Armor lack of effectiveness Devs should consider

[xdj1nn]

Do you know that these words mean exactly this?

Except the steel part, because early medieval armor was iron, not steel.


Maybe that's why I wrote this:

***

No, an arrow hit doesn't deliver enough energy to the body to lean back, but they can move and turn on a living person, so the angle of the incoming arrow won't be always ideal.

Early medieval armor often was of poor quality. But again, Tod tested 15th century stuff, not 11th century ones.

Which time?
Anyway, do it! I'm interested.

we are part of the same following (tod / skallagrim / shad / Joerg) we work on the same team so to speak and have similar interests and tastes...
What I do, however, is question human application of their tests basing it upon my competitive level on practical martial arts like BJJ Judo and kick boxing - which, primarily due to Judo, taught me that we have so much imperceptible to the eyes influence over dmg inflicted to us because the training create reflexes that mitigate impact through small movements. I often refuse to take most testing at face value. But a longbow arrow impact would def push the body, in fact it does, some tests made with longbows do put the ballistic gel placed on "bobbing" stands and it makes a reasonable difference on it's own, different from firearm bullets, arrows do not have enough velocity and concentrated force on their tips to be able to bypass both reflexes and natural bobbing over impact. if there was a trained person underneath, it's possible that the dmg would be even lower.

What I would doubt, though, is that a guy would manage to pass unscathed against a line of archers shooting such heavy arrows at such high draw weights unless wearing the 15th cent. plate armors... He'd be able to mitigate a few shots but with enough shots done in a rapid succession nobody would be able to do anything as to mitigate that.

I don't want to enter the quite superficial armor penetration debate, it's a disillusionizing read, about "plate" being steel (while the majority of plate before the late 14th century being iron), seemingly coupled with the perception that "steel" means carbonized hardened steel (although almost all plate before the 15th century being of mild unhardened steel), or bows being fundamentally unable to penetrate "steel" (it depends a lot of the quality of the material, the thickness, the angle of hitting etc.). I also wonder why the dumb medieval people added plate to mail although the latter was such a good protection against anything.

We cannot take isolated armor penetration tests as a rule for armor effectiveness. We don't have a realistic armor and health system with deflection and total avoidance without penetration, we don't have gaps in the armor, we don't have heat strokes because of armor and diminished mobility because of damaged armor.

So I think five bucks ideas of buffing armor and melee piercing would lead to the best experience in this given system, without using mods and difficult formulas which might work or not.

we are double standardizing here because the game states the armors are made of steel, not iron, when it's Iron they tell you it's iron too.
What the game presents' that all t6 armor is made of steel, not iron. Which's also reflected on their art take (the color of the metal couldn't be iron) - and yes, steel was used during earlier middle ages for armors, the romans did it way before the middle ages in fact... What changed was the quality of steel they could produce and the quantity / price.

Now, if we suppose your theory's correct: that would mean that the longbows in-game are absurd, because those didn't exist until much later, and even than in a much lower quantity the game portrays and than only a select few could use them properly / were trained to do it. If it existed, than the game has a poor portrayal of historical context, because when such fierce ranged weaponry first appeared, everybody started making armor that could stop it - so in the game that would make for a really weird contextual flaw.

 

[JunKeteer]

We cannot take isolated armor penetration tests as a rule for armor effectiveness. We don't have a realistic armor and health system with deflection and total avoidance without penetration, we don't have gaps in the armor, we don't have heat strokes because of armor and diminished mobility because of damaged armor.

So I think five bucks ideas of buffing armor and melee piercing would lead to the best experience in this given system, without using mods and difficult formulas which might work or not.

Armor/weapon balancing notwithstanding, I still think archers are way too accurate and they should look at tweaking the higher end bows to lose a few points of accuracy - Fians are as accurate as olympic level archers but faster and with 'non-modern' bows.

 

[xdj1nn]

Armor/weapon balancing notwithstanding, I still think archers are way too accurate and they should look at tweaking the higher end bows to lose a few points of accuracy - Fians are as accurate as olympic level archers but faster and with 'non-modern' bows.

