I was prompted to give a bunch of suggestions by my usual deities, so I've decided to compile a thread of my brain stormings. Without further adieu..
Increase armour rating for Highlander's heavy armour
As it stands, the highlanders have some very cool equipment, but after wave five or so of any worthwhile enemy, the armour might as well not be worn; one or two hit deaths are assured. A boost to the armour (totalling around 40-45?) would be about right. I'm sure this would resolve the issue of this faction not being played anywhere near often enough.
Add-in the wagon defence map from WFAS
The wagon defence map from WFAS was the best thing about the game. It was just fifty shades of awesome, y'know? Couldn't hurt to add it in.
Add the armours from ROTK to Chinese Dynasties
The ROTK mod for Warband has some frankly amazing equipment; the scale armours especially. The current Chinese Dynasty armour looks 'meh' at best, the Chinese Guard Armour being one sexy exception. As far as I can tell, the mod has ceased development, so it couldn't hurt to pool the resources from it.
Maybe add in the running animation as well? You've got to love the sword-arm-behind-the-back running thingie. So good.
Remove terrain rendering from most scenes
I recently learned that it's possible to remove the pre-generated terrain from Warband, which eats up the CPU due to the collision being calculated for every polygon. Especially considering how the terrain can be heavily simplified with no visual impact, it would be a major boon to performance to create the terrain in World Machine 2 (Which I can do if needed), export it to your 3D package of choice, optimize it and then export it into a .brf file. Or just model it all in the program and export, whittling out the heightmap generator.
Make scenes in 3D editor, merge textures into master texture
Following from the above, you can also model entire maps with scenery inside a 3D editor, removing the tedious placement within Warband's editor. Granted, this won't work for activators and the like, but if the scenery was to be merged into a single mesh, the number of draw calls would be heavily reduced.
To go one step further, would be to get all the textures used in a map, and make it into a big master texture. This would have to be done on a per-map basis (unless it's used for scenese that share the same textures), however; the UV mapping would also most likely need to be re-done, which shouldn't be difficult at all. Speaking from experience here.
The performance gains from using one master texture rather than several individual ones would be rather tremendous, especially if it were done for units. It would reduce draw calls even further, of which the Warband engine is starved; being DirectX 9 and not OpenGL/DirectX 11/Mantle which can utilize multithreaded draw calls.
Hotkey for making stabs into over-head swings
When the mobs start getting ganky, you need to move back in order to avoid being killed. The stab motions for most swords, however, make this a most painful experience. The sword of War and Rhodock War Cleaver would be a good example; the Sword of War has a stabbing motion when moving backwards, whereas the War Cleaver does an over-head swing if you're moving forward or backwards.
Perhaps link it to the X key?
Small barricade box construction object
As we all know, placing a barricade can screw out the collision on any map; Osigiliath being a prime example. What would save much time as well as lower the chance of bugging the collision, would be to make a barricade object that are four small barricades placed in a box formation. Cuts the number of placed barricades by a factor of 4 and reduces the chance of collision havocery.
Edit1:
Add in FI2 Combined faction
One of the main problems in FI2 is that everyone polls LoTR, so it's the same troop types all the time. One way to work around (not solve, mind you), would be to create compilation factions with similar combat styles. So you would have Highlanders, LoTR, Greek City States, etc. but not alongside WWII soldiers, Future marines, etc.
Perhaps add in smaller ones as well, that do, for example, Byzantine, Rome and Greek City States. Similar themes, y'know?
Could also be done for the enemy waves. Would be cool to see Orks accompanied by Isengard infantry and mongol cavalry.
Increase armour rating for Highlander's heavy armour
As it stands, the highlanders have some very cool equipment, but after wave five or so of any worthwhile enemy, the armour might as well not be worn; one or two hit deaths are assured. A boost to the armour (totalling around 40-45?) would be about right. I'm sure this would resolve the issue of this faction not being played anywhere near often enough.
Add-in the wagon defence map from WFAS
The wagon defence map from WFAS was the best thing about the game. It was just fifty shades of awesome, y'know? Couldn't hurt to add it in.
Add the armours from ROTK to Chinese Dynasties
The ROTK mod for Warband has some frankly amazing equipment; the scale armours especially. The current Chinese Dynasty armour looks 'meh' at best, the Chinese Guard Armour being one sexy exception. As far as I can tell, the mod has ceased development, so it couldn't hurt to pool the resources from it.
Maybe add in the running animation as well? You've got to love the sword-arm-behind-the-back running thingie. So good.
Remove terrain rendering from most scenes
I recently learned that it's possible to remove the pre-generated terrain from Warband, which eats up the CPU due to the collision being calculated for every polygon. Especially considering how the terrain can be heavily simplified with no visual impact, it would be a major boon to performance to create the terrain in World Machine 2 (Which I can do if needed), export it to your 3D package of choice, optimize it and then export it into a .brf file. Or just model it all in the program and export, whittling out the heightmap generator.
Make scenes in 3D editor, merge textures into master texture
Following from the above, you can also model entire maps with scenery inside a 3D editor, removing the tedious placement within Warband's editor. Granted, this won't work for activators and the like, but if the scenery was to be merged into a single mesh, the number of draw calls would be heavily reduced.
To go one step further, would be to get all the textures used in a map, and make it into a big master texture. This would have to be done on a per-map basis (unless it's used for scenese that share the same textures), however; the UV mapping would also most likely need to be re-done, which shouldn't be difficult at all. Speaking from experience here.
The performance gains from using one master texture rather than several individual ones would be rather tremendous, especially if it were done for units. It would reduce draw calls even further, of which the Warband engine is starved; being DirectX 9 and not OpenGL/DirectX 11/Mantle which can utilize multithreaded draw calls.
Hotkey for making stabs into over-head swings
When the mobs start getting ganky, you need to move back in order to avoid being killed. The stab motions for most swords, however, make this a most painful experience. The sword of War and Rhodock War Cleaver would be a good example; the Sword of War has a stabbing motion when moving backwards, whereas the War Cleaver does an over-head swing if you're moving forward or backwards.
Perhaps link it to the X key?
Small barricade box construction object
As we all know, placing a barricade can screw out the collision on any map; Osigiliath being a prime example. What would save much time as well as lower the chance of bugging the collision, would be to make a barricade object that are four small barricades placed in a box formation. Cuts the number of placed barricades by a factor of 4 and reduces the chance of collision havocery.
Edit1:
Add in FI2 Combined faction
One of the main problems in FI2 is that everyone polls LoTR, so it's the same troop types all the time. One way to work around (not solve, mind you), would be to create compilation factions with similar combat styles. So you would have Highlanders, LoTR, Greek City States, etc. but not alongside WWII soldiers, Future marines, etc.
Perhaps add in smaller ones as well, that do, for example, Byzantine, Rome and Greek City States. Similar themes, y'know?
Could also be done for the enemy waves. Would be cool to see Orks accompanied by Isengard infantry and mongol cavalry.
