Arrows too powerful to heavy armor

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kingofnoobia

Master Knight
I've noticed that the fact that arrows do piercing damage allows them to negate armor a bit too much. In real life, an arrow barely pierces plate armor (if you don't believe me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=NL&hl=nl&v=D3997HZuWjk ). Now, arrows can easily still do 10 damage to plate armor. My suggestion: make bows weaker OR make arrows do cutting damage OR make piercing less effective vs armor OR make plate armor, iron greaves and great helmet stronger. Not just for realism reasons, also for more fun and amore melee-oriented game.

I think the best one is making piercing less effective against armor. No one would rly have a problem with it, melee players will be archered less easily, while an enemy usually doensn't have very heavy armor, so archer players won't be too annoyed either, maybe they will sometimes need 3 shots in stead of 2.

Also, for the multiplayer, I'd suggest to give warriors with two handed weapons (like some of the nord huscarls, or vaegir guards) plate armor, otherwise no one will ever use two handed weapons, because they can't protect themselves vs arrows (edit: or at least a good shield).
 
True; Arrows are good for tearing up light infantry, but a knight? It ain't realistic for one body shot to kill him. (And even less to see him fly off his horse  :lol:)

Crossbows are much stronger than normal bows, and if anything, they need to be buffed too...

 
I rather think that this has to do with the armour rather than the arrows. I recall reading that armour offers damage reduction equal to 0.5-2.0x its armour rating, with modifications for the damage type. If the bottom range was increased significantly, I doubt that missile fire would be as potent as it is now.
 
Dragon13 said:
Crossbows are much stronger than normal bows, and if anything, they need to be buffed too...
I'm not sure, but I think a longbow and the hand spanned crossbow like we see in m&b have about the same strength (there are more powerful crossbows but I don't think they can be hand spanned). A longbow simply needed a lifetime to get good enough at, while a peasant practising the crossbow for a week could easily take down someone with only mediocre armor.

If anything, bows must be made slower AND weaker. If you see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=NL&hl=nl&v=HagCuGXJgUs , the guy needs 50 seconds to fire ten shots with the longbow. I think you can fire way more in mount and blade, about one arrow every 3 seconds...

Crossbows can be made stronger, but only if you have special types of VERY, VERY slow crossbows.
 
kingofnoobia said:
Dragon13 said:
Crossbows are much stronger than normal bows, and if anything, they need to be buffed too...
I'm not sure, but I think a longbow and the hand spanned crossbow like we see in m&b have about the same strength (there are more powerful crossbows but I don't think they can be hand spanned). A longbow simply needed a lifetime to get good enough at, while a peasant practising the crossbow for a week could easily take down someone with only mediocre armor.

If anything, bows must be made slower AND weaker. If you see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=NL&hl=nl&v=HagCuGXJgUs , the guy needs 50 seconds to fire ten shots with the longbow. I think you can fire way more in mount and blade, about one arrow every 3 seconds...

Crossbows can be made stronger, but only if you have special types of VERY, VERY slow crossbows.

Having actually used a bow, i know that you do not, to the common belief, pull back the arrow, aim, then shoot.  You pull it back and let it go in one smooth motion, so that guy was not trained and shoving arrows in the ground isn't the best way to have them in a battle. A man could loose 60-72 arrows in about four minutes theoretically, but it would be extremely tiresome for the mortal man.  Plus, historically, bows were used in large groups to volley the ememies, as opposed to accurate shooting as in mount and blade.  Therefore, I think that the bows are well balanced in-game, until you get to extremely high levels of character (50 or higher level character), which in this day, is mostly attained by cheating, something most likely not taken into account when designing the power of the bow. Perhaps a cap as to how powerful the bow could get, but certainly not weaker bows.  If the bows were to made more historical, then the usage of them should be made that way as well, and since battles in mount and blade aren't on a large enough scale to have a large group of archers volleying and still have an army to fight with, and the fact that the AI will not shoot into the air to get more range then is alloted by the game codes, I do no think that bows should be weakened.  A cap as the their power, however, is, I think, an interesting idea
 