I'd prefer almost perfect accuracy with lower dmg, makes for better gameplay experience if the player wants to go for ranged, it is more realistic (well trained archers are extremely accurate, where the inaccuracy only happens with movement and fatigue)
To mimic fatigue and for a more honest portrayal of archery, draw speeds should be slower for the more powerful bows (like the top speed should be what we get with low skill on a 70 speed bow, or something of the sorts) - RBM does a good job at speed, but the DMG's still too much there - instead I'd speed it up a little bit and lower the dmg

 

[five bucks]

I'd prefer almost perfect accuracy with lower dmg, makes for better gameplay experience if the player wants to go for ranged, it is more realistic (well trained archers are extremely accurate, where the inaccuracy only happens with movement and fatigue)
To mimic fatigue and for a more honest portrayal of archery, draw speeds should be slower for the more powerful bows (like the top speed should be what we get with low skill on a 70 speed bow, or something of the sorts)

+1
Though I would only make small tweaks to bow speed but agree it should be lower

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

Armor/weapon balancing notwithstanding, I still think archers are way too accurate and they should look at tweaking the higher end bows to lose a few points of accuracy - Fians are as accurate as olympic level archers but faster and with 'non-modern' bows.

I want my elite archers to feel elite. If they start struggling to hit looters, then what's the use of them?

Nah, let them stay accurate. Lower damage is the way to go.

 

[Dabos37]

Agree with this, armor should protect more against projectiles (both: arrows and bolts).

 

[xGreedo]

Well said. But they are not going to do it.
You are wasting your time talking about it sadly

 

[Retrobarbaari]

At least now you could as well arm your Aserai character and troops with them turbans (that have couple of points protection).
Doesn't make a difference to a full closed visor metal helm.
Yeah, that is kind of silly.

 

[geala]

As the fully closed visored helmet of BL does not have the disadvantages to combat effectiveness (for archers or foot troops generally) it had in reality, it's not as silly as some think.

 

[five bucks]

As the fully closed visored helmet of BL does not have the disadvantages to combat effectiveness (for archers or foot troops generally) it had in reality, it's not as silly as some think.

Seeing through a visored helmet makes a small difference to combat effectiveness, wearing a visored helmet makes a massive difference to survivability.

 

[AoC]

As the fully closed visored helmet of BL does not have the disadvantages to combat effectiveness (for archers or foot troops generally) it had in reality, it's not as silly as some think.

What kind of penalties? In game only helmets that might impose any serious penalties ale faceplate ones from vlandia. Nothing else. I shoot with my bow in conical helmet with full aventail just fine.

 

[Ichon]

I don't want to enter the quite superficial armor penetration debate, it's a disillusionizing read, about "plate" being steel (while the majority of plate before the late 14th century being iron), seemingly coupled with the perception that "steel" means carbonized hardened steel (although almost all plate before the 15th century being of mild unhardened steel), or bows being fundamentally unable to penetrate "steel" (it depends a lot of the quality of the material, the thickness, the angle of hitting etc.). I also wonder why the dumb medieval people added plate to mail although the latter was such a good protection against anything.

We cannot take isolated armor penetration tests as a rule for armor effectiveness. We don't have a realistic armor and health system with deflection and total avoidance without penetration, we don't have gaps in the armor, we don't have heat strokes because of armor and diminished mobility because of damaged armor.

So I think five bucks ideas of buffing armor and melee piercing would lead to the best experience in this given system, without using mods and difficult formulas which might work or not.

Good points, I find it very disheartening that arrows can get up to 104 piercing damage while a spear only has max 38 piercing but a short sword has up to 54 piercing damage? Especially 2 handed spears should get DOUBLE piercing damage at minimum which would only be 76 damage at current damage values.

Then crossbows still do less damage than top end bows- I am fine with light crossbows being more accurate at lower weapon skill and having more damage (they aren't and don't) and high end crossbows being equal to high end bows in piercing damage (bows still have draw speed + ammo quantity advantage) but for some reason TW made crossbows have both weaker damage, less ammo, and fire more slowly so... why even bother to include it other than some historical gesture.

Overall hand piercing weapons are a bit weak (especially spears and daggers) while bows are pretty much the best not even close. Granted only a handful of bows are doing 100 piercing and you have to have bodkin arrows to get the extra +4 damage but bow damage curve is pretty high, it starts above 1 handed spears for the weakest bows and then gets up to 3x damage of any spear.

The 3 basic damages of pierce, slash, and blunt would make sense- especially if some weapons did more than 1 type of damage and armors were more effective vs certain types of damage.

Crossbow bolts tend to be a bit heavier than most war arrows though there is some overlap and the heaviest bows often used very heavy arrows matching the lower weights of heavy quarrels but for game purposes to distinguish if arrows did 100% piercing while bolts did 80% pierce and 20% blunt damage which applied against an armor that had 75% pierce reduction but only 50% blunt like lamellar then a 100 damage arrow would do 25 damage but 100 damage quarrel would do 30 damage.

