Are spears and pikes ever going to be fixed?

[xdj1nn]

If boxing is considered martial art, than you are very wrong. But I admit - I never held a spear in my hands. My previous post was half a joke, but seriously - if a polearm weapon is stuck in your chest plate you won't be able to move as fast. If able to move at all.

So, you are well trained with sharp spears and plate armor?

I have spent most of my youth fighting BJJ and Judo. Trained Tae Kwon Do for around a year, box for 2 years, Karate for 2 years. I know too much about martial arts... Probably, if a spear got stuck on your armor (plate I mean), neither you or your opponent would be able to puncture it deeper (not enough force) and would have a tremendous difficult time removing it. Hence why if a spearman gets his weapon stuck on your armor, you can just casually approach and kill the unarmed guy, unless he has a backup weapon that works against armor (like a mace), else it becomes wrestling (dagger or half-swording). Either way, the only situation where you'd attack the armor with a spear is if the armor is curved in a way that could lead the tip into a Gap, and if you were trying that you would not over-do it, you wouldn't apply all your force to the attack... In fact, most of the time spears are not meant to be used "full-force" or you'd risk a over-puncturing, which could get stuck even in a unarmored person...

 

[Hero_of_Ferelden]

As usual, any thread mentioning realism has been flooded by Lindybeige subscribers.

 

[Nickname]

I have spent most of my youth fighting BJJ and Judo. Trained Tae Kwon Do for around a year, box for 2 years, Karate for 2 years.

Ok, cool, but has nothing to do with current topic.

Probably, if a spear got stuck on your armor (plate I mean), neither you or your opponent would be able to puncture it deeper (not enough force) and would have a tremendous difficult time removing it. Hence why if a spearman gets his weapon stuck on your armor, you can just casually approach and kill the unarmed guy, unless he has a backup weapon that works against armor (like a mace), else it becomes wrestling (dagger or half-swording).

Probably, or probably not. You can't casually approach a guy, whos spear is stuck in your armor. First of all, he will not just stand there and wait for you to kill him. Secondly, spear weights quite a bit, it will hang and rest against the ground, preventing you from advancing. One way or another, you won't be able to move efficiently.You will have to remove the spear, either dropping your shield or dropping your weapon. In case of full-plate no shield typically, but nonetheless a waste of time and attention. And we are talking battlefield melee, where you are getting constantly attacked from all sides. Watch this, I think you get the idea

Either way, the only situation where you'd attack the armor with a spear is if the armor is curved in a way that could lead the tip into a Gap

Of course you would attack the armor with spear in many situations. I think the most often case was - you are a soldier, regular spearman in an army, attacked by enemy forces including some armored dudes. You guys are often mentioning half-swording against armor. Well, guess what, spear is better version of half-swording - longer reach, much better handling. I'm not saying its easy do penetrate plate with a spear, hell no. But knights, mounted or dismounted, were often defeated by spear men. And medieval combat manuals clearly display men in full-plate fighting with spears two-handed as primary weapon. Means it was effective, otherwise why did they train it? So you may want to update update your knowledge a bit.

 

[SmattlePattle]

As usual, any thread mentioning realism has been flooded by Lindybeige subscribers.

Time to deny climate change and talk about how Napoleon sucked but the British Empire is wonderful and never did a bad.
I'm a re-enactor that went to private school, don't you argue with me!

 

[Hndzm]

My bet is that a spear thrust from horseback would shatter the spear rather than penetrate plate, although the armor wearer is still gonna be quite unhappy because of the impact (don't quote me on that, I don't claim to have any level of expertise on the matter).

Piercing through chainmail, even higher weave density mail, sounds at least more credible, but debatable nontheless. It isn't like armor was designed to resist slashes and do nothing with other, not edge-based cutting weapons - you still have to overpower the strength of linkage, then the gambeson underneath, yada yada.

I misspoke somewhat about spears through plate armor on foot, the likelihood of you penetrating and killing a knight as a spear wielding footman is incredibly low (praying for cheap armor), but you will be able to leverage the main disadvantage of plate armor, the fact that it deforms and can be made to be more cumbersome than it is protective. A spear driven as deep as possible into a plate cuirass may only penetrate 1mm through the armor, and of course because of the gambeson not reach the knight, but now the knight has a spear driven into his armor, giving leverage and maintaining distance. A similar concept to the pilum, I've shared a video of what they do to shields here previously. (
Edit: Didn't refresh page, vid has already been posted) You won't be fighting much with spears lodged in your armor, and taking time to remove one could get you killed.

In regards to spears or lances off horse, they absolutely would penetrate plate armor and kill the wearer. There is a reason for jousting tournaments the lances were blunted and the armor extra heavy, the force generated from a horse at full charge will give a small spear point deadly penetration, at the very least crushing the armor and leaving the knight unable to move, if not outright killing them from the trauma and broken bones or a quick death from being hit in the head.

