Why "Focus Fire" Should be a top priority and implemented immediately.

Should a "Focus Fire" command for ranged units be a top developmental priority?

  • "Focus Fire" should be a top priority and should be implemented immediately.

    Votes: 51 46.8%
  • "Focus Fire" should be implemented eventually, but it is not a top priority.

    Votes: 50 45.9%
  • "Focus Fire" should not be implemented at all.

    Votes: 3 2.8%
  • I do not care about "Focus Fire" one way or another.

    Votes: 5 4.6%

  • Total voters
    109

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Viking Conquest is the best M&B experience there is. Anyone who disagrees can settle the dispute with me not through words, but a boxing match, the sport of true gentlemen!
It seems like VC has a lot of great features that its a wonder why a lot of them didn't make it into future iterations of M&B like Bannerlord, especially when it comes to Ai control. Hopefully the devs will take a further look into what worked so well about that game and reconsider implementing some of those features into BL.
 
It seems like VC has a lot of great features that its a wonder why a lot of them didn't make it into future iterations of M&B like Bannerlord, especially when it comes to Ai control. Hopefully the devs will take a further look into what worked so well about that game and reconsider implementing some of those features into BL.
Do you think anyone in TW actually played VC? For them, it's just a third-party DLC they were selling and not a ready, tested design to learn from.
 
Do you think anyone in TW actually played VC? For them, it's just a third-party DLC they were selling and not a ready, tested design to learn from.
What other titles they should play if not TW branded products? Legend of Zelda? This should be their CV strongest point -> min. 100hrs original M&B, 1000hrs in Warband, 1000hrs in VC, 100hrs in F&S, 1000hrs in Napoleon (for those dealing with Multiplayer).

It is like: 'Man, I work for C&C but I drink Pepsi most of the time.'
Viking Conquest is the best M&B experience there is. Anyone who disagrees can settle the dispute with me not through words, but a boxing match, the sport of true gentlemen!
Must say it is great fun. Building your camp, unit experience, diplomacy, top-notch, battle commands, etc. This is all that 'Vikings' and 'The Last Kingdom' fan such as myself needs waiting for another season... But I must say because of the shield wall formation abuse and lack of cavalry, it starts to be a little bit dull during battles in some time... I hope this last sentence does not qualify me as your next sparring partner.

I am late to the party but to the main point of this thread. We desperately need focus fire or similar mechanics and we need it now! Why?

Because it is vastly stupid when one (literally one) cavalryman disperse your whole shield wall formation into sliced pork they will soon become torn apart by the enemy's arrows! It is stupid as hell, isn't it?
 
Do you think anyone in TW actually played VC? For them, it's just a third-party DLC they were selling and not a ready, tested design to learn from.
DQkJM.gif

:lol:
 
The problem is archers are op enough as is. So unless drastic improvements are made to armour and formations, granting such a command would make archers dominate even more.
 
The problem is archers are op enough as is. So unless drastic improvements are made to armour and formations, granting such a command would make archers dominate even more.
I wish this was a problem in multiplayer but sadly archers and skirmishers are the least chosen class because of how poorly they perform. Im all for increasing armor values but I dont think that this should be a reason to restrict control options for the player, especially when without this command it is causing serious exploits with the ai.
 
Must say it is great fun. Building your camp, unit experience, diplomacy, top-notch, battle commands, etc. This is all that 'Vikings' and 'The Last Kingdom' fan such as myself needs waiting for another season... But I must say because of the shield wall formation abuse and lack of cavalry, it starts to be a little bit dull during battles in some time... I hope this last sentence does not qualify me as your next sparring partner.

I am late to the party but to the main point of this thread. We desperately need focus fire or similar mechanics and we need it now! Why?

Because it is vastly stupid when one (literally one) cavalryman disperse your whole shield wall formation into sliced pork they will soon become torn apart by the enemy's arrows! It is stupid as hell, isn't it?
Never really saw "The Last Kingdom" but I like the books a lot, mainly for their top-of-the-line description for battle scenes in books. The show looks too ridiculous with its costumes to interest me very much. The books don't have this problem. I've seen more of "Vikings" but again the costumes are too ridiculous for me. The shield wall abuse and lack of cavalry thing are sorta valid, but it's very accurate for the period and place.

