Combat realism in Brytenwalda the discussion

[Tchan]

Yeah. I've allready added "deleting the weapon brakeage"

"breakage"

We already have that option. Just as an idea, in an rpg game that comes to mind, breakages would happen on a fumble (usually 4% chance depending on weapon) Then if you roll 0-5 out of 100 it breaks.

So a 5% chance, but only a 4% chance of that Dont know what that works out as, but it happened just about often enough to be 'good'. Early morning forgive my ****ty sentences ...

 

[Life_Erikson]

Wait, wait, wait! 
A 5% chance for what?

Every hit?

That would be still way to high.

I just saw, that Rus XIII century has got something interesting there. After Battle there is the chance, that your weapons and armors can be damaged. That means, they just get a lower quality. At the end they'll break too I think.

So a 1% chance to get a lower quality for a high quality sword for exemple and a 10% chance to get a lower quality for a damaged sword after each battle would be allright there.

But I must say:
I don't know how this in Rus XIII century works, and I don't even know how this in Brytenwalda works.
Idibil is the scripter, I just do some models and try to make this little modification to Brytenwalda.

(Which doesn't mean I couldn't ask him)

 

[Tchan]

5% of 5%

It worked out quite well.
I think it's 0.0025%

For higher quality it would be 4% of 5%, then 3% of 5% down to 1...

 

[Life_Erikson]

Did you get it to work?

 

[BrustwarzenLenny]

After Battle there is the chance, that your weapons and armors can be damaged. That means, they just get a lower quality. At the end they'll break too I think.

This sounds very cool!
Would be really interesting to have this in Brytenwalda.

The only thing I can do to make cavalry less important in game is lowering the health of horses and their charge.
(which was allready mentioned)

I lowered the health of horses in a little mod I made for myself and raised their speed and damage (and changed it to blunt).
This was really cool, because the horses were quick and deadly with the first charge, but they died with 1-2 hits.
So cavalry was good for charging into little groups, or skirmishing, but if you tried to attack a formation, you were stopped and the horse got killed instantly.

 

[olla podrida]

Somehow nice, Lenny.
Would be more realistic. And we need to get rid of the bigger horses. Simply enough, there were only ponies on the british isles after the departure of the romans. Nothing above 14 hands.
Hmm. What about the strong cavalry of the brythonic cavalry then?


Anosther thing that springs to my mind:
I'm not sure. I would like to fight on food in the scjaldborg but when the enemy breaks I'd also like to hunt them down, which is what normally would happen then.
My horse and all the horses of my dismounted cavalry have run away at this moment, normally. Which is realsitic and alright under other circumstances. Is it possible to make a "hoofshackles" skript? simply let the horse stay where it is, once in a battle? This way you could fight in the shieldwall and have the fun of riding down the fleeing enemies later. No idea though if anyone else would like that?

 

[Life_Erikson]

Somehow nice, Lenny.
Would be more realistic. And we need to get rid of the bigger horses. Simply enough, there were only ponies on the british isles after the departure of the romans. Nothing above 14 hands.
Hmm. What about the strong cavalry of the brythonic cavalry then?


Anosther thing that springs to my mind:
I'm not sure. I would like to fight on food in the scjaldborg but when the enemy breaks I'd also like to hunt them down, which is what normally would happen then.
My horse and all the horses of my dismounted cavalry have run away at this moment, normally. Which is realsitic and alright under other circumstances. Is it possible to make a "hoofshackles" skript? simply let the horse stay where it is, once in a battle? This way you could fight in the shieldwall and have the fun of riding down the fleeing enemies later. No idea though if anyone else would like that?

Something like that was allready made.
Your charakter has a new skill: wistleling. With this he can attract horses.
We just need to add a script, that was allready made. 

The only thing I can do to make cavalry less important in game is lowering the health of horses and their charge.
(which was allready mentioned)

I lowered the health of horses in a little mod I made for myself and raised their speed and damage (and changed it to blunt).
This was really cool, because the horses were quick and deadly with the first charge, but they died with 1-2 hits.
So cavalry was good for charging into little groups, or skirmishing, but if you tried to attack a formation, you were stopped and the horse got killed instantly.

I'm a bit stuck here. What would be more realistic? Decrease Horsecharge to 0, to simulate shie (mainly for smaller horses) or adding horsecharge and just decrease health.

A question to BrustwarzenLenny and olla podrida.


