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Ironic considering you're telling someone else its easy to do something that you won't do yourself and they don't want to do anyway.
Used to make mods, gave a hand in countless WB mods over the years, and have a degree in game development, I was simply giving him some hints that may or may not have crossed his mind, now I'm arguing with an douche because he got his feelings hurt by proxy when there was absolutely nothing offensive about what I said to the OP.

You, how many mods have done? Avoid sticking nose to others' businesses, specially when the subject was over and done just to beg attention for yourself, it's pathetic.

As for the bait pushing on "make it yourself boohoo", if you pay me I'll do it.
 
@Philozoraptor
took me over a month to get around and finally test this mod because I was strongly drawn to test Warbandlord first.
The overall improvement to AI is pretty good, and probably the best part of the mod.
With the combat module on infantry engagements look incredibly good at first, but the novelty wears off pretty quick and the issues start piling up.
First and foremost's the cavalry, cavalry AI + Combat mod = one of the dumbest experiences in gaming I've ever had. First the ally AI will do everything in it's power to body block you, be it during engagement or on marching phase, they'll keep trying to merge infantry into their horses, they'll block your attacks, they'll basically get in the way 200% of the time, if you're doing infatry playstyle, GL, the mod's only good if you delete all cavalry units from the game, and that just throwing in the PoV of allied cav. Enemy cav's a completely new beast, they are immune to spears, immunen to arrows and can only be killed during their charge at full speed, otherwise GL, you're going to have to hit the same unit 300 times before it falls, that if you aren't body blocked by your ally cav... They also retained their space-scifi singularity super power of pushing everyone aside and being able to pass through hundreds of bodies blocking the way, Super Cavalry tribute was detected on this one. Probably the reason why so many ppl like it (most M&B players don't have the skill necessary to play infantry, and whenever cav has any weaknesses there's a lot of TTing)
Secondly are overall "debalancing" of piercing dmg. The javelins and throwing axes dmg was toned down to uselessness, which's quite absurd considering the weight of these objects and the fact they'd be really hurting, even if not puncturing through armor, as is, low ammo with 5% effectiveness = wasted slot, wasted skill points. There's a reason why in WB most combat changes in mods were basically about switching archery dmg from Piercing into Cutting, instead you've basically nullified piercing dmg across the board, and that makes for crap balance. Bows are also virtually useless if used with the intended slow-motion reloading, sure it might look realistic to some, but that's not quite how medieval warfare worked. In fact bowmen would only draw arrows from their quivers every 4 to 5 shots. (OMG, HOW? Do some research xD). So it's not good neither, nor realistic.

So, changes to the combat module that would make your mod both more fun while retaining some realism to it would be to restore piercing dmg to decent numbers, improve spears a bit (either by throwing in extra handling or better adjusting their length, currently their hitboxes are somewhere between 20 to 30 centimeters in front of the tip), and removing the slow-mo for bow usage, warbows weren't slow to draw, the only bows slow to draw were longbows with massive draw weight values. You also need to revise how Combat and AI modules interact so the AI cavalry doesn't become a hinderance, by fixing spears and piercing dmg overall enemy cavalry will be managed automatically. As for bows, the low weight bows should do Cutting dmg while heavy weight ones are "upgraded" to piercing or receive a significant buff towards their hidden blunt dmg. And there you go, should fix most of it.

Even though I have all this feedback, personally I'd merge Warbandlord with your mod and call it done, overall a lot of work, but ultimately would make for the best combat mod even surpassing the best Warband ones.

Finally, congratulations on the mod, the AI module's just spetacular when comparing vanilla AI to it, I congratulate you sir, and I'll probably be deactivating your combat module in favor of Warbandlord (see if can work together), the sad part's losing the new troop tree loadouts, which are also fantastically done!

Peace and out :*
 
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@Philozoraptor
took me over a month to get around and finally test this mod because I was strongly drawn to test Warbandlord first.
The overall improvement to AI is pretty good, and probably the best part of the mod.
With the combat module on infantry engagements look incredibly good at first, but the novelty wears off pretty quick and the issues start piling up.
First and foremost's the cavalry, cavalry AI + Combat mod = one of the dumbest experiences in gaming I've ever had. First the ally AI will do everything in it's power to body block you, be it during engagement or on marching phase, they'll keep trying to merge infantry into their horses, they'll block your attacks, they'll basically get in the way 200% of the time, if you're doing infatry playstyle, GL, the mod's only good if you delete all cavalry units from the game, and that just throwing in the PoV of allied cav. Enemy cav's a completely new beast, they are immune to spears, immunen to arrows and can only be killed during their charge at full speed, otherwise GL, you're going to have to hit the same unit 300 times before it falls, that if you aren't body blocked by your ally cav... They also retained their space-scifi singularity super power of pushing everyone aside and being able to pass through hundreds of bodies blocking the way, Super Cavalry tribute was detected on this one. Probably the reason why so many ppl like it (most M&B players don't have the skill necessary to play infantry, and whenever cav has any weaknesses there's a lot of TTing)
Secondly are overall "debalancing" of piercing dmg. The javelins and throwing axes dmg was toned down to uselessness, which's quite absurd considering the weight of these objects and the fact they'd be really hurting, even if not puncturing through armor, as is, low ammo with 5% effectiveness = wasted slot, wasted skill points. There's a reason why in WB most combat changes in mods were basically about switching archery dmg from Piercing into Cutting, instead you've basically nullified piercing dmg across the board, and that makes for crap balance. Bows are also virtually useless if used with the intended slow-motion reloading, sure it might look realistic to some, but that's not quite how medieval warfare worked. In fact bowmen would only draw arrows from their quivers every 4 to 5 shots. (OMG, HOW? Do some research xD). So it's not good neither, nor realistic.

So, changes to the combat module that would make your mod both more fun while retaining some realism to it would be to restore piercing dmg to decent numbers, improve spears a bit (either by throwing in extra handling or better adjusting their length, currently their hitboxes are somewhere between 20 to 30 centimeters in front of the tip), and removing the slow-mo for bow usage, warbows weren't slow to draw, the only bows slow to draw were longbows with massive draw weight values. You also need to revise how Combat and AI modules interact so the AI cavalry doesn't become a hinderance, by fixing spears and piercing dmg overall enemy cavalry will be managed automatically. As for bows, the low weight bows should do Cutting dmg while heavy weight ones are "upgraded" to piercing or receive a significant buff towards their hidden blunt dmg. And there you go, should fix most of it.

