Shall we talk about the paper armors?

[Philozoraptor]

You do realize that untrained, unarmed peasant masses in armies were generally avoided because: A) they were too valuable as a source of labour, food and taxes and B) were very prone to routs (since it is believed that 10-15 % casualities during battles resulted in rout most of the time during mediaval period). Current recruit units in vanilla should be probably replaced with tier 2 or even tier 3 units, at least when used by lords (we can probably get away with player hiring absolute rabble because he is poor in the beginning). Shield, helmet, thick clothes or gambeson and spear + axes should be bare minimum for recruit, at least from "historical immersion" perspective.

 

[Marajah]

Current recruit units in vanilla should be probably replaced with tier 2 or even tier 3 units, at least when used by lords (we can probably get away with player hiring absolute rabble because he is poor in the beginning). Shield, helmet, thick clothes or gambeson and spear + axes should be bare minimum for recruit, at least from "historical immersion" perspective.

I agree with this, and it's another reason for not widening the armor gap too much: tier 2 troops are lightly armored. If they don't break, they should have a chance to win against outnumbered tier 5 troops, instead of bonking them for no effect until being cut down

 

[Berzerker Jay]

Just to chime in my two cents here, I don't have this problem. I don't expect to be invincible, and thought the invincibility one could practically attain in Warband was a bit much.

In my current playthrough I am playing a Battanian giant with a melee focus as well as bow. I now have the Highland Scale Armour over Mail (I believe that's the name of it,) and I routinely run out ahead of my troops smashing multiple enemies at a time, and even when I mess up I still have a good chance of getting back to my troops without getting knocked out. I can take quite a few hits from most weapons, and the rocks don't really do much at all.

Do you think you should attain invincibility? Would it be immersive if you stood there in front of an army of looters catching their rocks all over and not being impacted? I certainly don't. In real life that would eventually wear you down and they would overtake you.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

To the point, here's a very well done short film that basically shows a hero in full plate armour going up against a band of looters alone.

The Knight of Hope

 

[Philozoraptor]

It always buffles me why people play against the looters all the time, its the worst most boring part of the combat gamaplay (monoarmy with garbage gear and garbage loot and zero tactics), you can literally avoid fighting them after 30 minutes of playing and never again bother with them, looters should not be benchmark of anything. More focus should be put on how funny and immersive (and balanced if you are into that in SP) big battles are, not literal gameplay padding that is looters.

Also if realism would be focus, armors should be more more powerfull in general, this includes gambesons.
I even made some tables based on scientific literature and experimental evidence which I apllied in my mod.

 

[vonbalt]

It always buffles me why people play against the looters all the time, its the worst most boring part of the combat gamaplay

Exactly, people say "oh but if you boost armor you'll be invincible against looters and that's bad"

But what about medium/high tier units? those would get the biggest benefits of improving armor, the player is just one but armies can have hundreds of those units that would be a treat to you and your army with being able to tank more hits instead of dying in one or two as in vanilla.

in warband lategame i was basically invincible against looters yes but i still dreaded a charge of swadian knights against me, or nord huscarls, rhodok sharpshooters etc if i wasn't accompanied by equally strong soldiers.

 

[Marajah]

Exactly, people say "oh but if you boost armor you'll be invincible against looters and that's bad"

But what about medium/high tier units? those would get the biggest benefits of improving armor, the player is just one but armies can have hundreds of those units that would be a treat to you and your army with being able to tank more hits instead of dying in one or two as in vanilla.

in warband lategame i was basically invincible against looters yes but i still dreaded a charge of swadian knights against me, or nord huscarls, rhodok sharpshooters etc if i wasn't accompanied by equally strong soldiers.

Yeah, top end units were dreadful because other units were completely helpless against them. No amount of strategic/number superiority could change that. Hit for 0-1 damage -> dead.

Also, we're talking about soloing armies, not armies of looters. Again, if you guys have your fun with 10 legionnaires cutting swathes through 100 tier 1-3 units because they are invulnerable, be my guests. Just don't claim it's for the sake of realism.

 

[darksoulshin]

JOINT HURTBOXES and ARMOR HURTBOXES: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system(suggestions)

I wrote this thread to solve 3 problems:
1) armies based on archers generated the snowball effect (khuzait) and in multiplayer the archer has a huge advantage: wherever he hits, even if the armor is very heavy, the damage is still sufficient if you take into account factors such as "the lightness of the unit and increased speed of movement".
2) paper armor.
3) hand-to-hand combat much deeper than it already is (it would require a few more mechanics, but not everyone who has mastered the game wants to give up the pro position due to the introduction of some mechanics that risk changing the metaplay )

 

[five bucks]

Maybe it shouldn't be so powerful then or have a counter for better gameplay? blunt damage is absurd ignoring 100% of armor, there is no reason to use anything other than a blunt weapon then (unles asthetics of course but that isn't good gameplay)

Agreed. Besides, real life armor has padding and isn't completely useless against blunt damage. The damage formulas need a looking at.

1) armies based on archers generated the snowball effect (khuzait)

Faction balance has very little to do with field battle damage calculation, and the snowball effect has nothing to do with it, and I'll explain why.

Only the player fights real battles. All battles the AI fights against each other are autocalculated. The autocalc is a fairly simple system which doesn't actually simulate the effects of a real battle. In a real battle, archers are overpowered because the damage calculation lets them deal massive armor-piercing damage. In an autocalc battle, each archer is basically just counted as one number that is no stronger than any other unit.

