Archery

[Kinsume]

So in order to try and balance archery you removed the Power Draw limits on bows and capped Power Draw at level 2 in order to give us a minimum damage bonus from it since at higher levels it can be quite a bit. However I believe there were several other options that would have been far better. High levels of PD did so much with bows in this mod simply because the arrow damage bonuses are so high. Lets face the facts, while a peasant who picks up a bow for the first time most likely isn't going to be able to kill his target in under 10 arrows, it's not uncommon for a highly trained archer to drop their target in a single shot. As such this should be reflected in the PD skill being leveled as well as proficiencies.

So what I am proposing is, return the PD limits back to 6 or 8 or so. However drop the arrows damage by about half, and reduce the amount of damage piercing weapons do to armors if need be. What does this do? Makes it so that a peasant/companion with no power draw isn't going to do crap for damage with a bow, where as the higher tiered archers/companions trained in PD, who are trained to use the bow effectively, will represent their skill levels.

I don't have the numbers to run, but as it stands I have 8 companions all equipped with strong war bows since they have nothing stopping them from using it. Combined with my own bow and several archers I'm still just as devastating to any army I run into. There is nothing realistic about someone being able to be given the best bow in the game and use it with no training in that area.

 

[Arszi]

However drop the arrows damage by about half

Good one. Maybe PD cap could be removed. With the PD cap Bows are like Xbows. The only difference is bows are too superior to xbow.

 

[xat]

Atm xbows kill more ppl than bows atleast in my game. Not mentioning the throwing ones which I myself gimped by capping thrown weapons to 4 pt.

 

[othr]

I'll try this, the only thing I'm afraid of is that low level archery will be impossible to level because the power draw bonus is applied exponentially (it grows really fast).  So at low level you will do no damage at all and at high level you will get to the point where you can penetrate shields and kill through in one shot 100% of the time.

 

[Shifty76]

Maybe up the PD requirements on the bows too, so that the stronger ones can only be used with 8+ points in PD

 

[Kinsume]

Maybe up the PD requirements on the bows too, so that the stronger ones can only be used with 8+ points in PD

Exactly, againstly lightly armored units yes you'll rip through them like nothing. That's how its supposed to be, but vs heavily armored units it will take you several shots to bring them down even with high end archery stuff.

Edit :

It's all about finding a happy medium damage wise, it's painstaking but necessary. The way you tried to fix it sounds good on paper but it's too easily exploited...

 

[xat]

Easy just increase the armor penetration bonus and modificators in module ini.
At the same time increase all weapons pierce damage bonus so that it will nullify the bow nerf on spears and swords etc.
Atm values are at

# RCM values
armor_soak_factor_against_cut       = 0.95
armor_soak_factor_against_pierce    = 0.55
armor_soak_factor_against_blunt     = 0.55

# RCM values
armor_reduction_factor_against_cut       = 0.10
armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce    = 0.10
armor_reduction_factor_against_blunt     = 0.10

So then just try to fool around with them.

Also for shields and other stuff

#missiles with damage > shield_penetration_offset + shield_penetration_factor * shield
#will penetrate.

shield_penetration_offset = 30.0
shield_penetration_factor = 3.0

#setting speed_power to 2.0 makes damage scale with the square of missile's speed.
# you can set it to 1.0 to make it scale linearly as it was before.
#missile_damage_speed_power = 1.9;
#melee_damage_speed_power = 2.0;

# RCM values
missile_damage_speed_power = 1.1;
melee_damage_speed_power = 1.2;

Imo You should work on these values rather than jumping with PD as it doesn't work to well.

 

[othr]

Velocity damage bonus doesn't is something else, soak values etc affect a lot more than just arrows.  Thanks for the suggestion though.

The real problem is PD and the fact that the damage bonus for this is hardcoded.

 

[xat]

Thats why I said INCREASE soak values but at the same time INCREASE piercing damage of swords/lances/spears and any other stuff besides the bow.
This way you get gimped bows with PD to increase them.

 

[Kinsume]

Velocity damage bonus doesn't is something else, soak values etc affect a lot more than just arrows.  Thanks for the suggestion though.

The real problem is PD and the fact that the damage bonus for this is hardcoded.

Which is why I said, among lowering the damage a bit, to cap the PD at say 6 and readd PD requirements for bows. With the high end bows needing PD 4 atleast.

For example :

War bow (12 damage)
Barbed arrows (15 damage)
Power Draw 6 (Level 4 for bow requirement, so only a 28% bonus to damage)
Then proficiencies which adds a bit more

Then there is the armor's damage reduction from the target you hit and such, which you can increase its resistance to piercing damage as was already suggested.

 

[othr]

Thats why I said INCREASE soak values but at the same time INCREASE piercing damage of swords/lances/spears and any other stuff besides the bow.
This way you get gimped bows with PD to increase them.

Eh?, no.

 

[Kinsume]

With the stats I put up there you'd be doing in the 20's for damage on heavily armored units, which is more than reasonable. You still might 1 shot lower tier'd units, but honestly that makes sense from a skilled archer.