Bows??

[IntelHydralisk]

/rant on

Ok wow... one of the more enjoyable aspects of Native for me was the ability to use my bow on my horse with 5 into horse archery and have pinpoint accuracy. Even while standing, the bows in native expansion have (70-75) accuracy which means they have a hard time hitting the broad side of a barn...

It's made horse archery not very fun at all. Oh well, horse charge is so overpowered apparently that I just afk run into infantry and see "75 charge damage" pop up 10 times in a row.

Ok fine, but during sieges, wtf?? The crosshair is larger than the little holes in the battlements that the enemy archers are peaking out of! I'm just staring at amazement at the wild arrows my character is launching. It was extremely fun in native to hit head shots while your soldiers charged the walls... it was pretty much the only way you could back up your mob of mentally retarded lemmings. Head shot ?? Forget it unless it's point blank or completely random.

The archers on the walls on the other hand ... they don't need accuracy since there's a giant mob of "if you miss this you have down syndrome" on the freakin' ladder.

Sieges are completely retarded now... as if archers weren't strong enough on defense before.

/rant off

 

[Ruthven]

Chew your fingers until the red water comes out.


I like rusty spoons... *wanders away*

 

[Jinnai]

At least two other threads have covered this topic before.

First: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,54029.0.html
Second: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,51406.0.html

 

[The Mercenary]

In addition, as I've said before, it's realism. I guarantee you won't score a perfect head shot using a longbow every time, from an awkward angle while arrows are whizzing around you and there are multiple battlements in your way.

 

[IntelHydralisk]

At least two other threads have covered this topic before.

First: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,54029.0.html
Second: http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,51406.0.html

The only argument I can surmise from those posts is that "bows shouldn't be accurate at 50 yards"

Fine. But it's not even accurate at 20 yards.

It's not TERRIBLE on an open field fight since the only real use is against enemy calvary and you can pretty much 1-2 shot a horse with a strong enough bow + ivory arrows.

But during a siege, if we're going for realism here, how realistic is it for the attacking army to put up one dinky ladder and have an all you can kill line of demented soldiers walking up it? I'm not even going to mention the retarded siege towers.

I don't see a way to siege an enemy castle if they have any sort of archers on the wall. The only thing i can think of is reducing battle size to something like 20.

 

[Shawyn]

ability to use my bow on my horse with 5 into horse archery and have pinpoint accuracy.

There is the flaw in your logic, you should have to have it maxed out before it's 'pinpoint.'

 

[Ruthven]

If you can eat your own toes, you have won the game.

 

[Mini Marine]

Ivory bows are plenty accurate, unless they've been nerfed in the new patch, i haven't had a chance to get one yet

 

[DamienZharkoff]

Mini.. im sorry but... seems the ivory bows may be MIA

 

[Mini Marine]

well it looks like i won't be importing my horse archer than

well thats too bad, i rather enjoyed my full gallop sniper, I guess its time to clobber guys over the head instead.

 

[IntelHydralisk]

ability to use my bow on my horse with 5 into horse archery and have pinpoint accuracy.

There is the flaw in your logic, you should have to have it maxed out before it's 'pinpoint.'

The problem isn't with horse archery the skill it's with how accurate the bows are period.

5 in horse archery makes it as accurate as if you were unmounted... but the unmounted accuracy is piss poor.

There honestly should be a way to improve on the piss poor accuracy if you were skilled enough in power draw / horse archery / bow proficiency. The way it is now, it's seriously just not fun. I don't care how realistic it is, it's just not fun. Many things in real life aren't fun in a game.

 

[Mini Marine]

I'm actually inclined to agree, while the 99 accuracy of native bows is a bit much, not being able to get above 80 makes shots at any sort of range impossible.  Yeah bows are good against area targets, but against point targets they aren't so great...maybe having some bows in the range of 85-90 accuracy would be a decent compromise with the best bow(s) being up at 95 or so.

since accuracy is so integral to a bow, making the modifiers for the bows have more of an impact on accuracy instead of damage and speed.

 

[Chopa]

Quote MiniMarine:
 

since accuracy is so integral to a bow, making the modifiers for the bows have more of an impact on accuracy instead of damage and speed.

    Interesting...... That's the way they have gone in "Onin No Ran"

            The better the bow, the more accurate.
            The damage is in the arrows....Better arrows=higher damage.

 

[Deadly Dick]

I am actually quite content with the way the bows are now,
it balances out the native problem where crossbows had no advantage whatsoever over bows, now their slow but much more accurate

I also agree that if you want to be able to hit people at 50 yards at full gallop with pinpoint accuracy you should have to slowly build up your skills and have 10 horse archery and 400-500 archery.
That way its not exceedingly easy to be a one person army where 60 arrows lets you take out an army of 60 people.

I am really liking the direction this mod is taking as it is making it much more balanced and challenging rather than very easy and boring.

