Do you think infantry with spears will be less ****?

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There are two main types of sophism in this forum:

1) to think that the game needs to be as realistic as possible even if it would hurt balance, performance or fun.

2) to think that the game must cater only experienced, competitive multplayer gamers, even if they're only a small (and entitled) fraction of the community.
 
Well the downer there is that spears, as they are now, aren't fun to use on foot. Nevermind balance or realism, and I don't think the standard spear really is that effective against cavalry! The current spear isn't balanced,fun, or realistic. It fails in all three fields.
 
Innocent Flower said:
Well the downer there is that spears, as they are now, aren't fun to use on foot. Nevermind balance or realism, and I don't think the standard spear really is that effective against cavalry! The current spear isn't balanced,fun, or realistic. It fails in all three fields.
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I agree, the game is meant to be fun and immersive, so it needs to be grounded on reality while balanced. This is a real argument.
 
lolbash said:
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Maybe I should be more clear. I'm not talking about NW. I refuse to give it the time of day if we're seriously discussing a combat system.  I'm talking about the Deluge, who has spears and pikes ranging from 2 meters long to 4 meters long, archers, guns, cavalry, shields, and meh armor. I'm also talking about Bello Civilli, a mod for Napoleonic Wars set in the period of the third Triumvirate. The Greek mercenaries can be disgustingly overpowered and very, very unfun to play with and against. I'm also technically talking about Native when the Rhodoks are involved, whose pikes can in the right hands be incredibly unfun to play against because of the quirks inherent to a system like Mount & Blade's.

In every mod I have played where spears are supposed to be a prominent role, regardless of armor, cavalry, weapons choice, terrain, or any other factors, I consistently feel like matches are won by numbers or luck rather than coordination and 'skill'.

And as an aside, **** realism. Everyone keeps tossing around "But it needs to be realistic" without any ****ing hint as to what that's even supposed to mean.
 
FBohler said:
Innocent Flower said:
Well the downer there is that spears, as they are now, aren't fun to use on foot. Nevermind balance or realism, and I don't think the standard spear really is that effective against cavalry! The current spear isn't balanced,fun, or realistic. It fails in all three fields.
Click to expand...

I agree, the game is meant to be fun and immersive, so it needs to be grounded on reality while balanced. This is a real argument.
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Holy ****, I couldint find out a way to write my next reply to rhade without potentially starting a heated argument with the comp players here, but thank you. You summarized what I wanted perfectly in the nicest way possible.
 
Well, this game is named Mount & Blade, wich means you may want to mount your horse and blade your enemies, not Mount & Poke'em to death.  :lol: just kiddding, lol. But yes, this is a complex subject.

What I think it should be done is, just as cavalry, infantry should have an option to couch the lance on the ground. But that's a maybe, because I think the game is pretty well on this aspect. Well, of course spears in real life were way more lethal than they already are in Warband, but the point is: what's the fun? Great part of game combat mechanics goes around sword fight, wich is one of the funniest and main aspect of the game. The spears go quite well against cavalry, since it has bonus damage and are capable to fully stop a charging horse, but two infantry regiments fighting each other with spears could be very boring. And, not forgetting, it's a game. We can't evocate all the realism and all the circustances that could happen in real life in a game (well, not yet). Also, there's not a very good reason to use spears without a propper formation system, and the spearmen would die easily by swords if the formation was broken, as said above by some people.

I don't think that spears are **** in the game, but it's use has been applied to more specific roles, like anti-cav or, in my personal case, stabbing soldiers by distance in sieges. And, this is my personal opinion: watching a bunch of soldiers in a live mass of chaos slashing themselves is way more fun than just watch them poke each other by distance.
 
Well there are still caveats to using the spear; While not as bad as mount and blade, they are still pretty hard to use as effectively with a shield in the other hand, the longer they are the worse it gets

They're not that easy to break, and I'd say the complaint about how everything breaks in renactment when "everyone's only using a 10th of their power" is a misguided one; You're only free to abuse your equipment because your life doesn't depend on it, so you can smash your spear into shields or hit blade on blade if you wanted to. In general, people battled far more conservatively than they did in games, because their life was on the line, and a lot of soldiers didn't want to actually kill their enemy, just make them route, thanks to morality and such. A reinactment's like Red orchestra: everything looks right and it's all modeled to be accurate, but everyone's shooting to beat their opponent and they're all a 10th as careful about it because the player ain't gonna die.


But yeah, Sword+Board>Spear+board, even though Spear>>Sword. Plus in later history you've got specialised rolls like that one guy you send forth, plate+hallberd, to mess up an enemy's pike formation.
 
Honved said:
A pike or long spear beats a sword, but sword plus shield was a very viable alternative if you could force your way past the range advantage (usually with some losses). The spear benefits from order and organization, the sword works best in a state of chaos.  Rome started out with spears and hastas (a knife bladed spear-like weapon), but after several painful battles against Gauls with sword and shield, decided to go that route instead.  Problem was, it took a LOT of discipline and high morale to get a line of men to gather the courage to push past the spears into effective sword range.  When it worked, the sword proved decisive; where it failed to push past, or the troops wavered, the spears won.

