African Forest Elephant Fix - a few questions

[Barathor]

So, I recently played a game as Carthage (loved those free, early harbors!), and only after creating some elephants did I realize how screwed-up these poor guys are (along with their dull name)!

They looked so silly zipping around the map, and while attacking, they just stood there and waited for enemies to come to them. They're war elephants! They need to charge and trample things! Especially if their riders are melee units.

So, the move rate change was a simple one and works perfectly. They're incorrectly using Quadruped (used mainly for those speedy horses) instead of "Phant" like the other vanilla elephants.

The attack animation wasn't too bad either. I think earlier in development this unit may have actually been a ranged unit like India's, but it was never updated, because I had to remove ranged attacks from it while assigning it a rush attack (like Siam's) and I also had to change its weapon sounds from Arrow to Spear.

Anyway, the only problem is that sometimes the attack acts a little glitchy. The elephants will charge, both parties stand there for a few seconds, and then the elephants withdraw and damages are displayed. As in, the warriors riding the elephants aren't swinging and stabbing their spears. This only happens sometimes, but I'd still would like to try and fix it.

What could be causing this?

Also, is there a way to get the warriors to swing and stab a bit more often during battle?

Also, what is VisKillStrengthMin and VisKillStrengthMax in ArtDefine_UnitMemberCombatWeapons? (I just left them as is, but Siam's elephants have a max value of 25 while Carthage's have a max of 20.)

Also, what "exactly" does ReformBeforeCombat in ArtDefine_UnitMemberCombats do? I tinkered with different values (NULL, 1, 2) to see if it made any difference with the combat issues and didn't notice any changes between them. (Perhaps the reformations aren't as noticeable with elephants since their formation count is so small to begin with.) I just copied Siam's value of 2 for Carthage's since they're both melee elephant units and all the melee mounted units before Cavalry use a value of 2 as well.

Anyway, attached is the file if anybody wants to check it out and see what's wrong.

 

[Irkalla]

So, I recently played a game as Carthage (loved those free, early harbors!), and only after creating some elephants did I realize how screwed-up these poor guys are (along with their dull name)!

They looked so silly zipping around the map, and while attacking, they just stood there and waited for enemies to come to them. They're war elephants! They need to charge and trample things! Especially if their riders are melee units.

So, the move rate change was a simple one and works perfectly. They're incorrectly using Quadruped (used mainly for those speedy horses) instead of "Phant" like the other vanilla elephants.

The attack animation wasn't too bad either. I think earlier in development this unit may have actually been a ranged unit like India's, but it was never updated, because I had to remove ranged attacks from it while assigning it a rush attack (like Siam's) and I also had to change its weapon sounds from Arrow to Spear.

Anyway, the only problem is that sometimes the attack acts a little glitchy. The elephants will charge, both parties stand there for a few seconds, and then the elephants withdraw and damages are displayed. As in, the warriors riding the elephants aren't swinging and stabbing their spears. This only happens sometimes, but I'd still would like to try and fix it.

What could be causing this?

Also, is there a way to get the warriors to swing and stab a bit more often during battle?

Also, what is VisKillStrengthMin and VisKillStrengthMax in ArtDefine_UnitMemberCombatWeapons? (I just left them as is, but Siam's elephants have a max value of 25 while Carthage's have a max of 20.)

Also, what "exactly" does ReformBeforeCombat in ArtDefine_UnitMemberCombats do? I tinkered with different values (NULL, 1, 2) to see if it made any difference with the combat issues and didn't notice any changes between them. (Perhaps the reformations aren't as noticeable with elephants since their formation count is so small to begin with.) I just copied Siam's value of 2 for Carthage's since they're both melee elephant units and all the melee mounted units before Cavalry use a value of 2 as well.

Anyway, attached is the file if anybody wants to check it out and see what's wrong.

Reform before combat seems to suggest that the units break rank, charge, then get back into rank to fight.

 

[Gedemon]

they break rank when turning to face the enemy, I think it's to force the unit to reform after turning and before attacking (charging or firing).

 

[Barathor]

Ah, gotcha... that sounds correct. Thanks, guys. Perhaps that's why I didn't really notice a difference, since I was mostly charging straight towards the helpless brutes I spawned on the map during tests.

Perhaps the occasional glitch is due to something in the gr2 files and/or the "bones". Pretty much things that are beyond my current capabilities to fix, lol.

I threw it up on the Workshop as well if anybody wants to try it and prefers that method of installation: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=108585883