Combat realism in Brytenwalda the discussion

[Life_Erikson]

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.

That will defenitly be a problem, but I think most of the spears will stick in the shields and not into bodies.
Some changes to troops wouldn't be wrong there, you're right.



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

Maybe leaving the all horsetypes in game but giving the cavalry troops just medium horses.
Would be an idea...

Did the roman cavalry really use their lances with two hands? 
Seems not very comfortable to me. 


Btw: I'll try to read your article. 




"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."

Maybe mixing them up with real throwing spears and for very low tear troops only.
Not a bad idea though. Men used everything to throw on the enemy before actual impact of shieldwall and enemy.

 

[olla podrida]

Yes, here is a 3rd century graffito of a roman catafract from a citywall in Dura Europos, Asia minor.
Heavy armour and a twohanded lance. This works very well, you can manipulate the lance easily and have a greater reach because you can hold the lance further back to the end. Its more dynamic then a crouched lance and more controlled then a spear in icepick grip. The Sassanid Persians and the Sarmatians were famous for it.

隐藏

PS: maybe you can also make wooden clubs as throwing weapons, there are some depcited flying through the air on the bayeux tapestry, and Ammianus marcellinus and Tacitus mention them some centuries prior to our timeframe.

 

[Nasferatu]

@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)

what kind of shield do you have? type of wood? it depends on that mostly because the materials they had back then werent anything like what we have now. I for example use plywood which isnt going to get damaged at all. No need even for rawhide backing...

I have to say throwing weapons should do at least twice as much damage. All weapons should be faster. Ive never seen anyone swing a weapon that slow... Also i dont know how to change this particular one but throwing weapons fall short by alot. Fransisca for example goes for about five game feet and just kind of fall...

Ringmail has waaaay too much strength requirement. They should still be expensive and the amount of armor they give shouldnt be able to deflect everything.

Helmets should give the most armor since its solid metal and would absorb the shock almost completely.

 

[graycloak]

what kind of shield do you have? type of wood? it depends on that mostly because the materials they had back then werent anything like what we have now. I for example use plywood which isnt going to get damaged at all. No need even for rawhide backing...

I have to say throwing weapons should do at least twice as much damage. All weapons should be faster. Ive never seen anyone swing a weapon that slow... Also i dont know how to change this particular one but throwing weapons fall short by alot. Fransisca for example goes for about five game feet and just kind of fall...

Ringmail has waaaay too much strength requirement. They should still be expensive and the amount of armor they give shouldnt be able to deflect everything.

Helmets should give the most armor since its solid metal and would absorb the shock almost completely.

Well, game stuff first:
Franciscas might be a little too short ranged now, but it is better than in Native where all thrown weapons function like ballistic missiles...I'd be perfectly happy if thrown axes (and similar weapons) went about twice as far as presently

Weapons get a lot faster at higher skills, the problem here is scaling. If you make the basic weapon "fast" then at skill 150+ it becomes blindingly fast.

I agree that the strength requirements for armor are too high for "realism"; armor weight is much better distributed and easier to wear than most people think, however I think the str minimums serve a useful game balance purpose and are fine as is. (It forces more specialization and choices in your character and companions, so you cannot do everything and still wear heavy armor)

Metal helmets do NOT absorb shock well at all. They prevent catastrophic damage, but they tend to transmit shock rather than absorb it. That is why padding and deformation space is so important. I do agree they should have higher armor values than they have here though.

As for shields, I have used a variety of different shields over the years. Everything from plywood with rim reinforcement to proper period style woods with laced or laminated leather coverings. If your plywood doesn't get damaged, then no one is really hitting you hard enough. (Not trying to be snide there, but I have seen 3/4 inch plywood with a metal rim get deformed, cracked and pulverized purely from blunt impact with relatively "soft" weapons over the span of a couple of battles) It is also not as hard to hold and use a 15-20 pound shield for the duration of an hour plus of battle as most think, just requires having good upperbody and shield arm strength.

 

[olla podrida]

what kind of shield do you have? type of wood? it depends on that mostly because the materials they had back then werent anything like what we have now. I for example use plywood which isnt going to get damaged at all. No need even for rawhide backing...

