Isn't heavy armour a little too OP?

First of all, a huge kudos to all the authors, this mod is wonderful, one of the best I've tried so far, and I've been playing Mount & Blade since about version 0.7.
I have just one single problem - the heavy armour and its defense values. I know that this is supposed to mimic the actual real life difference between wearing no/light armour and heavy armour, but come on - having to hack at someone with a huge two-handed hammer (or an axe) for 30 seconds straight to put them down, even when you're aiming for the head... that does seem a little overblown. I could understand that for a low-level character, but on level 30 you'd expect your attacks to have just a little more effect
So... is there a way to reduce the effectiveness of heavy armour? Thanks! It really breaks the tempo of the game for me a little when I have to hit a stupid highwayman on the head 4-5 times from full gallop to kill him.

One of the great advantages of this mod is very very  thick armor. Do not change it because you get such a mod like any other. Set on copies and hammers and enjoy this really great mod.
In this mod you can feel what it really means to have armor

Greg

gchojna1 said:

One of the great advantages of this mod is very very  thick armor. Do not change it because you get such a mod like any other. Set on copies and hammers and enjoy this really great mod.
In this mod you can feel what it really means to have armor

Greg

Click to expand...

If You've EVER worn armor and fought in mellee in real life, you'd know that a SINGLE hammer blow to the head no matter WHAT helmet you wear will make youy almost puke your guts out... 2 blows will have you on your knees at least with the helmet disfigured a third will cave in your skull for SURE! And that's from a dude on his feet without the force of a galloping horse!
This mod doesn't make you feel what it really means to have armor, it makes you feel what it's like to have a fantasy FORCEFIELD equipped...
Don't write as if you know facts when you know **** all about reality!

Sir Wolfeye of Malta

This is not true !

If you have such a weak head did not fight!
Become a magician.

I am sure that my head can withstand at least two to three strokes!

Greg

Everythings, is bettere, with an Jeckala Advance Armor, one of the best i see with the Twilight Knight Amor and Juggernaut Armor. But...one question. For the Jecakala Advance Armor and Juggernaut Armor, the model, it's a rivisiting model of the Juggernaut armor set in Dragon Age Origins? 

Compliments for this mod. It's one of the my Three favourite mod of ever!

Baalzie said:

gchojna1 said:

One of the great advantages of this mod is very very  thick armor. Do not change it because you get such a mod like any other. Set on copies and hammers and enjoy this really great mod.
In this mod you can feel what it really means to have armor

Greg

Click to expand...

If You've EVER worn armor and fought in mellee in real life, you'd know that a SINGLE hammer blow to the head no matter WHAT helmet you wear will make youy almost puke your guts out... 2 blows will have you on your knees at least with the helmet disfigured a third will cave in your skull for SURE! And that's from a dude on his feet without the force of a galloping horse!
This mod doesn't make you feel what it really means to have armor, it makes you feel what it's like to have a fantasy FORCEFIELD equipped...
Don't write as if you know facts when you know **** all about reality!

Sir Wolfeye of Malta

Click to expand...

He never said he was talking about reality. Try to read his post before you lose control of yourself.

Baalzie said:

gchojna1 said:

One of the great advantages of this mod is very very  thick armor. Do not change it because you get such a mod like any other. Set on copies and hammers and enjoy this really great mod.
In this mod you can feel what it really means to have armor

Greg

Click to expand...

If You've EVER worn armor and fought in mellee in real life, you'd know that a SINGLE hammer blow to the head no matter WHAT helmet you wear will make youy almost puke your guts out... 2 blows will have you on your knees at least with the helmet disfigured a third will cave in your skull for SURE! And that's from a dude on his feet without the force of a galloping horse!
This mod doesn't make you feel what it really means to have armor, it makes you feel what it's like to have a fantasy FORCEFIELD equipped...
Don't write as if you know facts when you know **** all about reality!

Sir Wolfeye of Malta

Click to expand...

I don't supposed you'd like to elaborate on your real life experiences, Sir Wolfeye of Malta? I was not aware there was much combat done by sword and armour in the region these days.

Plenty of people do reenactments with real weapons nowadays. I have heard stores about people being quite seriously injured in the process.

jacobhinds said:

Plenty of people do reenactments with real weapons nowadays. I have heard stores about people being quite seriously injured in the process.

Click to expand...

I confirm. I was part of "roleplayers" club. We built fantasy armor from soft metals, leather and cloth, and did weapons from textolite. There was a "restorators" club in another city, those guys were hardcore. They made real weapon and armor replicas from harder alloys, and held tournaments. It was uncommon to get traumas during events. Even a hit to the side with a textolite sword is not too pleasant.

The problem with realism is a couple things.  For example, in this mod it isn't hard to find yourself surrounded by a dozen enemies.  However if your wearing the heaviest armors, you don't care because no one can hurt you.  However if you want to talk realism, in real life I don't care how strong your armor is, you get surrounded by 5 or 6 guys, they are going to bum rush you, take you off your feet and then poke daggers in your eye slots, armpits or various other weak points in your armor. 

