The problem: Armour sucks
The solution: Buff Armour
Simple.
Not simple. I have played some mods that just buff armor or reduce damage and so far this seems to result in a worse gameplay experience rather than a better one so just buffing armor isn't by itself enough to improve the game.
I would say armor sucks specifically against ranged weapons -- or, in other words, ranged weapons do too much damage.
ATM, ranged weapon damage seems roughly on par with one-handed weapons -- but it is much, much easier it is to land many consecutive ranged attacks without endangering yourself. Combine this with the fact that ranged troops are not noticeably more vulnerable than melee troops even in melee, this makes ranged troops much more powerful than their melee counterpart.
Spear thrusts in particular seem to do consistently far less damage than arrows, which is just insane from both a realism and gameplay perspective.
And then horse troops are also much less vulnerable than they should be -- as long as they ride, they are practically immune to arrows, but are also not effectively stopped by spears and pikes. And they can come to a stop in the middle of an enemy infantry formation and survive, which, again, both overpowered and unrealistic.
Combine those two and horse archers -- which are both mounted and ranged -- beat everything else easily.
JOINT HURTBOXES and ARMOR HURTBOXES: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system(suggestions)
I notice that, as for a year, there are those who continue to say that you have to buff the armor, those who ask that the weapons be nerfed, and those who say that these solutions are not correct because in their game they have applied them and they simply do not work.
And since the time of the beta I have been writing on the forum a solution that is not limited to buffing and nerfing.
Since starting early access I have written several suggestion threads that tend to improve the game by ADDING NEW MECHANICS and new ways of thinking about others that don't work as well or as hoped in game.
One of these is described in the thread whose link is written in red.
in summary it is written that by increasing the number of hurtboxes of the character (ie the blocks of the body that can be hit) to at least 25, and to make a part of these blocks "coverable" by the pieces of armor and will be defined "armor slots" , on the other hand, the remaining blocks that cannot be covered with armor parts will be the "joint blocks".
Those joints are: elbow, knee, armpit and a few others that you can see within the thread as I have included quite a few images showing how they should be arranged and distributed.
Along with this, the armor value of armor should be significantly increased.
What would the result of this be?
I bring two examples taken from the thread.
QUALITATIVE ESTIMATE ON ARMORES VS ARCHERS, OLD SYSTEM:
If we consider the entire surface of the body with a value of 1 with the system currently in play, it means that, without a shield, 100% of the body is vulnerable to bullets.
If we had a plate armor, two-handed broadsword and each arrow would take away ABOUT 10 life points in the different points of the body, 10 arrows would be enough to knock us down and if there are 20 archers in front of us, EVEN while we are on horseback, not it is so unlikely to be hit by 10 arrows along the way as we load them.
Certainly, if the arrows come to cover the entire area occupied by the front part of our body (therefore the archers are accurate but not precise), 100% of the bullets that hit us will still do us a not negligible amount of damage.
If out of a group of 30 archers 10 hit us and the damage of each arrow is 10, we are dead.
And an arrow only subtracts 10 if the armor value is very high.
Generally an arrow removes more than 30 at realistic difficulty, therefore a volley of arrows fired by 30 archers can eliminate 6-7 knights, who with the single charge certainly do not kill 6-7 archers and if they do not fight hand to hand and decide to turn around to charge further, they end up being hit from behind by arrows and then head-on again, losing the fight.
QUALITATIVE ESTIMATE ON ARCHERS VS ARCHERS, NEW SYSTEM (after introducing everything):
Let's assume that our system is introduced and that our plate armor protects us so well that the arrows that hit the armor deal 1 damage, while those that hit the uncovered hurtboxes come to cover damage that depends on the hitbox, suppose 15-20 damage on uncovered hurtboxes.
We can estimate that a good 85% of the body is well covered by armor and this means that the same archers as before have a 15% chance of inflicting significant damage on us.
So only about 1 out of 6 arrows will hit us doing 15-20 damage and this means that to kill us it will take at least 30 arrows (in case of 20 damage on hurtbox uncovered).
If instead we assume that the arrows on covered areas inflict 0 damage and that our character is on horseback and therefore our legs are quite covered together with the hurtboxes of the pelvis (covered), then we would only have a 10% or less chance of being hit. .
With 20 damage on exposed joints it would take 50 arrows to take us down.
And if we consider that the joints may not all have the same damage (because some are more vital and others less), then the number of arrows needed to kill us increases.
Thus 3 problems are partially solved:
1) cavalry which during a frontal charge is cut down by archers
2) infantryman with a 2-handed weapon (falxman or berserker) who finds himself against an archer risks being killed easily.
If, before, the archer simply aimed at any part of the infantryman's body to be sure to hit him, now he will have to aim well at an exposed part or he will not be able to kill him before resorting to the melee weapon to defend himself.
This situation has such dynamic in "1vs1".
Considering instead the case of 20 archers and 20 infantry men advancing in non-wide two-line formation, then the archer has a greater chance of hitting an enemy, since if the one in the front line is missing, perhaps the arrow could hit the one in second line.
3) it is not necessary to make the shield hurtbox larger than the 3d model of the shield, as the armor probably covers that part of the body.
NOTE:In case you have doubts about a possible imbalance between footed infantry with shields and archers, I suggest this other thread of mine that would introduce a further balance.
From the link’s title you should guess what it is.
[POLL] SHIELD + STUCKED PROJECTILE = ENCUMBRANCE
In addition to all this, the hand-to-hand combat becomes much deeper, as the spam of the attacks is discouraged.
In fact, spamming attacks are more likely to hit an armor slot than a joint slot because spam is not very precise.
Conversely, a more cautious, careful and precise fighting style is rewarded.
The only flaw of this solution is to put a little more pressure on the CPU.
At the moment there are 6 hurtboxes in the game, but if they are increased to 25 the load related to the recording of contacts between the weapon's hitbox and hurtbox is equal to the product between the number of hurtbox and hitbox.
Currently with a weapon with 3 hitboxes you generally have 18 pairs to control, which with 25 hurtboxes would become 75, so you would have a load 3-4 times the initial one.
Sure, you could find ways to optimize and in case remove somewhere else.
Here I have not only made a summary, but I have omitted many details and mechanics introduced, so read the thread please.
This solution is not in its own right, but is part of an overview made up of all the other threads that I wrote and that you find below my profile where it says "megathread" .