Let's talk about the spears.

[niekdegrijze]

With everything it should be possible to do everything.
what should be different are the CONSEQUENCES.

With a spear you should be able to POINT AND HIT.
But pointing and hitting should not imply that the attack is coming from one direction and therefore can be parried from that direction.

In summary:
- the thrust of a spear, the attack by moving the mouse backwards or forwards and then pressing the left mouse button, should be NON-DIRECTIONAL (in the sense in which the game means the directional attack).
As a result, the only way to block them should be to have the spear hitbox (the tip) collide with that of the equipment you use to defend yourself.
It means that you can aim and strike anywhere with a lunge and that the enemy can only block them if the weapon with which he is defending himself realistically touches the spear when he performs the parry animation.
The longer you hold down the left button, the slower and stronger the lunge becomes.
On the other hand, if you press quickly then the lunge is quick but weaker.

-In addition, it should be possible to execute short and fast horizontal blows (and obviously with a low damage whose type is associated with the tip of the spear), or wide, heavier and slower blows.
These attacks should be performed by moving the mouse to the right or left and using the left button.
The choice between fast swing or slow swing should depend on how long the left key is held down.
The longer you hold it down, the slower and wider the shot will be.

With this set of commands, the oriental style of combat with spears is even reproducible, which often involves short and fast swings, and short and fast thrust.

I would like to try this system. It sounds fun and plausible, but unless tested it remains speculative.
Then there is the problem of having the AI handling the extra system. Reacting with the appropriate blocks to the new attacks etc.

I am afraid Taleworlds wil never implement it. Hopefully they add extra damage from the start of the attack animation and extra speed for short spears.

 

[niekdegrijze]

history aside, if they reduced glances and made spear hits always knockback enemies that would be a great start already

if they are feeling a little bit wild, they could even make the AI use the polearm bash attack when enemies get too close knocking opponents back a bit, or make it so the bash pushes enemies a bit further to really give the spearman some space.

if they are feeling ultra wild, they could make so if an enemy blocks an spear with a shield in the wrong direction, it briefly stuns the opponent giving the spearman another chance to attack, just like RBM

Yes, knockback on all spear thrusts would really help a spear formation out. Maybe only after a certain length of the animation and then allow shield bash for close courters.

 

[reset5]

While whole discussion went all over the place, one thing is clear, at current state, spear in bannerlord is bad and needs to be changed.

I think adding second stance (with quick swapping) with spear's pointy end closer to your body and allowing attacks in this stance to not bounce off of enemies even in very close range, would make spear viable option in combat. I would also like them to add swing attacks from left and right (only in stance where spear is held normally) with small damage and pushback if hit successfuly as a means to keep enemy far from you.

I remember in beta, I liked spear and got good with it, because it wasn't bouncing off of enemies as much. In current game's state, spear feels like a quarterstaff without option to swing it...

To be honest though, all weapons in bannerlord are terrible at thrusts (except once you're on horse, then it never bounces and deals insane damage). Even when you use two handed sword, thrusting feels useless, animation is wonky and too long and there's like 60% change that weapon with bounce off of enemy dealing zero damage. I don't know why they made it this way, but warband's thrusting felt much more impactful and satisfying.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

Literally just have the Viking Conquest spear and you're done.

As weapons are now, you just win the game if you so much as grab a glaive and swing from horseback. TW's insistence on keeping spears one note makes absolutely zero sense when there are weapons that are blatantly the best.

 

[XDaron]

also, collision has to be reduced at the back to prevent your attack being interrupted from behind you by your allies

 

[Philozoraptor]

Yes, knockback on all spear thrusts would really help a spear formation out. Maybe only after a certain length of the animation and then allow shield bash for close courters.

We gave auto pushback to 2 H polearm thrusts in RBM and it works fine, it makes pikemen actually viable.

 

[Philozoraptor]

also, collision has to be reduced at the back to prevent your attack being interrupted from behind you by your allies

We also did this (its just xml tweak no hardcore coding). I said it multiple times, doing efficient spears is not technical problem, its matter of design choice. We even gave two distinct thrust types to spears, lower thrust have shorter range and works pretty well in close quarters and upper thrust have longer range which works very fine in formation battles since 99% of thrusts from second rank of infantry are upper thrusts.

 

[Tork789]

Some spears kept being used when swords became more affordable because (a) just because swords are MORE affordable doesn't mean they still aren't a comparatively more expensive option than spears if you're a poor fighter, and (b) as I already said, spears and pikes had an advantage against cavalry which swords didn't.

There's another reason to use spears without replacing them with swords: you can take both. A sword is comfortably dangling in the scabbard while you try to keep the enemy at spear's length and when it comes to close quarters, you got the good old sword right beside you.