Point is, if you really want realism, you can't have the armor too strong or else your not accounting for all the weaknesses in armor plate.

Sure, it's great to have a suit of plate armour when you're surrounded by enemies. It means that they'll take a few minutes longer to stun-lock you to death.

Meanwhile, the Swadian lords are consistently able to field a force consisting of hundreds of heavily armoured knights and infantry, whereas most lords deck their units in chain and leather. Worse, they have some of the strongest, longest weapons in the game, meaning that they can consistently outrange you, stun you, and cut you down. Many of their weapons are *also* capable of crushing through blocks.

For those of you who are going to accuse me of not using hammers: used save editing to give myself a ridiculous amount of money, then grabbed the best hammer the Nords had available in their shop. Fought a Swadian army. It took over ten hits, with 20 strength, to bring down one dismounted knight; that's not accounting for whatever health he lost before my troops killed his horse (the damn thing looked like a pincushion, because obviously horse chain mail is standard issue in the Swadian military). Soooo being the easily agitated, morally deprived individual I am, I went ahead and gave myself 2000 strength, maxed out all my skills, and maxed my two-handed weapon skill. Save editing is fun.

Took two hits with that hammer from before to take down a rider, at roughly 60 damage each (this time I'd run off to Tihr, the Swadians and Vaegirs having conquered most of the known world, and sieged it with roughly 20 mercenaries, so I didn't have to worry about horses). I lost track of the number of hits it took to bring down a Twilight Knight, although, to be fair, I was backpedaling, because the alternative was getting stunlocked into oblivion by a horde of angry, heavily armoured Swadians.

Going back to before I made myself into a bite-sized Godzilla: while wearing the best armour available to the Nords, as well as Twilight Gauntlets, with newb damage reduction set to the maximum, the knights were routinely hitting me for 18 damage with bladed weapons. This, despite the fact that I could barely tickle them most of the time with my hammer. And the Swadians were fielding dozens of these units in armies of 400 men.

Darth Crow said:

First of all, a huge kudos to all the authors, this mod is wonderful, one of the best I've tried so far, and I've been playing Mount & Blade since about version 0.7.
I have just one single problem - the heavy armour and its defense values. I know that this is supposed to mimic the actual real life difference between wearing no/light armour and heavy armour, but come on - having to hack at someone with a huge two-handed hammer (or an axe) for 30 seconds straight to put them down, even when you're aiming for the head... that does seem a little overblown. I could understand that for a low-level character, but on level 30 you'd expect your attacks to have just a little more effect
So... is there a way to reduce the effectiveness of heavy armour? Thanks! It really breaks the tempo of the game for me a little when I have to hit a stupid highwayman on the head 4-5 times from full gallop to kill him.

Click to expand...

What is a game without something that is so OP nothing can defeat you, exept a campaigning army>

Seán Mormont (TPS) said:

Darth Crow said:

First of all, a huge kudos to all the authors, this mod is wonderful, one of the best I've tried so far, and I've been playing Mount & Blade since about version 0.7.
I have just one single problem - the heavy armour and its defense values. I know that this is supposed to mimic the actual real life difference between wearing no/light armour and heavy armour, but come on - having to hack at someone with a huge two-handed hammer (or an axe) for 30 seconds straight to put them down, even when you're aiming for the head... that does seem a little overblown. I could understand that for a low-level character, but on level 30 you'd expect your attacks to have just a little more effect
So... is there a way to reduce the effectiveness of heavy armour? Thanks! It really breaks the tempo of the game for me a little when I have to hit a stupid highwayman on the head 4-5 times from full gallop to kill him.

Click to expand...

What is a game without something that is so OP nothing can defeat you, exept a campaigning army>

Click to expand...

Given the fact that, again, the Swadians are capable of fielding an army of people wearing that armour...

... but yet, in almost every AND game I've had (and I've played a number), the Swadians are one of the first major factions to be defeated.  I'm not sure how that reconciles with the claim that they're OP because of their gear. 

YMMV

Faactions get defeated almost semi-randomly because the autoresolved battles are based mostly on army sizes. Equipment doesn't factor into battle calculations at all, unless you're actually fighting the battle manually.

SenpaiHinds said:

Faactions get defeated almost semi-randomly because the autoresolved battles are based mostly on army sizes. Equipment doesn't factor into battle calculations at all, unless you're actually fighting the battle manually.

Click to expand...