Even though I have all this feedback, personally I'd merge Warbandlord with your mod and call it done, overall a lot of work, but ultimately would make for the best combat mod even surpassing the best Warband ones.

Finally, congratulations on the mod, the AI module's just spetacular when comparing vanilla AI to it, I congratulate you sir, and I'll probably be deactivating your combat module in favor of Warbandlord (see if can work together), the sad part's losing the new troop tree loadouts, which are also fantastically done!

Peace and out :*
Mod is not necessarily balanced, this is something people often dont get. The mod is primarely based on available data (I am scientist IRL so not gonna budge there), balancing comes into play only when we dont have enough (or any) data and with unit overhaul (since we are using vanilla unit IDs for compatibility purposes - no brand new units, no complete reworks of trees or factions) or with features not necessarely ralated to realism (Tournaments). The initial intent of the mod was to be very niche, we became "unofficial patch" by accident and natural selection since majority of other combat reworks became discontinued.

We are going more for approach of making simulation and then finding out what new gameplay comes out of it (and many aspects of historical combat actually became viable due to our attempts at simulation). So for example cav is kinda OP (it was far more powerfull historically, in RBM it has kill death ratio of 1.5-2:1 vs infantry of same tier) but its kinda expensive, at least for player due to requirement of horse for each upgrade and due to increased prices of horses in RBM. We are more interested in making cavalry counterable by some historical tactic (hill and forest = nerf to speed / couching, piercing attacks including projectiles can rear up horses) rather than by some gamey mechanism (anti cav bonus of spearmen in Age of Empires).

So this is logic we are generally following. Simulation first, balance second.
 
Mod is not necessarily balanced, this is something people often dont get. The mod is primarely based on available data (I am scientist IRL so not gonna budge there), balancing comes into play only when we dont have enough (or any) data and with unit overhaul (since we are using vanilla unit IDs for compatibility purposes - no brand new units, no complete reworks of trees or factions) or with features not necessarely ralated to realism (Tournaments). The initial intent of the mod was to be very niche, we became "unofficial patch" by accident and natural selection since majority of other combat reworks became discontinued.

We are going more for approach of making simulation and then finding out what new gameplay comes out of it (and many aspects of historical combat actually became viable due to our attempts at simulation). So for example cav is kinda OP (it was far more powerfull historically, in RBM it has kill death ratio of 1.5-2:1 vs infantry of same tier) but its kinda expensive, at least for player due to requirement of horse for each upgrade and due to increased prices of horses in RBM. We are more interested in making cavalry counterable by some historical tactic (hill and forest = nerf to speed / couching, piercing attacks including projectiles can rear up horses) rather than by some gamey mechanism (anti cav bonus of spearmen in Age of Empires).

So this is logic we are generally following. Simulation first, balance second.
I understand and can respect that. But the cav vs inf ratio wasn't really due to equipment or being mounted, it was more to do with lack of professional infantry for the most of it. Cavalry was mostly used as a skirmish unit with hit&run tactics, and they were devastating because most of the infantry were levies, not knights. Say, if you had a Roman Legionary unit in 1200ad properly equipped and tried to pull-off the mounted advantage you'd likely lose, most of the cavalry efficiency came from those factors combined. If you change the rules (which the game already does) by introducing extra efficient infantry, the whole of the statistics change. Isolated examples of specialized infantry units that crushed cavalry centric forces were Scandinavian Huscarls during the HRE invasion of Denmark, and much later down the line the Picchieri in Italy, the Scottish Sheltrons and the Swiss Guard were no joke, cavalry wouldn't do anything to these. Bannerlord mixes eras and cultures, it simulates hybridized versions of said units to some extent, like the Empire's menavilon and the Sturgian shock infantry shouldn't be in trouble against cavalry as long as they were using the appropriate tactics (positioning and formations), that's not what happens.

Anyway, just gave tips to make the mod into a better Game, and highlighted some minor misconceptions that it carried with it, but I'm fine. As for bowmen and other stuff I'll link you some videos and you might be able to start researching from there:

Lars mostly uses light draw weight bows, but some guys proved it's possible to do everything except the acrobacies he shows there even with Longbows, for the mod that translates into faster shooting for most bows and more precision/accuracy:


Armor tests show how strong the impact of longbow arrows were and how loud they were (would cause massive panic overtime, I kid you not, they'd also instantly drop anyone hit on gaps due to the depth of penetration)

Notice 13:48 shot, that'd instantly disable, fatally wounded outright.

Three dimensional Bow Precision:




More armor tests (chainmail):


Javelin / Pilum:

and I think that's enough for now xD
I didn't include plate armor on melee testing because that's an obvious, they wouldn't be affected by cutting or piercing unless it managed to find gaps between plates or through blunt force trauma. In fact a massive 2h axe to the head would instantly knock-out most helmet designs that we see in the game except for the high tier tall helmets (all cultures have those, so it's not up for debate much, basically the design of the armor must have gaps or cushions to reduce blunt force trauma, just mentioning as an indicator).
 
I understand and can respect that. But the cav vs inf ratio wasn't really due to equipment or being mounted, it was more to do with lack of professional infantry for the most of it. Cavalry was mostly used as a skirmish unit with hit&run tactics, and they were devastating because most of the infantry were levies, not knights. Say, if you had a Roman Legionary unit in 1200ad properly equipped and tried to pull-off the mounted advantage you'd likely lose, most of the cavalry efficiency came from those factors combined. If you change the rules (which the game already does) by introducing extra efficient infantry, the whole of the statistics change. Isolated examples of specialized infantry units that crushed cavalry centric forces were Scandinavian Huscarls during the HRE invasion of Denmark, and much later down the line the Picchieri in Italy, the Scottish Sheltrons and the Swiss Guard were no joke, cavalry wouldn't do anything to these. Bannerlord mixes eras and cultures, it simulates hybridized versions of said units to some extent, like the Empire's menavilon and the Sturgian shock infantry shouldn't be in trouble against cavalry as long as they were using the appropriate tactics (positioning and formations), that's not what happens.

