Scorpion, Beehive and Snake Pot projectiles - DLC

[Myrmidon]

Tempted by Beasts of War as it's £0.99. Always wondered what do these projectiles actually do? I kinda imagine them as just incapacitation rounds that spread panic and cause ranks to break in panic (especially with something like bees).

Edit: Bees

[Salty Nobody]

Honestly not sure why any of those are even in the game. Incapacitation is only useful when engaging the enemy in melee and if you are doing that and shoot art at them you will likely hit your own men as well.

The bug projectiles are all useless in my experience and if anyone else has actually gotten good use out of them compared to the normal giant bouncing rocks that actually kill things I very much want to hear of it...

[Myrmidon]

Originally posted by Tactician:

Honestly not sure why any of those are even in the game. Incapacitation is only useful when engaging the enemy in melee and if you are doing that and shoot art at them you will likely hit your own men as well.

The bug projectiles are all useless in my experience and if anyone else has actually gotten good use out of them compared to the normal giant bouncing rocks that actually kill things I very much want to hear of it...

There are two areas of potential niche use where I've been wondering if they might have some effectiveness.

The first is directly engaging units on walls. Usually when I siege I'll spend my siege ammunition taking down a couple of walls and the surrounding towers. I'll usually have a bit of ammo left spread across my artillery pieces so I'll often either fire at another wall with men on or fire directly at the men to cover the advance of my infantry. Neither firing at walls (without the specific intention of breaking them) or firing directly at the men atop ever seems to really kill any at any range.

What about firing something like beehive rounds at a wall though just during the closing phase. You could potentially continue firing until your infantry are right up close to them because if they do catch the edge of one they're only bees. That said I don't know if any of these seemingly unaffective regular rounds fired during the closing of the infantry have morale effects on the troops that may beat beehives anyway.

The second would be naval warfare. I use artillery ships for bombarding coastal cities to support land forces more than I use them for actual naval engagements. Firing at ships they seem to rarely ever hit anything regardless of range, regardless of whether either they or the enemy ships are moving. Once in a blue moon a projectile will hit a ship and it's more the case of "caww that did a nasty bit of hull damage" but the bloody thing won't be impaired in any way.

So leads me to wondering about bees, scorpions or snakes. Would they impair a ships speed or turning, negate row hard abilities? With ships the men are packed in tightly on the deck so their formations can't seperate really. I know historically snake pots were used against ships to quite nice effect on a few occasions but how well that translates into game I don't know.

[Salty Nobody]

I don't know if they would do anything at all against ships other than give the debuffs to the men on the deck.

In general though, normal art rounds also give a mroale penalty. Debuffing morale with missiles is normally not very helpful. The debuffs only last a short time.

You need at least three debuffs to get most enemy units to break, and normally that consists of the unit has taken/is taking heavy losses, they are surrounded, and their general has died. So basically you need to already be winning the battle to get all but the lowest quality units to run.

Shooting them with art or fancy arrows while affected by the above does speed up this process, but in the case of art killing a bunch of them probably does more to lower their morale, and is easier on your own units when they catch the weakened enemy in melee.

[bbolto]

From what I have seen (and it's been a while, I haven't tested it recently)

- the snake pot ballistas do ok against units on walls, and do some damage to units in the field... somewhat better than an archer vs. walls units, worse on the field. On balance not worth it unless you're interested in "style points"

- beehive onagers have one real use which is routing low-morale units, like skirmishers. They can do this pretty fast so there is a use there, however, is it better than having a regular onager hitting the enemy general? no

These should really be alternate ammo that you unlock with tech advances, not entirely separate units, I think.

[Hasefrexx]

Originally posted by Myrmidon:

The second would be naval warfare. I use artillery ships for bombarding coastal cities to support land forces more than I use them for actual naval engagements. Firing at ships they seem to rarely ever hit anything regardless of range, regardless of whether either they or the enemy ships are moving. Once in a blue moon a projectile will hit a ship and it's more the case of "caww that did a nasty bit of hull damage" but the bloody thing won't be impaired in any way.

So leads me to wondering about bees, scorpions or snakes. Would they impair a ships speed or turning, negate row hard abilities? With ships the men are packed in tightly on the deck so their formations can't seperate really. I know historically snake pots were used against ships to quite nice effect on a few occasions but how well that translates into game I don't know.

Well... onager in naval battles is a must to me. Yes it will miss 50 to 60% but when it hits it commonly sinks low hull ships. Since the AI loves attacking navies with land armies, I commonly use cheap and fast ships to maneuver and distract the AI while the onagres pound everything... much better than land onagres when it only kills a handful men when it actually hits.

Real navy ships survive hits but then it means I can quickly finish it off by raming.

Usually the AI ignores them so long as I distract them and I keep a handful ships to board or ram anything that would want to go after my baby onagres (fire pots are fun for that too, the AI can get shot by the onagre or come to be rammed by my pots).