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Future Plans post 2 from Taleworlds
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oh, just my favorite vanilla mod! Adhd rocks
Floris Mod Pack [S]
Latest release: for Warband 1.172 Basic release available for older versions.
five bucks
Knight at Arms
Unfortunately the system needs fixing too - even in the hands of a player who knows how to use a spear properly unlike the AI, spears are still very very statistically underwhelming; they attack very slowly, have only one attack direction, do only mediocre damage at optimal range, and do terrible damage at close range.
Compared to something like two-handers which in exchange for slightly less range, do a ****load more damage and attack way faster in multiple directions.
Or especially glaives, which have every possible advantage - long range, 1h/2h, usable on horseback, enormous damage, enormously high swing speed, attack from multiple directions.
Spears and pikes need AI fixes but also statistical buffs, which is why it isn't a bad thing for pierce damage against armour to be nerfed because either way spears' base damage and/or speed has to be buffed.
I agree, though I also think that an expert archer with a longbow taking 7-8 body shots to kill someone in high-quality mail or lamellar is not too unrealistic, and much better than the current 4-5.
I have absolutely no problem destroying cavalry with only a spear in hand. The only thing that's problematic is the über-effect of horse charges (horse should be more skittish of running through pointy metal (call it realism), plus the push aside effect's also way too strong, I see what they did try to accomplish (it was usual to get stuck in crowds in Warband, and it was quite ridiculous/unrealistic) but they've over-done it. Enemy characters should not be able to push asside troops, but it happens.
Basically charges are going as the following: Horses apparently were on crack and meth since birth, hence they have absolutely no judgement and charge over spears no matter what. If the horse so much as touch you you'll either get knocked-back through the "push aside" "feature", or you'll get knocked down hard (being run over by a horse shouldn't knock you down unless you were standing right in front of it, hitting shoulder hitboxes should give a short knockback effect) As such, the only counter's to either pike the horse's head before you get hit (Spears, when attacking a horse, have a really ridiculous effect, but it's a "counter".), or you have better athletics, step aside and use over-head spear attack to poke the rider. If done right, the second one can insta-kill a full speed knight (I do it constantly), but you may take dmg in the process. As for spear effectiveness, you need to spec on it and branch perks appropriately, just like the over-board addiction towards 2 handers, there's a reason you are so effective with it, and it's because it's got AoE so you don't actually NEED to aim properly, spamming attacks will eventually kill stuff. With spears, much like any ranged weapon, you must time things and aim properly, but fully perked you'll kill anything quite fast with headshots, you simply must understand that using long spears for melee infantry close range fights' just dumb, that's the reason why short spears existed, even historically.
So let's break down the issue you're probably facing: It isn't necessarily charges (because as players we can avoid them and get those easy kills I mentioned), it isn't the use of spears on foot (as I've said, short spears exist), and it isn't spec issues neither. So what gives? Armor functionality. Any mod that fixes armor already enhances this by a thousand fold... Which's a fix that needs to make into the live vanilla since 2020... The other being AI, AI should use footwork to avoid charges and attack at the same time. Give them RNG based as to choosing between over-head for rider, or thrust for mount, and we're golden. Remove the RNG if: There's a friendly unit in front of you, if so, overhead only, and diminish the hitboxes for "friendly wall hits", specially for over-head ones, and BOOM. The problem is that the AI won't work as it used to in WB, destroying the spearmen troops efficiency, but to be really pristine the AI needs a rework that makes it operate 150% like it used to in Warband's Formation Mod. IF they do that correctly, formations like Shiledwall with perks should be unbeatable by cavalry unless flanking. Formations like Square would work as a moving slaughter-house for cavalry, and lines should get totally destroyed by cavalry on full frontal charges...