Anyway, just gave tips to make the mod into a better Game, and highlighted some minor misconceptions that it carried with it, but I'm fine. As for bowmen and other stuff I'll link you some videos and you might be able to start researching from there:

Lars mostly uses light draw weight bows, but some guys proved it's possible to do everything except the acrobacies he shows there even with Longbows, for the mod that translates into faster shooting for most bows and more precision/accuracy:


Armor tests show how strong the impact of longbow arrows were and how loud they were (would cause massive panic overtime, I kid you not, they'd also instantly drop anyone hit on gaps due to the depth of penetration)

Notice 13:48 shot, that'd instantly disable, fatally wounded outright.

Three dimensional Bow Precision:




More armor tests (chainmail):


Javelin / Pilum:

and I think that's enough for now xD
I didn't include plate armor on melee testing because that's an obvious, they wouldn't be affected by cutting or piercing unless it managed to find gaps between plates or through blunt force trauma. In fact a massive 2h axe to the head would instantly knock-out most helmet designs that we see in the game except for the high tier tall helmets (all cultures have those, so it's not up for debate much, basically the design of the armor must have gaps or cushions to reduce blunt force trauma, just mentioning as an indicator).

Archery:

Did you even read the mod description (section numbers are different, I am copy pasting):
  1. Bow and crossbow reload rate: Bow and crossbow reload rate was changed to historically accurate speeds relevant for war equipment - three setting are available, realistic (slow), semi-realistic (moderate), vanilla (fast). This setting is applied only to player, AI will always use realistic reload.
  2. Bow drawing speed: When you unlock new bow with your skill, it will have draw speed of roughly 3 seconds, you can increase this speed further by training with the bow (skill scaling), when you have 50 more skill than is required to unlock the bow you will reach 2 seconds drawing speed, your drawing speed will further improve with more skill past that point.
  3. Speed shooting is now available to player (until TW fixes bug that is breaking the feature to the AI). You need to have 70 more skill than is the bow difficulty to unlock it.
  4. When targeting reticle (crosshair) is disabled your shot angle will be increased by roughly 5 degrees just like IRL with most of archery anchor points. This improves aiming at longer distances.

or at the articles section.

I did a lot of studying on bows and crossbows and I am doing historical archery in my free time as well. We even made proper simulation of arrow speed that depends on bow draw weight and arrow weight.

Sorry but you come off as someone who did not properly test the mod.
 
Archery:

Did you even read the mod description (section numbers are different, I am copy pasting):
  1. Bow and crossbow reload rate: Bow and crossbow reload rate was changed to historically accurate speeds relevant for war equipment - three setting are available, realistic (slow), semi-realistic (moderate), vanilla (fast). This setting is applied only to player, AI will always use realistic reload.
  2. Bow drawing speed: When you unlock new bow with your skill, it will have draw speed of roughly 3 seconds, you can increase this speed further by training with the bow (skill scaling), when you have 50 more skill than is required to unlock the bow you will reach 2 seconds drawing speed, your drawing speed will further improve with more skill past that point.
  3. Speed shooting is now available to player (until TW fixes bug that is breaking the feature to the AI). You need to have 70 more skill than is the bow difficulty to unlock it.
  4. When targeting reticle (crosshair) is disabled your shot angle will be increased by roughly 5 degrees just like IRL with most of archery anchor points. This improves aiming at longer distances.

or at the articles section.

I did a lot of studying on bows and crossbows and I am doing historical archery in my free time as well. We even made proper simulation of arrow speed that depends on bow draw weight and arrow weight.

Sorry but you come off as someone who did not properly test the mod.
I was observing the AI exclusively, didn't use bows myself during my run, only melee and throwing. Throwing's not in a good shape, but the point was just bringing what I know to help, somehow, even if minimally! I'll keep following your project though =)
 
The RBM cavalry being OP issue has been discussed in several threads lately.

So, I've been thinking. Apart from the strong armor and high skills, it's a mount that makes cavalry so OP in Bannerlord.

In reality, I guess, falling from a horse in the middle of a melee was an almost 100% death sentence to even the most heavily armored cavalrymen.

I know that a lying plate armored knight unable to stand up (like a turtle) is a popular misconception, but there could be a plethora of other deadly factors - e.g. your own horse (~600 kg) falling upon you, enemy infantry stomping you or poking their rondel daggers into your eyeslits, deep mud/water, which doesn't help to breath naturally (especially if you are crumpled under a horse or other dead/wounded people) etc.
At Agincourt many French knights (who were probably still combat capable) fell in thick mud and suffocated, when English longbowen shot their horses, and French allies kept advancing, stepping on their own fallen.

Also, in reality concussion and shock is a thing. Even without brain damage, falling prone from a saddle height will get you incapacitated at least for several seconds (which is still enough to kill you in a thousands of ways). If there is a hard ground underneath (with rocks and bumps), you may also get a broken neck, bone fracture, dislocated joint or some other heavy blunt trauma (even in full plate). Falling down at a gallop speed? Multiply all trauma factors at least 10 times.

But even in non-combat situations falling from a horse was often lethal. Drunk nobles cosplaying a Wild Hunt on their way to rape some peasant wenches? Bam!!! Count Geoffrey falls down from his horse at a 45 km/h! Bam!!! Broken neck, broken spine, broken ****ing everything! Look at that list for example:


What do we have in BL? Imperial Cataphract/Vlandian Banner Knight lost his horse/fell of a saddle at a full gallop? Nah, he'll be fine. Probably will even **** some infantry up right after he gets up almost unscathed.

So, my opinion is that instead of nerfing body armor and weapon damage/penetration values, we should make all dismounted (either by melee hits or by killing the mount) NPCs dead/knocked out, regardless of how many HP are left or what armor is currently equipped. Is that even technically possible, I wonder?
Cavalry is extremely easy to counter, the issue is the AI just doesn't. The easy way to cripple any cav spam engaging in melee is to just bring a buttload of pikes and stick them in square formation. The cav will be eaten alive and will lose momentum penetrating the square so they just get casually poked to death with extreme ease.

