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[Gameplay A24] - Drastically change artillery attacks.

Description

[Gameplay A24] - Drastically change artillery attacks.

Artillery is not that effective in 0 A.D., partly because their damage per second is unimpressive (especially compared to rams or war elephants), partly because of their splash damage.
Splash damage was added in r11886 / rP11886 (nearly eight years ago). The values have changed multiple times, as has the exact calculation (see simulation/components/Attack.js). While it's quite interesting in theory, in practice it's not that effective. @fatherbushido explained how it works on the forums. It's important to understand the actual splash damage depends on the distance to the centre of entities, in contrast to ordinary attacks, which do full damage when they hit the footprint (edge).
Splash damage has some serious problems:

  • It may have no effect vs entities with footprints longer than the splash radius, such as many (most?) structures and warships.
  • The AI does not take it into account.
  • It's anachronistic: exploding shells did not exist yet in 0 A.D.'s timeframe. Missiles were rigid objections, and even the very largest projectiles were well under a metre in diameter.

This patch therefore removes splash damage from artillery (except bolt shooters).
Fireships and fireraisers now deal fire damage instead of a combination of other damage types.

Basically, stone throwers are good against large unit masses and structures only, while bolt shooters are unit killers.
Artillery and bolt towers no longer get additional projectiles from garrisoned units.
Roman artillery does not get a larger range but keeps the increased damage.

Patch by: @Nescio
Differential revision: D2494
Reviewed by: @borg-, @wraitii
Comments by: @Angen, @Stan

Event Timeline

Or to put it differently:

  • bolt shooters, bolt towers, stone throwers, quinqueremes, and artillery towers now clearly outrange archers
  • bolt shooters and bolt towers have lower spread, while the spread of stone throwers, quinqueremes, and artillery towers was increased
  • bolt shooters and bolt towers inflict only piece damage
  • stone throwers, quinqueremes, and artillery towers inflict only crush damage
  • fire raisers and fireships inflict only fire damage
  • bolt towers, stone throwers, quinqueremes, and artillery towers no longer have splash attacks (but bolt shooters keep their linear splash)
  • bolt shooters, bolt towers, stone throwers, quinqueremes, and artillery towers have their base damage raised significantly
  • these entities keep their high reload times (from rP23285) and their new damage-per-second values are still well below that of elephants or rams

As a consequence, bolt shooters and bolt towers are more effective vs units but worse vs structures, whereas stone throwers, quinqueremes, and artillery towers are more powerful vs structures but less effective vs units, thus further differentiating the two, giving each a more specialized function.

It's important to understand the actual splash damage depends on the distance to the centre of entities, in contrast to ordinary attacks, which do full damage when they hit the footprint (edge).

This is no longer true since rP24010

(doesn't change much but the commit message is inaccurate)