Another big-brain choice would be to allow EVERY SPEAR to be BRACED for infatry, or make the tip hitboxes on them switched on 100% of the time against horses, BOOM! (such effect would need % chance of fully stopping a horse based upon % dmg done, this way some horses with some armors could go through, but hardly alive.) For full effect, square formations would likely wipe most horses out when used with spearmen sending a bunch of dumb knights flying overhead towards the back of the formation, while shieldwalls would stop the charge (men stacked plus big shields) and the 2 line spears / polearms would try to kill the riders. That's the desirable effect. As for line formations mostly all of the cavalry would be able to pass through, but some would die in the process from spears. Than after fully applying these effects the AI could be worked around it to recognize such formations and have a judgement roll if they choose to risk it or not, or if they are over-confident or not.
A clever way to apply the full-stopping power of a shieldwall against charges would be to add a hidden effect to the formation where depending on the shield weight and size, the toon becomes immune to charge effects and "pass-through" effects from horses while blocking (WHILE BLOCKING). If the toon ****s on it and stops blocking, than the effect's gone for him
As a balancing measure, the absurd "loss of control over character" during horse prancing should be removed, if the guy's attacking it won't stop the attack, but it may interfere with the aiming (like knocking it aside requiring readjustment).
The devs do have enough references to fix the game in this regard, from both mods for WB and new mods for BL that already exist, yet apparently so far their choices as to what integrate and what not seem to lean against it more than in favor of it, the result's that we'll need another "Floris" mod tot play vanilla campaign, and we'll mostly just play heavily modded BL forever.
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You got my hopes up only to dash them, thanks a lot.
I don´t how it was back in 2010 but the communication at the beginning of the EA for the ~first half year was quite good.
i member when people were *****ing about them updating every other week
how the times changeElCrisp
Sergeant at Arms
I have done many playthrough using spears and you are correct, that if you perk correctly and play correctly you can make spears work. But that's just it you have to make them work. You have no such problem with the other weapons, they simply work out of the box.
There is nothing stopping you from hitting a character in the head with a 2hander and overkilling your target you simply dont have to.
You can also stab with swords just as you can short spears. A shorter spear is what 180 at the high end and 140 at the low end (outside javelins)
Im not even sure if a weapons reach is counted from grip to tip, or it is just the length of the weapon - in the latter case the spears lose a third of their length anyway.
If taking a short spear over a sword, in what situations is that extra ~20-40 weapon length reaping dividends over the ability to swing your weapon in 3 extra direction each of which have a suprior damage hit box for the messy mob fighting that is bannerlord infantry combat.
Which comes to in my opinion the biggest stat weaknesses of spears - their handling. This meassure the size and there fore duration of the damaging and peak damage windows during a swing or thrust.
If you sweet spot it spears can do damage equal to other weapons its just harder because they have ~25 less handling. The two hander and one hander perk trees have ways to increase their handling further multiplying their higher base values. Both one hander and 2 hander skills give better scaling per skill point than the pole arm tree putting thrusting spears further behind.
2hander swords are just a better thrusting weapon than a spear.
Relating to long spears + pikes and their supposed or ideal effectivenes against cavalry it is a at this moment a more academic than practical question. As it currently stands cavalry seem to be completely inaffective. I can have 20 tier 4 cav charge full speed into an equal number of spread out looters and they will leave with 1-2 kills. They just dont hit anything, or they dont do enough damge to kill and by the time they get their second charge off the infantry melee will already be decided because they take less than 1 minute
The most cavalry do is their minor CC disruptions when they charge / collide with you.
They rarely even hit me though, I'll get run through by about 6 horses if im caught out of position before one of them even clips me with their weapon. This CC can be anouying as a player because loss of control always is. Plus the outsized effect we as the player have on the tide of battle means any down time for us can be dangerous given how random the outcome of relatively even fights can be.
If you are talking about outright killing riders then two handers are also just as, if not more effetive because of their higher handling and base damage, multiplied by the speed bonus provided by the rider charging you. Most Cav dont have spears long enough that you cant stab the head of their horse with a two handed sword before they can touch you . the window just feels scarier because you have to let the horses get closer to you than with a spear.
