Recent content by Highest of all Landers

This is the worst side effect of modding with harmony as it uses reflection to inject code and multiple mods trying to alter the same method may end up with interactions that break a part of the game.

During the unmodded flow the state of the objects are likely validated so if an object reaches a particular piece of code with a null reference adding a null check will just hide a bug happening somewhere else that might have other implications as the game runs, maybe even break a save at some point as the game deteriorates.

In a scenario with multiple mods, you may have more than one mod trying to change the state of an object before the original code is executed, or you may have a mod that replaces the original method altogether and the interaction between them is what causes the object to have a null reference. Hiding the error in this case is even worse and will kill saves in the long run, crashing might allow you to remove one of the mods and keep going from that point.

Askorti said:

I might be completely misremembering, so please take it with a big pinch of salt, but I think this was asked about before, and the conclusion is that the ability to gather armies is locked to vassals/kings precisely so that you can't comfortably remain free without joining/creating either. It's basically to push you to "progress" the game.
It is also a way of handicapping you so that you can't easily go from free to own kingdom by just rolling in with a 5-party army and taking any city you want. They want you to progress by either having to snipe a recently conquered settlement or by first taking a castle to establish yourself and then work from that.

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It is just an inconvenient extra hoop that you don't even need to jump through. You could take a recently captured castle, form your kingdom, gather your clan and take a city.

The extra step to achieve the same thing creates a frustrating mechanic and the lack of logic to explain why, other than "we want you to do it this way", is just bad game design.

Apocal said:

It is frustrating because this could be an interesting mechanic that would inject some much-needed dynamism into the battles and TW are just like, "Eh... what if it's overpowered... we don't want tactics to be up-ended... the balance..." There are a lot of other medieval games but banners are either abstracted or meaningless and Bannerlord might be the first were the banners actually have a role beyond looking pretty.

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I think the "x% damage reduction" or "x% to morale" wouldn't be such an interesting mechanic anyways, and there would be types that would never be picked and ones that would be pretty much be the only viable choice. I see the ranged damage reduction as a must, even if they keep it as 10% I can hardly think of anything else that would be better, except for maybe survival rates.

I would rather have banners change the behavior of the group. For example, a banner that would add a bias so the AI would choose blocking attacks more often that attacking, or a bias for the troops to prioritize using polearms, a banner that would increase the aggressiveness, a banner that would prioritize a certain type of enemy when picking targets and so on.

Something like this would not only be noticeable, it would also give the player more control over the AI without forcing us to babysit too much and would expand tactical options in battle.

five bucks said:

Alternatively, TW could buff armour protection against arrows, and then we would see banners having a noticeable impact without being too OP.

Both sides in a battle should be using banners anyway so I don't think, say, a localised 10-25% boost that both armies have access to would be too gamebreaking

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It was you that posted a comparison between hits one troop could take before dying in Bannerlord and Warband, wasn't it? With the current 4-5 arrows, the percentage for an extra arrow would be around 20%, but even if tw rebalanced that to around 7-8 it would still require around 15% for the extra arrow.

I agree that tw should rebalance armors and I think your (?) suggestion of 7-8 is good, but my main problem with the way tw is going with banner bonuses is that ranged damage reduction or even any damage reduction would be a sure pick over anything else.

If I understood it correctly, you want to gather parties that belong to your own clan into an army without the constraint of being a vassal or a king. I agree with this, I see no reason why the player, or even mercenary clans should be barred from creating an army if it is limited to their own clan and they have no access to the influence system.

Edit: It is unlikely taleworlds will change it, but there might already be a mod that does that, I would recommend searching Nexus

Apocal said:

I mean their actual effect. Who the hell is going to notice a difference of only 8%? Decreasing ranged damage by a tenth?

