RELEASED! Yari & Teppo (the Pike & Shot Japanese mod)

[rbodleyscott]

Thanks for the suggestion. My ranged units, rifle and bows are light units and I think they're alright that way.
I will make my spearmen medium infantry to test out and maybe lower the armor value.

In FOGR they are Medium Foot, it seems to get the right effect.

Ashigaru MF Spearmen Average/Raw, Armoured/Unarmoured

Foot Samurai MF Spearmen, Superior, Heavily Armoured/Armoured

Obviously you don't have to follow this, but it might give you some idea of what Nik (and I) thought.

[jomni]

Thanks for the suggestion. My ranged units, rifle and bows are light units and I think they're alright that way.

I will make my spearmen medium infantry to test out and maybe lower the armor value. My order of battle will be based on GMT Games Samurai so they aren't too diverse (no heavy foot with pure sword units, no missile cavalry). But there is a lot of quality levels in between. The foot troops ended up as superior because they are superior in the OOB reference above. Some commanders have lesser quality infantry.

GMT's Quality rating ranges from 3 to 8 and I had to assign Quality and Elan based on the distribution of units in the OOB (bell-curve). So there infantry that will end up as superior. 5 and 6 are the most common counters so I put them as regular.

Here's my conversion. See if it needs tweaking.
GMT Own P&S Elan Elan
Quality Description Experience Foot Horse
3 Raw 100 50 100
4 Trained 150 50 100
5 Regular 150 100 150
6 Regular 150 100 150
7 Veteran 200 150 200
8 Elite 200 300 300


Another interesting notion is that in GMT Samurai, the horse units are not pure horse. They actually have spear foot troops accompanying them. I don't want to replicate this one.

In another note, maybe a mixed sword and spear unit will also work (60% spear, 40% sword) since it is generic. This may lessen the "spear wall effect" when cavalry charges head on.

As for mixed spear and arquebus, I though of it too but there aren't much riflemen to spread among the spear units in most battles based on the OOB source indicated above.

[jomni]

I now changed the infantry to "medium foot" and 60% spear 40% sword. Changed the cavalry to "Horse". But still no way can the cavalry effectively attack an infantry unit of the same quality head on. But that makes sense actually. Total melee value of the most elite cavalry do not exceed the best infantry. It must still do flank attacks.

I also tweaked Experience and Elan. I figured that too wide a gap between the levels will make it more of a rock-paper-scissors puzzle with more predicable results. Have to balance them to be distinct yet not be too predictable.

I still don't know how to do the purchase point system properly. Now cavalry is more expensive than the best foot but it seems that the foot have more combat power so the AI seems to prefer buying them than cavalry because of the cost-benefit ratio. But I don't want the armies to have too many cavalry because that is not the historical composition.

[rbodleyscott]

Now cavalry is more expensive than the best foot but it seems that the foot have more combat power so the AI seems to prefer buying them than cavalry because of the cost-benefit ratio.

The AI makes no judgement based on cost benefit when selecting forces. The forces are selected randomly (weighted in proportion to the number of units available in the list).

Note that the Army List is based on 2000 points. Smaller and larger forces have their minima and maxima adjusted accordingly.

[TheGrayMouser]

I now changed the infantry to "medium foot" and 60% spear 40% sword. Changed the cavalry to "Horse". But still no way can the cavalry effectively attack an infantry unit of the same quality head on. But that makes sense actually. Total melee value of the most elite cavalry do not exceed the best infantry. It must still do flank attacks.

I also tweaked Experience and Elan. I figured that too wide a gap between the levels will make it more of a rock-paper-scissors puzzle with more predicable results. Have to balance them to be distinct yet not be too predictable.

I still don't know how to do the purchase point system properly. Now cavalry is more expensive than the best foot but it seems that the foot have more combat power so the AI seems to prefer buying them than cavalry because of the cost-benefit ratio. But I don't want the armies to have too many cavalry because that is not the historical composition.

Hello, cavalry class and horse class , in the context of light lances makes no difference. Cavalry is(was) a distinct class simply to allow them to be able to evade. Currently they cannot although the code is there(in the assault.bsf) Of course the code as written doesnt allow cavalry armed with any type of lance to evade anyways although if you wanted em to you could just uncomment out those lines of code.

