Endurance Reworked
TaleWorlds introduced Smithing and with it, a Stamina bar that is specific to just one function. This feature sticks out, since a character can freely take 500 consecutive beatings in the practice arena but is limited in crafting. The Endurance Reworked system would bring that concept to the entire game by giving each Hero character and each Army a global Endurance bar.
When reading the details of this system, know that I believe that the leveling system takes too long to gain progress and needs to be tuned.
Goals:
IDEALLY, THIS ENTIRE THING COULD BE DISABLED VIA AN OPTION.
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The Endurance Bar:
Actions that spend Endurance:
Recovering Endurance:
Direct Impact of Endurance:
Using the Endurance Bar’s levels described earlier, the following actions would have detrimental effects that scale from minimal to severe. Being exhausted would NEVER prevent you from taking an action, so you will never see a dialog box saying “You are too tired to do this.” Instead, it would just increase the likelihood of something going wrong.
Conclusion:
This is still a fairly raw idea, and I don’t have any sort of modding/coding experience to provide a proof of concept, but I hope that some of you like it and can expand on it. I tried to limit the scope so that it would not introduce a bunch of entirely new systems for the AI to consider, instead I focused on the idea of numerical stat scaling since that seems far easier to implement.
Let me know what you think, if you have any suggestions, tweaks, etc.
TaleWorlds introduced Smithing and with it, a Stamina bar that is specific to just one function. This feature sticks out, since a character can freely take 500 consecutive beatings in the practice arena but is limited in crafting. The Endurance Reworked system would bring that concept to the entire game by giving each Hero character and each Army a global Endurance bar.
When reading the details of this system, know that I believe that the leveling system takes too long to gain progress and needs to be tuned.
Goals:
- Enhance realism by giving more consequence to our actions. Just like we can't Smelt 50 tons of material in a day, nor should we able to fight a hundred times, or march without rest for weeks
- Prevent one good military victory from snowballing into a series of nonstop conquests.
- Add a more dynamic nature to combat by making you and your troops feel fresh or weary based on their level of fatigue.
- Allow TaleWorlds to tune down the character leveling system to be less grindy, while not opening it up to a “Skyrim dagger crafting” situation.
- The goal is NOT to turn Bannerlord into a Get 8 Hours of Sleep Simulator, or the first several hours of Zelda: (Out Of) Breath of the Wild. Ideally these features would be tuned in a way that still allows players to take a lot of actions and not have to constantly rest to do so.
IDEALLY, THIS ENTIRE THING COULD BE DISABLED VIA AN OPTION.
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The Endurance Bar:
- Heroes would have a second bar in addition to their health, indicating their Endurance.
- The bar would go from 0 – 100, with the segments listed below. The effect of the Endurance level would be determined by which segment the bar is currently in, with more adverse effects occurring the lower the Level.
- Level 1: 0-20% (Exhausted) – Severe penalties to stats/percentages
- Level 2: 21-40% (Weary) – Significant penalties to stats/percentages
- Level 3: 41-60% (Tiring) – Minor penalties to stats/percentages
- Level 4: 61-90% (Fresh) – Baseline stats/percentages
- Level 5: 91-100% (Rejuvenated) – Give a BONUS to stats/percentages while in this condition
- Stat points in Endurance would decrease the rate at which that character loses Endurance
- The bar would go from 0 – 100, with the segments listed below. The effect of the Endurance level would be determined by which segment the bar is currently in, with more adverse effects occurring the lower the Level.
- Armies and Garrisons would also have their own Endurance (collectively, not by the individual soldier)
- The Endurance of the Army or Garrison would be the Average based on Troop Tiers
- Each count of a soldier would add a certain amount of Endurance to the total based on their Tier, with higher Tier units adding more Endurance
- The higher the average Endurance of the army, the more slowly they lose Endurance. Conceptually, a highly trained army might be able to withstand an extended military campaign or several days of travel, while peasants and recruits would likely need more rest to remain competent or to avoid desertion.
- Clan Roles could contribute bonuses to an Army’s Endurance
- Quartermaster: Combat would not expend as much Endurance based on Leadership level and potential Perks
- Scout: Map Travel through difficult terrain would not expend as much Endurance based on Scout level and potential Perks
- Engineer: Building equipment would not expend as much Endurance
Actions that spend Endurance:
| Action | Endurance Spent | Heroes | Armies | Note |
| Map Travel | Very Low | X | X | Weather/Terrain modifiers add to the amount spent, but a good Scout can help minimize this. Having extra horses also helps reduce this. |
| Force March* | High | X | X | *Short term higher speed Map Travel. This could help avoid those awkward 5 minute long chases around the map. |
| Sustained Travel* | Medium | X | X | *Going too long without Resting/Camping would increase the Endurance Spent |
| Battles/Raids/Sieges | Variable | X | X | Variable based on Damage sustained (for Heroes) and Losses (for Armies and Garrisons) |
| Practice Fights/Tournaments | Low | X | | Should help prevent infinite Gold farming. Practice/Tournaments will grant XP as normal. |
| Smithing | Low | X | | A Smithing Perk could reduce the amount |
| Engineering | Low | X | X | An Engineering Perk could reduce the amount |
Recovering Endurance:
- Simple: Rest in a City, Village, or Camp (once camping is added)
- No need to make this aspect complex.
- Endurance should recover quickly enough to not seriously disrupt the core gameplay loop.
Direct Impact of Endurance:
Using the Endurance Bar’s levels described earlier, the following actions would have detrimental effects that scale from minimal to severe. Being exhausted would NEVER prevent you from taking an action, so you will never see a dialog box saying “You are too tired to do this.” Instead, it would just increase the likelihood of something going wrong.
- Fighting: It is my hope that this could potentially help the current "snowball" issue where a large army forms and rolls through the kingdom one fight after another. Perhaps a Fresh/Rejuvenated reinforcement army of fewer numbers could push back the numerically superior force that is trying to fight for the 5th time in a day.
- Melee Attack Damage decreases
- Melee Attack Speed decreases (perhaps add a few labored looking animations?)
- Block Effectiveness (More stun? More shield damage?) decreases
- Movement Speed decreases
- Bow Draw Time increases
- Crossbow Reload Time increases
- Throwing Weapon Damage/Range decreases
- All Projectile Weapon “Time before aim gets shaky” decreased
- Morale more easily broken
- Army Cohesion decreased
- Map Travel:
- Movement Speed decreases
- Difficult Terrain Movement Speed decreases
- Scouting/Vision Radius decreases?
- Smithing:
- Flaw likelihood increases
- Enhancement likelihood decreases
- Potential for minor accidents that cause small injuries and/or loss of material
- Social:
- First Impression chance of gaining favor decreases
- Persuasion chances decreased (greater likelihood of critical failure at very low Endurance)
- Courting chances decreased
Conclusion:
This is still a fairly raw idea, and I don’t have any sort of modding/coding experience to provide a proof of concept, but I hope that some of you like it and can expand on it. I tried to limit the scope so that it would not introduce a bunch of entirely new systems for the AI to consider, instead I focused on the idea of numerical stat scaling since that seems far easier to implement.
Let me know what you think, if you have any suggestions, tweaks, etc.
