Recent content by Balor

Well, more drastic improvements seem to be WAY beyond the time scope of the game.
I mean, it was ok in, say, TW to grow towns from villages... but it took many years!
Now, if we want things to be realistic, we'd better shift the focus from strategy to tactics...

I mean, most of the villages should already be specialized. And 'turn your hamlet into a a fortress in three easy steps' should be a big no-no. TW and Civilization series are about that, not M&B (IMHO). You want a castle? Capture one.
Your help, realistically, should be concentrated at boosting the defenses (building some military infrastructure), and providing the supplies... and, of course, collecting taxes.
However, even such system will not really work for now - cause HUGE (like, king's) armies roaming the land will steamroll over your army, even VERY high-level one, and destroy everything you've done. Bummer.
Anyway, the system needs a lot of fine-tuning:

1. Mega-armies should not just roam around, but defend capitals, or only participate in large siedges (or defend against them). It’s both realistic and will not make your more or less long-term plans futile... and by the time you'll be worthy of notice by 'superpowers' - you'll be ready for it (see 3.).

2. Either map should be expanded, or ‘time compression’ quickened (preferably both) - right now you can gallop thru the whole country in a few days! You should have a bit more of an 'early warning' in case someone attacks, too... right now it's nigh impossible with all those armies looting and pillaging like there is no tomorrow.

3. A bit offtopic, but anyway - I don't think that 'limit on max army size' is correct mechanics. It’s artificial. My take on this:
Leadership, modified by renown, should affect a chance of someone joining you AT ALL, not just you max troop size. (And hire/upkeep costs, which should be made much more prohibitive) Current system supports this:
You don't just recruit troops at your leisure, but ask them to join. (And mercenaries are not found everywhere in large quantities) Therefore, until you've gained enough fame and popularity, knights will look down on you and refuse to join 'a band of assorted rubble led by a tongue-tied simpleton'... and when they do, the costs should be really prohibitive (both one-time hire and upkeep). Same should apply to high-level NPCs.

Your main source of manpower should be from fief(s) - but you'll be limited to untrained (or a bit trained, if you manage to build some infrastructure) men, which you'll have to spend quite a few time 'tempering', losing a large part in the process. Also, size of army should be inversely proportional to it’s morale (it’s implemented already, btw, but cannot fully show itself due to ‘hard limit’ on available men).
Getting infinite men from freeing prisoners is fixed easily:
a. Upped upkeep, like I said.
b. When you "free" them, you essentially 'buy' them, at discount, but still not for free (heh) - after all, you don't expect prisoners to be fully armored, armed and otherwise equipped by the time you've freed them? And besides, higher-tier troops (read - knights) will eventually grow unhappy serving under you, drastically lowering morale of your army, demanding more payment and even eventually leaving if you will somehow further displease them (lose a battle, miss a payment, etc).
All in all, it will allow you to raise a large army if needed (like, for an epic siege or defending against a punitive expedition by an enemy king/khan)... but KEEPING it would be much harder... and it would not be 100% knights - which will require you to use tactics in combat, and this is a Good Thing.

Btw: appointing governors in your fiefs could be a good idea, especially with training (which would be MUCH more useful skill that it is now) and, obviously, engineering.

I personally think that Darklands were among the best games in that genre, and I think that Mount&Blade can really benefit a lot by borrowing from it.
Everyone should try and play it - it's very, VERY good.

Er... nothing special, really.
After shaders, all kinds of 'animated textures' water types produce 'meh' as responce.
Btw, M&B supports shaders (shiny armor), isn't it?
If it is, perhaps implementing 'shiny&ripply' water is just a matter of time...
But it's a rather minor, if nice, feature.

A couple of exceptions do not an era make.

Click to expand...

Great. Let's ask Armagan to add a couple laser rifles into the game - a couple of exceptions do not make an era, right?

Hey, it seems like some people think think that firearms appeared only during WWII and begin from invention of AK47! (Well, there is a spark of sense in this statement , but...)
Read above posts about when firearms appeared, they are absolutely right.

If we are to have full articulated plate mails (and he HAVE them)- we should also have handguns for setting timeline to be realistic, not vice versa!

And yea, I agree with all statements (high damage, AP, inaccurate, long to reload, ammo has to be bought each time, shots should make low-to-average horses to rear (warhorses shoud be trained for pretty much anything)).
Primitive handguns should be in the game, if rare and, therefore, expencive.

