SomeWeirdSins
Veteran
Taleworlds team and fellow Bannerlord fans:
I wanted to close out my second season of streaming Bannerlord with my thoughts on the current armor system. In 1.59 ranged damage is overwhelmingly strong. This strength creates a fight system where the ability to play tactically with a mixed army is mostly irrelevant, as mass ranged attackers (archers) will win virtually any fight without any use of tactics.
The root cause of this problem is the armor system and ranged damage calculations. Currently, armor only partially reduces damage from ranged attacks. Furthermore, enemies charging archers take bonus damage from the projectile's relative speed. Cavalry charging archers suffers even more, meaning that the unit that 'should' counter archers in a rock-paper-scissors manner actually just dies like flies to archers in most scenarios.
In my opinions battles would have more tactical depth if archers were a counter to unarmored targets but mostly ineffective against armor. There are two ways of making this idea work: 1. Ranged damage should be its own damage type with armor reducing damage along a sigmoid curve. 2. As a shortcut test, tier 5 melee units could have a 10% reduction from ranged damage (similar to the 175 bow perk), tier 6 units should have a 15% reduction from ranged damage, and heroes/lords could have a 20% reduction from ranged damage.
I want to acknowledge Taleworld's progress in addressing the ranged-dominant meta. Bow accuracy has been reduced and AI shieldwall usage has been vastly improved. Archers ARE worse than they were in 1.4.x patches. Based on my game experience the armor system bottlenecks the tactical potential of Bannerlord. Until the armor system receives a significant rework Bannerlord fights will continue to be winnable with the simple rule of 'build more archers and upgrade them more, sometimes take high ground'.
Thanks again to the Taleworlds staff for all your hard work on Bannerlord,
Sins
I wanted to close out my second season of streaming Bannerlord with my thoughts on the current armor system. In 1.59 ranged damage is overwhelmingly strong. This strength creates a fight system where the ability to play tactically with a mixed army is mostly irrelevant, as mass ranged attackers (archers) will win virtually any fight without any use of tactics.
The root cause of this problem is the armor system and ranged damage calculations. Currently, armor only partially reduces damage from ranged attacks. Furthermore, enemies charging archers take bonus damage from the projectile's relative speed. Cavalry charging archers suffers even more, meaning that the unit that 'should' counter archers in a rock-paper-scissors manner actually just dies like flies to archers in most scenarios.
In my opinions battles would have more tactical depth if archers were a counter to unarmored targets but mostly ineffective against armor. There are two ways of making this idea work: 1. Ranged damage should be its own damage type with armor reducing damage along a sigmoid curve. 2. As a shortcut test, tier 5 melee units could have a 10% reduction from ranged damage (similar to the 175 bow perk), tier 6 units should have a 15% reduction from ranged damage, and heroes/lords could have a 20% reduction from ranged damage.
I want to acknowledge Taleworld's progress in addressing the ranged-dominant meta. Bow accuracy has been reduced and AI shieldwall usage has been vastly improved. Archers ARE worse than they were in 1.4.x patches. Based on my game experience the armor system bottlenecks the tactical potential of Bannerlord. Until the armor system receives a significant rework Bannerlord fights will continue to be winnable with the simple rule of 'build more archers and upgrade them more, sometimes take high ground'.
Thanks again to the Taleworlds staff for all your hard work on Bannerlord,
Sins