I think TW was afraid of giving spears too much damage due to speed damage bonuses but with how many units have shield and the directional blocking ability of shields REALLY nerfs spears while swinging attacks that come from the side or above a shield easily bypass the block which is why falx and menavliation are so dangerous and partially why arrows do so good damage even before getting to actual pierce vs armor debate- when there are a lot of archers, simply many arrows will come from angles shields do not block.

 

[five bucks]

Good points, I find it very disheartening that arrows can get up to 104 piercing damage while a spear only has max 38 piercing but a short sword has up to 54 piercing damage? Especially 2 handed spears should get DOUBLE piercing damage at minimum which would only be 76 damage at current damage values.

Agreed.

Then crossbows still do less damage than top end bows- I am fine with light crossbows being more accurate at lower weapon skill and having more damage (they aren't and don't) and high end crossbows being equal to high end bows in piercing damage (bows still have draw speed + ammo quantity advantage) but for some reason TW made crossbows have both weaker damage, less ammo, and fire more slowly so... why even bother to include it other than some historical gesture.

Well, in real life top end crossbows did do less damage than top end bows. Their main advantages were being much easier to use, and "getting off the ground" sooner with a low end crossbowman being able to do more damage than a low end bowman.

I think Bannerlord does an okay job of representing this. Crossbowmen are also usually better melee fighters than bowmen. Some of the benefits of crossbows over bows are subtle, for example crossbows can hold full accuracy much longer than bows, and crossbows can fire straight out of cover without needing the same windup; crossbowmen also duck while reloading, sometimes avoiding arrows that way.

Perhaps some tweaks are needed though, bigger quiver size for bolts would be very good as I do not think that it is even realistic for bolts to have a smaller quiver.

Overall hand piercing weapons are a bit weak (especially spears and daggers) while bows are pretty much the best not even close. Granted only a handful of bows are doing 100 piercing and you have to have bodkin arrows to get the extra +4 damage but bow damage curve is pretty high, it starts above 1 handed spears for the weakest bows and then gets up to 3x damage of any spear.

This.

Crossbow bolts tend to be a bit heavier than most war arrows though there is some overlap and the heaviest bows often used very heavy arrows matching the lower weights of heavy quarrels but for game purposes to distinguish if arrows did 100% piercing while bolts did 80% pierce and 20% blunt damage which applied against an armor that had 75% pierce reduction but only 50% blunt like lamellar then a 100 damage arrow would do 25 damage but 100 damage quarrel would do 30 damage.

For context I'll post this. Crossbowmen usually do a little bit better vs well armoured units already.

 

[AoC]

Another thing to consider, crossbows just weren't as good in related period as bows so no point in creating parity between those.

It's already ****ing counter strike, so nerf bows instead or ya know buff armor against ranged?

 

[Ichon]

For context I'll post this. Crossbowmen usually do a little bit better vs well armoured units already.

Thanks for posting that link- actually decent test methodology unlike most youtube tests I've seen. The main takeaway from that is that the Fian Champions are simply broken, most tests scoring 2x anything else. I knew they were strong simply from playing but I didn't realize how strong- I thought Palatine and Master Archers were only 20% or so less effective- not nearly 50% less effective. It will be difficult to play and not use Fians now, especially when fighting vs Battania.

The damage per shot vs armor from crossbows on the higher end seems ok but the spread between high tier and low tier for crossbows was huge and basically low AND mid tier crossbows are just fodder about as effective as recruits.

I guess given that evidence the changes that make the most sense to me for crossbows specifically would be at least double ammo for all crossbows and increasing the armor substantially for the higher tier crossbows. That way at least in sieges on both offense and defense they would make sense as it is hard to show in game the value of ducking/able to hold full draw to snipe. The lower shot per minute and less ammo while still on average having less armor than high tier bowmen impacts the higher tier crossbows hugely.

With those changes archers would still be better in most field battles and a bit better in longer battles but crossbows would perform better in sieges.

Historically way more high value leaders in the medieval era were killed by crossbows than bows from my reading of historical records, though the most surprising killer was the simple rock which BL sieges actually show adequately if not a bit OP but limited acceptably by locations of rock piles.

For low and mid tier crossbows, rather than big increases in armor- lower the recruitment and upkeep costs and give higher 1 handed weapon skill so they can be taken out by opposing ranged and shielded units quite easily but actually can be useful in siege defenses and do a bit better in melee vs low tier melee units.

Not 100% sure what nerfs Fian Champions should get- probably just lesser bow skill so they have less acurracy and rate of fire, that still lets their shots hit hard and they will remain capable in melee but less lkely to snipe from halfway across the map and effectiveness should drop 10-15% so they are only +30% better than other ranged because they should be better as the only noble ranged. Still leaves them a bit OP but at least able to be played around and not plain broken OP.

