Volley fire question

[Wong Lo Kat]

Another frustration of the day. I want to know how volley fire really works. According to the manual:

"When clicked once, this orders all soldiers in the unit to cease fire and reload. When clicked again, it orders all soldiers fire a volley and then resume fire at will."

Okay, so when I click on volley fire and the button will turn yellow and my infantry units will reload right? But how do I know my units have done reloading? because sometimes I will see them idling instead of reloading. So once I re-click the volley fire, it will turn gray and my units start shooting. I'm happy with this. I reclick again for the 2nd volley, but most of the time I don't see any animation of my units reloading for 2nd time. I just click, wait, and click volley fire again without any helpful visual indicators that tell me when is my unit done reloading? when is the good time to release the volley fire? The sprite's animation isn't simply good enough to tell how it works.

Another issue is what's the hotkey for volley fire? I really hate it that there's no functional hotkey for something I want to do repeatedly. I pressed A-Z and not one is mapped to volley.

Can someone just teach me? This game simply have poor documentation and I couldn't find any good let's play video AT ALL.

[Biondo]

Hello, when you click the volley fire button, all the battalion stop to fire and start to reloading all the muskets; there is no graphic animation, you have to wait 40/45 seconds IIRC, then if they are in musket range, they automatically release a volley; more experienced troops wants to release volley more closer to the enemy so sometimes you see them not firing, but I'm not absolutely sure about this.

Actually there's no hotkey for volley fire but you can modify this in the keyboard.csv file inside Documents/SOWWL folder. You'll see all the keys that are mapped for the game.First: make a backup of this file, just in case...Then, after the last row you can add this line:

Volley,V,volleyon,,,,,

Save when you close, should work.

[Wong Lo Kat]

Originally posted by Biondo:

Hello, when you click the volley fire button, all the battalion stop to fire and start to reloading all the muskets; there is no graphic animation, you have to wait 40/45 seconds IIRC, then if they are in musket range, they automatically release a volley; more experienced troops wants to release volley more closer to the enemy so sometimes you see them not firing, but I'm not absolutely sure about this.

Actually there's no hotkey for volley fire but you can modify this in the keyboard.csv file inside Documents/SOWWL folder. You'll see all the keys that are mapped for the game.First: make a backup of this file, just in case...Then, after the last row you can add this line:

Volley,V,volleyon,,,,,

Save when you close, should work.

I wish to get back and try it again but I'm so occupired with work these days. Anyway, for the volley fire, I don't need to unclick the volley fire and my infantry will automatically fire the rifles once everyone is reloaded? Reason I'm asking because I see my units never even fire a bullet at all and just standing there being shot :(.

Also, this is another question but related to volley fire, I was playing again and again the first mission of Allied's Waterloo Campaign, the one where you only play using brigades only. The French infantry untis are significantly larger than the skirmisher units that the British have. I was hoping multiple volley fire by my skimishers would deal more damage but I got mowed down instead.

To win this mission, am I going to just move all my British and Prussian skirmishers back to Hugoumont and defend by the wall while hoping for the best?

[Biondo]

Regarding the volley fire, yes, they should automatically fire once they reload their weapons. If not, take a screenshot of the situation to see what's happening.

About skirmishers, their role is to delay enemy advance taking advantage from terrain cover. Skirmishers take less casualties because they are in open order but they can't hold a line. I think moving men inside Hougoumont is a good tactic because of the defensive bonus the fort give them.