Arquebus is being calculated wrong

Ever wondered why Arquebus won’t effectively hit moving targets like ballistics do?
Simply because Arquebus considers the projectile speed as if they were arrows, but for some weird reason it’s slower, so when they were about to hit, the enemy is already ahead.
Not to mention about Cannon Galleons and Bombard Cannons, they hit about 0.0001% more than without Arquebus.

So in order for Arquebus to be a “ballistics for gunpowder” they need to either change the math, or increase projectile speed to match arrows (for Hand Cannoneers/Organ Guns) and much faster cannon balls (+0.2 means nothing) for Bombard Cannons, Bombard Towers and Cannon Galleons.

And yes this is a bug, because it’s doing something wrong it’s not supposed to.

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Please provide proofs of the “bug”, otherwise it might be considered just as a vague commentary. (Also, if you’re reporting a bug, use the format that’s already established to do that).

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If want you said is correct, then Portuguese would be so much better!

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This is true. Here is a video detailing the problem.
This is a scenario with player 2 as Post-Imperial portuguese.
Look how the Hand Cannoneer managed to score some hits (they have low accuracy afaik). But the Bombard Cannons and Cannon Galleons only managed to score hits when the unit turned around on their patrol routine (so the damage was only because the unit returned to the point where the shot landed).


Then I tested with player 2 as magyars. The hand cannoners never managed to score a hit.
So yes, the portuguese really need to have their cannons fixed somehow.

This is the post edited for a correct bug report:

:arrow_forward: GAME INFORMATION

  • Build: 39284
  • Platform: Steam
  • Operating System: Windows 10
  • Gamertag: Hectornauta

:arrow_forward: ISSUE

Portuguese Arquebus tech does not provide the advertised effect (gunpowder units hit moving targets Ballistic for Gunpowder units) to Cannon Galleons and Bombard Cannons (I’ll include Bombard Towers as well). The “bullets” travel too slow to effectively hit a moving target The portuguese unit does not correctly predict where the moving enemy unit will be (if they are fast like cavalry, monks are affected because splash damage) and the shot of the cannon always miss (the “bullet” hits “behind” the target).

:arrow_forward: REPRODUCTION STEPS

  1. Start a match with one player as portuguese and research Arquebus
  2. Create/Build Bombard Cannons, Cannon Galleons and Bombard Towers
  3. Make an enemy unit move inside the unit/building range and make it move perpendicular to the portuguese unit
  4. Look how they don’t hit the moving target.

:arrow_forward: GAME FILES

  • There is no need to game files on this case

:arrow_forward: IMAGE & ATTACHMENTS

The units only managed to hit do damage when the enemy unit turned around on their patrol edges

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I can’t believe some people haven’t yet discovered that both “ballistics” and “Arquebus” technology do not ensure 100% accuracy of fire, in any unit. This is what Arquebus tech says: Arquebus (gunpowder units more accurate) and this is what Ballistics tech says: Archers, Town Centers, Castles, Galleys, Unique Naval Units, and Mounted Archers fire more accurately at moving targets.

Also, there’s something called “micro” (Micromanagement in gaming is the handling of detailed gameplay elements by the player. In PvP, it’s the detailed management of units in combat aims to maximize damage given to enemy units and minimize damage to the player’s units).

As an example, watch this video: https://youtu.be/H_OsEguc3OY?t=68

There is no need to explain what micro management is. And you misunderstood the problem. Everybody knows that with micro you could make archers with ballistics and thumb ring miss.
The problem here lies in that Arquebus doesn’t make the cannon unit shoot “where the unit will be” accurately if the enemy unit is cuman cavalry, for example.
You could test by yourself, with ballistics archers fire “where will be” a cavalry unit that is moving (with more or less accuracy as intended without thumb ring). But with arquebus, cannons and the like will shoot “where the unit will be” and will manage to score a shot correctly on units like infantry, monks or siege (because of splash damage). But this will not work for cavalry. The cannon will not “predict” correctly where the cavalry unit will be and will shoot a little behind.
Maybe the problem is that “Arquebus <> Ballistics for gunpowder units” but more like “ballistics, but a little less powerful”. Which is different for what the tech displays:
image

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Arquebus was deemed too OP when it had the full projectile speed effect on bombard towers and bombard cannons, so they did have to nerf it a bit. (back in 2017)

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As in pre 2017 it used to give the projectiles a speed boost?

You don’t need to give the projectiles a speed boost if you just do an accurate projectile calculation though right?