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Will 10% make a difference if the ranged troop is a Fian? No way.
Will 10% make a difference if the ranged troop is an Empire Archer? It is likely that top tier infantry will be able to take an extra arrow before being killed, but anything short of that will still die just as easily.
Do AI armies have enough top tier infantry or top tier ranged for this to even be noticeable? No.

Combat in Bannerlord ends so quickly and the damage values are so high that I don't really think the banner effects are going to be noticeable either way. For bonuses to be noticeable they would also have to be OP.

Apocal said:

What the **** are these banner bonuses?

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You mean the values? Likely percentages, 0.08 would be 8%, and 0.1 would be 10%. Since it seems to be a work in progress, maybe they haven't got to the part of doing the UI presentation of the values.

It is common in programming to use percentages as values between 0 and 1 to simplify math operations.

Dejan said:

What's wrong with the current reinforcement system (1.8.0) and how would an increased cap help?

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The increased cap would help in avoiding the current reinforcements implementation altogether.

Sometimes the AI or even the player will take up defensive positions behind their own spawn, an when reinforcements spawn, the troops will have to move through the enemy to get to their own formations and it becomes a mess as casualties pile up as new troops spawn. Easiest way to fix this would be to do as a lot of people have requested and have troops spawn outside the battle area and move in.

It is also infuriating to have your infantry on advance and then they start to fall back because more troops spawned in and for some reason you have no way to tell them to ignore new spawns and keep moving forward, so the best you can do is either order them to hold and watch while the enemy regroups and their ranged troops get a load of free kills or order a charge and watch the AI at its best.

My suggestion would be that settlements with no governor got the bonuses from the owner instead, and for that I tried two things and both are really easy and small changes in code.

1. Apply only when spending time in the settlement
2. Apply when the owner is within X distance from the settlement

I would go with the second, I don't see a player spending too much time waiting inside for bonuses to take place. Since it is not better than assigning a dedicated governor as you might be forced to move away and the AI would benefit from it as well, maybe even more than the player, I don't think it would unbalanced.

Edit:
Or instead of simply ceasing after X distance, the bonuses could receive a gradual reduction as you move further away.

This is like Vietnam POWs showing the middle finger and blinking "torture" in morse code when being forced to record propaganda videos.

Don't worry MostBlunted, someday someone is going to find the basement you are being held and forced to play unmodded Bannerlord non-stop and your "probation" will be over.

Flintstones and Land Before Time DLC confirmed

They seem overwhelmed to finish the stuff that they have planned, and I say planned in a very loose definition of the word. Adding mods to the base game would require looking at the code and "translating" it into their pattern (not necessarily better or worse) and it would require taking on the responsibility of keeping yet another part of the game balanced, working and interesting, which they don't seem all that capable of doing so far. Improvements and fixes would also fall into their schedule of patches.

In my opinion, entrusting TW with integrating mods into the game would be detrimental to players and modders.

I love that we always go through this cycle of questioning TW about when the patch is going to be released and TW ignoring us for the most part while providing pretty much no information, and when they do say something we act pissed as if it was unexpected that they won't suddenly improve communication, which has been a problem for a decade and a half.

It is like we are stuck in a Vaas meme from Far Cry 3 with his definition of insanity being played over and over in the background.

Art

• Added two new armors: Legionnaire armor with chainmail and Legionnaire armor with brass plates.

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Can any good soul post a screenshot of those two?

Antaeus said:

In this time period in Calradia, people don't read.

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Because in the grim darkness of Bannerlord there is only war...

I don't really want to get dragged into another discussion that stopped being as much about the game and more about history, but you can't really compare weapons without comparing other aspects of their usage, like discipline, training, formations and so forth. For example, in the battle of Cynoscephalae, the romans were being pushed back on their left flank by the Macedonian phalanx, when the Roman commander saw the rest of the Macedonian phalanx that arrived later still out of formation he took the initiative and attacked them before they could form which resulted in a rout to which he then proceeded to flank the formed phalanx and routed/pursued the Macedonians all the way to their camp.