Rome still used the spear as a defensive weapon in many engagements, and its fabled (and very misunderstood) Triarii were armed with spears, not swords: they were generally the "specialists" in the army, such as smiths, paymasters, clerks, engineers, head cooks, or others with a lifetime of service and skills that were hard to replace, NOT the elite fighting force that many game players use them as.  If they had to get involved, holding the enemy back with spears while the youngsters tried to reorganize the defense, it was already a bad day.  With large pensions at stake (a defeated Legion might be disbanded, forfeiting all of its accumulated pensions and loot), the Triarii were certainly high-morale troops (it's amazing how much a risk to 20-30 years of accumulated pension money can motivate someone), but many were past their prime or were never that good at combat (picture fighting against a professional accountant).

The spear in formation depends on having enough points focused on the enemy to stop him from blocking all of them, or the intimidation factor preventing him from getting past the business end of the spears.  That requires multiple lines.  The sword doesn't need multiple lines to be effective, since it's faster for striking at different locations to negate a shield's coverage.  You can stab several times in succession with a spear, but it takes more time to strike a different area, so it requires more than one spear targeting different locations to effectively negate the safety of a shield.  Since the spear has greater range, that's possible, given more ranks in formation.

One on one, spear versus sword is probably marginally better with the spear, almost entirely on account of reach.  Sword and shield versus spear and shield takes away the spear's strong points and hands the advantage to the sword.  Fighting in formation with a larger group, the spear again takes the top role, with swords often relegated to exploiting breaks in the opposing line or fighting on the flanks.

I guess the effectiveness of spears may depend on formation AI, and whether the troops can form ranks instead of a skirmish line.
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You're overstating things a bit. There's almost no evidence for any major group moving away from spears or spearish weapons. Rome went from basically a phalanx to more of a heavy infantry with throwing/stabbing spear designed to penetrate shields (there's a common characterization of legionary as swordsmen, but there are a number of records of them acting as spearmen with the pila), and that only lasted a few hundred years before they were standard spearmen again. In the medieval era pretty much everyone used spears. Even groups like Vikings or Saxons that had the wealthy fighting on foot would have spears as the primary weapon and swords, axes and clubs as a backup plan.

The spear is generally better balanced, has better reach, is more durable, is more effective when thrown and can hit with more force. A sword fits on your belt and nobody looks at you like you're a freak if you bring it to dinner.
 
One way to start would be to get rid of the silliness in Warband where a spear's thrust (from the low end of reach) did less damage than a similarly lengthy sword's thrust. Make spear thrusts faster and give a variety of angles to the thrust, rather than the swinging overhead. Maybe make the stance change button offer a choice between a standard center grip and choking up on the shaft for less reach when the enemy closes in.

 
Yeah, spears should be relatively forgiving for range (basically full damage for targets in a 2-3 foot range), they should be relatively high damage compared to sword thrusts and they should transition from good one handed weapons to good two handed weapons.

The drawback of spears should be that they aren't convenient to equip, long spears suck in 1v1 and they aren't good vs shields. A knight with a lance, archer, pikeman, skirmisher, crossbowman etc all need a secondary axe or club or sword, and there should be reasons to use specialists with two handed axes or swords.
 
Rhade said:
Since everyone seems to love to use real life as a measuring stick for balance, I think we should cut out all respawning mechanics.

Because, in Rome, in real life, the legions didn't respawn when they died.

So we should address that, too.

:party:

Real life takes a back seat here. This isn't a real life simulator, it's a game. A spear is a tool and has a niche and place to be utilized, which is anti-cav and it's also useful in group-fighting situations. I tire so much of seeing people fail to understand things like that and constantly fall back on the "Well, in real life..." arguments.
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It's called immersion :wink:

People tend to roleplay a little when playing games like M&B, be it themselves, or some kind of favorite/historical character. It's a game first, but it's also a way to pretend it's real, and that gives comparisons to real life, since a lot of people pretend during gaming it's real. I understand your 'tiredness', i do feel kind of the same at times, (not necessarily the same subject off course). But also, try to understand where it comes from that people compare it to real life, and why they want it as close as possible to it.

And nothing wrong with a discussion about the usefulness of spears/lances in general though :wink:
 
Radiant Pale Knight said:
Innocent Flower said:
In regular mount and blade, The spear for infantry... It's really sucky, because they can win by just getting past the tip
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thats not how it works in the game at all
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Yes it does. Go grab a friend and go have one of you pick rhodock and get a pike while the other stand naked.


Have naked person stand directly in front of pikeman, and make sure its hugging distance.

Have your rhodock friend try and stab naked man that is 2 inches away from him. Did pikeman suceed or fail?

 
Ristridin said:
It's called immersion :wink:

People tend to roleplay a little when playing games like M&B, be it themselves, or some kind of favorite/historical character. It's a game first, but it's also a way to pretend it's real, and that gives comparisons to real life, since a lot of people pretend during gaming it's real. I understand your 'tiredness', i do feel kind of the same at times, (not necessarily the same subject off course). But also, try to understand where it comes from that people compare it to real life, and why they want it as close as possible to it.

And nothing wrong with a discussion about the usefulness of spears/lances in general though :wink:
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The counter-argument there is that he could just play any number of pseudo-medieval games that more perfectly balance weapons within niches -- in the vein of Fire Emblem or similar offerings.  :mrgreen:

It is less about realism though and more about keeping spears reasonably viable outside of situational use. Now the extreme end of the spear-line -- such as pikes and lances (if you consider those indistinct from spears) or other long spears -- being niche is fine. But there are shorter versions as well, that are more commonly used, and should offer a comparable set of stats as axes, swords, etc. while remaining distinct in terms of execution. Plus something like a sword being better at thrusting than my slightly shorter spear is just odd.
 
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