The snowball effect- which is mostly fixed now anyway- was caused for numerous reasons such as AI lords travelling too far out of their territory to declare war, Khuzait cavalry armies being faster than everyone else on the world map, AI lords defecting a lot, AI kings going bankrupt or declaring too many wars at once, and various other factors, but it was not due to the Khuzaits having archers.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

Should be added that blunt weapons tend to generally be less effective, otherwise, than other weapons. Maces, for example, are all slower and shorter than swords.

That said, if 100% is the real metric, that's ludicrous. While the shock of impacts does go through armour, the armour does dampen this even without padding, but most armour has padding to directly attend to this. I could see as much as 75% or something like that, but 100% isn't sensible. Most of a blunt impact will be felt through armour, but not all.

This all being said, one of the biggest advantages blunt weaponry had against armour was in actually immobilizing it or otherwise affecting the wearer's ability to fight. That's not in the game, and may be difficult to reflect in the game. So this is a tough one.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

For example: without considering the opponent's armour, two-handed maces are nothing compared to two-handed swords and axes in the game, in all measures. The swords and axes are longer, faster, and deal quite a lot more damage.

 

[ratschbumm]

Shield, helmet, thick clothes or gambeson and spear + axes should be bare minimum for recruit, at least from "historical immersion" perspective.

From the "historical immersion" perspective I am disagree about helmet, at least without precise description of it. In the history of our world metal helmets were most expensive things up to late medieval. So the typical helmet was just very thick fur/leather cap over the quilted/padded coif (or just coif). next tier was about mailed coif, and all types of spangelhelms it's about small nobles or "full-time" man-at-arms, not for an ordinary shieldwall member.

What I am vehemently agree about, it's a shield. Only idiot could send to fight a levy in formation without at least jerry-rigged plank shield. ANY fighters group without shield is a weak part of ranks. More of it, there even was a proverb, saying 'Best armor of man is his shield'.

 

[daxiapi777]

I don't see TW addressing this problem anytime soon. Bannerlord is supposed to be a fast-paced action RPG, and increasing the effectiveness of armour could only slow it down.

 

[five bucks]

I don't see TW addressing this problem anytime soon. Bannerlord is supposed to be a fast-paced action RPG, and increasing the effectiveness of armour could only slow it down.

There is such a thing as TOO 'fast paced'. Right now even the biggest battles end in about 3-4 minutes and the player doesn't get the chance to enjoy the spectacle.

 

[Apocal]

what? The only way you could solo an army in warband was on the easiest damage settings and cheesing the AI until you almost died of boredom from charging and retreating to pick them one at a time (or using horse archery with lots of arrows in the inventory to replenish going to the inventory chest in your spawn point)

You could lance the men at the edges of their formation ad infinitum as well. That was how I solo'ed lords' parties in Native sometimes. The only investments you needed were enough strength for the lance and enough riding for a fast enough horse.

There is such a thing as TOO 'fast paced'. Right now even the biggest battles end in about 3-4 minutes and the player doesn't get the chance to enjoy the spectacle.

I'm not using any mods currently but it takes about 10-15 minutes for battles between two armies to resolve. Even just a mid-sized 600 on 500 takes longer than four minutes. If you're finding battles between 2000+ troops ending in three or four minutes, that's definitely something not normal.

 

[Philozoraptor]

500 v 500 battles are not very long in vanilla (less so if lot of ranged units are included), bigger battles might take longer due to reinforcements and regrouping, but clash of 2 melee lines takes 2-3 minutes max (since units of equal tiers tend to kill each other in 2-3 hits and parry and block very little).

 

[Berzerker Jay]

As to the duration of battles, the only way I'd really like to see them take longer is maybe in the initial skirmishing and maneuvering. Once two opposing lines met in battle, things generally got decisive fast. The exceptions to this are when two opposing sides both hold to defensive positions. If both sides are aggressive, the battle's sorted pretty rapidly and one side or the other takes the advantage.

 

[chemical_art]

In my experience blunt weapons simply have too much base relative to other weapons. I'm not referring to looter rocks but maces and such. When standard ones drop over 50 damage and high tiers one over 70 and you simply wreck any kind of armor. Either reduce that damage or make the swing speed fall off as range increases more sharp so there is more tradeoff to whacking armor and capturing to boot

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Also, we're talking about soloing armies, not armies of looters. Again, if you guys have your fun with 10 legionnaires cutting swathes through 100 tier 1-3 units because they are invulnerable, be my guests. Just don't claim it's for the sake of realism.

They were never that invulnerable in warband, unless you turned the damage down, then it could be 0-2 and such. IMO A legionnaire should be able take out 10 t1-2 units on full damage, why not? It's ****ing Legionnaire it should be elite!

It always buffles me why people play against the looters all the time, its the worst most boring part of the combat gamaplay

TBF I start new games all the time so I have a lot of those first few looter fights added up. After that they just for leveling up troops.

Do you think you should attain invincibility? Would it be immersive if you stood there in front of an army of looters catching their rocks all over and not being impacted? I certainly don't.

I would be fine with seeing zeros from recruits, peasants and looters when you have enough armor or against a t5-6 units. I'd think it was really good if they just hard coded damage limit of t1-2 to higher tiers for now, until they actually enhance and balance everything, which is not going to be over anytime soon.

Really it should be a non-issue, as recruits and t2 should never ever even land a hit on anything more then a couple tiers above them in the first place! But the AI is not finished and the speed boosted damage and blunt damage is out of control.

 

[Berzerker Jay]

But we all know that auto-resolving is going to produce a less desirable result. This has been a game-mechanic in every M&B game. To test for this, I auto-resolved against a lot of big groups of looters today. I did lose troops, but I had to get really reckless and perhaps lazy in order to do it. If I play it out, then yes, my high-tier troops withstand them easily.

I mean, why wouldn't I just always auto-resolve if there couldn't be consequences?