Yes, penetrating chainmail is not easy, but very much possible. Even an untrained spearman can deliver a fatal stab through chainmail if their spear has an appropriate thin head and not a broad leaf blade. Once you've made it through the mail, the gambeson is hardly a factor, as the rings hold the spear straight and basically give you leverage to push deeper.





In game, I really wish Taleworlds would be more ambitious. Give us different TYPES of armor that are better or worse vs certain damage types, or more damage types that react differently against higher/lower values of armor, preferably both. Hack damage for axes, as an example, could have higher armor penetration stat up to a certain armor threshold than slash damage for swords, but slash damage gains bonus damage when they deal damage exceeding armor threshold by a certain number. Blunt and pierce could be alternately better vs different types of armor, blunt doing more consistent damage across armor types, but dealing lower value damage, while pierce could possibly completely negate armors such as cloth, leather and cheaper mail and deal higher damage than anything except high value/two handed axes until you reach lamellar and basic plate (coat of plates for Vlandia) armors, where blunt would deal the most damage not accounting for horse speed bonus, which should be higher for pierce weapons.

 

[Koshkasa]

-snip-

Well... consider me constructively defeated in that case. Haven't even had a thought about lances when writing the post you've replied to.

As for armor types, I guess TW wouldn't want to complicate fights that much. While what you've suggested is certainly realistic and curious to play around in a custom battle setting, in Campaigns that would force me to just carry three sidearms, each for a specific purpose, swapping them in the middle of a fight to my unlimited frustration. I guess there's a balance between realism and playability that we'd have to find first.

 

[Hndzm]

As for armor types, I guess TW wouldn't want to complicate fights that much. While what you've suggested is certainly realistic and curious to play around in a custom battle setting, in Campaigns that would force me to just carry three sidearms, each for a specific purpose, swapping them in the middle of a fight to my unlimited frustration. I guess there's a balance between realism and playability that we'd have to find first.

It could complicate fights somewhat yes, but I would think it would mostly leverage the advantages of shock infantry and certain infantries with maces and axes, giving them a better place in fights. I wouldn't want slash damage for example to do no damage to lamellar, even though realistically it wouldn't. For gameplay, every weapon should be able to hurt any armor with speed bonus, enough weapon skill and athletics, even if it's only 10 or lower damage. Sabres and other slash only swords could become hack weapons, to beef them up vs armor or have even higher damage value to make up for lacking a piercing stab attack.

I'm not sure exactly what Viking Conquest did with armor, but they made lower tier spears deal cut damage, as well as certain arrows to make armor more efficient vs slash, and gave better axes pierce damage to allow them to penetrate armor as they should. Something could be done without changing the current mechanics too drastically.

 

[xdj1nn]

-snip-

Aye, go kill some plate armored knights with spear only, it'll be really entertaining to watch

 

[Nickname]

Aye, go kill some plate armored knights with spear only, it'll be really entertaining to watch

I can do this all day in M&B

But I have a counter offer - you dress in plate armor and proceed to attack this formation. I bet it will be no less entertaining, although the outcome is known (see Battle of Bannockburn).

 

[Apocal]

I don't think they had much plate armor at the Battle of Bannockburn, unless you're talking like coat of plates or something similar.

 

[Nickname]

I don't think they had much plate armor at the Battle of Bannockburn, unless you're talking like coat of plates or something similar.

You a right! A good reminder that we should refrain from further theorizing and turn to the era of Bannerlord.

 

[Confuttziuss]

I hope but what I see is that they nerved them in 1.2...
I would love it but I would love it more to have working Couch lance
I run in the problem that after all I have no Mele weapon on the Horse back. You can use them but you can't hit the enemy's and they can hit you very Easy.
I put all my hope in the Modding community
Smithing has no indicators if the weapon is a couch Lance or not...
I am a bit pissed of. I have the problem that every Pacht I lost amount of speed and carry capacity. I started a new game and with all item starting equipment (in the inventory ) I was to have to move even fast... I mean each damn Patch the horse carry less and move slower on the map. I have enough horses (both types ) and a army with 1000 people is faster than me what?
I found a Mele weapon that I can handle and it get nerfed or changed some items disappear...
I got really pissed of the new 1.2 patch
I played this game over 70 hours and twith each patch I get the feeling that they don't test this game for 0.5 seconds.

 

[Forlorn Hope]

Some good points here.

For starters I think it'd be good just to give spears four attack directions when used with two hands and a speed bonus. Additionally I'd give long spears an alternate weapon mode that renders you immobile by bracing the spear on the ground, but any cavalry who run onto it at sufficient speed would receive something equivalent to couched lance damage. These fundamental improvements would go a long way by my reckoning.

 

[Hndzm]

Some good points here.