 

[niekdegrijze]

We gave auto pushback to 2 H polearm thrusts in RBM and it works fine, it makes pikemen actually viable.

nice, Just started yesterday with a 1.6.5 + RBM play through and had not noticed yet.

 

[Adov]

The wat to fix spears in bannerlord is easy: Make them swing!

For short-tipped spear only some miniscule blunt damage would make sense - like in VC - but that would just mostly get in the way.

The only reason swingable polearms are this unrealistically good in Bannerlord is simple - there's no melee friendly fire. A weapon like that would wreck havoc IRL as well but the downside is - upon one's allies too and when formation is especially tight, it would just chamber block itself or lose too much momentum when the wielder is trying to pull it back. Also, there's no pole breaking or weapon loss mechanic.

The problem with thrusting polearms in the game is also quite simple - there's just not enough piercing damage and thrust speed. An adult man's weight giving velocity to a spear point makes a hell of a stab - piercing most early medieval armors or a horse's chest like butter. That is especially true when a spear is wielded with both hands - the difference between 1h and 2h mode should be way greater and the AI should be aware of it and make use of it. And a thrust is a lot harder to perceive for the opponent than a swing. So RL spears are very crit-heavy.

Spears at close quarters don't really work that great, the game gets it roughly right. There's the dagger grip technique of course - but would be clumsy to implement and, more importantly, that's a spearman's last resort - it takes precious split seconds to switch to it and the pole becomes a trouble - it makes it unbalanced and someone behind might get in its way. The only purpose of this technique is to hopefully get lucky enough to stab your opponent right in the face before they shank you down. So in close quaerters a secondary weapon (if there's any) is the way to go for a spearman - a dagger or a seax is even better than a sword in this case.

All of the above is spoken out of personal RL experience in the battlefields of historical reeanctment. In actual mortal warfare spears are even more lethal since one wouldn't restrain themself from stabbing their opponent in the face there.

 

[niekdegrijze]

We gave auto pushback to 2 H polearm thrusts in RBM and it works fine, it makes pikemen actually viable.

hi @Philozoraptor, i justed tested a few custom battles with 30 Pikeman vs 30 Sturgian heavy Axeman, and the Pikeman easily beat them every time.
a few things i noticed:
- pushback really helps
- all the javelins where thrown by the enemy while the pikeman stood still in line formation, only to 100% overshoot my line with a couple meters. (maybe because the added 10 m/s?)
- shield wall vs shield wall really makes battles last longer (a good thing)
- i could easily trick the ai by setting my units in shield wall, in response the enemy also uses shield wall, this prevents them from throwing their javelins, even when i reverse back to line formation.

I hope these observations are useful. Keep up the good work!

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

For short-tipped spear only some miniscule blunt damage would make sense - like in VC - but that would just mostly get in the way.

The only reason swingable polearms are this unrealistically good in Bannerlord is simple - there's no melee friendly fire. A weapon like that would wreck havoc IRL as well but the downside is - upon one's allies too and when formation is especially tight, it would just chamber block itself or lose too much momentum when the wielder is trying to pull it back. Also, there's no pole breaking or weapon loss mechanic.

The problem with thrusting polearms in the game is also quite simple - there's just not enough piercing damage and thrust speed. An adult man's weight giving velocity to a spear point makes a hell of a stab - piercing most early medieval armors or a horse's chest like butter. That is especially true when a spear is wielded with both hands - the difference between 1h and 2h mode should be way greater and the AI should be aware of it and make use of it. And a thrust is a lot harder to perceive for the opponent than a swing. So RL spears are very crit-heavy.

Spears at close quarters don't really work that great, the game gets it roughly right. There's the dagger grip technique of course - but would be clumsy to implement and, more importantly, that's a spearman's last resort - it takes precious split seconds to switch to it and the pole becomes a trouble - it makes it unbalanced and someone behind might get in its way. The only purpose of this technique is to hopefully get lucky enough to stab your opponent right in the face before they shank you down. So in close quaerters a secondary weapon (if there's any) is the way to go for a spearman - a dagger or a seax is even better than a sword in this case.

All of the above is spoken out of personal RL experience in the battlefields of historical reeanctment. In actual mortal warfare spears are even more lethal since one wouldn't restrain themself from stabbing their opponent in the face there.

Okay, but if a stinky little 25 damage looter hammer can defeat a T6 armored units because of the speed boosted damage, in bannerlord world a swinging spear/pike staff would too.

 

[Adov]

Okay, but if a stinky little 25 damage looter hammer can defeat a T6 armored units because of the speed boosted damage, in bannerlord world a swinging spear/pike staff would too.

Yea, normally the hammer should just fly away from the impact possibly twisting wielder's wrist along the way - but oh well, no such mechanics and maybe for good. Those looters' hammers' lucky strikes are negligible - surely frustrating when you're soloing a horde of looters but make no difference in large battles.

