Combat Balance issues

Users who are viewing this thread

Just a few thoughts on the way combat is balanced in Mount and Blade.

I'm pretty happy with most of it but there are a few things that seem odd.

An archer can go toe to toe with a swordsman purely by backing up and firing point blank headshots.

Of course being shot in the face at point blank hurts but I find it frustrating in the arena when I'm toe to toe with an archer and ripping him a new a hole and he gets up and pulls a shot off right in my face.

I just think that if a player or non-player is carrying a weapon that has no defensive value whatsoever that he should take a little more damage due to the fact that any hit on him is going to be purely undefended.

I know there are ways to mod this but changing the core ruleset almost feels like cheating. Especially because I insist on using the normal damage and not 1/2 or 1/4.

My other annoyance is fighting lance users on foot 1 on 1. they just back up, and jab jab jab and its hard to close in on them when realistically it would involve batting the lance aside and closing in on them.

I'm even thinking some kind of lunge or charge attack might help considering 'trotting' into battle seems a little bland.
 
Sounds like you need a higher athletics skill. Most of the people in the tournament have high athletics, which is why it is oten so difficult to kill an archer or lance guy, because he is backing away faster than you can catch up.

About backpedaling- it might be a feature in future versions that backpedaling is much slower than walking forwards. It's a popularly requested feature.
 
Yeah you sound about right, I've only just hit level 8 so I'm certainly pushing for as high athletics as possible.

I'm also finding archery is fun but once the battle closes I tend to hit more of my own men than theirs unless I'm badly outnumbered.

I'm thinking of rerolling as a Squire and just making a solid beefcake warrior. At the moment I'm playing a horse archer with a sword and shield as backup when I'm out of arrows.

What does everyone else play as and how do they work for you?
 
1. My first woman (theyre normally girlies, I can tell when im being hit from the audio), has 2h weapons (war axe), great lance, sheild, and throwing axes just to fill the gap. Heavily armoured (black) with charger. Mounted allies. Large party. strong.

2. Second, mounted archer with 2h weapon and two bundles of arrows. Lightly armoured with hardened leather armour n boots, nordic helm just because I look good. Spirited hunter, mounted allies mostly. Small party. Fast.

3. Foot soldier (a guy, im regretting it), no horse skills at all, currently wears leather armour and black helmet and probably always will (speed is more important than plates of metal on foot). Bow, arrows, (sometimes 2 against foot soldiers like sea raiders, and the first waves of big was parties), bardiche, poleaxe (for mounted types). Allies pretty much the same all foot shooter types. Medium party needs to be bigger to make up for archers being stupid. Fast.

Unfortunately number 2 has been corrupted so im restarting a mounted archer, but this time im only recruiting though rescue, and im enemys of both warring factions to help me in that. Hoping for some black knights. Weve got some steppe bandits they are good to have whizzing around. :grin:

On the subject of combat balance, I currently think that all one-handed non polearms are a waste of time. The bit of extra speed does not make up for the low damage, the low range, and the small selection of weaponry. I suppose I would have to use one facing archers on foot without a ranged weapon myself, but thats the only time I imagine it being even equal.
 
Lupos Davalte said:
. At the moment I'm playing a horse archer with a sword and shield as backup when I'm out of arrows.

What does everyone else play as and how do they work for you?

You know, you would get 50 arrows more by taking that sword and shield away from your inventory.. about 75 arrows wont usually end during combat

I played archer whit bow.. whitout horse ! :lol: she sucked. had like 50 hp at lvl 10 heh.

now I have my cool barbaric two handed axe swinger whit super armor. Like black knights, they do max. 8 dmg to him. Normal peasant cant even hurt me. and I kill Swedian Knights and other Knights expect Black Knights whit single blow! ! ! then I have usually also crossbow whit me, and horse of course. If my horse dies I take my sword. Axe is good on horse back but in close you cant even hit enemies whit it. so I flip to my two-handed sword if horse dies
 
ahh good idea! But I'd feel so vulnerable without a nice meat cleaver to swing around...

Is it possible to make a hunter melee focussed rather than ranged? I mean will i be at a disadvantage playing a hunter as opposed to rolling as a squire at any stage?
 
Squire has more focus in melee weapons (atleast I think so) and definitely the skills squire posseses are more melee orientered, but there isn't a big difference after all.
 
If you wanted to play a foot trooper, the Hunter might be a more efficient choice because he starts with points in athletics instead of riding...
 
Lupos Davalte said:
Yeah you sound about right, I've only just hit level 8 so I'm certainly pushing for as high athletics as possible.

I'm also finding archery is fun but once the battle closes I tend to hit more of my own men than theirs unless I'm badly outnumbered.

I'm thinking of rerolling as a Squire and just making a solid beefcake warrior. At the moment I'm playing a horse archer with a sword and shield as backup when I'm out of arrows.

What does everyone else play as and how do they work for you?
Archery is great. You can always switch to sword/shield anyway, especially when you are on horseback. You just need a high archery skill. At 120 or so, the scope starts tightening up. My second character is now up to 230+ and needless to say, deadly long range. :cool:
 
Back
Top Bottom