So whatever I set the normal and long range values to the result should be that there is very little difference in hit probability below 100 yards, and around twice the chance to hit at 200 yards (the difference beyond 200 yards doesn't matter much because I've set the smoothbore's maximum range at 200).Īs an aside, modifying rifles.csv basically grants godlike powers. I have no idea what the actual difference is on a battlefield, but some test firing mentioned in an article I came across hit a 10ft by 10ft target about twice as often with a rifle than with a smoothbore at 200 yards, so I was planning on rolling with that (better data would be appreciated though). So the values I need to worry about are normal and long range. In fact I'll probably leave "best" range at the default 40 yards, since both rifles and smoothbores would have their highest chances to hit at that range, and it wouldn't make much difference which one you had at that range. So the "best" range for both of them will be the same. As far as the difference in effectiveness at any particular range, it seems likely that at ranges less than 100 yards there is little to no difference. The two values that I know exactly what to set to are the maximum ranges for smoothbores (most Napoleonic sources seem to think that about 200 yards is the "battle range" of their muskets) and the maximum ranges for rifles (a lot of American Civil War sources seem to think that about 500 yards is the battle range of their rifles). But my overall conclusions were that the difference in effectiveness is far less than many documentaries would have you believe, but definitely more than no difference at all. I put a fair amount of work into trying to find out how smoothbores and rifles would have differed in effectiveness, and made less progress than I would have liked (shockingly, there does not seem to be a consensus). If you're curious what I'm doing, I'm trying to get a realistic relation between smoothbore and rifled muskets.