And if you just don't like guns in any shape or form for some reason - don't use them.
But they deserve to be in M&B - in fact, they MUST be there, for it to be realistic (see above).

Да, с моддингом придеться погодить до выпуска тулзов.
В принципе, можно и так, но сложно дюже, как я понимаю.
А вообще я жду Oblivion'a.
Там, конечно. на лошадях драться нельзя и вообще много чего дурацкого, но уж эдитор явно лучше - будем делать полную конверсию под Колесо Времени.
M&B же мне понравилося более-менее реалистичной системой боя, оружия\брони и, есс-но, боями на лошадях .
Кстати, Прозорова никто не читал?
Сделать мод про Россию времен Ивана Грозного было бы весьма заманчиво.

I'm for armor skill, but not just in a way that it will serve as a prereq for some armors (no matter how lame you are, you can hop into any armor and run about, tested on myself, and I'm not exactly a hercules ), but so it will allow you to move faster in it, and add to actual armor too - meaning you'll learn to utilize it to the best effect, positioning your body so blows will slide off from it, and moving in a way that only the most protected part of the body will be possibly open for an attack.
Armor skill as a prereq for wearing armor sucks and mustdie.

Well, I think it is fine for you to look in it, just why should you post somethign in it, since it shouldn't really bother you?
And for entire forum... doubt so. A thread is fine, though... same can apply to germans, french, etc.
Anyway...

@ Debris
А что надо-то?
Какие-то конкретные вопросы есть?

Oh, and patch size is misspelled at the download page.
It's 26, not 11 megs.
If it was 11 megs, I would not complain .

I'm happy and all, but...
*scratch-scratch*
Don't you think that having a patch that is almost the size of an entire game kinda defeats the purpose of it?
I guess that's because you include all changes in it, from the first versions and up.

Dunno if it's asking much, but how about going WoW way, and making incremental patches for each version, with ability to download a full game for those who are new?

Especially, since we are back to, as I understand, the usual routine of bugfixing patches that do not add a lot, only do some changes in the game settings, minor changes in the source code, and/or add/change a few items.

So, in a perfect world, patches would look like
Full game (7.01) 36 megs.
All versions -> 7.01 - 26 megs.
7.0 -> 7.01 - 5 (or so, I suppose) megs.

Then we can have just have new incremental patches appended to the list, so the, again, in a perfect world, the download page would look like:
download 1.01 -> 100 megs
7.0 -> 7.01 - 5 megs.
7.01 -> 7.50 - 7 megs
7.50 -> 8.0 - 10 megs
8.0 - 8.01 - 2 megs
...
1.0 - 1.01 - 1 megs.

Not too hard to make, I suppose.

The alternative, I'm sure of it, would be making players download about 30-40 mb (and more, as the game will grow) patches each time the game will get updated.

Like I noted, it defeats the purpose of having patches in the first place...

P.S.

And, unfortunately, for some people, downloading costs quite a lot of money.
For instance, I pay 10 cents for every downloaded meg over our LAN. This situation is common in Russia, expecially in smaller towns with monopolized ISP industry.
Which is kinda funny - you pay more for downloading a game then for buying it overseas, heh.
Talking about battling piracy .
But when it comes to games distributed online, it’s a real bummer.

Oh well, it's a beta, betas are bound to have bugs .
Anyway, I'm sure that they will be fixed soon enough.
We can wait. Have not run into any, besides too much cash and the padded cloth.

I suspect it's now either level (must be powerful enough) or reputation-based (merchant must like you enough).
About sword:
Longsword is, actually, a term for a two-handed sword, that is later would be called bastard one.
One-handed swords were called arming swords, usually. (There was a thead about that).
I think that was modded to give the game more historical accuracy.

*blink-blink*
I was thinking that someone was requesting flails and wanted to second that... but .
Well, flail will be very good indeed (they were very widespead as a horsemen weapon... Well, at least in Russia. Much better realism-wise that this insane polehammer. At least, I've never heard of anything like that.)... yet, I suspect, will be quite a challege to implement.

Well, longbow is sure powerful, but technically inferiour to warbow, therefore it takes more str to draw it, and it's slower, logically.
Also it's big and bulky to carry around. I'd restrict using it on a horce, but Armagan objected cause he loves longbows for some reason.
Cannot fight with this .

Woo-hoo!
Downloading now.