 

[LDominating]

They could give spears more thrusting speed and damage,a close combat mode(like the X for javelins)which would put it in hopliye style for close combat.

We can talk abouy short swords aswell.
Which could get an over the shield faster thrust instead of the normal one.
Kinda like the romans did with gladius
Ofc the soldier wouldn't be immune to slashes or have the shield count as blocking.

 

[LDominating]

Literally just have the Viking Conquest spear and you're done.

As weapons are now, you just win the game if you so much as grab a glaive and swing from horseback. TW's insistence on keeping spears one note makes absolutely zero sense when there are weapons that are blatantly the best.

Yea,that.
With that one we could get Heavy Spearmen to work aswell.

Would love short swords to behave like VC spears when it comes to thrusting.
Since they're also bad

 

[Philozoraptor]

hi @Philozoraptor, i justed tested a few custom battles with 30 Pikeman vs 30 Sturgian heavy Axeman, and the Pikeman easily beat them every time.
a few things i noticed:
- pushback really helps
- all the javelins where thrown by the enemy while the pikeman stood still in line formation, only to 100% overshoot my line with a couple meters. (maybe because the added 10 m/s?)
- shield wall vs shield wall really makes battles last longer (a good thing)
- i could easily trick the ai by setting my units in shield wall, in response the enemy also uses shield wall, this prevents them from throwing their javelins, even when i reverse back to line formation.

I hope these observations are useful. Keep up the good work!

Javelin accuracy currently does not work in custom battle, will be fixed in next release. We did not realize that until now because we were using enhanced battle test instead of custom battle.

Shieldwall mirroring is intentional, shieldwall helps units with shields so much in melee that player would beat most of enemy armies by just shieldwalling if they did not mirror it. Only weakness of shieldwall is 2 handed units, specifically 2 handed units in shieldwall perform worse than in line formation. Its temporary solution until we come up with something more clever.

 

[Ser Jon]

RBM truly is the most important mod in existence for Bannerlord right now. The changes are like night and day. Thank you again for the awesome mod, @Philozoraptor (and Marnah93!)!

 

[CrazyElf]

Those are the points I was arguing about. If you agree with that we are on the same page.

Overall I'd say the spear needs big buffs right now in the game.

That's to reflect both historical reasons and frankly, for game balance. IF a bunch of swordsman charge a spearwall with medium to longer spears on even terrain, the swordsmen should get defeated badly.

Its hard but possible, the spear won't be as wieldy but at least it is functional. It is much better then the bouncing back that is happening now.
I am not implying that the spear is better then the sword, so your little Rome fanboying was a bit unnecessary. That was just a photo i found on google to clarify what i meant and where approximately the spear would be held. Depending on the length of the spear, you would have to hold it a bit further from the pointy end.

You misunderstood me then. In the post, I was not saying Romans were superior - but rather expressing my skepticism at the supposed superiority of swords over spears. If you read my post, you'll note that I'm quite skeptical about swords.

The original poster that I was replying to implied that because the Romans used the Gladius therefore swords are better, which in my reply I explained is quite untrue.

What I am saying is that historically spears were better in many situations than the sword. That is not reflected in the game at all, with only swinging polearms have the power they deserve.

Shieldwall mirroring is intentional, shieldwall helps units with shields so much in melee that player would beat most of enemy armies by just shieldwalling if they did not mirror it. Only weakness of shieldwall is 2 handed units, specifically 2 handed units in shieldwall perform worse than in line formation. Its temporary solution until we come up with something more clever.

Maybe keep the 2 handed units to the rear and then have the AI try to flank the enemy shieldwall.

RBM truly is the most important mod in existence for Bannerlord right now. The changes are like night and day. Thank you again for the awesome mod, @Philozoraptor (and Marnah93!)!

Yeah I agree with this. RBM is a major improvement over the base game.

Maybe Drastic Battle is the only other mod that makes comparable changes, although it is a bit more conservative for the sake of compatibility.

 

[Lazregamesh]

You misunderstood me then. In the post, I was not saying Romans were superior - but rather expressing my skepticism at the supposed superiority of swords over spears. If you read my post, you'll note that I'm quite skeptical about swords.

The original poster that I was replying to implied that because the Romans used the Gladius therefore swords are better, which in my reply I explained is quite untrue.

What I am saying is that historically spears were better in many situations than the sword. That is not reflected in the game at all, with only swinging polearms have the power they deserve.

I guess we both misunderstood each other xD I didn't say you were taking any position. I just wanted to refocus on the main issue that OP is pointing out in this thread.
Spears are always gonna have a limited use in this game but at least they have to be functional and versatile. That's why they were the standard in each army.

 

[Arel37]

Only buff spears need is that they should stop bouncing off people and deal 3 damage. That's it. They are already great weapons for support roles if used right.