I understand and can respect that. But the cav vs inf ratio wasn't really due to equipment or being mounted, it was more to do with lack of professional infantry for the most of it. Cavalry was mostly used as a skirmish unit with hit&run tactics, and they were devastating because most of the infantry were levies, not knights. Say, if you had a Roman Legionary unit in 1200ad properly equipped and tried to pull-off the mounted advantage you'd likely lose, most of the cavalry efficiency came from those factors combined. If you change the rules (which the game already does) by introducing extra efficient infantry, the whole of the statistics change. Isolated examples of specialized infantry units that crushed cavalry centric forces were Scandinavian Huscarls during the HRE invasion of Denmark, and much later down the line the Picchieri in Italy, the Scottish Sheltrons and the Swiss Guard were no joke, cavalry wouldn't do anything to these. Bannerlord mixes eras and cultures, it simulates hybridized versions of said units to some extent, like the Empire's menavilon and the Sturgian shock infantry shouldn't be in trouble against cavalry as long as they were using the appropriate tactics (positioning and formations), that's not what happens.

Anyway, just gave tips to make the mod into a better Game, and highlighted some minor misconceptions that it carried with it, but I'm fine. As for bowmen and other stuff I'll link you some videos and you might be able to start researching from there:

Lars mostly uses light draw weight bows, but some guys proved it's possible to do everything except the acrobacies he shows there even with Longbows, for the mod that translates into faster shooting for most bows and more precision/accuracy:


Armor tests show how strong the impact of longbow arrows were and how loud they were (would cause massive panic overtime, I kid you not, they'd also instantly drop anyone hit on gaps due to the depth of penetration)

Notice 13:48 shot, that'd instantly disable, fatally wounded outright.

Three dimensional Bow Precision:




More armor tests (chainmail):


Javelin / Pilum:

and I think that's enough for now xD
I didn't include plate armor on melee testing because that's an obvious, they wouldn't be affected by cutting or piercing unless it managed to find gaps between plates or through blunt force trauma. In fact a massive 2h axe to the head would instantly knock-out most helmet designs that we see in the game except for the high tier tall helmets (all cultures have those, so it's not up for debate much, basically the design of the armor must have gaps or cushions to reduce blunt force trauma, just mentioning as an indicator).

Youtube tests are a rather poor thing to go for with maille on account of virtually nobody actually using properly made maille for historical testing in the first place (it is prohibitively expensive to get authentic maille vs Indian made sub par hauberks). Tod does good work, but the thing to keep in mind is that longbows are for the bulk of time, not contemporary to Early Medieval warfare in the first place. Javelins are extremely dangerous, potentially at least, but my main grief with RBM is that the mod is simply too lethal due to the blunt trauma mechanic. What I'd want the most is for any future updates to remove damage thresholds, because a low pound bow hitting a cataphract shouldn't deal -1 damage to health, but simply do no damage as it did in warband.

Lars FYI is also a terrible thing to do use for anything as a guideline because the poundages he uses for his bows are for children/varmint shooting. Warbows start at 80+ pounds, and heavy longbows go up to 110 or so pounds on average, and the heaviest composite bows went as high as 235. You cannot do rapid trick shooting while also pulling 100-pounds that can potentially dislocate a joint if done improperly (or snap a tendon).

Also historically there was specifically the armor known as King's Maille/Double Maille/etc by various names which was specifically taken up to deal with lances, high power missiles (crossbows or bows), and was supposed to mitigate the threat entirely. We don't have any surviving examples thus nobody knows what or how it was constructed, but we do have the contemporary anecdotes of its function/tactical use. Possibly would stop some of the lighter longbows, hard to figure how it worked given no knowledge of construction.

But on the topic of damage, please, on my hands and knees, in some future version add the ability to mitigate damage entirely with no blunt damage persistence. It is frankly infuriating, un-immersive, and unrealistic to have the chipping of health still present, where you can be 100% immune to a certain form of damage, yet it still does a minimum of -1 damage to your health. Drastic battle was able to eliminate it, i don't know how, but it made things feel far more realistic until he unfortunately removed his config panel. Health is supposed to be damaged by injuries, and there's nothing injuring about being struck by weak arrows while wearing 3mm ablative thickness of iron. Or the swing of an arming sword against a hauberk.
 
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Guys, your mod is nice and all but your polearms are broken and definitely not historically accurate. You should not be allowed to 1shot armored guy with a polearm thrust while standing still. Also I think part of it might be unintentional cause all other weapons feel balanced while polearms are this one jackass that makes everyone die super fast
 
Cavalry is extremely easy to counter, the issue is the AI just doesn't. The easy way to cripple any cav spam engaging in melee is to just bring a buttload of pikes and stick them in square formation. The cav will be eaten alive and will lose momentum penetrating the square so they just get casually poked to death with extreme ease.


Youtube tests are a rather poor thing to go for with maille on account of virtually nobody actually using properly made maille for historical testing in the first place (it is prohibitively expensive to get authentic maille vs Indian made sub par hauberks). Tod does good work, but the thing to keep in mind is that longbows are for the bulk of time, not contemporary to Early Medieval warfare in the first place. Javelins are extremely dangerous, potentially at least, but my main grief with RBM is that the mod is simply too lethal due to the blunt trauma mechanic. What I'd want the most is for any future updates to remove damage thresholds, because a low pound bow hitting a cataphract shouldn't deal -1 damage to health, but simply do no damage as it did in warband.

Lars FYI is also a terrible thing to do use for anything as a guideline because the poundages he uses for his bows are for children/varmint shooting. Warbows start at 80+ pounds, and heavy longbows go up to 110 or so pounds on average, and the heaviest composite bows went as high as 235. You cannot do rapid trick shooting while also pulling 100-pounds that can potentially dislocate a joint if done improperly (or snap a tendon).

Also historically there was specifically the armor known as King's Maille/Double Maille/etc by various names which was specifically taken up to deal with lances, high power missiles (crossbows or bows), and was supposed to mitigate the threat entirely. We don't have any surviving examples thus nobody knows what or how it was constructed, but we do have the contemporary anecdotes of its function/tactical use. Possibly would stop some of the lighter longbows, hard to figure how it worked given no knowledge of construction.

