Hey, weim18. Good to hear from you. Really, I appreciate all the ideas.
The name, the Kingdom of Laerte, comes loosely from the mythological father of Odysseus - indeed I should be planning to implement Greek elements into their armor set. The name Laertes is also shared by the Shakespearean character Laertes, who can be said to represent the brasher side of authoritarian rule. Sounds like a good idea to me, since your concept synchs quite well with it.
Originally I thought it might be a cool idea to leave a faction without territory, and allow the player to deal with them if he so chooses. The way the game is set up, though, is that in order to be a functional faction they would have to have some territory in which their "lords" could respawn, otherwise they would be considered defeated and would go off joining other factions. It's a cool concept to think about, but for the time and effort involved I don't think I could crank out the proper modifications, tested and all, to make such a thing possible. It might be possible to spawn them like bandits, but assuming that these knights you have in mind would be unique NPCs that could lead to numerous problems, such as possible duplication of hero characters and so forth. I'll keep this in the back of my head, though, since it's a romantic concept, and we'll see if time permits that kind of modification for this update, which I'd like to have finished with some time before Warband is released, blowing everything away.
Finally, having one guy who rolls in by himself and starts wiping stuff out is a very theatric idea, but the game isn't really equipped to handle something like that at the moment. Second he runs into a major army, whether he's level 50 or 500 (Which would be ridiculous) sheer numbers in the automatic battle simulation would stop him, unless the player is, by any chance, able to see this battle as it starts and intervene. And setting up some code to have him automatically wipe out major armies would simply ruin things. This does, however, sound like a fair idea for a quest NPC that the player could choose to assist in some way. Any ideas in that direction?
To triptick and DrDoom151:
Currently I'm toying around with different forms of kingdom management. I think having some means of collecting taxes without having to visit ludicrously out-of-the-way villages like Aldelen, Epesche, Veidar and Peshmi just to collect taxes. I owned all of these before, and probably got around to stopping there three times per game. Fief management should also be less cumbersome, and there should be more benefit to owning a castle, beyond being forced to defend it with little reward. As Native stands, you're better off just owning a village. Management issues aren't the focus of this mod, but they should be integrated so that the player can focus on what is the focus - the wide and creative mix of troops and equipment coupled with with advanced options in combat.
To Bernhardt:
Haha, you posted in the middle of me typing up this horribly all-encompassing reply. Thanks for the compliments. I had a lot of fun adding to the Nord tree. Producing knighthood orders sort of reminds me of an idea I had about getting lords to get companions like the player does. It reminds me of this, because I don't very much like the way the player gets all these abilities to which NPC lords have no access. If this would be something I could allow other lords to do as well, without too much trouble, I'd certainly implement it. There's a big difference between running into an army of regulars, then hitting a wave of elite guards, each of which has his own character. I'll keep this in mind and see what I can do with it.
Any more thoughts/opinions, totally welcome. I'm glad everyone likes how I'm considering all ideas. Just seems to me that that's what Mount&Blade is all about.
Poll
