poison slingers...

[Twogun]

i've always liked this unit. but never been able to do ANYTHING with it.

they have an annoying tendency to run forward even though they have range 15. even at 'fire and keep distance' they seem to want to get within 5 tiles of the enemy, whereupon, they get slaughtered.

anybody figured a way to use these fellows?

it would seem you'd need poison resistance on your troops, too.

[Mount Nomad]

You can mix them in with Light Infantry that tosses javelins. It'll spread them out and limit attrition. C'tis has a lot of poison resistance by default, so for ranged units basically designed to shoot into their own ranks, they're not so bad.

Their poison is Armor Negating and Area 1, so decent against smaller high armor targets like MA Ulm. That said, even within their niche they're pretty frail and very expensive, so don't tend to see a lot of use when you could spend gold on Empoisoner assassins and Marshmasters instead.

[Twogun]

i understand the unit. i'm just having a problem with their inexplicable behaviour of running almost into melee range instead of firing from 15 spaces out, as their weapon allows.

[Mardagg]

I would skip it all together. If you want poison based battles, just aim for foul vapors + skellie spam. Ctis to me is all about mages(tons of it!) + cheap poison resistant meat shields. And assassins.
Taking more PR as bless effect does make sense imo, e.g. to put shrouds on indie mages.

[Twogun]

i understand they aren't necessary. i just want to know why they run forward when they are a missile unit! no other missile units do that!

[Mormacil]

Any ranged unit set to fire runs into range, that's how I use javelinists...

[Twogun]

yes, but the slingers run RIGHT UP to the enemy, even though they have range 15. javelins do NOT!

and to make it even more irritating, they've done it since dom3!

[Mount Nomad]

What formation are you using?

[ÆtherNomad]

Originally posted by Mardagg:

I would skip it all together. If you want poison based battles, just aim for foul vapors + skellie spam. Ctis to me is all about mages(tons of it!) + cheap poison resistant meat shields.

By the way, LA C'tis has poison slingers as well but no access to foul vapors.

[Twogun]

using the regular box formation, not mixing them with any meleeers!

[DasaKamov]

Twogun, are you playing with any mods? I just tested with 2 throw-away SP games (MA and LA C'tis) with all-slinger units set in the Box formation with "Fire Closest" orders, and they performed completely as expected -- they advanced to range 15 and fired with their Poison Slings until they ran out of ammo.

[Twogun]

hmm. i never tried fire closest. just fire.

that might be the ticket!

[DasaKamov]

Yep, if you don't specify which unit to target, all ranged units default to targeting an enemy at random. Sounds like your Poison Slingers decided they were going to fire at a unit behind your enemy's front line, so they got murdered as they tried to get close enough to their intended targets and ran headlong into pointy sticks.

[Twogun]

sometimes the simplest solution is the most likely!

[Kid Icarus]

OT but just had a thought that targeting decisions would be a very useful thing to have in battle logs.