As for shields, I have used a variety of different shields over the years. Everything from plywood with rim reinforcement to proper period style woods with laced or laminated leather coverings. If your plywood doesn't get damaged, then no one is really hitting you hard enough. (Not trying to be snide there, but I have seen 3/4 inch plywood with a metal rim get deformed, cracked and pulverized purely from blunt impact with relatively "soft" weapons over the span of a couple of battles) It is also not as hard to hold and use a 15-20 pound shield for the duration of an hour plus of battle as most think, just requires having good upperbody and shield arm strength.

Well, from the experience of my full contact fights I must disagree. I only saw shields break which were not covered on two sides by linen or rawhide. Big roundshields should be thick at the middle and thin towards the rim, they do not normally break so easy. They can be damaged, but it takes a long time or massive axes. It really IS a question of materials. Which kind of wood, which kind of covering, how thick and which kind of glue - that can make the difference between a shield holding two fights and a shield holding two years of fights.
I would not like the shields beeing weaker then they are, shield eating javelins will be good enough to open up the shieldwall a bit.

I will take another look at the battle damage on the shields from Thorsbjerg, tomorrow. I think there is no better way to determine the toughness of shields in this period.

 

[BrustwarzenLenny]

There is this guy on YouTube who explains some things about weapon-behaviour.
I think he tells some good things (for example scabbards worn on the right hip, not the left).
http://www.youtube.com/user/lindybeige

 

[zemdu]

could you make it so that when you get it your attacks become slower, i mean no one can take a spear in the shoulder and still fight like a demon come on where not gods here

 

[BrustwarzenLenny]

Maybe it's possible to give penalities on the skills if your health gets lower.
This would be really cool 

 

[Life_Erikson]

could you make it so that when you get it your attacks become slower, i mean no one can take a spear in the shoulder and still fight like a demon come on where not gods here

Would be really cool. I can ask Idibil about this.

 

[MrExpendable]

Hi guys, I'm posting a suggestion here regarding archers. I personally think that archers could get a buff to accuracy, while having their reload speed increased as well.

Here's an example I posted in another thread:

You have to take into consideration the different ways an archer can be trained. English longbowmen at the 14th-15th century fired in volleys. Volleyfire was delivered by having archers reloading an arrow and directly releasing it. This allows an archer battalion to "bombard" enemy formations with large numbers of arrows (Longbowmen delivering 12 arrows a minute). In short, the archer gained reload speed whilst having a decrease in accuracy, but it wasn't a real concern as most opposition would arranged themselves in large formations.

Most archer companies at the 7th century weren't trained to unleash volleys while standing in lines (as being said before, most achers were militia and hunters, thus they're not used to fireing like this), but to hunt men in skirmishes. They mostly tried to aim with their bows at short range, supporting the infantry. This aiming reduced their reload speed, but also increased their accuracy, especially when fireing at their used short distance.

I do agree that archers could use a buff. I think that by increasing the accuracy and damage (with the last one being only a slightly increase!), while considerably increasing their reload speeds, you will achieve a nice balance if you do it right. 

I'd love to hear some opinions on this.

 

[Life_Erikson]

Hi guys, I'm posting a suggestion here regarding archers. I personally think that archers could get a buff to accuracy, while having their reload speed increased as well.

Here's an example I posted in another thread:

You have to take into consideration the different ways an archer can be trained. English longbowmen at the 14th-15th century fired in volleys. Volleyfire was delivered by having archers reloading an arrow and directly releasing it. This allows an archer battalion to "bombard" enemy formations with large numbers of arrows (Longbowmen delivering 12 arrows a minute). In short, the archer gained reload speed whilst having a decrease in accuracy, but it wasn't a real concern as most opposition would arranged themselves in large formations.

Most archer companies at the 7th century weren't trained to unleash volleys while standing in lines (as being said before, most achers were militia and hunters, thus they're not used to fireing like this), but to hunt men in skirmishes. They mostly tried to aim with their bows at short range, supporting the infantry. This aiming reduced their reload speed, but also increased their accuracy, especially when fireing at their used short distance.

I do agree that archers could use a buff. I think that by increasing the accuracy and damage (with the last one being only a slightly increase!), while considerably increasing their reload speeds, you will achieve a nice balance if you do it right. 

I'd love to hear some opinions on this.

This is a good Idea! Could be defenitly used in game! (note)

 

[graycloak]

Regarding archers: The problem (for me) is that there simply should be not be the number of archers present that there are already. Yes, some version of the longbow was around and it was very effective - apparently from archaeological evidence something like the longbow goes way back - but the number of people who could use it effectively was very very small until ~the 13-14th centuries. This is why you don't see it appearing en masse on the battle field until then. If you want to add some very nice bows, with very high PD requirements for a few select companions/characters to use then that is fine, but the troops units should not get any better than they are now. I'd even argue that the top tier welsh archers are too good already.

