It might just be me, but have we been getting the Shatagni debuff wrong?

This is just a random thought, but I feel like we might be wrong about Shatagni. A lot of us are in the habit of saying that is decreases accuracy, but is this really true? Before Shatagni, a Hand Cannoneer has 75% accuracy, and 7 range. After Shatagni, it has 75% accuracy still, and 9 range. If accuracy means that at max range, a shot has a 75% chance to hit it’s target, isn’t this actually a buff? If the HC still has 75% accuracy at 9 range, doesn’t this actually mean the comparative accuracy at 7 range is higher, because the accuracy increases towards 100% the closer the target is? I might have done some basic mistake in my thinking here, but is Shatagni actually an accuracy buff at 7 range, and we have been mostly getting it wrong for a while?

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I have been saying this since ever, Shatagni doesn’t affect accuracy and was already a good tech when it was +1 range.

Also that’s not how accuracy works, the game calculates if the projectile will hit the taget (75% of the time) or miss the target (25%) of the time. This is true for targets that are a tile away or 10+ tiles away.
The only difference is that a further away target can dodge the projectile because of travel time, but the base accuracy is unaffected. This means a still target that is 20 tiles away will still get hit by a HC with 20 range by75% of the shots

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Ok, my unclear understanding of accuracy notwithstanding, it’s good to know it doesn’t actually nerf HC.

You will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known, and exist, before it is generally received and practiced on.

Spirit of the Law, probably, every time this comes up

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It’s impressive with how much confidence you can claim stuff that is obviously wrong.

Well it does get affected. I just know of nobody who actually tested how much. All we have is videos like the above thats show how range decreases accuracy even if the stats don’t reflect that but not specifically for this unit/tech and player reports about subjective impressions.

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here is how i understand accuracy:
with 75% accuracy there is a 3/4 base chance the archer (or other unit) will hit where they are aiming
there is also a 1/4 chance that the archer will ‘miss’, this means the arrow (or other projectile) will have a trajectory which is off by a certain angle. but since targets have width, these stray arrows can also hit the target by chance. the further away the target is the less likely they will hit. ie at point-blank range they will always hit

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I can claim that with confidence because it is true. Actually pretty easy to prove, you should try it yourself

Dude in this thread there is literally a video that proves otherwise but let me go through the details.

This is accuracy on paper. While your explanation is true in theory that’s not how accuracy works in practice. In a real game scenario accuracy is always higher than the amount on paper. Like if units stand next to their target their accuracy is 100%. The value is stil 75% but the “missed shot” with 25% will still hit the target 100%. So effectively hc have 100% with 1 or 2 tiles distance. Then the further you increase distance the lower the chance that “missed” shot will hit the target. Thus higher distance equals lower effective accuracy.

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Which is then compounded by the target moving about, because the projectiles keep the same speed (I think?), so they have a better chance to move out of the path of the projectile if the distance is longer…

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Another very valid thing to remember, indeed.

it is, show me a clip of an archer missing a stationary target at 1 tile distance

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I appreciate the explanation and the video shows this well too. However my claim is that the additional range of Shatagni is not a malus for HC because they still have 75% accuracy vs. non-moving targets. They hit as many targets as a regular HC at max range

Because HC accuracy isn’t as high as archer units their missed shots are so inaccurate that they would even miss a target that is 4 tiles away (compare this to Arambai that even miss targets at 2 tiles away). So again, Shatagni is not affecting HC accuracy, because if they miss at 9 range they would have also missed that shot at 7 range. (I encourage you to test this in the editor! :slight_smile: )

Well some of them will do so but others will hit. It’s just a matter of percentage. So the question becomes how much impact that has.

Probs to you if you did that but tbh that’s too much work for me 11 Like to test that properly you need units with like 20 pierce armor and then let both hc from 7 and 9 range shoot at them for several min and see how many shots were landed.

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correct setup would be something like this i think:
one HC with 7 range shooting at a small unit (7 tiles away) which only takes one damage per shot
one HC with 9 range shooting at a small unit (7 tiles away) "
one HC with 9 range shooting at a small unit (9 tiles away) "

and repeat the same with a big unit. I reckon there will be a difference in accuracy between a karambit warrior, a paladin, an elephant and a siege ram

hmm, the final test i tried with 4 HCs:
hindustani at 7 range before shatagni
hindustani at 7 range after shatagni
hindustani at 9 range (obv with shatagni)
generic at 7 range

the only thing i can be sure of is that:
with shatagni they are more accurate at 7 range than at 9 range (big ■■■■■■■ suprise)

the AIs keep bugging out after a while making it hard to get clear comparisons, my current impression is that the accuracy is the same at 7 range without shatagni as it is at 9 range with shatagni, but there is quite a lot of randomness included:
eg 116 hits vs 104 for hindustani without shatagni vs generic

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According to the video shouldn’t hand cannons be unable to fall under 75% accuracy no matter what? Also with the way bullets work they are much more likely to land into something else than their target if they miss + it’s a shot you couldn’t even have shot without shatagni, and since something is better than nothing, it’s even harder to claim shatagni gives a debuff now that it’s +2 range than before.

correct, the accuracy should never be below the advertised accuracy of 75%. the current assumption is that the real accuracy is say 85% before shatagni and 80% after (actual numbers made up, but you get the idea)
(all of this for a stationary target)

That’s weird I mean the accuracy itself shouldn’t be influenced as op wrote it is still 75%. So how I understand it either shooting at 9 range will have a noticable decrease to accuracy or ot will not. Bit the tech shouldn’t actually influence that. This would be observable in the stats.

Yes. But the idea is that the 7 range hc is higher above the 75% than the 9 range hc. But the question is how much.

Sure but if it hits something else instead of the target because of +2 range that’s also not great. I mean we could speak about like 1 or 2 % less accuracy but it could be just as well 10 or more. That’s the question.

it could be that the devs noticed that the HC was quite innacurate at longer range, so they slightly improved accuracy along with statagni to counteract this. can someone check the gamefiles for this?

You bet ornlu would have found out when he went into genie editor to check stats of new patch.