This is mostly based around PvP and my own observations. At the moment, hitting a horse when standing near you or moving slowly is ineffective and not worth the effort, this is for multiple reasons — arcs of swings and damage curves make it difficult to deal any reasonable damage, and often cavalry can thrust faster than you can pull off an attack — even when landing good hits with good weapons however, especially on heavily armoured horses, you might deal around 20 damage which is absolutely negligible compared to the horse's total health pool (generally 200+). At the same time, if the health of horses were simply lowered, while damage would feel better when they're up close or moving slowly, horses would also feel paper thin when hitting them at high speed — for example when charging at you. This is due to the speed bonus to damage. The current disparity between damage with low speed bonus and high speed bonus is too wide and renders it generally inconsistent, making damage only adequate when striking at high speed and too low when at low speed. You could stand near an enemy and use your horse as a shield while trying to hit them for a prolonged time simply due to the amount of hits you could tank when moving slowly, or not at all.
My current suggestions to address this issue:
Reducing the speed bonus could have side effects on other areas of combat, for instance damage dealt by projectiles, however I imagine that could be changed by tweaking the damage of each individual item or modifying the effect for projectiles exclusively. Moreover, I feel like regardless the effect of speed bonus is generally too prominent in any melee situation, which contributes to make damage inconsistent and sometimes too high, particularly with spears. I would appreciate a developer response to understand whether this is technically feasible or not, what side effects it could have, and if there is any better solution to the problem. Aside from that, I wish to also reiterate a few more suggestions to balance cavalry made in the past which are now sadly buried in the old beta board, again from my own experience:
My current suggestions to address this issue:
- Reduce the speed bonus or the effect of speed bonus on damage, so that it's not so high when striking at high speed.
- Generally reduce the health pool of horses (obviously to a lesser degree for light horses). Combined with the above, damage should feel adequate both at low speed — allowing cavalry to be punished for staying too close — and at high speed, this way horses shouldn't feel fragile upon lowering health.
Reducing the speed bonus could have side effects on other areas of combat, for instance damage dealt by projectiles, however I imagine that could be changed by tweaking the damage of each individual item or modifying the effect for projectiles exclusively. Moreover, I feel like regardless the effect of speed bonus is generally too prominent in any melee situation, which contributes to make damage inconsistent and sometimes too high, particularly with spears. I would appreciate a developer response to understand whether this is technically feasible or not, what side effects it could have, and if there is any better solution to the problem. Aside from that, I wish to also reiterate a few more suggestions to balance cavalry made in the past which are now sadly buried in the old beta board, again from my own experience:
- Generally increase the maneuverability of horses. At the moment riding a horse, especially those with the lowest maneuverability, feels like trying to turn a Panzer IV at full speed. This doesn't only make it feel wholly unpleasant, but transforms cavalry combat into a succession of moving in and out of the fight repeatedly, since it becomes too difficult to keep up with enemies. I don't think this playstyle is necessarily wrong, but I would prefer if cavalry played a bigger role in close combat.
- Hitting with a sidearm on horseback needs to be more practical. The above would improve it, however currently trying to swing at a target at the sides of the horse requires too large mouse movements to hit at a reasonable angle rather than going over the opponent's head, forcing you to turn the camera completely to the side and below, rendering it unnecessarily difficult.
- While on horseback, moving near anyone on foot will make them gently slide away. This should be minimized, as it makes it extremely difficult to deal bumps, and mini-bumps especially, as well as sometimes simply hitting the target. It can also make it very frustrating for allied infantry to be moved around while fighting.
- The horses' rearing angle was recently reduced in a beta patch to about 45°, in my opinion this made it too difficult to rear a horse even when being fairly in front of it, which is counter-intuitive. Especially with higher maneuverability the rearing angle should be increased.
- Cavalry should be stunned for running into obstacles, again especially with increased maneuverability, to make it easier to punish reckless riding and force the horseman to pay more attention to their surroundings.
- It shouldn't be possible to double tap W after being reared, quickly accelerating out of danger is easily done unless multiple enemies are nearby and prepared (it would be your fault for charging into half their team).
- Riding into a teammate should severely slow you down rather than shoving them aside.
- Currently holding a couched lance for too long will make it gradually sway until it becomes totally inaccurate, however this is pointless since you're able to simply tap RMB and X again to restart it with perfect accuracy. Couched lances need a cooldown, not as long as Warband's since they're certainly worse, but a small cooldown is necessary nonetheless.
- Couched lance activation time is too short, it can be active while the animation has barely even started, it needs to be slightly longer.
- Couched lance stays active even at extremely low speeds, I'm not necessarily against it since it would be frustrating to restart it for every minor speed loss, especially with a cooldown, but it should at least deal a lot less damage.
- Some of the heavier knockdowns dealt by horses last way too long, allowing even the horseman to slow down, turn around, move back to the enemy and stab him multiple times while he's on the ground. Even worse if there's a single infantry nearby. This is way too punishing and shouldn't happen. Some of the charge values are also poorly balanced allowing some horses to knockdown at low speeds.
- Animation for being dismounted lasts too little and sometimes even allows the rider to block while standing up. Again, I don't think this should happen, the rider should be vulnerable after being dismounted and for a duration similar to an infantry knockdown. Considering that cavalry can pick their fights, this is more than fair.
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