There was no previous version to compare to and things that were left out and we had them before. Although vanilla M&B was lacking in some important ways, like the strategy AI, which got improved in Warband.
This can't be over-stated ever. Those lines didn't become signature meme lines for no reason.* Voiced Greetings:We are finding a terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator to voice Sea Raider greeting lines!
Oh bless his heart, he has never played Halo.
But communication the last 4 months have been pretty great as well, last month excluded (holidays & Duh's leave of absence).
Duh and other dev's have been posting tons in these last months.
Still wondering if we can get the @DeV Replied tag on topic threads. Make the replies more visible. I knew @Orion was looking into those.. Perhaps he has an update?
try playing the game with reasonable balancing mods that actually make armors a little more logical, and reduces overall HP and you'll understand that the problem isn't the spears, they can do with a bit of handling and speed buff (like 5 more for each) but other than that there's nothing to mess them with. We could also use a wider array of spears, Viking Conquest in Warband had some of the best designs for it because Brytenwalda team (guy's who made it) are history buffs and always shot their designs leaning more towards realism. Basically going to a major battle with sword's just stupid, those were expensive and inneffective against almost everything in a battlefield. They were the "pistols" backup weapons of the middle ages, not the "rifles", the "!rifles" were polearms, axes and maces, in that order. Than we had bows which were tactical harass weapons at distance, and killers at mid-range distance against non-fully covered armor. The whole "shooting the sky" is a hollywood fantasy, it was only used a few times in history by a few tacticians but the main goal was demoralizing the opponent, actually killing them doing that was nearly impossible. The only other long range use of bows and crossbows was shooting down, that was golden, if you had a good position you'd rain arrows. (Battle of Agincourt, Castle Garrison, etc) - I'm getting annoyed to have to explain that xD I'll just link a video
2 handed swords with any decent balancing against charging cavalry are just bad. If the guy has a couched lance you're dead. The fact that cutting dmg is going through the high tier armors without issues is the culprit to create this impression. The thing is, all weapons should be harder and you should always need primaries and secondaries at all times if armor worked properly. If you wanna see true almost life-like balancing you can always roll back to Warband and play 1257ad, there you get a feeling of what Bannerlord (and even warband) should be balanced like (sure it could use adjustments but it's that, high end armor is a fortune, almost impossible to get, and it's a tank against arrows, bolts, javelins, rocks and swords - even perked you shouldn't do much and the armored guy should get ZERO stun-hit effect, except for javelins)
I believe that the best compromise mod for balancing I've seen so far is https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/3961 - it still carries over some flaws from Warband and missconceptions about gear and etc, but it's a 10x better experience than vanilla is
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ElCrisp
Sergeant at Arms
So in a completely different game that isnt the one I'm talking about spears arent a problem? Nice.
Appart from that salient point. The armour in the video you presented is a single peice cuirass which isnt present in banerlord nore the periods that loosely inspires it. But dont worry I have seen the litany of other videos showing armour effectiveness everytime these realism discussions are rehashed.
I'm all for bannerlord to be inspired by or reflect real life, but first and foremost I want it to be a fun game. It's not realistic that I can't suplex a man but this is a game with limitations. Certain realisms can't be mapped by this game. So to religiously persue the select realisms that you can implement just leads to bad game design. and something that doesnt really reflect real combat anyway.
I think archers could use a nerf but that's just because I want unit tactics to not be one dimentional. I still think they should be a fun class to play with a lethal role beyond just harassment.
My opinions on the relative strength of spears in this game still stands.