---
If people are finding bows annoying I have a suggestion, take on a few hungry bandit parties at the beginning of the game before you have a large entourage
fill your slots with arrows and have a few extra in the inventory chest, then just circle and shoot
you will very quickly build up your arrow proficiency to the point where the accuracy becomes less of an issue, also if you get a masterwork short bow or khergit bow the accuracy and speed make things easier

 

[Mini Marine]

Crossbows should maintain their 99 accuracy, plus they have the advantage of firing their bolts at considerably higher speed so their base damage is multiplied by a considerable margin.

Arrows should be deadly effective against light and moderately armored opponents.  but against guys wearing a coat of plate, or plate armor, arrows should be far less effective than crossbow bolts which due to their higher speed should have a very sizable damage advantage.

 

[IntelHydralisk]

I am actually quite content with the way the bows are now,
it balances out the native problem where crossbows had no advantage whatsoever over bows, now their slow but much more accurate

I also agree that if you want to be able to hit people at 50 yards at full gallop with pinpoint accuracy you should have to slowly build up your skills and have 10 horse archery and 400-500 archery.
That way its not exceedingly easy to be a one person army where 60 arrows lets you take out an army of 60 people.

I am really liking the direction this mod is taking as it is making it much more balanced and challenging rather than very easy and boring.

If people are finding bows annoying I have a suggestion, take on a few hungry bandit parties at the beginning of the game before you have a large entourage
fill your slots with arrows and have a few extra in the inventory chest, then just circle and shoot
you will very quickly build up your arrow proficiency to the point where the accuracy becomes less of an issue, also if you get a masterwork short bow or khergit bow the accuracy and speed make things easier

How does proficiency help accuracy? As far as I can tell from one of the linked threads proficiency doesn't affect accuracy at all, just how fast the cross hair zeros in on its ultimate accuracy.

I don't care if it takes 500 proficiency and 10 in horse archery, I'll get there eventually. It's something to work for after all. The leveling in native expansion is also much faster than native so that's not really a big deal. Either way, I said it's annoying on horseback, but ultimately not that huge of a deal since I just end up aiming for their horse now since horses have like 70-90 hp.

The advantage of crossbows was not having to have power draw at all. In theory anyway. So you can arm a soldier that had 0 in power draw and points spent elsewhere with a good damage dealing weapon for siege combat. This makes sense from a "realistic" point of view if you must since crossbows require a lot less training than bows.

It's not "challenging" because it's just "random". It's like closing your eyes and shooting arrows randomly because that's ultimately what it boils down to in sieges. It's not like making the bow less accurate makes it more challenging. It just makes it more frustrating since your shot is a dice roll and not how good you are at aiming.

And it just turns into a 1 person army armed with a horse taking out a 60 person army by running them over. It's not unrealistic for you yourself to take on at least 30 men. After all, during a real battle 80% of the casualties are caused by 20% of the soldiers.

The main point is: SIEGES.
I took over the map in native and it was ONLY because I backed up my guys charging castles by picking off the archers on the walls. There's no way a slow stream of cows in a slaughterhouse could take a castle without this kind of support. Yes I hired plenty of Vaegir archers to stand in the back as support as well. They are however pretty terrible at aiming and I ended up with 90% of the ranged kills. With bow accuracy dropped to 70-75, like I said earlier, my cross hair was larger than the size of the hole in the battlement where the enemy archer was. It takes about 5 arrows to randomly get the right one to land.

Again, for the defense it doesn't matter since they don't need accuracy when they're just shooting into a huge line of enemy soldiers walking up the ladder.

If the only defense is "realism" I find it very weak since the sieges are so poorly setup to begin with, any sort of realism is tossed down the drain.

The most unenjoyable aspect of M&B was being on the offense of a siege. In native expansion it was just made worse. I like everything else about this mod though, it was just a huge let down after I worked so hard to get all my companions together, train them up, start recruiting an army and then go into my first siege to find out I'm worse than a blind man at archery and see a huge wall of red text as I shoot blanks.

EDIT:
I found that this mod is too good to give up on a simple matter of accuracy so I went ahead and changed the accuracy of my Yew Longbow in Item_Kinds1. I did notice however that the Ivory Bow in the text file had 99 accuracy... I'm assuming it's the one used by the Ivory Archers... but someone mentioned earlier it wasn't available at the shops anymore? How do you make it available at the vendor again?

 

[XWolfGhost]

I don't have much of a hard time with archers while sieging, in fact my archers constantly destroy the garrison. I don't have a hard time hitting people either, its better then being able to hit anyone 100% of the time, and I don't even have the Ivory Bow yet...

 

[Feanaro]

The Ivory Bow was never available from shops, as far as I can remember. You had to loot it by fighting Ivory Archers. Needed a pretty high looting skill as well.

 

[Mini Marine]

yeah, thats why the masterwork ivory bow is so freaking amazing, i really need to get around to playing the new patch.

 

[Uberness]

yeah, thats why the masterwork ivory bow is so freaking amazing, i really need to get around to playing the new patch.

That's really all there is to it, just add in a couple not to rare 90-99% bows you can find from merchants requiring a high power draw, thereby rewarding specializing your character deep into one path instead of putting a couple points in.

Also another suggestion, add in bows that require high Horse archery if possible, with huge accuracy or speed, I'd love to see that.