But on the topic of damage, please, on my hands and knees, in some future version add the ability to mitigate damage entirely with no blunt damage persistence. It is frankly infuriating, un-immersive, and unrealistic to have the chipping of health still present, where you can be 100% immune to a certain form of damage, yet it still does a minimum of -1 damage to your health. Drastic battle was able to eliminate it, i don't know how, but it made things feel far more realistic until he unfortunately removed his config panel. Health is supposed to be damaged by injuries, and there's nothing injuring about being struck by weak arrows while wearing 3mm ablative thickness of iron. Or the swing of an arming sword against a hauberk.
Players would kill us if we did this (I can do this in 1 minute if I want to - just change blunt fuctor in the config to 0 or something silly low on weapons which you think should cause less blunt trauma). If we did this oficially, we would have to add some other historically plausible mechanic to balance this out since we dont like half assing stuff - for example armor damagaging model, even more reliance on stamina/posture etc. We also have to take into consideration length of battles in game, large battles (1K+ vs 1K+) generally take 30+ minutes if you have largest battles possible enabled, however some players probably cannot play with max settings so for them the battle might be already super long. Prolonging large battles to 60-120 minutes would be very off putting for majority of people - we would be getting to the point of mod being unplayable. Which means we would have to rely more on morale system - which might be very interesting for very niche audience but again of putting for majority. We are at the point of being unofficial patch / fix for the game. Adding something radical like this (assuming it is doable, there might be some issue on code level which would make this impossible anyway) would have to be toggle-able which would mean two separate ways of balancing the mod etc.... There is good reason for drop of customization options in Drastic Battle mod, its pain in the ass to balance and you are sacraficing lot of your own vision to apease mostly ungrateful whiny brats that are foten too lazy to even read mod description because wall of text

Our bow balance: I will quote from our article here:
"The core of the armor penetration calculation comes from The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy by Alan Williams. However there are some gaps in it since it primarely focuses on plate armor. So gaps were filled with Youtube experimental evidence and historical sources. For example we are assuming arrows / bolts are not greased in RBM (greased arrows seem to have "effectively 20 more joules" in comparison to non greased ones when we take into consideration results from Knight and the Blast Furnace). However the videos about loss of energy of arrows at range or penetration of light-medium shields are very educational in my opinion. Also videos with speed meter and bows used with multiple arrows and multiple weights (specifically Joe Gibs videos) are pretty good sample for reverse engineering the results and developing general formula for arrow missile speed calculation. Similiar thing was done for crossbows with videos by Mediaval Crossbows channel, especially the crusades era crossbow (270 lb I think). Also Tods videos are best information I was able to find about reload techniques of crossbows, given that he mentions max draw weight with these techniques and does demonstrations. Also other videos regarding melee fighting can give us some basic idea of how likely is it to cut / penetrate mail and gambeson. For example I came to the conclussion that deep penetration with polearm or sword is very unlikely against mail because they failed to break through more than one ring in all of the experiments I saw so far."

Of course we consider only tests done with proper (at least relativelly) riveted mail (Tod, Skallagrim, Theng and Thrand and few others). My conclussion is that 15th century mail supported by gambeson could stop bodkin arrow with up to 100 joules of energy (gambeson underneath armor in our mod = 16 layers of linen = 10 armor or 20 joules, gambeson worn alone can go up to 36 layers or some 25 armor), steel in that era was reletivelly similiar to modern mild steel (as far as I know). However majority of steel in BL has only 83% of this strength (low carbon 10-12th century steel) and wrought iron or brass has only 57% of this thoughness - so best single layer mail with padding is 45 (35+10) armor or 90 joules / damage absorbed by arrows, majority of good mails are more likely 40 (80 joules) armor, there are some that are 30+ (60 joules). And funny thing is that with this formula / logic / balance (not intended though, just coincidence) entry level war longbow can at least little bit penetrate entry level mail at short distance - which kind of explains what war bows were - bows capable of penetrating decent armor, funny what you can learn when you put together simulation from data and then watch it go.
 
Guys, your mod is nice and all but your polearms are broken and definitely not historically accurate. You should not be allowed to 1shot armored guy with a polearm thrust while standing still. Also I think part of it might be unintentional cause all other weapons feel balanced while polearms are this one jackass that makes everyone die super fast
I have seen this reported before but we were not able to replicate this - which polearm and which units are we talking about? Do you have some other mod that changes polearms, such as spear rework (incompatible with RBM btw, written in mod description)?
 
Players would kill us if we did this (I can do this in 1 minute if I want to - just change blunt fuctor in the config to 0 or something silly low on weapons which you think should cause less blunt trauma). If we did this oficially, we would have to add some other historically plausible mechanic to balance this out since we dont like half assing stuff - for example armor damagaging model, even more reliance on stamina/posture etc. We also have to take into consideration length of battles in game, large battles (1K+ vs 1K+) generally take 30+ minutes if you have largest battles possible enabled, however some players probably cannot play with max settings so for them the battle might be already super long. Prolonging large battles to 60-120 minutes would be very off putting for majority of people - we would be getting to the point of mod being unplayable. Which means we would have to rely more on morale system - which might be very interesting for very niche audience but again of putting for majority. We are at the point of being unofficial patch / fix for the game. Adding something radical like this (assuming it is doable, there might be some issue on code level which would make this impossible anyway) would have to be toggle-able which would mean two separate ways of balancing the mod etc.... There is good reason for drop of customization options in Drastic Battle mod, its pain in the ass to balance and you are sacraficing lot of your own vision to apease mostly ungrateful whiny brats that are foten too lazy to even read mod description because wall of text

Our bow balance: I will quote from our article here:
"The core of the armor penetration calculation comes from The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy by Alan Williams. However there are some gaps in it since it primarely focuses on plate armor. So gaps were filled with Youtube experimental evidence and historical sources. For example we are assuming arrows / bolts are not greased in RBM (greased arrows seem to have "effectively 20 more joules" in comparison to non greased ones when we take into consideration results from Knight and the Blast Furnace). However the videos about loss of energy of arrows at range or penetration of light-medium shields are very educational in my opinion. Also videos with speed meter and bows used with multiple arrows and multiple weights (specifically Joe Gibs videos) are pretty good sample for reverse engineering the results and developing general formula for arrow missile speed calculation. Similiar thing was done for crossbows with videos by Mediaval Crossbows channel, especially the crusades era crossbow (270 lb I think). Also Tods videos are best information I was able to find about reload techniques of crossbows, given that he mentions max draw weight with these techniques and does demonstrations. Also other videos regarding melee fighting can give us some basic idea of how likely is it to cut / penetrate mail and gambeson. For example I came to the conclussion that deep penetration with polearm or sword is very unlikely against mail because they failed to break through more than one ring in all of the experiments I saw so far."