I thought about just using different horsecharge settings for eache horsetype. (bigger horses more horsecharge then in Brytenwalder/smaller horses less horsecharge  -> 0 )

 

[Belthize]

I'm a bit stuck here. What would be more realistic? Decrease Horsecharge to 0, to simulate shie (mainly for smaller horses) or adding horsecharge and just decrease health.

I still think it's pretty close to right,  a horse *will* knock you down if it hits you but it's not going to do that much damage.  They can't charge through 3 ranks of soldiers but they can charge through one.

They don't do much damage but they don't get hung up either.

 

[graycloak]

I just saw, that Rus XIII century has got something interesting there. After Battle there is the chance, that your weapons and armors can be damaged. That means, they just get a lower quality. At the end they'll break too I think.

This still has the big drawback of all of the equipment loss/breakage (and horse death) mods to M&B: It only is a problem for the player. You're still never paying for your masses of non-player troops or even for your companions; so it penalizes you for fighting (with higher costs and item loss) but rewards you for sticking your nose in a tree and letting your troops win the battle. I've always considered that smashing and bashing people myself was the most attractive part of M&B, so I am not sure this is an area where there is really any "historical realism" that can be modded in because the basic underlying problem remains that M&B doesn't seem to have a mechanism to track equipment loss and damage for your followers. (Which I can understand, tracking 6-8 pieces of gear or more for say 250 men would be a database hassle for little gain)

If I had to pick three things I'd want to see done to improve realism, they'd be:

Better close quarters/close combat fighting and animations
Less cavalry in the Brythonic armies
More shield breakage (from all causes, not thrown weapons specifically)

I'd have formation stuff at the top of the list, but I know that about all that can be done with that has already been done
I will also add that I think the problem with spears is more due to their weapon reach and attack animations than damage ratings; The problem is that they only do full damage when you get a full swing in and hit almost exactly with the tip. As a player, I can do that fairly often and do perfectly fine damage...easily as good as with my sword, but the spear animations are so clunky that the non-player troops, especially in close fighting, never get off a decent swing/thrust with the spear - so they do no damage.

 

[Tchan]

I'm a bit stuck here. What would be more realistic? Decrease Horsecharge to 0, to simulate shie (mainly for smaller horses) or adding horsecharge and just decrease health.

I still think it's pretty close to right,  a horse *will* knock you down if it hits you but it's not going to do that much damage.  They can't charge through 3 ranks of soldiers but they can charge through one.

They don't do much damage but they don't get hung up either.

I disagree. I've worked with horses and they are very powerful animals. Ok back in the day they were bound to be smaller, granted but a glancing blow at full trot will certainly knock you down but could knock you out. As far as going through ranks, i think most horses will avoid this unless it's trained in, ie a war horse. If the horse was trained to confront people, it could plow it's way through several lines no trouble. If it got stuck it would fight it's way out, kicking and screaming.
But say if i took a non war horse up against some people, trying to knock them down and such, chances are the horse will buck me off and then leg it.

 

[olla podrida]

Exactly. I think reducing the health would be fine though. If you knew how, you could kill a horse easily enough. And this would reduce the menace of the horse to break through any line of battle.
But the charge power of a horse is a summa of its weight and its speed at the moment of impact. It shouldn't be changed.
@Life: Really? That's elegant!
@Greycloak: I do not think that the shieldbreakage rate should be higher for every weapon. Have you ever used a shield in real life? Swords and axes and speastabes only slowly wear them down if they are made right and out of the right wood wit a layer of rawhide on each side. The reason for making javelins and selvevidently franciscas(!) shieldbraking if thrown is solely to simulate the imobility of a shield pierced by several javelins. This would create a better impression of the two advancing shieldwalls. The javelins and franciscas  in this moment are only thrown to make some of the shields in the front rank useless

 

[graycloak]

@Greycloak: I do not think that the shieldbreakage rate should be higher for every weapon. Have you ever used a shield in real life? Swords and axes and speastabes only slowly wear them down if they are made right and out of the right wood wit a layer of rawhide on each side. The reason for making javelins and selvevidently franciscas(!) shieldbraking if thrown is solely to simulate the imobility of a shield pierced by several javelins. This would create a better impression of the two advancing shieldwalls. The javelins and franciscas  in this moment are only thrown to make some of the shields in the front rank useless

Actually I have used shields in real life...but like most sane folks, only vs blunt weapons. As for melee breakage, I am not talking 1-2 hit breaks here but I shouldn't be able to go through an entire battle in the thick of it and never have my shield break. As it is now, I can wade into every fight and I have *never* had my shield break outside of a tournament, which is just wrong.