I wasn't thinking so much of a sparring session, more like going 100% and working towards the knock-out, but I think you don't dispute my main point. I could use more sparring partners though, I'm short of them at the moment.

But it's amazing how Bannerlord calls itself part-strategy, yet it gives you almost none of the key tools necessary to play it as such and is designed in such a basic manner. Something like focus fire would be a great and easy step towards being able to micromanage the battle strategy. Trying to take out the archers by only able to have my cavalry follow me just doesn't cut it.
 
The problem is archers are op enough as is. So unless drastic improvements are made to armour and formations, granting such a command would make archers dominate even more.
Archer AI in cap mode are not op. They are the opposite of op. They have too slow movement speed. Too slow fire rate, and they have a ridicules bad accuracy. All inf unit classes from all factions, can without any effort or skill own any archer class. And 1 single cav can also with no skill or effort reduce a group of archers to a bunch of confused schoolchildren with cerebral palsy. I guess you don't play archers very often.
 
I’m only talking about sp, I haven’t played mp since release so I am oblivious to its current situation.
 
I’m only talking about sp, I haven’t played mp since release so I am oblivious to its current situation.
I think there are a lot of improvements that could be made to mitigate the overall effectiveness and prevalence of archer spamming in SinglePlayer, like you suggested improving armor effectiveness is one way to do this as well as decreasing the overall output damage of projectiles. I would rather see these nerfs to damage and stat adjustments be made in order to balance this and still have the added option to have more control over the battle situation with the implementation of focus fire on top of that.
 
I think there are a lot of improvements that could be made to mitigate the overall effectiveness and prevalence of archer spamming in SinglePlayer, like you suggested improving armor effectiveness is one way to do this as well as decreasing the overall output damage of projectiles. I would rather see these nerfs to damage and stat adjustments be made in order to balance this and still have the added option to have more control over the battle situation with the implementation of focus fire on top of that.
I am completely with you on this one, I’m just saying the order of implementation matters.

In the end, it is just another mechanic you would expect from a modern medieval battle simulator.
 
I’m only talking about sp, I haven’t played mp since release so I am oblivious to its current situation.
Ah, got it.. And I haven't played SP since 1.0.1. But I hope that SP have been improved since then. The dev's have been using 98% of their time on SP. But still, I think archers in SP and MP should be a great force, that will force the players to have a tactic to counter them.
 
The problem is archers are op enough as is. So unless drastic improvements are made to armour and formations, granting such a command would make archers dominate even more.
the only reason archers are op is cause the armor formula is completely bonkers, it's basically protects you the same as wet toiled paper wrapped around the body (the best armors in the game that cost thousands will only mitigate around 30-40% damage maximum, lower tiers that are far more common protect even less)

mods like RBM that drastically increase armor effectiveness make archers much more balanced with only mid-top tier ranged troops being really threatening in numbers.

TW acknowledged that armor needs improvement like months ago but we haven't heard a word of it since..
 
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the only reason archers are op is cause the armor formula is completely bonkers, it's basically protects you the same as wet toiled paper wrapped around the body (the best armors in the game that cost thousands will only mitigate around 30-40% damage maximum, lower tiers that are far more common protect even less)

mods like RBM that drastically increase armor effectiveness make archers much more balanced with only mid-top tier ranged troops being really threatening in numbers.

TW acknowledged that armor needs improvement like months ago but we haven't heard a word of it since..
Having armor that protects 100% against range is not a tactic. If you could counter range by going into a shield wall then it would be too easy. And no fun to be a shield or archer class.
 
the only reason archers are op is cause the armor formula is completely bonkers, it's basically protects you the same as wet toiled paper wrapped around the body (the best armors in the game that cost thousands will only mitigate around 30-40% damage maximum, lower tiers that are far more common protect even less)

mods like RBM that drastically increase armor effectiveness make archers much more balanced with only mid-top tier ranged troops being really threatening in numbers.

TW acknowledged that armor needs improvement like months ago but we haven't heard a word of it since..
Yeah, but RBM is a band-aid. There should be ways for the AI to protect itself without needing big armor values. In fact that to leads something I dislike about RBM: units with looots of armor (so all top tiers in Native Bannerlord) are a pain to kill, not because they are somewhat competent but because they are DPS sponges.