Of course we consider only tests done with proper (at least relativelly) riveted mail (Tod, Skallagrim, Theng and Thrand and few others). My conclussion is that 15th century mail supported by gambeson could stop bodkin arrow with up to 100 joules of energy (gambeson underneath armor in our mod = 16 layers of linen = 10 armor or 20 joules, gambeson worn alone can go up to 36 layers or some 25 armor), steel in that era was reletivelly similiar to modern mild steel (as far as I know). However majority of steel in BL has only 83% of this strength (low carbon 10-12th century steel) and wrought iron or brass has only 57% of this thoughness - so best single layer mail with padding is 45 (35+10) armor or 90 joules / damage absorbed by arrows, majority of good mails are more likely 40 (80 joules) armor, there are some that are 30+ (60 joules). And funny thing is that with this formula / logic / balance (not intended though, just coincidence) entry level war longbow can at least little bit penetrate entry level mail at short distance - which kind of explains what war bows were - bows capable of penetrating decent armor, funny what you can learn when you put together simulation from data and then watch it go.
hi Phil
thanks for your essential mod
reading this made me wonder about Ulfberht swords ( " Thamaskene steel " ? ) - do you model these in RBM, perhaps as " mail busters " ?
 
hi Phil
thanks for your essential mod
reading this made me wonder about Ulfberht swords ( " Thamaskene steel " ? ) - do you model these in RBM, perhaps as " mail busters " ?
No, not at the moment. Only way I can think of doing that at the moment would be givint that specific blade much more damage, and even then that would increase damage overall not just armor pietcing properties.
 
I have seen this reported before but we were not able to replicate this - which polearm and which units are we talking about? Do you have some other mod that changes polearms, such as spear rework (incompatible with RBM btw, written in mod description)?
I havent played for a while now, this issue is glaring when playing tournaments in armor and even the starting mission when comparing killing the bandits with a spear vs with a sword. In my campaign the **** got wild once I got like 18pierce cataphract lance, also for some reason the khuzait glaive has 50 cut dmg - much more than any other cut weapon.

No other mods, I would love the polearm dmg in your mod to be much more speed dependent also balanced for the fact that in reality they often broke after use (knights going back to the camp after a charge to charge again with new lances after breaking their old ones)

much love
 
Great work adjusting horse archers combat distance in the last update.

The remaining part is lance charge - lancers (knights, mameluks, steppe lancers etc.) don't use couch lances, they just try to hit the enemy thrusting their lances with the hand like short spears or just chose short maces and charge with maces in hands and their 4m lances on their backs.
Do you have any controll over their behaviour to adjust it? Personally i've found hitting the target with 4m lance quite difficutl, when hitting target with the same 4m lance with basic attack like a spear during charge, easy.

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For the authors of the MOD:
Thanks for you work, this is the best and most impressive MOD for Bannerlord so far. I've became so spoiled i can't enjoy vanilla combat anymore. All true shield sizes, armor actually working, different weapons being proper for different situations, hand thrown spears and javelins speed, archery etc. And i haven't even talk about AI and battles. It's great it is compatible with De Re Militari as well.
With RBM everything becomes far less generic - you have to find more specific and interesting solutions to defeat different enemies, when in vanilla you will deal with everyone with 3-4 swings of a common sabre. Keep up your work, it's awesome.
 
Players would kill us if we did this (I can do this in 1 minute if I want to - just change blunt fuctor in the config to 0 or something silly low on weapons which you think should cause less blunt trauma).
I've actually tried this myself, but unfortunately dropping the blunt damage factor to just 0 causes a CTD on launch, so I don't even know if it's the mod's fault or the game has something finicky going on. It's been my issue toying with the settings, because it seems impossible to remove blunt trauma chipping, which turns all combat at the end of the day into a game of numbers of chipping people down even with poor attacks instead of armor behaving like armor, which is more an all-or-nothing affair.
If we did this oficially, we would have to add some other historically plausible mechanic to balance this out since we dont like half assing stuff - for example armor damagaging model, even more reliance on stamina/posture etc. We also have to take into consideration length of battles in game, large battles (1K+ vs 1K+) generally take 30+ minutes if you have largest battles possible enabled, however some players probably cannot play with max settings so for them the battle might be already super long. Prolonging large battles to 60-120 minutes would be very off putting for majority of people - we would be getting to the point of mod being unplayable. Which means we would have to rely more on morale system - which might be very interesting for very niche audience but again of putting for majority.
IMO though that just makes the historical aspects just a veneer of any historicity and using Williams' numbers not really a 'real' matter in the first place and more a facsimile of realism. I also doubt it would actually see a bleed of players in the first place since when it comes to grueling combat, that seems to be more what people would opt for over the Shouen fest that is vanilla combat of worthless armor, provided that something mitigates the combat time (I don't think morale would be impossible given there's perks which supposedly increase melee 'damage' anyway, although I don't know if those actually work knowing TW lol). Considering that actual deaths in battle on the loser's side were more on the range of 10-30% outside of the peak of later period violence, more durable enemies should equate to more impactful death on army morale and add up nicely. The poise system also has exceptional potential to be capitalized on - I know in warband it was possible to add coup de grace style damage based upon hitting an enemy in the back - is it possible for whatever flagged state of being knocked down to enable a damage bonus?
We are at the point of being unofficial patch / fix for the game. Adding something radical like this (assuming it is doable, there might be some issue on code level which would make this impossible anyway) would have to be toggle-able which would mean two separate ways of balancing the mod etc.... There is good reason for drop of customization options in Drastic Battle mod, its pain in the ass to balance and you are sacraficing lot of your own vision to apease mostly ungrateful whiny brats that are foten too lazy to even read mod description because wall of text
Balancing outside of egregious factors shouldn't really be a concern in the first place for any videogame that isn't focused on PVP symmetrical warfare in the first place though. So long as everything is more or less in the vague 'place it should be', if something is 'overpowered' but accurate, well that's just war and it's a videogame about early medieval tactical play from a first person perspective. I wouldn't call the current state terribly 'balanced' in a gameplay sense in the first place, so any way that the pendulum swings is a fairly mild thing. I can casually just stock up on a bunch of Cataphracts and absolutely bulldoze the enemy with barely any losses, over and over again, along with keeping troops in formation with the follow me command while the AI has no grasp of formations leading to perpetual defeats. Actually making armor work proper instead of blunt trauma 'chipping' might if anything, improve AI performance against the player as their heavy cav flying across the horizon in total disorder won't get pulled apart from a couple errant jabs by archers it fights in melee.
Our bow balance: I will quote from our article here:
"The core of the armor penetration calculation comes from The Knight and the Blast Furnace: A History of the Metallurgy by Alan Williams. However there are some gaps in it since it primarely focuses on plate armor. So gaps were filled with Youtube experimental evidence and historical sources. For example we are assuming arrows / bolts are not greased in RBM (greased arrows seem to have "effectively 20 more joules" in comparison to non greased ones when we take into consideration results from Knight and the Blast Furnace). However the videos about loss of energy of arrows at range or penetration of light-medium shields are very educational in my opinion. Also videos with speed meter and bows used with multiple arrows and multiple weights (specifically Joe Gibs videos) are pretty good sample for reverse engineering the results and developing general formula for arrow missile speed calculation. Similiar thing was done for crossbows with videos by Mediaval Crossbows channel, especially the crusades era crossbow (270 lb I think). Also Tods videos are best information I was able to find about reload techniques of crossbows, given that he mentions max draw weight with these techniques and does demonstrations. Also other videos regarding melee fighting can give us some basic idea of how likely is it to cut / penetrate mail and gambeson. For example I came to the conclussion that deep penetration with polearm or sword is very unlikely against mail because they failed to break through more than one ring in all of the experiments I saw so far."

