fu12
Legionary
posted 05 April 2008 06:21 EDT (US)
Does anyone know how to modify the ballistic accuracy of ballistae and other siege engines for Rome? I've looked through the posted tutorials and none of them cover how to make siege engines a little less whiffy. I've looked through the files a little and I think I've found maybe how to modify the boulders, but im a bit lost for the bolts of death.
fu12
Legionary
posted 05 April 2008 20:56
EDT (US)
2 / 10
well, fiddling with the number values in the descr_projectiles file seems to work to some extent. I've managed to get the boulders to stop being a 20% hit to being around an 80% hit. Same with the ballistae i think. I'm trying to see if i can modify the firing rate a little. Make a machine gun ballistae for kicks. As far as i can tell, firing rate is linked to when a projectile actually hits the ground plus the delay attribute in the unit stat. Adjusting projectile velocity does help to a point, after which it gets ridiculous to hit anything because the projectiles are going too fast to do any good (and faster projectiles seem to be less effective in making things stay dead)
ezekiel2517
Legionary
posted 20 April 2008 15:49
EDT (US)
4 / 10
can you explain exactly how to make the onagers be more accurate? =D
fu12
Legionary
posted 22 April 2008 18:33
EDT (US)
7 / 10
My bad, its the descr_projectiles_new file. Anyway, to make the boulders more (or less) accurate, all you have to do is to decrease the value of the "accuracy_vs_units" parameter (say...from 0.1 to 0.01; 0.01 looks like it gives around a 80% accuracy against non-moving targets) under the boulder or big_boulder section. As far as I can tell, adjusting this parameter doesnt actually "increase" accuracy so much as it shrinks down a "target area", because the shots still scatter, just not as ridiculously as they did before. Same goes for the "accuracy_vs_buildings" parameter. Apparently you can't insert the accuracy parameter into the ballistae (repeating, scorpion, or regular) projectile or else it crashes the game (I got it to work once in BI, but i don't remember how).
You can also modify a bunch of other things in the file, like projectile speed. Higher is better to a point. Around 200, it gets hard to hit things with the ballistae because it can no longer arc shots properly and at 400 it becomes stupid fast, but is only useful on a flat battle area. I haven't adjusted the arrow parameters yet, so I dont know how it'll affect archers.
SwampRat
M2TW Ladder Leader
posted 25 April 2008 08:46
EDT (US)
10 / 10
Ahh, the last comment was a shame, I'd seen the start of the thread a while ago and hope that it had workd - I had an image of a rapid fire mortar in MTW to get a fairly nasty rain (preferably firing all of its ammo before the first shot lands, which wouldnt be possible if the delay for one shot is from when the previous shot lands).
Good luck with making the ballista work