Anyway we are off topic. I'm just here waiting for a patch ahah..
oh damn, you want me to link 50 videos, 20 on the subject alone + 30 on historical technology, advancements and functionality of armor?
as for the balancing, no, it isn't a different game, eventually TW will be much closer to the mod I just shared to you than what it currently is in-game. Believe me, WB plate armor was a beast, there's a reason why we all meme about the coat of plates on swadian horses, in BL without proper balancing you are basically 1hk by looters with rocks and sickles while rocking full Cataphract gear...
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five bucks
Knight at Arms
Yes. The hammier, the better!
Can I ask, how many chest shots do you think a T5 archer should take to kill a T5 armoured melee unit wearing mail-over-gambeson or lamellar at a 30 metre distance?
Bearing in mind that the current amount of shots is 4-5, and in Warband it was 7-9.
I won´t ever call TWs (as a whole) communication good. Do you know an estimated date when the deflection bug will be fixed? I don´t after 4+ weeks. Or what the next update will bring (Banners? Claimants? Major improvements to X? Armor changes because of "OP" archers? Whatever? Even 8k sheep texture)? I don´t...because see my signature.
Duh on the other hand is doing an awesome job providing information from areas he is working on or has insight on (as I believe?). Also forwarding suggestions from the forum peasants to the TW management. But one dev isn´t TW. I know, there are a few more and I appreciate every post from them (don´t care much about MP though, but that´s a personal thing).
But the real important information aren´t shared. And as you already said, Duh is not "here" = silence mostly. F for Mexxico.
I´ve experienced EA from real "indie" companies in a different ways like communicating as a standard:
- when will the next patch be ready (of course stuff will get delayed from time to time)
- what you can expect from the upcoming patch like content (of course stuff like this changes because of several different reasons)
- when an important bug will get fixed (of course stuff will get delayed from time to time)
...
...
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To me the only way of balancing it properly would be to make it depend on bow draw weight. To make it simpler for both balance and simulation ("realistic") contexts:
Short Bows: no dmg
Short Composites: Low Dmg as in 0 to 2 - with possibility of critial (simulating gaps between plates) which would do normal dmg
Longbows: enough to cause hit-stun - with possibility of critial (simulating gaps between plates) which would do high dmg
-- basically fast shooting bows should do almost nothing against it, while the heavy draw bows should give punch knocks, but not be able to kill with less than a gazillion shots --
Since I believe the game already provides us with material recognition, for the non plate mats if you hit gaps than you do massive dmg with the heavier bows, medium dmg with composites and low dmg with short bows if the gap is a mail.
Applying this to the game would signify a need to review the archer troops and the use of archer troops by the AI (earlier withdraws when skirmishing and putting bows away when being charged). To balance players, forbid the use of heavy draw bows when using full plate on the hand slot (you need your hands fine movements to do it), and bump up it's dmg against gambeson, mail and leather to at least 2/3rds of the enemy HP per shot on average.
Unfortunately game was done with, again, a heavy bias towards bows, I believe a lot of ppl would get pissed at it, but it would improve the strategic level while also making the game more close to reality.
I still stick to my opinion, the actual plates should basically make you immune, the gaps should grant dmg, and shots towards the neck always do full dmg. Shots to arms and legs with the heavier bows should do more dmg, but not enough to kill under 10 hits
EDIT: Oh yeah, provided that we get material recognition and not just hitboxes, it's golden that way, if not, bows should be given a chance to do critical simulating gap shots.
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five bucks
Knight at Arms
For the sake of simplicity of not having to rework the AI arrow targeting system, the hitboxes, and simulate many tiny little gaps on thousands of troop models at once, could direct hits to the body not be generalised/abstracted?
I'll explain what I mean: your system would call for, say, 10% of hittable space on armour to have tiny "gap" hitboxes that do 99 damage, and hitting on the rest of the body armour would do 1 damage. If accuracy for hitting the gap was around 10% then it would take 10 hits on average for a T4 archer to kill a man in T5 armour.
