Field drills and troop inspection

[VictorF]

I feel like there should be a spontaneous scene (either on the field or on a player's settlement) where one could inspect troops, train basic and advanced formations and maybe even get some xp for recruits and other low level soldiers after a few drills and some time sparing. Maybe this could be done on some sort of military camp scene... hell, even the traditional battle maps would do. Quite frankly, this is very easy to mod in and was indeed part of some amazing mods for warband, but it would be owesome if the devs could actually make the effort to put this on native... It is historically accurate and does give the player an oportunity to check out his or her own troops in all their glory, without the distraction of being in a battle.
Does anyone else think the same?

 

[Owen Wulfson]

As you've pointed out, there are mods already out there that help with some of these necessities. Frankly, if butchering looters is all it takes for a typical unit to go from lowly runt to elite grunt then I don't see why a less violent but more thought out process shouldn't be in place.

Hopefully as the game progresses either the mods or the developers will implement new features for us to access.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Warband had this feature, but the problem is that you can repeat this task infinitely with no risk. It's just a grinding machine. Even adding a "manufactured" risk like making troops randomly get injured would just discourage anyone from using it. In warband the infinitely repeatability meant that the XP gain had to be too low for it to be worth grinding, which defeats the purpose of the entire mechanic. There are so many other XP sources which are less boring than just sparring with your own guys. If a feature like this exists it should be pure flavour.

Military drilling is extremely boring and repetitive, which is half the point of why drills exist in the first place, but I don't think this should be in the game.

 

[Nakh]

Hunting countless looters to level up your recruits is boring as well. It's OK while we talk about main party, level them once and keep some prisoners to replenish losses, but if we talk about garrison for new castle or city - it's a bloody chore to do, level up 200, preferably 300 recruits just to put them in garrison and forget about them forever.

 

[Gambles]

I'd say it's already needed. In the 1.2 beta they effectively removed farming the auto resolve on looters as they now straight up kill your men. This means you have to manually fight every single looter you want to farm. Definitely not the worst thing ever but it makes it such a grind to get those early levels on recruits in mid game as you just have to load in slaughter looters and repeat forever cause there's no way to train your men outside of battle.

I think the change was super premature given that we don't have an alternative troop training mechanic right now.

 

[Gambles]

Warband had this feature, but the problem is that you can repeat this task infinitely with no risk. It's just a grinding machine. Even adding a "manufactured" risk like making troops randomly get injured would just discourage anyone from using it. In warband the infinitely repeatability meant that the XP gain had to be too low for it to be worth grinding, which defeats the purpose of the entire mechanic. There are so many other XP sources which are less boring than just sparring with your own guys. If a feature like this exists it should be pure flavour.

Military drilling is extremely boring and repetitive, which is half the point of why drills exist in the first place, but I don't think this should be in the game.

You could very easily fix that by making it only usable a certain amount of times in a week/month, or better yet have it only work up to say rank 3, beyond that it does nothing. Easy fixes for a simple problem.

 

[khuzait haircut]

At the very least inspect troops would be nice. Just to try formations.No need for attack commands. Just positioning.

 

[Pancakelord333]

Just make it so that

1. garrison passively gain XP and
2. when you visit the castle to walk around you'll see the men marching around in formation (e.g. blocks of 4x10 men marching up the main road to the castle, standing to attention for a bit, then marching off back down the main road and de-spawning when out of sight,
   • or have troops sparring in the courtyard,
   • or patrolling marketplaces.

The game will already spawn your garrisoned men around towns and castles - you see them wandering about, so there is already a system there to build off for spawning in your troops.

• Making it a manual process requiring constant/regular player input (rather than a passive one) opens up the possibility for exploiting it[and then it getting nerfed into the ground] or making it annoying to use.
• Whereas if it's a passive system you could just have a checkbox in fief screen that says "Drill my troops for XP passively Y/N - this increases garrison upkeep by X%" - reflecting the fact that a lord has their "little people" to drill his men on a day-to-day basis, he doesnt get involved in that directly, rather he manages the operation as a whole.
  • and this gives you one more thing to think about within fief management (which is so barebones right now).

 

[fireraizer]

Just make it so that

1. garrison passively gain XP and
2. when you visit the castle to walk around you'll see the men marching around in formation (e.g. blocks of 4x10 men marching up the main road to the castle, standing to attention for a bit, then marching off back down the main road and de-spawning when out of sight,
   • or have troops sparring in the courtyard,
   • or patrolling marketplaces.

The game will already spawn your garrisoned men around towns and castles - you see them wandering about, so there is already a system there to build off for spawning in your troops.

• Making it a manual process requiring constant/regular player input (rather than a passive one) opens up the possibility for exploiting it[and then it getting nerfed into the ground] or making it annoying to use.
• Whereas if it's a passive system you could just have a checkbox in fief screen that says "Drill my troops for XP passively Y/N - this increases garrison upkeep by X%" - reflecting the fact that a lord has their "little people" to drill his men on a day-to-day basis, he doesnt get involved in that directly, rather he manages the operation as a whole.
  • and this gives you one more thing to think about within fief management (which is so barebones right now).

+1

 

[brognar]

Hunting countless looters to level up your recruits is boring as well. It's OK while we talk about main party, level them once and keep some prisoners to replenish losses, but if we talk about garrison for new castle or city - it's a bloody chore to do, level up 200, preferably 300 recruits just to put them in garrison and forget about them forever.

Not only is it boring, it's frustrating and doesn't feel immersive. Do you think medieval armies trained by chasing robbers across entire provinces? It just takes you out of it and reminds you that it's just a video game. I know that seems silly because it IS just a video game and it's far from realistic, but a basic level of authenticity is important in a historically based RPG like Mount&Blade.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

You could very easily fix that by making it only usable a certain amount of times in a week/month, or better yet have it only work up to say rank 3, beyond that it does nothing. Easy fixes for a simple problem.

At that point you might as well make it accumulate passively. Having to enter the scene and waste irl time just to do some menial task is pointless.

This is all a very blinkered approach anyway: the broader issue is that the quests don't give enough xp or renown and the only way ro progress is to farm looters. They seriously either need to shorten the earlygame significantly or add triple the number of core tasks you can do.