gunpowder or pulleys/strings


Cheers,
Jer

[shall]

rbodleyscott wrote:
whitehorses wrote:

Cool - can some Artillery still fire over friendly troops, or do they have to be on a hill to do so now?

They have to be on a hill.

We are trying to avoid representing Roman carro-ballistae as some sort of super-weapon.

an XBows/Longbows shoot at long range over friends if on a hill?

Is Heavy Artillery still affected by weather?
I never could understand why in DBM, why a Stone thrower or a Bombard would be affected by wind, being both v. heavy to move & difficult to be affected by wind, strong or otherwise.
Rain made more sense since it would affect gunpowder or pulleys/strings

You can shoot over if from a hill and there is sufficient distance between the targets and friends. Not easy to achieve but it can be done.

Weather is left for the campaign supplement .... we are "fair weather golfers" for now.

Si

[tadamson]

Can horse archers shoot overhead ?
As per Arrian for the Romans, and Xixia heavy cavalry against the Liao etc....

Tom..

[shall]

A Battle Group is a lot of troops so the normal 2 deep shooting of such a formation represents overead firing and circular firing in action anyway.

They can shoot over another BG only if uphill and suitably placed - it would be pretty difficult.

Si

[tadamson]

So how deep is an element?

In the Roman example the horse archers are firing at the Alans over seven ranks of infantry. The Xixia heavy cavalry were firing over massed infantry who were probably in five ranks. Both examples are cavalry firing at cavalry if it makes a difference.

Tom..

[rbodleyscott]

So how deep is an element?

In the Roman example the horse archers are firing at the Alans over seven ranks of infantry. The Xixia heavy cavalry were firing over massed infantry who were probably in five ranks. Both examples are cavalry firing at cavalry if it makes a difference.

Hello Tom,

Welcome to the board.

We currently have no plans to allow cavalry to shoot over foot. If I recall previous discussions of Arrian correctly, the horse archers shooting overhead would only have been about 1 rank deep anyway, so likely to have had a fairly minor effect hard to represent under the rules. We do allow Roman foot battle groups to include 3rd rank LF bowmen to represent Arrian's array. These have a fairly minor effect under the rules, and only in the impact phase when the foot are charged by mounted troops. They do not have any distant shooting capability.

As a general policy we are designing the rules around typical historical cases rather than complicating the rules to represent everything that occurs in single battle accounts, however reputable. They may represent atypical cases, and in our view giving them too much weight risks over-representing the effect of such tactics and unbalancing the rule representation of more typical cases.

It also risks complicating the rules beyond the level of complexity we are aiming for. Maintaining a certain level of simplicity does require some ruthlessness in excluding special cases and fine detail! We are trying to avoid the truism that wargames rules start simple and become more complicated as development progresses. So far we feel we have been very successful in avoiding this trap, and in fact the rules have got gradually simpler.

I am not familiar with the Liao account - can you quote it in more detail?

Richard

[tadamson]

ok Richard,

1048 One of the Liao campaigns against Xixia (Hsia). The Xixia forces line the banks of the Yellow River, infantry to the front, cavalry behind firing overhead [these are Reg Kn9f) in the DBM list]. The Liao main body commence an amphibious assault, left flank cavalry sail up a small tributary, land behind the Xixia forces [from specialised cavary transports] and roll up the Xixia ater a hard battle.

Liaoshi chap 20 and appendix IV.

nb This isn't the only amphibious assault in the wars of the Liao.

[arctic]

Handgunners and javelins have an effective range of 2 MU, horse archers have an effective range of 4 MU but no long range as do slingers.

Long range (foot bows, longbows, foot crossbows) reduces shooting dice by a third. For heavy artillery it reduces dice to half.

What is the rational behind the lack of a long range for the horsebows?