Whereas I would simply keep the existing system, increase armor's protection against pierce damage, and make hitting on the body do only 10 damage, so it would take 10 hits on average for a T4 archer to kill a man in T5 armour. We would simply pretend that in 10 shots, 9 had done little damage and 1 had hit a gap and done massive damage. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference at a distance.
So in the end both your system and TW's existing system with modified armour pierce damage absorption values would have the same functional outcome if you weren't looking too closely at the corpse of every troop that gets shot; but using the existing system would be less work. And I don't expect TW would even be willing to rework everything at this point.
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the problem there is that it fails to simulate properly, if you go on flat numbers that's gonna turn the armored unit into a attrition score, because if by each hit that takes a chunk, it'll make it easier for the unit to die, whereas if there's luck or, preferrably, skill involved, you can do serious damage at once, but only you / the special unit that pulled that off. That means you can create a tactical choice to hunt down specialty units that can pull such a thing off with high odds.
If you flatten it, than anyone's dangerous and we're back to square one, which wouldn't make much sense re-creating a balance for armor. It'd stay more or less the same as warband's base game.
The gap thing I mentioned you can see it happen in both BL and WB, I think it's already there, it's just not disclosed, there's a reason why we have gutt hitboxes, neck hitboxes, etc. The trick used in 1257ad was to bump the momentum effect (makes a huge difference in dmg because it increases the innate blunt dmg of all weapons) and they've bumped up the puncturing dmg effect. Seriously, if you own Warband, donwload that mod and try it out, make a full campaign run and you'll understand.
Much like Kingdom Come, at the start you'll be pretty lame and won't be able to beat top armored people, as you learn the new tricks it'll become possible, and as you progress in skill it'll become easier, but always challenging if you don't use the appropriate weapons. One thing introduced there that could use a rework is how often lances and spears break, which's a neat addition, I'd like to see it in BL, but reduced, as in making it a very rare occurence if you hit plate above certain momentum threshold
This is a big exaggeration and goes straight against many contemporary sources of the time where plate armor was used. Which was not in use in the 11th c. AD which seemingly is kind of a model for BL Calradia. So even if you were right about the impenetrability of plate armor (which you are not), it would mean not much for the BL timeframe.
There was hardly any hardened steel armor in the early late medieval ages, judging from the few surviving example, so assuming it would have existed in the early high medieval period is not convincing. There was not even much mild steel armor, most armor was made from iron. Steel and iron of varying quality, far away from what we use today, even in the best made tests.
If we assume that late medieval plate armor was used, your conclusion is also wrong. An arrow from a medium powered war bow (let's say 120 lbs) or a similar powered crossbow (let's say 800 lbs) or a javelin of about 0.8 to 1 kg weight may not have been able to penetrate a breastplate or the front side of an helmet, measuring about 1.5 to 2.5 mm. But it could probably penetrate the arm and leg armor (often 0.8 mm or less) or the sides of the helmet/visor (why else tell the sources about the fear of knights about it?).
A men-at-arms in plate armor shot through the arm or leg would be out of combat or greatly reduced in his effectiveness. BL cannot simulate this. So the armor cannot be modeled after isolated tests of the effectiveness of the most effective armor pieces alone. That's the same as creating a modern video game tank by giving it front armor strength all around.
BTW I wonder why there were projectile weapons in use in the medieval age and castles constructed to bring bows and crossbows into best use if a well equipped army could nullify the effectiveness of ranged weapons?
Wether archers in the game are able to kill an armored unit in 4 or 6 or 8 or 20 shots, I do not care that much, because I hope it will be moddable (f.e. with mods like Modifiable Armor Modifiers or Custom Damage, sadly not up to date), so anybody can do his/her thing. It's more about feeling because arrows/bolts/javelins don't tear down people's health more and more in reality, so we don't have examples how strong a bow has to be in the game. It's arbitrariness.
It can because with RBM mod, this is how you make a significant damage to highest tier units in game and eventually kill them while when shot in torso, they take 1 or 2 damage.
