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Arrows.

An arrow limit? I’ve always liked this idea, so here goes.

Let’s say the arrow limit is, uh, 15. After you use some/all of the arrows, you have to return to the barracks to get more. The barracks can only produce, let’s say, 30 arrows a minute with one fletcher (You can purchase more fletcher if you need to, but it takes a long time to train, and are somewhat expensive.) and has a maximum of 300 arrow storage, and when you build the barracks it comes with 150 arrows. When you train an archer it uses up 15 of this stockpile. The stockpile limit can go up with barracks upgrades.

To make arrows the Fletcher will need lumber, which (if the resource is not a main resource) the fletcher venture out and get it himself.

Optional: To remove the insane micromanagement of all this, the barracks can create porters, that can carry, say, 100 arrows and deliver them to the archers with a button and an area selection.

OR

You can click a button and have the archer return to the nearest barracks, then go back to their original spot.

Another optional: Certain archers can chop down and fletch their own arrows, such as my faction 3’s or elves.

I really, really like an arrow limit idea because it gives huge realism. And thanks to this realism, it gives ANOTHER realism: Without unlimited arrows, arrows can do a lot more damage, such as chance one-hit-kills.

Also, I don’t think arrows should hit every single time. It looks gay and destroys all realism the game may have had. I’m thinking R:TW, though a little bit more accurate and does a lot more damage (with 70 archers shooting at 400 lightly armored units, you only kill like 3-4 units, even at point blank or with fire.

Your thoughts about archers and arrow limits?

I think this may be too specific and management intensive, even with porters.  It worked in total war because any given skirmish was indeed one skirmish.  These games should (hopefully) be a continuous war.

As a more generic concept, how about just having fatigue.  Fatigue would represent not only a soldier's physical weariness, but also supply levels.  Units would become fatigued from fighting too much, and would regain their stamina from being idle (preferably near a barracks or some sort of camp).

Or could regain arrows after an idle period of time when not exposed to danger and not in hostile territory? And they could regain arrows instantly by returning for a barracks.

Yeah, I think that's possible, but you'd need a degree of automation to it and a damn good unit AI.

Archers... my favourite unit type in most games

Just will just be a start, my intention is to make this as realistic as gaming sanity allows

arrows
Quivers could carry around 20 - 25 arrows, although in war, archers would often not carry a quiver at all, because arrows would be supplied at the start of a fight and they would put them in the ground, which allows them to fire faster.

On average, these 20 - 25 arrows would be fired up in about 2 - 2 1/2 minutes. (Times vary with experience and training.) At the point that these arrows were gone, they'd not need rest already, being trained for war.
During a battle it would mean that arrows would need to be resupplied constantly, either in quivers, or in heaps. Or all would just be supplied with more arrows.

Ah, here is something:

Henry had approximately 5,000 archers at Agincourt, and a stock of about 400,000 arrows. Each archer could shoot about ten arrows a minute, so the army only had enough ammunition for about eight minutes of shooting at maximum fire power. However, this fire power would have been devastating. Fifty thousand arrows a minute - over 800 a second - would have hissed down on the French cavalry, killing hundreds of men a minute and wounding many more.

Each archer would have been shooting 80 arrows during that battle. I can't imagine them having that many ready at start, so the battle would have lasted longer than these 8 minutes, but it shows the stamina is going to let them last longer than 1 quiver anyway.

Regaining arrows over idle time is a nice idea, but it wouldn't cover the use of 1 quiver per battle. Either we increase the number of carried arrows (2 or 3 quivers), or we go for the fatigue. Personally, I'd prefer the first option.

The number of arrows of 3 quivers would be what would be supplied to them during battle, perhaps they would have a small resting time after each 25 arrows, to represent the switching of quivers.

Your idea of regaining arrows over time is good. I can't imagine that professional archers wouldn't know how to make their own arrows. The barracks would always have a ready supply of arrows (well, not always, but let's forget about that), which would allow archers to resupply instantly.

Another source for arrows would be the battlefield itself. Fallen archers (from the same type) would leave useable arrows behind, as well as the fired arrows that missed their target and are still useable. With both sources, there would be a randomisation on how many of the arrows would still be useable.

That would be all I can think of now... for arrows.

Spread of fire

Archers were used in numbers, their accuracy wouldn't be to write home about, but with the number of arrows shot at a time, that would not really matter all that much. So the arrows should indeed be spread, but still hit a target.

What I would like to see is that arrows would not be directed at an enemy, but given a calculated curve when shot. The arrow would follow it's curve and only hit if an object would be in it's path. Wether that object would be a tree, rock, enemy or ally, etc.

Such a shower as a battalion archers could produce, would be death for unarmored and light armored enemies, but for heavy armored opponents, it would hardly kill anyone. If I recall correctly, it would take an average of 3 to 4 arrows to take down a soldier. It didn't say what kind of armor such a soldier would wear, but I take it that would be light armor.

It should also be noted that archers were a bane for horses too, forcing cavalry to turn and retreat or continue on foot.
An arrow wouldn't kill a horse, and they could be armored too you might say, but one arrow is enough to make a horse uncontrolable, which is the reason that against archers, footman were preferred.

There is more, but I got to go.

Solinx

I like it.

One note about archer shooting: You could tell them to arc-voley their arrows, just close up you could tell them to go for direct shots. This wouldn't kill as many (you're only getting the ones in front and not the soldiers in the back), but is faster, more accurate and more powerful than volleying at close ranges.

Of course, and as you say, the effect would considerably be less. Therefore, I'd say only the front two rows of archers would shoot straight, while the rest would remain shooting arced.

It could be that a battalion of archers would have only two rows, then there would simply be only straight forward shooting.

This reminds me that different formations should be allowed, and more than two options per battalion.

Also, not all archers would be mass battalions, some would be snipers, some hit and run...

Solinx

Nice ideas, but how about this little thing...if you had too many different formations, the screen would have to have buttons for all of them right? Or would Hotkeys save the day? Either way, there are issues.

1. Some people don't use any hotkeys, because they would rather focus only on the game and not even want to glance down at the keyboard, even for a second.
2. As for buttons, if you had too many formations, you would have to use a screen kindof like Age of Empires 1 & 2 (not sure about 3, haven't played it) where you barely had any view in comparison to some games. This could get annoying. But, now that I think about it, sometimes it's just necessary. I'm new around here; is the game going to show all the units you have selected at the bottom of the screen, or what? If not, then you have a lot of space to use at the bottom/top/somewhere on the screen for the actual game, or anything else. Just to clarify this, too: Is this a game that requires micromanagement on individual units, or battalions/hordes/groups you select with one click? I'm going to regester soon, because this sounds like a really awesome idea.

As far as hotkeys go, it's a difficult issue either way.  For those who are comfortable with them, hotkeys help them focus on the game.  I know the keyboard well enough that I can type without looking at my hand, and that applies to hotkeys.  Hotkeys help me stay focussed on the game because I don't need to move my cursor to the interface and away from the action.  For those who are not comfortable with hotkeys, however, I can understand the difficulty.  However, I highly recommend learning to use them, as it makes so many features in RTS games much more accessible.


We haven't done a lot of talking about interface yet, so I won't comment on where selected units will be shown.  We'll definitely be aiming for the least intrusive and most practical interface possible.

Arrow limit=ick.

Not to be rude, but a popular American proverb "Keep it simple, stupid."

As Darvy said, I could see this for an RTS like Rome or M2TW, but not for an RTS of this caliber. It slows down the action. Fatigue, once again like Darvy said, would be better here.