The Red Baron said:
Having actually used a bow, i know that you do not, to the common belief, pull back the arrow, aim, then shoot.  You pull it back and let it go in one smooth motion, so that guy was not trained and shoving arrows in the ground isn't the best way to have them in a battle. A man could loose 60-72 arrows in about four minutes theoretically, but it would be extremely tiresome for the mortal man.  Plus, historically, bows were used in large groups to volley the ememies, as opposed to accurate shooting as in mount and blade.  Therefore, I think that the bows are well balanced in-game, until you get to extremely high levels of character (50 or higher level character), which in this day, is mostly attained by cheating, something most likely not taken into account when designing the power of the bow. Perhaps a cap as to how powerful the bow could get, but certainly not weaker bows.  If the bows were to made more historical, then the usage of them should be made that way as well, and since battles in mount and blade aren't on a large enough scale to have a large group of archers volleying and still have an army to fight with, and the fact that the AI will not shoot into the air to get more range then is alloted by the game codes, I do no think that bows should be weakened.  A cap as the their power, however, is, I think, an interesting idea
I'm confused as to how the evidence you present supports the conclusion you make. :???: And as far as I can tell, none of this is particularly relevant to the ease with which bows pierce plate armour in this game. Essentially you've said that a) learning to use bows is extremely difficult, and I think that the balance of that in the game is about right, if it took longer for your shots to become vaguely accurate it could be aggravating b) it's extremely tiring to loose a large number of arrows a minute with any bow, never mind a longbow, and c) bows weren't used as an aimed weapon but a volley weapon. I'm sure that the majority of the time that's true, but only for the less well trained. I'm sure for the steppe horse-archers of the time it was an aimed weapon. And as far as I can remember, trained longbowmen were expected to make aimed shots, although this might have been much later on, I can't remember the source of that.
Anyway, on the basis of this information, you've decided that the bows are well balanced since they become plate-armour destroying and pixel-accurate? I'm slightly confused. :neutral:
I agree with kingofnoobia and Swadius that bows should use cutting damage. A slightly better solution, but harder to achieve, would be that the arrows determine the damage type.
 
bows are overpowered to plate armor. A while ago I got an arrow in my LEG (it was under my shield), where I wear iron greaves and plate armor so >50 leg armor, and it did 10 damage. An arrow in my winged great helmet, where it shouldn't even get through, did fckin 20 damage. I call that overpowered.

Maybe making arrows do cutting damage is a good solution, but I think decreasing the armor ignore of piercing attacks is even better. That way, military picks won't be that powerful either (I haven't used them often, but of what I hear on the forum...)
 
The big problem with arrows, as already said, is the piercing damage.  Piercing damage it way way too strong, even light glances of a spear or lance onto platemail armour will penetrate it.
 
Jon Snow said:
The Red Baron said:
Having actually used a bow, i know that you do not, to the common belief, pull back the arrow, aim, then shoot.  You pull it back and let it go in one smooth motion, so that guy was not trained and shoving arrows in the ground isn't the best way to have them in a battle. A man could loose 60-72 arrows in about four minutes theoretically, but it would be extremely tiresome for the mortal man.  Plus, historically, bows were used in large groups to volley the ememies, as opposed to accurate shooting as in mount and blade.  Therefore, I think that the bows are well balanced in-game, until you get to extremely high levels of character (50 or higher level character), which in this day, is mostly attained by cheating, something most likely not taken into account when designing the power of the bow. Perhaps a cap as to how powerful the bow could get, but certainly not weaker bows.  If the bows were to made more historical, then the usage of them should be made that way as well, and since battles in mount and blade aren't on a large enough scale to have a large group of archers volleying and still have an army to fight with, and the fact that the AI will not shoot into the air to get more range then is alloted by the game codes, I do no think that bows should be weakened.  A cap as the their power, however, is, I think, an interesting idea
I'm confused as to how the evidence you present supports the conclusion you make. :???: And as far as I can tell, none of this is particularly relevant to the ease with which bows pierce plate armour in this game. Essentially you've said that a) learning to use bows is extremely difficult, and I think that the balance of that in the game is about right, if it took longer for your shots to become vaguely accurate it could be aggravating b) it's extremely tiring to loose a large number of arrows a minute with any bow, never mind a longbow, and c) bows weren't used as an aimed weapon but a volley weapon. I'm sure that the majority of the time that's true, but only for the less well trained. I'm sure for the steppe horse-archers of the time it was an aimed weapon. And as far as I can remember, trained longbowmen were expected to make aimed shots, although this might have been much later on, I can't remember the source of that.
Anyway, on the basis of this information, you've decided that the bows are well balanced since they become plate-armour destroying and pixel-accurate? I'm slightly confused. :neutral:
I agree with kingofnoobia and Swadius that bows should use cutting damage. A slightly better solution, but harder to achieve, would be that the arrows determine the damage type.