 

[Life_Erikson]

Isn't it allready like this?

I mean soldiers use huntingbows and shortbows and nothing else I think right now.
(Just tell me if I'm wrong here.)

 

[Morcant]

I quickly went along the thread, so sorry if I missed some of the interventions. I would like to give a few points.

I think shieldwall is overrated most of the time. Having shields overlapped in a very dense formation means you lack of space to weld correctly your weapon. Certainly this can of formation was used, but only in specific conditions for me, like repelling a charge or a cuneus. I think that most of the time, the warriors would kept enough space between the ranks, with shields touching their respective rims but not overlapped.

As for projectiles, I agree that one of the best use of them was getting ride of the ennemy shield, and possibly killing him. Angons were designed for that specific purpose (I don't know if you have them but they could be a great addition). In game terms, I better like the warriors having few javelins (1-3), no javelin bag except skirmishers maybe, and javelins dealing a great damage.

About two handed fighting: a few irish swords of the "crannog" type may have been designed for champions and welded two handed in some occasions. Those swords had often a quite long handle and a larger point. A great weapon to have (we had one in SoT, althought the handle wasn't perfect), but that would be somewhat rare. Two handed spear fighting would certainly be seen aswell. Re-enactors disagree about that kind of fighting, some of them using it a lot, often with a shield protecting the left flank and held by a strap. The Aberlemno stone suggests this for a Pictish warrior facing a cavalry attack.

A last point, maybe not in the good thread. Picts and Gaels used a lot of short swords, those would be a great thing to have in.

 

[graycloak]

Isn't it allready like this?

I mean soldiers use huntingbows and shortbows and nothing else I think right now.
(Just tell me if I'm wrong here.)

It is; I was responding to the poster who wanted better bows. Although I do think there are too many archers in most armies now.

 

[Life_Erikson]

True,

As olla allready said. It's not the time of archery but of melee fight.
But I don't know if it's actually possible to affect how many archers a party get very well.

It works like this (in M&B, I don't know if there're changes in Warband):

A Lordparty gets 5 types of troops. You can choose them. Of course 5 troops sounds much, but you want the Lords to have troops with different experience/levels too. After this 5 troops is very short.

This is something I must talk to Idibil. It would be a change defenitly responsing to Brytenwalda and not to the mini mod.

 

[Griefer]

A light spear or javelin will deliver about 3 times as much energy as an arrow fired from a 60 lb bow - about as good a bow, as in longbow quality, as any that should exist in this era. Most of them should be in the 25-45 lb range. It also carries almost 10x the momentum of the arrow, while only suffering a four fold reduction in penetration over an arrow.

What does this mean? It means that a thrown javelin will hit its target with at least three times the force of an arrow, it will be ten times more effective at delivering that force completely into the target and the arrow will only be four times more efficient at penetration due to its smaller cross-section - given that it's conveying 3 times less force total and with only a tenth the momentum, that's almost irrelevant.

Result? A arrow might puncture a mans armor or stick in his shield, a javelin would go clean through his armor and likely right out his back - all while knocking him off his horse.

I would say javelins should do easily 2x the damage of arrows - easily. Spears, especially larger ones, 4 times as much. Getting hit by a javelin or spear should be pretty much lethal. Then again you should get 2 spears and maybe 4 javelins. I'd even agree with just having short spears throwable for that sort of damage - you want two of them? Take up two equipment slots. Fitting, you could carry two spears, a shield and a sword.

In the SCA we've emptied, gah, forty? Sixty arrows into a wooden shield? Without it breaking. Now, was it useful? No, it would be too heavy, but in terms of destructive force there just is no comparison.

IMO, give arrows cutting damage and javelins/spears piercing damage.

Throwing axes are a good mix, while not as lethal as a spear in the chest they do a great job of ruining shields.

Attack speed being slow compensates for the reflex delay between my being able to do something in reality as opposed to making my character do it in the game.

A good metal armor works surprisingly well. That's why people wore it and used it, a man in a full suit of chain might actually be hit repeatedly in a large battle and get out of it barely with bruises where an unarmored man might not survive one hit. Keep in mind that few hits are 'clean'. That is in part what made swords so effective, you could get a draw-cut out of a hit that was actually pretty weak when it hit the guy.