Of course we consider only tests done with proper (at least relativelly) riveted mail (Tod, Skallagrim, Theng and Thrand and few others). My conclussion is that 15th century mail supported by gambeson could stop bodkin arrow with up to 100 joules of energy (gambeson underneath armor in our mod = 16 layers of linen = 10 armor or 20 joules, gambeson worn alone can go up to 36 layers or some 25 armor), steel in that era was reletivelly similiar to modern mild steel (as far as I know). However majority of steel in BL has only 83% of this strength (low carbon 10-12th century steel) and wrought iron or brass has only 57% of this thoughness - so best single layer mail with padding is 45 (35+10) armor or 90 joules / damage absorbed by arrows, majority of good mails are more likely 40 (80 joules) armor, there are some that are 30+ (60 joules). And funny thing is that with this formula / logic / balance (not intended though, just coincidence) entry level war longbow can at least little bit penetrate entry level mail at short distance - which kind of explains what war bows were - bows capable of penetrating decent armor, funny what you can learn when you put together simulation from data and then watch it go.
The issue with William's tests is that some of his results seem to simply be off or not even exemplifying the best potentials of maille judging by the couched lance test by Arne not to long ago against an aventail made by Augusto using specifically round links (densely woven too), which in spite of using both a broad leafed and pointed cornel failed to achieve any penetration (although nothing to be said how your throat would be doing from that kind of blunt force trauma 😄). The other concern is king's maille double maille (of which there is surprisingly one east roman example of I never knew of) which per period documentation is supposed to protect you excellently against contemporary crossbow poundages or couched lance strikes. Main issue is sheer performance variance of any age due to matters of thickness of the ring, the setting of the rivet, and the density of the weave wildly influencing performance in either direction.
 
I've actually tried this myself, but unfortunately dropping the blunt damage factor to just 0 causes a CTD on launch, so I don't even know if it's the mod's fault or the game has something finicky going on. It's been my issue toying with the settings, because it seems impossible to remove blunt trauma chipping, which turns all combat at the end of the day into a game of numbers of chipping people down even with poor attacks instead of armor behaving like armor, which is more an all-or-nothing affair.

IMO though that just makes the historical aspects just a veneer of any historicity and using Williams' numbers not really a 'real' matter in the first place and more a facsimile of realism. I also doubt it would actually see a bleed of players in the first place since when it comes to grueling combat, that seems to be more what people would opt for over the Shouen fest that is vanilla combat of worthless armor, provided that something mitigates the combat time (I don't think morale would be impossible given there's perks which supposedly increase melee 'damage' anyway, although I don't know if those actually work knowing TW lol). Considering that actual deaths in battle on the loser's side were more on the range of 10-30% outside of the peak of later period violence, more durable enemies should equate to more impactful death on army morale and add up nicely. The poise system also has exceptional potential to be capitalized on - I know in warband it was possible to add coup de grace style damage based upon hitting an enemy in the back - is it possible for whatever flagged state of being knocked down to enable a damage bonus?

Balancing outside of egregious factors shouldn't really be a concern in the first place for any videogame that isn't focused on PVP symmetrical warfare in the first place though. So long as everything is more or less in the vague 'place it should be', if something is 'overpowered' but accurate, well that's just war and it's a videogame about early medieval tactical play from a first person perspective. I wouldn't call the current state terribly 'balanced' in a gameplay sense in the first place, so any way that the pendulum swings is a fairly mild thing. I can casually just stock up on a bunch of Cataphracts and absolutely bulldoze the enemy with barely any losses, over and over again, along with keeping troops in formation with the follow me command while the AI has no grasp of formations leading to perpetual defeats. Actually making armor work proper instead of blunt trauma 'chipping' might if anything, improve AI performance against the player as their heavy cav flying across the horizon in total disorder won't get pulled apart from a couple errant jabs by archers it fights in melee.

The issue with William's tests is that some of his results seem to simply be off or not even exemplifying the best potentials of maille judging by the couched lance test by Arne not to long ago against an aventail made by Augusto using specifically round links (densely woven too), which in spite of using both a broad leafed and pointed cornel failed to achieve any penetration (although nothing to be said how your throat would be doing from that kind of blunt force trauma 😄). The other concern is king's maille double maille (of which there is surprisingly one east roman example of I never knew of) which per period documentation is supposed to protect you excellently against contemporary crossbow poundages or couched lance strikes. Main issue is sheer performance variance of any age due to matters of thickness of the ring, the setting of the rivet, and the density of the weave wildly influencing performance in either direction.
I am still waiting for the part two video (the one with proper war lance shaft that is not supposed to "intentionally" break). As far as I understand main difference in penetratiomn of arrow / bolt vs spear / lance / sword is that arrow is thinner, which means it has to defeat less armor surface in order to fully penetrate while melee weapons are significnatly thicker which means higher resistance due to larger surface. For example, if you manage to break one ring on mail with bodkin arrow, you are probably in, if you break one ring with lance, part of the tip might get inside but entire thing wont because it will be stopped by neighboring rings - hence partial penetration in RBM, up to 15 damage can be caused according to bodkin rules (1 armor stops 2 damage) when larger piercing weapons are used, more damage has to defeat more armor (larger surface, more links, etc - 1 armor stops 3-4 damage).
 