I was combatting kingofnoobia's suggestion
 
I agree with The Red Baron, altough I only read the first sentence.
Arrows should do piercing damage.
Arrows were effective, Cbows were more effective and fire weapons were the least effective (early stadium).


According the youtube video:
There's people who have made videos about throwing darts at eachother, and both survived. I can't see how you can survive with a dart in genitals.
I din't watch the video, so my post was kind of unnecessary.
 
The Red Baron said:
I was combatting kingofnoobia's suggestion
I know. Have you even read the first post? To reiterate:

Jon Snow said:
...as far as I can tell, none of this is particularly relevant to the ease with which bows pierce plate armour in this game.
I agree with you that capping the power of bows is an interesting idea, but nothing you've said even vaguely addresses the fact that bows ARE too effective against armour. You provided a lot of facts that have nothing to do with this, such as usual methods of employment of bows, how to fire a bow, and how difficult it is to fire a lot of arrows in a short period of time, and then used these facts in some bizarre way to come to the conclusion that bows do not need to be weakened against armour. :neutral: As I understand it, bows were about as effective as swords against plate armour...i.e., not very effective.

kingofnoobia said:
...I think decreasing the armor ignore of piercing attacks is even better. That way, military picks won't be that powerful either.
I don't think it's unreasonable for military picks to be effective against armour. Picks are designed to go through armour. Have a look at this! http://www.myarmoury.com/review_dt_hammer.html That's a 15-gauge helmet he smashes through, not a very good one, but still. I'd be willing to bet a fair amount that an arrow wouldn't have gone through it. I'm no expert on the effectiveness of bodkin arrows, though, it's true.
 
UnholyNighmare said:
Arrows should do piercing damage.
Arrows were effective, Cbows were more effective and fire weapons were the least effective (early stadium).
No. Arrows cannot completely pierce plate armor. Even from a longbow from 20 meters, like in the video. Crossbows like we seen in m&b are not that strong. They are hand spanned, so they are only as powerful as longbows normally. You have more powerful crossbows, but you can only fire them a few times every minute.

I think piercing armor negates 50% armor right? Well, just decrease that to 10% or at max 20% and the problem is solved. Also for the melee weapons. I don't think a military pick does that much more damage to plate armor than an axe... A bit, sure, but not 50%
 
kingofnoobia said:
I think piercing armor negates 50% armor right? Well, just decrease that to 10% or at max 20% and the problem is solved. Also for the melee weapons. I don't think a military pick does that much more damage to plate armor than an axe... A bit, sure, but not 50%
Yeah, but then, I think that axes should do piercing damage as well. :wink:
 
Jon Snow said:
Yeah, but then, I think that axes should do piercing damage as well. :wink:

The way I see it, axes do more blunt damage than cut damage when it comes to plate armor. The real question is how complex we want the armor/damage system to be before it gets to be either as close to 100% accurate as possible, or where too much processing is used in battles.

For example, an axe would be devastating against unarmored and lightly armored opponents, and moderately effective against mailed and plate armored troops. To represent this there would have to be distinct armor categories for light (possibly medium) and heavy armor, instead of a catch-all armor rating. Most weapons would do well against light armor, but the trade off is increased agility, so is better suited for quick fighters. Heavy armor would truly represent the medieval tanks, and would shrug off almost all attacks from bladed weapons and arrows, but would be encumbering and still vulnerable to maces and picks. Medium armor such as mail would be impervious to cutting and resistant to blunt damage (due to the padded gambeson underneath), but open to piercing damage from spears and specifically bodkin arrows.

Sorry for the long post and for any historical inaccuracy, but to me this seems like the ideal solution.
 
Well, there is only one great issue, and it's the large armor negation of piercing attacks. Only that has to decrease to 20%, or even 10%. Historical accuracy is less important than balance.
 
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