This, but also:
In the game I'm playing, the Swadians and Vaegirs have each claimed half of the map. The kingdoms left are the Rhodoks, who are being kept alive by random Sun Crusader and Highlander spawns near their border (they lost Veluca and the town that starts with J can't remember the name right now) to the Ballions early on, but the Swadians went on to eradicate them) , the Sarranids, who have not been at war with either faction, the Junmans, who I've sided with, and the Nords, who only have two castles left--they lost Tihr and Sargoth to the Swadians, and Wercheg to the Vaegirs. The Swadians are currently preoccupied with shutting down the Junmans, which is why the Nords still exist; the only reasons they haven't finished us off yet are my save editing (and, again, even with maxed out stats, their armour negates nearly all of my damage, even with the strongest hammer I could find), and the fact that Junman Plunderers, Raiders, etc. are swarming the countryside; the Swadians often start marching towards Curin Castle (my poor liege's capital), then get distracted by Junman bandit mobs and return home after a few weeks of man hunting.
The Khergits lost two towns to the Sarranids, early on, following which the Vaegirs swept down from the north and cleaned out their castles and one of their towns shortly after. Most of the minor factions founded a kingdom, at one point or another, but they've since been wiped out by; the Ballions didn't even last a month after the Swadians declared war on them, despite the fact that they'd managed to capture and hold two Rhodok towns for several months before that.

So I'm not really sure how valid your anecdotal evidence is, Ditchinit.

Their cavalry can be tough, especially if you fight them on flat, open ground. But I've also seen the Swadians defeated a number of times.

Service_Disconnect said:

Their cavalry can be tough, especially if you fight them on flat, open ground. But I've also seen the Swadians defeated a number of times.

Click to expand...

Or if you fight them on hilly, forested ground. Or if you fight them in sieges. Or if you fight them pretty much anywhere.

The auto-resolve feature doesn't run miniature battles; it gives each soldier a value, changes a few other values based on the circumstances (IE A New Dawn gives armies a home field advantage), then smashes the resulting armies against each other until one side has no troops left. Since the Swadians spawn in the middle of the map, and therefore have contested borders with pretty much every other faction, this usually means that they'll start to lose territory purely because they won't have the resources to fight all the battles they need to. It does not mean that, in the actual battles, their soldiers are not silly.

Snowskeeper said:

SenpaiHinds said:

Faactions get defeated almost semi-randomly because the autoresolved battles are based mostly on army sizes. Equipment doesn't factor into battle calculations at all, unless you're actually fighting the battle manually.

Click to expand...

This, but also:
In the game I'm playing, the Swadians and Vaegirs have each claimed half of the map. The kingdoms left are the Rhodoks, who are being kept alive by random Sun Crusader and Highlander spawns near their border (they lost Veluca and the town that starts with J can't remember the name right now) to the Ballions early on, but the Swadians went on to eradicate them) , the Sarranids, who have not been at war with either faction, the Junmans, who I've sided with, and the Nords, who only have two castles left--they lost Tihr and Sargoth to the Swadians, and Wercheg to the Vaegirs. The Swadians are currently preoccupied with shutting down the Junmans, which is why the Nords still exist; the only reasons they haven't finished us off yet are my save editing (and, again, even with maxed out stats, their armour negates nearly all of my damage, even with the strongest hammer I could find), and the fact that Junman Plunderers, Raiders, etc. are swarming the countryside; the Swadians often start marching towards Curin Castle (my poor liege's capital), then get distracted by Junman bandit mobs and return home after a few weeks of man hunting.
The Khergits lost two towns to the Sarranids, early on, following which the Vaegirs swept down from the north and cleaned out their castles and one of their towns shortly after. Most of the minor factions founded a kingdom, at one point or another, but they've since been wiped out by; the Ballions didn't even last a month after the Swadians declared war on them, despite the fact that they'd managed to capture and hold two Rhodok towns for several months before that.

So I'm not really sure how valid your anecdotal evidence is, Ditchinit.

Click to expand...

Since you called me out explicitly ...

One piece of anecdotal evidence is just as valid as another, don't you think?  I added my observation from my experience which was contrary to your own.  That doesn't invalidate your experience or opinion.  This isn't about winning as some forum warrior.  It is about having fun playing Warband and this mod.  I've long come to terms that this mod is unlikely to ever be changed except for what we do with it ourselves.  Sure, there are good things and less wonderful things about it.  There are many things I would love to see changed too, but the fact is that the mod is what it is as is ... and armor values and behavior are a part of this mod.  We can either learn to work around this feature, use it to our benefit, or play a different mod that may be more suited to our taste.

Enjoy.

I used your name because you were the only person taking that position when I made that post. I made that post because I wanted to show why anecdotal evidence is not useful, not because I thought my anecdotal evidence was more valid than yours. And, lastly, I'm not trying to win a forum war; I'm trying to defend my position, which is that armour, especially the armour that the Swadian knights make use of, needs to be balanced. If I fail to make that point, then I've failed to justify that opinion. Not that there's currently any danger of that, since your post does nothing to contradict what SenpaiHinds pointed out, which is that battles between AIs are decided semi-randomly.

You're taking this too personally.