Without a mechanism for fatigue or battle-damage impacting your character though there are some real limits on realism. Given that, how do you compensate?

 

[jamiehamo]

Not along the same subject as such but, is there a chance you could include better textures in the mod like 1257ad? is it the floris pack ? That would be pretty sweet

 

[mouthnhoof]

Griefer brought up a good discussion about thrown weapons that are often ignored/mistreated in Native and mods. A thrown weapon (more than some object one can throw) can acquire and store energy very efficiently, much better than a bow+arrow.

The energy one can put into an arrow is limited by the force of the pull (roughly like the force squared). This is limited either by the bow (before it breaks) or by the muscles of the archer - and that is how much force he can apply STATICLY, holding the bow pulled back. A thrown weapon on the other hand relies on BURST force, but must be heavy enough to fully gain all the energy that the thrower can "give" (throwing a light baseball relies on the maximum speed of your arm rather than your strength). On top of that, throwing uses many more muscles in the body, legs, shoulders and arms, than what is used with the bow. And on top of that, a thrower can add even more energy by taking a running throw (at the cost of much accuracy though).

A throwing axe, while being inefficient in term of striking edge can store an even higher energy than most thrown weapons because of the handle. All the mass is at the tip and the whole length of the axe adds to the effective length of the throwing arm. Some of this extra energy is stored in rotation though, so the projectile velocity is not much higher, but the energy of the impact is. So even if the axe does not hit edge-on, it carries a strong blunt impact. Two more advantages of the throwing axe: a) it can be easily thrown is a steep arch, so it falls on the heads of the defenders from above, while their shields are locked in the wall or protecting from the more direct fire of archers and javelins. b) It jumpes and bounces off the ground and shields. While not doing much damage this way, it has a great psychological effect on the defenders making them cower behind their shields instead of throwing things back (and this is just a few seconds before the lines crash each other).

Velocity is a problem in M&B. Thrown weapons are SLOW in reality. One can easily see them coming and possibly even catch one in the air (not easy but possible). From wikipedia, the typical release velocity of an Olympic javelin is about 110 km/h, or 30 m/s in game units. If I am not mistaken, power-throw increase this speed significantly, so often the result is that a thrower with 5-6 power-throw can throw a javeling into orbit around earth. So go easy on the shot velocity (not the speed stat which governs the animation time).

 

[graycloak]

First off, I have to agree that the flight speed of thrown weapons in the game is off; but that is also true of arrows and bolts. It is possible to dodge incoming arrow fire in the game because you see it coming and get out of the way which is just nuts but I am not sure it can be fixed. However, thrown weapon ranges in Native exceed what even an Olympic athlete is going to get with a modern javelin.

As to the battlefield effectiveness of thrown weapons, I think there are a couple of things to consider here. The most important is the difference between a "weapon of war" in the hands of a dedicated warrior and a hunting weapon that gets pressed into use by a villager. Delivering the levels of force being talked about here accurately is not an easy task, especially at any range. (Throwing axes is actually much easier than accurately throwing a spear/javelin without an atlatl; and yes I have done both) The wide range of sizes and types in archaeological "spear head" finds would argue in support of this. I do not have a problem with "throwing spears" as the heavier/military end of the spectrum being slightly more effective so long as they are not carried in large numbers and used by every peasant levy in Britain.

Then we have to consider the historical accounts (such as they are), you simply do not read about the great javelin skirmisher hordes of Britain decimating the Saxon shield wall, in fact all the accounts we have stress the impact of the infantry masses as the deciding aspect of the battle - not the archers, not the cavalry and certainly not the peasants hurling javelins. Similarly, I haven't seen anything which suggests that javelins (as opposed to Pila) were particularly effective at breaking or fouling shields, if you have it please feel free to enlighten me.

Lastly, we have to decouple any visual impression from the game engine with actual effects. A javelin that does no damage whatsoever will still be visually shown punching through the shield and sticking - there simply is no "bounce off" or deflection animation; So the visual image of a shield with 10+ things sticking out of it is just that, an oddball image caused by the limitations of the game engine. Same with the assorted javelin/arrow sticking through some part of your body graphic. Regardless of what the graphics engine shows, most of those weapons bounced off or only scored a glancing hit.