For starters I think it'd be good just to give spears four attack directions when used with two hands and a speed bonus.

Other than making animations, this seems like the best, easiest fix. Speed bonus I don't think I would touch, just increase the damage, or the spin poke will be even more incentivized.

 

[bonerstorm]

I mean the REAL "best, easiest" fix would be to copy the homework of the Viking Conquest mod and Floris Mod etc etc etc...

I don't know exactly what they did to make spears and shieldwalls and phalanxes not suck but MB2 devs seriously need to do the same.

The fact that they've been NERFING spears instead says a lot about their priorities - basically making the game suck because they can't learn from the mods that made Warband playable to begin with.

 

[johncage213]

Some good points here.

For starters I think it'd be good just to give spears four attack directions when used with two hands and a speed bonus. Additionally I'd give long spears an alternate weapon mode that renders you immobile by bracing the spear on the ground, but any cavalry who run onto it at sufficient speed would receive something equivalent to couched lance damage. These fundamental improvements would go a long way by my reckoning.

you can move a couched pike, it shouldn't be immobile, it should simply be slowed down. a lot of these changes should really be about common sense rather than "muh balance". i don't give a crap if a couched pike is deadly against charging knights, they should be. and players knights should modify their behavior around that by attacking sides or rear rather than asking for pikes and spears to be nerfed because the game doesn't hold their hand on the optimal way to use cavalry

 

[Maximum997]

I know it is not realistic, but making spears ignore all friendly collision would probably fix all the problems.

Bad idea and thats why:

Imagine you are fighting against NPC as a Player
An them magical spear appears from his chest and hits you. You cant see that strike. That kind of **** was in vermintide 2 and it was frustraiting.

 

[Maximum997]

Yo forgot two reasons why spears are bad:

1) Perks dont work.

We have two perks.
On 125 - you push enemy when he is blocking with the sheild.
225 - push opponent with succesful atack. (It should be just a passive effect for any spear)
This perks are very important to keep the distance.



2) Collision is broken. Regular infantry battle is a moshpit with no space.

 

[h1zchan]

It is weird, because most HEMA people say again and again that overarm grup is rubbish and underarm grip is way better when using spears.

Nah it's just Lindybeige who says that and he isn't really a hema person per say. He's more of a reenactor. You can tell that by the gear he uses when he goes to teach people about spears. He doesn't tell his bois to wear face protection and as a result the head has to be excluded from the target zone which is quite misleading. You MUST be wearing fencing mask and using rubber safety spear tip to understand the effectiveness of the overhand grip. The overhand grip allows you to retract your spear behind you, to prevent the opponent from establishing a bind with your spear, thus making it much harder to parry. And because it comes down from above it has added speed and power making it difficult to parry even with a shield, as the weight of the shield may prevent you lifting it up in time to parry properly, and even with a proper parry it could still bounce off shield edge and hit somebody's face.

 

[xdj1nn]

I hope but what I see is that they nerved them in 1.2...
I would love it but I would love it more to have working Couch lance
I run in the problem that after all I have no Mele weapon on the Horse back. You can use them but you can't hit the enemy's and they can hit you very Easy.
I put all my hope in the Modding community
Smithing has no indicators if the weapon is a couch Lance or not...
I am a bit pissed of. I have the problem that every Pacht I lost amount of speed and carry capacity. I started a new game and with all item starting equipment (in the inventory ) I was to have to move even fast... I mean each damn Patch the horse carry less and move slower on the map. I have enough horses (both types ) and a army with 1000 people is faster than me what?
I found a Mele weapon that I can handle and it get nerfed or changed some items disappear...
I got really pissed of the new 1.2 patch
I played this game over 70 hours and twith each patch I get the feeling that they don't test this game for 0.5 seconds.

to me "couching" lance is currently bugged... In warband every weapon called "lance" would be able to couch, here there are quite a few lances that cannot, I think it's oversight...

Nah it's just Lindybeige who says that and he isn't really a hema person per say. He's more of a reenactor. You can tell that by the gear he uses when he goes to teach people about spears. He doesn't tell his bois to wear face protection and as a result the head has to be excluded from the target zone which is quite misleading. You MUST be wearing fencing mask and using rubber safety spear tip to understand the effectiveness of the overhand grip. The overhand grip allows you to retract your spear behind you, to prevent the opponent from establishing a bind with your spear, thus making it much harder to parry. And because it comes down from above it has added speed and power making it difficult to parry even with a shield, as the weight of the shield may prevent you lifting it up in time to parry properly, and even with a proper parry it could still bounce off shield edge and hit somebody's face.

Personally, the most hurtful thing about all M&B is the fact that we cannot attack with spears while blocking. That simply kills any "realism" in a shield wall formation... The workaround in warband was to force spear troops to fall in ranks (#2 #3 and #4) with swords at the shield-wall, not even this was implemented here, which's troublesome.