My problem with the idea of javelins and franciscas making shields useless is that I just haven't seen any evidence for it. The only evidence I have seen suggests that a francisca or three might not even stick into a well-made shield, let alone break it; Similarly, the only javelin-like weapon I have ever seen able to easily foul a shield are pila and those are much heavier and a more specialized weapon than the "javelins" that everyone in M&B has.  (and yes before you ask, I have thrown live steel axes, spears and javelins at targets as well...axes are actually pretty easy, but short ranged, spears and such just require more skill than you think)

 

[Life_Erikson]

Ok. Difficult to keep everything in my mind, what you've mentioned.

Horses:

Warhorses should get a horsecharge high enough to run down "3 lines of enemies" (actually I think 1-2 lines would be realistic)
but still not that high, that they would hurt the enemy hard. (Maybe a 25% life loss to light infantry or so)

Smaller horses are shie and won't charge (that means to me setting the horsecharge to 0 to simulate this in game)

Reducing the health of horses is important, so they will not survive an charge threw a shieldwall.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Actually what I mentioned and thought it to be like. (Only the actual data is not clear yet.)


Shields:

Shields should be a bit more damageble. But in extreme to throwing axes and spears.
(To throwing spears I can add a damage bonus to shields. Throwing axes allready have this tag, so this will be difficult)

Rawhide covered shields and shields with iron rim should be still very durable.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
What I thought about too so far (Will be difficult to make throwing weapons so aggressive against shields, but not against humen)




Please tell me if I took something wrong or if you have totaly other ideas.
Would be nice If you had some numbers for me too, how high horsecharge, shieldarmor and so on should be.
(By the way I put shields health quite low and shield armor quite high, to simulate, that only heavy hits hurt the shield)





I maybe put the abstract of this on the first site in a spoiler, ending, deleting and write the conclouson down of the poll and create a new abstract with a new poll.

So we can know how the feeling is about it yet. (We got quite far with it I think)

 

[Seleri]

I maybe put the abstract of this on the first site in a spoiler, ending, deleting and write the conclouson down of the poll and create a new abstract with a new poll.

So we can know how the feeling is about it yet. (We got quite far with it I think)

Good idea.

 

[BrustwarzenLenny]

Horses:

Warhorses should get a horsecharge high enough to run down "3 lines of enemies" (actually I think 1-2 lines would be realistic)
but still not that high, that they would hurt the enemy hard. (Maybe a 25% life loss to light infantry or so)

Smaller horses are shie and won't charge (that means to me setting the horsecharge to 0 to simulate this in game)

Reducing the health of horses is important, so they will not survive an charge threw a shieldwall.

Horses, which are used for combat, are trained and shouldn't be shy
That's why horses aren't used by every soldier. Because it takes too long, to train them for combat.
So every horse should get higher (blunt!) charge, to run down about 2 lines.
You could do differently trained horses. The cheap, which only can beat 1 line and the real warhorses for 3 lines.

I think, every horse should be a lot faster and more devastating for infantry, but die very fast.
That's for me realistic
Battle-horses are trained for battle -> not shy
A charging horse is devastating -> high damage (but blunt, so they don't kill and armor is good against them)
Horses are quick (especially horses without armor^^) -> ... ähm... yeah, they should be quick
Horses aren't Superman! -> 1-2 hits and it's dead!

Shields:

Shields should be a bit more damageble. But in extreme to throwing axes and spears.
(To throwing spears I can add a damage bonus to shields. Throwing axes allready have this tag, so this will be difficult)

Rawhide covered shields and shields with iron rim should be still very durable.

What I saw, a shield, made of wood without rim, is worth nothing. Good for kids.
Shields with rim and covered by rawhide are perfect, but a slash of a two-handed axe will destroy it (and they weren't used then, were they?).
But a shield with 1 spear and 2 throwing-axes in it, isn't very easy to handle^^
So, yeah, let them be destroyed faster by throwing-weapons

What I thought about too so far (Will be difficult to make throwing weapons so aggressive against shields, but not against humen)

Every man, who survives a direct hit of a thrown spear/axe, should be called Hulk, Superman, or Jesus...
I hate it to see men running through the battlefield, having 4 spears in their body.
I want to see them fall after 1 spear!
And how many spears can one man carry to battle? Not more than 2, I think.
So give only 2 spears/axes per man and let them be less accurate, but absolutely deadly!

I would love to see men with these equipments:
Elites: 1 shield, 2 throwing-axes, sword
Standard: 1 shield, 2 throwing-spears (one for throwing and one for close-combat, but they could still throw them - AI doesn't throw
the last spear, if it's their last weapon!)

