Siege Formula

[McNaughton]

I am trying to figure out what formula seige weaponry use in regards to cutting down fortifications. Does accuracy affect the weapon's ability to cause breeches in fortifications?

Currently, Siege artillery has greater accuracy than field artillery, meaning that they are valuable guns to have in a unit (even though their speed penalty comes into play). Also, for a cash strapped nation like the CSA they can rely on using larger numbers of non-siege guns and get the same effect.

I am working on modding a difference between 'siege' and 'field' artillery to make them a bit more specified for the role. I am trying to 'neuter' siege weaponry's ability to be forefront weapons, yet make them still powerful for sieges (powerful enough to promote their use in a siege, but not as a basic unit of equipment in a larger field formation).

Also, Coastal Artillery has a special 'Target Type' being that of $Naval (meaning the gun only fires on naval vessels). I am thinking of specifying field artillery to just target $Land, in order to specify between...

Field (targets just land)
Coastal (targets just naval)
Siege (targets naval and land)

Also, is it possible to create new 'abilities'? I was toying with the idea of adding traits similar to "Besieger" and "FortDefender" for siege artillery representing their use outside a fort to breech the defenses, as well as improved ability to defend fortifications (notably the implementation of heavy rifled artillery).

[PBBoeye]

RE: siege arty vs. naval - would not siege arty be much more inaccurate vs ships than coastal artillery? If so, I am not sure that could be reflected in the model.

[McNaughton]

RE: siege arty vs. naval - would not siege arty be much more inaccurate vs ships than coastal artillery? If so, I am not sure that could be reflected in the model.

The thing is, the only difference between siege and sea coast weaponry is the role at which they were assigned. Terms 'siege gun' or 'coastal gun' were interchangable depending only on their immediate use.

Check out this site for example.

http://www.civilwarartillery.com/tables.htm

So, the high accuracy of siege weaponry used as coastal/garrison artillery is historically viable, but, sticking an expensive rifled siege gun you just built in a fort, which will sit there for turns and turns doing nothing, until (if/when) your fort gets attacked isn't as good of a financial use of the gun over deploying it in your siege battery (which will see more combat).

It is a matter of finance. You start the game with loads of smoothbore artillery in your forts, you have to build all of your rifled heavy artillery from scratch, you can devote guns to forts, or concentrate them in siege batteries, but you cannot effectively do both (well, the North could, and did).

A rifled siege gun will be the most effective fort defender (coastal and garrison role), but the cost to do so will be very high to do it everywhere.

[Pocus]

You get +1 to the siege roll (or -1 if you are the besieged) for every 30 points of artillery (the general combat value, which takes into account most combat parameters), so this will be difficult to have siege weapons only good at siege, although if you reduce their speed and initiative, they will be less useful in battle but still potent in siege. Beware of reducing their speed too much though, because all AI stacks with such artillery will be slowed too (and AI don't know the difference between siege and field art usage).

You can add abilities yes. The siege class abilities can give bonus to siege, but the bonus is not very subtle: you give a bonus value and thats it.