Missile vs Shield

[Endoperez]

HoneyBadger said:
I'm playing early age Ermor now, which has loads of tower shields, and I agree, while they do seem to shrug off more arrows than any other nation, I regularly suffer some damage from archers, and possibly more damage from short range attacks like sticks and stones. I suspect there may be another factor at hand. One thing to keep in mind though, is the random element-with 100 arrows each having a base 1% chance to hit, that's 1 arrow hitting, but the random rolls in this game add a whole other element there. I don't know from the above formula whether or not there's randomness involved in calculating whether a striking arrow actually penetrates and hits, but I'd bet on it, and also on range having an effect.

I used the table that takes the randomness of rolls into account.

I just did the math and didn't test it; it's nice to hear that this isn't as severe as the math would suggest.

[mivayan]

Did a little test with tower shields (parry 7, def -2). It's nowhere near 3% that the formula says, closer to 14% (not very exact test).

Perhaps the correct formula uses (Parry - defence penalty) in stead? That gives 11% to hit a 0-fatigue tower shield unit. A small manual error wouldn't be strange.

[Jack_Trowell]

Or maybe that a shield parry doesn't negate the attack but add to protection, as in melee. It would explain why low armored troops can still get some damage from arrows even whith tower shields.

[Dedas]

According to the manual the arrow/bolt, if parried by the shield, hits the shield. Thus I tend to believe that the shield protection value is used.

[Folket]

Can someone make a mod with unarmoured tower shield welding hoburgs?

Then we can look at the damage.

[mivayan]

Folket said:
Can someone make a mod with unarmoured tower shield welding hoburgs?

Then we can look at the damage.

markata_greathideshield.dm:
#modname "Markata with great hide shields."
#version 1.0
#description "Markata get great hide shields, for testing."

#selectmonster 1118
#name "Markata of shield"
#hp 1
#armor "Great hide shield"
#end

Then I did a few tests. 200 Ulm crossbowmen with arbalests(14 AP) vs 2000 markatta modded to have 1 hp and a great hide shield. The crossbows were set to 'fire', the 4 groups of 500 markata set to Guard commander, the commander to "hold x5, retreat". almost all markatta left between shot 3 and 4. I tried it 5 times with the mod, 5 times without it (normally they have 5 hp, 0 prot, no shield, size 1).

Great hide shield, armor #112. prot 10, def -1, parry 6.
600 arbalest bolts were fired each game.

Summary:
with shield mod: 73, 89, 68, 68, 72 dead. Average 74
Without mod: 366, 372, 375, 381, 407 dead. Average 380

An arrow has a 76% chance to not hit the ground when landing on a tile full of unshielded units. 380 kills means about 380/0.76=500 arrows landed on someone each fight. So about 74/500 =15% of arrows got past the shield in the first scenario. Could be 10% or 20% perhaps, but not 6% like formula suggests.

[Jack_Trowell]

What are the results if you try the same mod, but adding a ligth (and helmet) to the markata ?

trying bow instead of crossbow could also show a difference if indeed the shield protection is used.