 

[Life_Erikson]

Horses:

Yes I wanted to make different horses with different stats as well, but I think that 60% of the horsetypes in game should be shy. I don't know how romans used their cavalry exactly, but normans (who trained their horses to be aggressive) used their cavalry mainly to throw spears in the enemy line. They didn't actually used it to charge. Impact warfare belongs to the time of chivalry.

The rest can get higher chargedamage as you've mentioned I think.


Throwing weapons:

You're totaly right; throwing weapons should be singleshots. The only thing that scared me of putting the throwing damage that high was that people in lamllar armor would get singleshoted too.

But I share you'r oppinion: Better a warrior in lamellar armor thrown to dead by one spear then a farmer with three spears in his chest. 

 

[BrustwarzenLenny]

Horses:

Yes I wanted to make different horses with different stats as well, but I think that 60% of the horsetypes in game should be shy. I don't know how romans used their cavalry exactly, but normans (who trained their horses to be aggressive) used their cavalry mainly to throw spears in the enemy line. They didn't actually used it to charge. Impact warfare belongs to the time of chivalry.

The rest can get higher chargedamage as you've mentioned I think.

Okay, that's right^^
So cavalry should be used as skirmishers, than for closecombat.

Throwing weapons:

You're totaly right; throwing weapons should be singleshots. The only thing that scared me of putting the throwing damage that high was that people in lamllar armor would get singleshoted too.

But I share you'r oppinion: Better a warrior in lamellar armor thrown to dead by one spear then a farmer with three spears in his chest. 

I don't think, a lamellar would stand a good throw with a spear

 

[graycloak]

Throwing weapons:

You're totaly right; throwing weapons should be singleshots. The only thing that scared me of putting the throwing damage that high was that people in lamllar armor would get singleshoted too.
But I share you'r oppinion: Better a warrior in lamellar armor thrown to dead by one spear then a farmer with three spears in his chest. 

Just keep in mind that if you do this, then you need to ruthless about cutting down the number of thrown weapons troops get and you will probably want to lower the power throw and throwing skill of a lot of the lower-tier troops significantly; Otherwise you will end up with a line of cheap (barely above peasant..Bweydds etc) that can and will massacre guys in chain+shield for a fraction of the cost and training.

 

[olla podrida]

Yep. More gore with javelins

Horses:
The Romans had cavalry units called cathafractarii, for example. They were very heavily armoured (like a 14th century Knight in transitive plate maybe) carried the contus ( a very long twohanded lance) and rode strong fully armoured horses, their sole purpose on the battlefield was to smash through a battleline and wipe out any opposing cavalry that would dare meet them.
So technichally, it was possible even without a strong saddle or stirrups and with the horsebreeding skills known at this time to create very heavy shock cavarly.

But the thing about horses is that they are very expensive. This is a rural society which barely manages to feed itself, sometimes parents nedd to kill their newborn hild because they cannot feed it through the winter. Horses eat lots of hey and oat and grain, but you cannot eat them ( or should not). They are pure luxury for the warlike upperclass.
And a big horse eats much more then a light small pony. And they need to be trained every day. This was possible with fulltime roman soldiers and wheat being imported from egypt, but not for the nobility of a petty kingdom in Cornwall or Yorkshire.

There is a very intersting article about this topic here:
http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/articles/bachrach3.htm

Maybe we should only have small horses with medium capabilities, it would fit into the mod.

 

[BrustwarzenLenny]

Just keep in mind that if you do this, then you need to ruthless about cutting down the number of thrown weapons troops get and you will probably want to lower the power throw and throwing skill of a lot of the lower-tier troops significantly; Otherwise you will end up with a line of cheap (barely above peasant..Bweydds etc) that can and will massacre guys in chain+shield for a fraction of the cost and training.

I could do simple wooden throwing-spears for very-low-tear-troops and bad-quality spears for low-tier-troops, so they don't deal that much damage.

And if you have about 30 guys with 2 spears, one for throwing and a enemy-line of guys with shield and armor, your troops could damage the enemies'
shields, but nothing more
And if you would have men with 2 throwing-axes, too, they could destroy some shields, but you still would have to face the enemy in close-combat.

I think, the throwing-weapons, back at this age, were primaly used to make the enemies' shields useless, because the shield was the most important defense.

Maybe we should only have small horses with medium capabilities, it would fit into the mod.

If it was only me, I would delete all horses^^
Who cares about them, when you can face a shieldwall with your own
I allways find horses annoying in M&B