Cavalry is extremely easy to counter, the issue is the AI just doesn't. The easy way to cripple any cav spam engaging in melee is to just bring a buttload of pikes and stick them in square formation. The cav will be eaten alive and will lose momentum penetrating the square so they just get casually poked to death with extreme ease.


Youtube tests are a rather poor thing to go for with maille on account of virtually nobody actually using properly made maille for historical testing in the first place (it is prohibitively expensive to get authentic maille vs Indian made sub par hauberks). Tod does good work, but the thing to keep in mind is that longbows are for the bulk of time, not contemporary to Early Medieval warfare in the first place. Javelins are extremely dangerous, potentially at least, but my main grief with RBM is that the mod is simply too lethal due to the blunt trauma mechanic. What I'd want the most is for any future updates to remove damage thresholds, because a low pound bow hitting a cataphract shouldn't deal -1 damage to health, but simply do no damage as it did in warband.

Lars FYI is also a terrible thing to do use for anything as a guideline because the poundages he uses for his bows are for children/varmint shooting. Warbows start at 80+ pounds, and heavy longbows go up to 110 or so pounds on average, and the heaviest composite bows went as high as 235. You cannot do rapid trick shooting while also pulling 100-pounds that can potentially dislocate a joint if done improperly (or snap a tendon).

Also historically there was specifically the armor known as King's Maille/Double Maille/etc by various names which was specifically taken up to deal with lances, high power missiles (crossbows or bows), and was supposed to mitigate the threat entirely. We don't have any surviving examples thus nobody knows what or how it was constructed, but we do have the contemporary anecdotes of its function/tactical use. Possibly would stop some of the lighter longbows, hard to figure how it worked given no knowledge of construction.

But on the topic of damage, please, on my hands and knees, in some future version add the ability to mitigate damage entirely with no blunt damage persistence. It is frankly infuriating, un-immersive, and unrealistic to have the chipping of health still present, where you can be 100% immune to a certain form of damage, yet it still does a minimum of -1 damage to your health. Drastic battle was able to eliminate it, i don't know how, but it made things feel far more realistic until he unfortunately removed his config panel. Health is supposed to be damaged by injuries, and there's nothing injuring about being struck by weak arrows while wearing 3mm ablative thickness of iron. Or the swing of an arming sword against a hauberk.
Lars did research historical manuscripts to come to his odd conclusions, they are very unorthodox and a mix of cultural trick-shots, yet they did exist and were used. The light warbows can be drawn rather fast by someone trained and strong, leading to the whole "tendon snapping" weight to exclusively 100+ weights and even than someone trained wouldn't have much of a hard time with those.

Some of the best examples we have today isn't even Lars himself, but those who still practice mounted archery. They have some amazing skills with considerable draw-weight. The holding arrows on fingers was used with any bows, though, as well as the right-side shooting which caused a massive uproar from more uneducated in history archery practicioners. Thing is that intuitive shooting was the key, which translates into killer accuracy if you have an easier time with some draw-weight, while the lower accuracy only occurring when tired out. The tests in Tod's video show that very well, but than again that bow was like, what, 160? 180?

As for composites, theoretically they are much easier to draw even though they carry such massive weights, which theoretically would allow for faster shooting if under equivalent or identical weights to longbows.

I've started using RBM again and it's fascinating how Raptor managed to simulate the finger-arrow holding at least with the practice bows in the Arena, haven't seen it working on battle scenes yet though.

The chipping's irrelevant too, it becomes a gamey mechanic that even if unintentionally, prevents total halts from the AI (because if no dmg was done they'd just stand there doing nothing). And often, if the skill lvl of the attacking party isn't high enough, it'll actually do 0 dmg - from a gaming perspective I have nothing against it although agreeing with you. Idk why, or how, but BL doesn't seem to support the dmg spreadsheet we had with 1257ad in Warband, to me that was the pinnacle of perfection taking consideration on the overall "realism vs fun-factor". Really loved how that mod was balanced.
 
Lars did research historical manuscripts to come to his odd conclusions, they are very unorthodox and a mix of cultural trick-shots, yet they did exist and were used. The light warbows can be drawn rather fast by someone trained and strong, leading to the whole "tendon snapping" weight to exclusively 100+ weights and even than someone trained wouldn't have much of a hard time with those.

Some of the best examples we have today isn't even Lars himself, but those who still practice mounted archery. They have some amazing skills with considerable draw-weight. The holding arrows on fingers was used with any bows, though, as well as the right-side shooting which caused a massive uproar from more uneducated in history archery practicioners. Thing is that intuitive shooting was the key, which translates into killer accuracy if you have an easier time with some draw-weight, while the lower accuracy only occurring when tired out. The tests in Tod's video show that very well, but than again that bow was like, what, 160? 180?

As for composites, theoretically they are much easier to draw even though they carry such massive weights, which theoretically would allow for faster shooting if under equivalent or identical weights to longbows.

I've started using RBM again and it's fascinating how Raptor managed to simulate the finger-arrow holding at least with the practice bows in the Arena, haven't seen it working on battle scenes yet though.

The chipping's irrelevant too, it becomes a gamey mechanic that even if unintentionally, prevents total halts from the AI (because if no dmg was done they'd just stand there doing nothing). And often, if the skill lvl of the attacking party isn't high enough, it'll actually do 0 dmg - from a gaming perspective I have nothing against it although agreeing with you. Idk why, or how, but BL doesn't seem to support the dmg spreadsheet we had with 1257ad in Warband, to me that was the pinnacle of perfection taking consideration on the overall "realism vs fun-factor". Really loved how that mod was balanced.
I think you need 70 more skill than is the difficulty of the bow to unlock "speed loading", unfortunatelly we had to disable it for the AI for now because crossbowmen AI in 1.8.0 is buggy and they become passive when they have one bolt / arrow left, we are using certain crossbow features for speed shooting so horse archers became passive after shooting their arrows just like the crossbowmen (and out other solution to the problem was sometimes causing crashes).
 
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