Didorder - 3 set types or a matter of degree?

[SnuggleBunnies]

As stated in subject line. Best illustrated by an example: would a unit of medium foot musketeers be any less disordered in a forest than a unit of pike and shot? Both are listed as moderately disordered, but you would think the latter unit would suffer more. Is there no difference, or is it slight enough that both statistics fall under the blanket of "moderate"?

[TheGrayMouser]

Hard to say for sure but If you look in the Combat.bsf file, there is alot on disorder.

From What I can gleam:

terrain type 3 ( which would be "difficult" and includes woods) would cause internal game calculation of 200 disorder for heavies etc, for medium foot its 100 and for mixed 134 (as the notes state in general, mixed is 1/3 heavy and 2/3 medium)
the next level is 2 , rough, would cause no disorder to medium and 34 disorder to mixed (and 200 to fully armored gendarmes) etc etc

The notes also state that the code could be tweeked if desired to allow the amount of disorder for mixed to be directly proportional to the % heavy/medium troops instead of the assumed 1/3 heavy 2/3 medium.

So yeah, it seems a mixed unit is slightly more disordered than a medium in woods. How those above internal #'s are actually applied to the combat degradation of a unit, I'm not sure....

[SnuggleBunnies]

Did some testing in game, here are the results.

Any mixed foot do indeed have the same level of disorder. So, a unit of Late Pike and Shot with 20% pikemen in a 500 man unit suffer from the same disorder in a forest as a 2000 man Tercio unit which includes 1000 pikemen.
On the other hand, medium foot, while labeled as "moderately disordered" in game just like mixed units, do suffer a lesser penalty. So all mixed units suffer a -30% malus in woods, as opposed to -22% for medium foot.

I don't know if any more patches are intended for P and S, but I for one would love if the different % of heavy foot in a unit effected it's disorder %. The change would be relatively minor in unit performance, but we wargamers like trying to take advantage of all the little statistical differences we can. The list of units that would be (slightly) altered to better reflect their makeup is quite large. Off the top of my head:

All tercio units, early and late
Early P & S
All P & S units that are 50/50
All late P & S
Royalist "mostly shot" and "mostly pike"
Bow and bill
Elizabethan foot
Select Levy

I assume light spear units would not be effected because they are classed as medium foot themselves. An alternative to such a change, I suppose, would be to at least have keil type units be more disordered than regular mixed foot units. But the easiest change to implement, that would not have a drastic effect on balance would simply be to enable the % system.

Thanks for making a great game. After playing for years, I'm still finding out intricacies of its systems.

[rbodleyscott]

Yes, that would be easy enough to implement.

[SnuggleBunnies]

I assume it could also be implemented in SotS, but I can't actually think of any units that would be changed; the Chinese mixed foot use light spear, and I think the heavy weapon component of the Korean mixed foot is medium foot, too.

[jomni]

Yes they're all 100% med foot (if not warriors) in the other game. Even the mixed weapons units. No heavy pike component.

[rbodleyscott]

Yes they're all 100% med foot (if not warriors) in the other game. Even the mixed weapons units. No heavy pike component.

There are Determined Foot hatamoto.

[SnuggleBunnies]

Not everybody in mp notices that they are determined foot, so luring them onto rough ground then slaughtering them is quite satisfying.

[jomni]

Ah yes forgot about that.