With archer fire doing slightly less damage, better armour and formations, we'd end up with something much more enjoyable: arrows (and bolts) can stilll deal a massive amount of damage, especially on unarmoured units, but can also be consistently be protected from (proper shieldwall and blocking, so no attacking a dude 5 meters away that's already getting gangbanged).

In that situation, focus fire would actually shine (I'm only talking about SP, reminder): because it would be actually rewarding! Finding the weakspot in the formation, or even using focus fire on skirmishers to break shields before sending the arrow shower... Mind you, we would also need to basically use the RTS Camera features...

Without functional armour, proper formations and competent AI soldiers... giving more tools for archers is a mistake, imho, because everything even further off balance in favour of archers. I would want to see it happen, mind you, just not right now.

Mp is another story, as other more informed forumites have stated, and it could even be testing grounds for the feature (which, let's be honest, doesn't sound like it would be hard to implement...).
 
Yeah, but RBM is a band-aid. There should be ways for the AI to protect itself without needing big armor values. In fact that to leads something I dislike about RBM: units with looots of armor (so all top tiers in Native Bannerlord) are a pain to kill, not because they are somewhat competent but because they are DPS sponges.

With archer fire doing slightly less damage, better armour and formations, we'd end up with something much more enjoyable: arrows (and bolts) can stilll deal a massive amount of damage, especially on unarmoured units, but can also be consistently be protected from (proper shieldwall and blocking, so no attacking a dude 5 meters away that's already getting gangbanged).

In that situation, focus fire would actually shine (I'm only talking about SP, reminder): because it would be actually rewarding! Finding the weakspot in the formation, or even using focus fire on skirmishers to break shields before sending the arrow shower... Mind you, we would also need to basically use the RTS Camera features...

Without functional armour, proper formations and competent AI soldiers... giving more tools for archers is a mistake, imho, because everything even further off balance in favour of archers. I would want to see it happen, mind you, just not right now.

Mp is another story, as other more informed forumites have stated, and it could even be testing grounds for the feature (which, let's be honest, doesn't sound like it would be hard to implement...).
oh absolutely agreed, improving armors is just a small part of it but we also need competent AI and formations that work as they should.

Right now the best formation in the game is simply no formation at all and just charging, anything else will give you more loses since the AI is only competent at fighting if they are constantly moving instead of using teamwork in formations to protect each other.
 
Right now the best formation in the game is simply no formation at all and just charging, anything else will give you more loses since the AI is only competent at fighting if they are constantly moving instead of using teamwork in formations to protect each other.
Oh no, the best formation is:

Infantry! Hold this position! Shields up!

Archers! Hold this position! Fire at will!

*ennemy starts routing or has no more reinforcements* Everyone! Chaaarge!

Edit: Forgot optional distraction cavalry or Sun Tzu's F1+F3 Horse Archers :ohdear:
 
Oh no, the best formation is:

Infantry! Hold this position! Shields up!

Archers! Hold this position! Fire at will!

*ennemy starts routing or has no more reinforcements* Everyone! Chaaarge!

Edit: Forgot optional distraction cavalry or Sun Tzu's F1+F3 Horse Archers :ohdear:
Yes that is almost every battle scenario, sometimes I'll order the sergeant to take charge
 
If we put these dummy bots in their charging state against an actual disciplined formation of the time, they wouldn't put a dent in the formation and would get too wounded and tired to continue. The whole formation combat is a giant mess. You have casualties inflicted at a faster rate than what a Maxim gun would do. Utterly obnoxious. And doing anything other than telling them to "charge" just gets all your infantry killed. I should be able to put my men in a shield wall, have them "focus fire" on the enemy's infantry, and be competent and deadly in their formation. Same thing if I just have them sitting still.
I’m only talking about sp, I haven’t played mp since release so I am oblivious to its current situation.
Trust me, in regards to MP, ignorance is bliss.
 
Even with just an extremely simple implementation of:

-If a Unit has a "Face This Direction" command active, acquire targets nearest the designated point first when using a ranged weapon.

Would solve 3/4s of this problem with a dozen lines of code and without changing the precious command tree structure. This shouldn't affect enemy Commander AI for singleplayer, as far as I can tell they don't seem to use facing commands this way.
 
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