If you know how fast a unit is moving, the direction it’s moving and how fast your projectile is, you figure out where the paths cross and aim there? If the unit changes or reverses direction after the projectile is shot it’ll dodge the shot if it’s slow enough (that’s whats happening with bombard towers right? nothing to do with arquebus)

It looks like in the video that it’s either miscalculating the speed of the unit (cavalry say) or it’s misusing the speed of the projectile in the calculation of the projectile. It seems like something is wrong either way.

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I think we are messing two things here, ballistics and thumb ring. Ballistics makes you able to predict moving targets so you can hit them (but doesnt increasy unit accuracy as thumb ring does), so you can still miss moving targets even with ballistics, for example arbalest without thumb ring has 90% accuracy, will miss 10% of the time.

With no ballistics an archer or a hand cannoneer will have 0% (*) accuracy at moving target (*funny fact, a lucky missing shot can actually still hit the target if the unit does not have 100% accuracy)

Accuracy:
Hand Cannoneer 65%
Organ Gun accuracy 50%
Bombard Cannon 92%
Cannon Galleon 50%

Sources:
Thumb Ring and Ballistics in AoE2 video by SOTL
Portuguese Overview AoE2 video by SOTL
Age of Empires Series Wiki

EDIT: just to be clear, ballistics doesnt affect hand cannoneers!

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That’s right. That is what the problem is.
If the Bombard Cannon has 92% accuracy and the Cannon Galleons 50%. Then, why they did not managed to score a single shot to the cavalry unit? They manage to kill infantry or monks because of the splash damage and to the cavalry only when the unit turned around during the patrol routine.
The video shows that for the hand cannoners the “prediction” is calculated correctly (“where the unit will be”) but sometimes miss because of their low accuracy. But with the cannon units the shots always miss against fast units (but because of the bad prediction, not because of their “low” accuracy).

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That’s not a problem with Arquebus and more with how the game predicts trajectories for all projectiles, not just gunpowder.

Put a longbow at 10 tiles and see if it hits a Paladin running perpendicular to the shots, all arrows will be slightly behind.

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I’ve just tested in the scenario editor.
The english longbowmen managed to score many hits on the English Cavalier with Husbandry (the english archers don’t have thumb ring of course). But they did not managed to score hits to the Cuman Paladin (because of their bonus to speed).
On another test using Teuton Paladins (they don’t get Husbandry), Portuguese Bombard Cannons scored allmost every hit. But Portuguese Cannon Galleons did not get a single one.
On the third test, neither Portuguese Cannon unit managed to hit English Cavalier (with Husbandry).
So I don’t know if this is expected behaviour. On one side I think that with Ballistics speed should not be a problem. But on the other side I see this as a reasonable and perfect advantage to fast units. On another side I could understand that the prediction of Ballistics only takes into account base speed for cavalry and Husbandry (or Cuman bonus) provides an “additional advantage” (aside from just “being faster”). And finally I don’t know what to think about Arquebus beeing equal (in terms of how well it predicts the units movement) or not to Ballistics for archers.

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Fair enough, but is it a bug or a feature? :slight_smile:

^^ But also the rest of the post seems to have interesting tests.

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It seems the only proper military bonus on land Portugal has as a civ doesn’t even work that well except for bombard cannons. Oh well…

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Quite a bit offtopic, but shouldn’t Handcannons projectiles be faster than arrows/bolts?
Might would be just the buff Handcannons need.
Also apply this to Cannon Galleons.

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I think you should move this to the general discussions area as that area gets more viewers so it can gain more traction. And not be overlooked as an ambiguous /arguably bug…

I mean, it seems to be a crippling bug for Portuguese and potentially a real reason why they stink right now. It doesn’t do what it advertises and makes it an expensive and useless tech. Moreover, it hasn’t always done so.

Should be a pretty easy fix.

So I think the description for arquebus is right but misleading, since it leaves out details like gun powder projectiles being slow so the unit could even stop moving and the projectile would miss. Also as @Harooooo1 pointed out at one point it did speed up the projectiles and I remember that being very broken.

I mean you are correct but that kind of glosses over details like a unit just stopping. Even if they calculation was good if the unit stopped immediately after the projectile was fired and the unit was going full speed first it would have to veer back towards the unit to hit. Even more strange would be if the unit was in range but was going to be out of range when the shot landed. I think you could perfectly calculate it and make it work but you would see some pretty funny shots when dealing with super fast units like cuman cavalry.

Should be.

Will it be though? We will have to sit and hope.

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