I too have issues with the cost of units. I believe the guides reverse engineering got it close but its not quite in line ( I think the quality modifiers are off but not sure)

Anyways here is my, hopefully constructive critism. IMHO it might be easier in the long run to go with the "standard" absolute values of troop quality. Ie Superior 200 average 100 etc Same with armour 0, 33 66 100. Then you can create armies basically matching closely to a battle you have planned. See how things play out. Then if needed you can do some fine tuning and beef up some units to being "slightly better than average" or "slight less than elite" for examples. I think if you start with too much granular in mind, it will be that much harder to see where imbalance issue originate from.

BTY if you really want Japanese cavalry to perform better than they do vs spear troops, you could code then as impact pistol (impact pistol gets a 100 POA vs spears, while lances do NOT) the effect would be vs medium spears 100 POA advantage, whereas lancers would be even. Of course for form you wouldn't want the game to display impact pistol, no doudt there are text files that have ids strings so the name of the weapon displays as you want. If in you mod all cavalry is armed the same or with no impact weapon, it wont make any real difference to use the impact pistol capability.

Of course you could go nutty and start modding the combat.bsf and completely alter the poas!

[archita]

For works there is an interesting page that gives suggestions

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=277195

[jomni]

It confirms what GMT Samurai has implemented. Cavalry troops are not pure horse. For every horse, there at least two 2 spear foot soldiers.

My idea... I can reclassify the cavalry as medium foot armed with spear 100% and probably sword 50-100%. They have more AP than pure foot. Idea is to have a fast moving heavy hitting (foot) unit. But unit graphics is still horse. That way they can do frontal assault against normal foot units.

We represented the horse like that in the FOGAM tabletop rules for the pre-1500 period. We represented them as MF, Bow 50%, Heavy Weapon 100% (Naginata). One mounted and two foot figures on each base.

What are the advantages of light lances vs spear?

None except -1 on cohesion test for enemy losing impact against lance.

Can they be given to infantry?

Up to you. I can't guarantee they would work as intended as we never envisaged them being used that way.

[jomni]

You answered my post by editing it.

[rbodleyscott]

You answered my post by editing it.

Arrgh. Sorry.

[TheGrayMouser]

For works there is an interesting page that gives suggestions

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=277195

Wow, very interesting. I must say , I know little about warfare in this period and at ist glance it would seem tactics were very complicated, and ritualistic, however the use muskets then reverses that feel since these were deadly practical weapons! Cavalry fighting in mixed units that directly support, with the mounted men dismounting with horseholders to help them flee reminds me of tribal war between chariot forces in Britain and even celtic Europe.

[jomni]

Advice needed.
Since it looks like the Ashigaru troops will be mixed spear and sword based on the OOB shown in the link above, shall I use a Late Tercio 3d unit? Or keep using the halberdiers. I think the Japanese deploy into thin lines. The halberdiers are just too blocky. Or maybe use the pure swordsmen 3d models? An interesting note, by 1600 during the Battle of Sekigahara, GMT Samurai considers all the ashigaru to have embedded teppou units (mixed pike and shot).

I don't do 3d modeling. May pick it up in the future but it's not my priority at the moment.

[archita]

an ashigaru look can be like image block of models here :

http://crazydwarf.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-311.html

[jomni]

Ok. Those figures look nice by the way.

[jomni]

Takeda Shingen's army fully painted. Red troops are elite. Shingen's bodyguards have the square flags (uma-jirushi).

[archita]

I noticed that there are 2 versions of Takeda Sahimono: black mon red background and black mon and white background, sametime I noticed that there is gold mon with red background too, however I suggest to put one very high and long nobori for unit but its a little not important detail good job

teppo units were separate units or in mod teppo are part of ashigaru units?

[jomni]

Thanks but I can't really make different dimensions at the moment since I use the standard 3d models. So I can only do two types, square and half square (making the other half transparent). They are not stiff banners, and are still flags.

Here is Uesugi Kenshin's army. Take note of the "Bi" character for the hatamoto (horse unit in the rear).

[archita]

great work

I hope that developers of P&S can support this mod and, why not, hire you like official owner of official module on japanese warfare

[Micha63]

Hello,
great Project, but the landscape does not really look like Japan.Is there anything planned ?

[jomni]

Well if someone can make 3d models of huts and temples. Otherwise I will do it later when I learn how to do these objects.

[Micha63]

Thanks for info. But thats the problem for modding here i see. 3d is a complete different Thing than 2 d.