 

[Agroplode]

I don't mind arrows tickling good armor, I just cant seem to find at what range the arrows lose the tickling power. I got shot at near max range the other day and it was a head shot. I was first man to cross the line and first arrow/bolt *ding*.
I would like to see something like 0 damage from say 100 meters or more on top end armor.

I want some kind of reasonable chance to command my army, given we only have limited options to do it. Last thing I need is lose 5 hp here 10 hp there while trying to shout commands. Which again will need to be repeated because there was a tree in the way or a rock etc. And for "realistic" reasons, my Commander will move his shield to one side and make gestures with his right arm. So as to make it easier for enemy archers to shoot him

 

[9yearsago]

I always had this model of armor implementation in games.

Armors will provide "chance" based protection rate. Heavier armors will be able to deflect attacks entirely on a higher percentage of chance (say %70) and lower tier armors will do vice versa. Bannerlord already has body parts that can be targeted so in order to take down a heavily armored opponent you must aim for the neck.

 

[Tlap]

I always had this model of armor implementation in games.

Armors will provide "chance" based protection rate. Heavier armors will be able to deflect attacks entirely on a higher percentage of chance (say %70) and lower tier armors will do vice versa. Bannerlord already has body parts that can be targeted so in order to take down a heavily armored opponent you must aim for the neck.

RBM does good job with weak spots. You have to aim for face (helmets have head armor and face armor, facecovered helmets have face armor, non facecovered helmets doesnt) and lower shoulder for bonus dmg against late end armors.

 

[Antaeus]

These threads are always very paper-scissors-stone.

When considering the way armour and injuries work IRL, if we're going to talk about plate vs brigandine vs mail etc. Then we should also talk about the complexity of injuries, and the complexity of discomfort that occurs when someone is attacked.

Currently in game there are two types of trauma causing factors. Blunt and Sharp. They might be broken into a number of sub-factors (cut, stab, what ever), but ultimately they do two things, blunt ensures a concussion, sharp adds the chance of a death. Our character's health is a simple bar. You have any health, and you can fight at your full capabilities.

To me this is more problematic than the quality of individual armours.

In battle, you might be hit with a blunt weapon over plate, and you might be OK. Or there is a chance you might experience a broken bone, or be staggered, or your plate armour might be caved in causing an open wound that can't be closed without cutting the armour off. With a sharp weapon over plate you might be shaken but unharmed. It might slide into a gap and cause a laceration. You might be hooked by a lance from horseback that tears your arm off, or dislocates it even through armour.

In short, there are an almost infinite number of ways that a character can be injured on the field. Those injuries might render you incapable of fighting to your full potential. A simple weapon damage value vs armour value doesn't capture this. If we're going to be this fine grained about armour, we should also have chances to lose function of limbs, or to have blurred vision with headshots, or a sharp injury to your torso might act as a health drainer as you lose blood on the field.

In all cases, your health should probably drain over time after any significant injury - putting you on an adrenaline clock that runs out.

Then there's what happens when arrows fill your shield, or get stuck in your armour, or javelins find something to embed into. Shields should become heavier, leading to slower function until they are ditched. A javelin that is in your arm or your leg should be a significant speed limiter.


When I think of these things, I think we have justification for better armour. Then protection means something. Currently, you might have 2% of your health left, and you can do a 11 second 100m race. So I think it is appropriate to have lower armour values. Now if the consequences of injuries became more complex, then wouldn't that half a million fancy armour be worth something?

 

[Ichon]

When I think of these things, I think we have justification for better armour. Then protection means something. Currently, you might have 2% of your health left, and you can do a 11 second 100m race. So I think it is appropriate to have lower armour values. Now if the consequences of injuries became more complex, then wouldn't that half a million fancy armour be worth something?

That is an interesting point- I get more annoyed by a lack of a stamina bar which to me would make the combat much more interesting and also battles WAY more interesting as advancing at a charge could drain stamina leaving troops unable to fight when they face the enemy.

BL abstracts and absolutely HUGE number of things and it could be argued barely attempts to simulate combat but more focuses on the game being playable and offering something other games don't but remains a game above all- not a simulator despite people trying to turn it into that.

I have less issues with armor itself than how some weapons function- particularly problematic are how weak spears and daggers are, how strong menavliation and falx- basically swung polearms simply dominate kills in battles, particularly in siege wall fights where somehow the length of the weapon never seems to matter except inside a tower.

Then relatively more minor quibbles over arrow vs quarrel and how couched lances work.