One thing that is completely unrealistic in the game to me is how one's troops can keep on marching non-stop for a whole year without ever getting tired, suffering defections or losing anyone.
One suggestion I liked and support very much here in the forums is @tane's "Bring back Camps" as I very much liked Warband's camp mechanic, where you could interact and talk with you companions and troops to raise their relation to you.
Yet this would probably make less sense without something like Exhaustion and Stamina being a part of the game, but it also would be very bothersome to have to stand still for hours every ingame day.
Medieval armies everywhere on the world used to march for days, yet they also had to rest for half to a full day after that and from time to time or soldiers would start to defect, would die marching or would be too exhausted to fight.
Mounted armies could march for longer, yet sometimes, the horses would die and that was a SERIOUS issue.
I think something like that could be added to the game together with an inbattle stamina mechanic as well, for added realism, immersion and so that you don't chase a 7 men steppe bandits over the whole map for an entire ingame year.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
| Stamina |
Your troops and your character would all have a stamina bar based on your attributes and skills.
More precisely: Atributes [Endurance & Vigor] Skills [Athletics, One Handed & Two Handed]
The higher your maximum stamina is. Every second sprinting on foot, every swing of a weapon and every attack blocked would consume a small amount of stamina, but a few seconds after, it would start to recharge, and it would recharge faster if your character would be walking instead of running, on top of a horse and faster still if you were to be completely stopped. This would be true to every character, including the AI and would have to be taken into consideration by both the AI and player to not get tired in a bad situation.
If your stamina bar were to be depleted, your attacks would get slower and have reduced damage, due to reduced muscle strength and being out of breath, you'd also not be allowed to sprint anymore.
| Exhaustion |
While on the world map, your party/army's stamina would be the mean value between the max stamina of all of your troops.
While walking, that stamina would slowly be consuming, allowing for to walk for 2 to 3 days without resting even at the very start of the game before starting to get exhausted.
This army stamina bar would be recharged by standing still and recharge even faster by waiting inside settlements or camping.
As long as you have any amount of stamina in the party/army bar, if a battle were to start, your troops would have a full maximum battle-stamina bar.
If your party/army's stamina were to be depleted though, a red exhaustion bar would start to grow from the opposite side of your stamina bar and you'd start to lose move speed little by little.
If a battle were to start, that red bar would be present inside the battle-stamina as well, reducing the maximum battle-stamina of you and your troops.
After 50% filled, the exhaustion bar would start to turn troops into wounded troops and create a small probability of defection.
After 75% filled, a few wounded troops would start to die, more troops would be wounded and you'd have a bigger defection rate.
At 90% you'd have a chance for a mutiny event, which would be a mini-game where only you and your companions and a very small amount of your troops would have to fight the majority of your troops, with EVERYONE exhausted and only 10% or less of their stamina bar. Either way, you'd either lose over 80% of your troops or everyone and be captured by the mutineers.
This would also be true and real for the computer as well, so even bandits would have to rest or force exhaustion in order to escape, if they were already to be tired when you start chasing them.
It would also be a big reason to stop and rest from time to time, which would slow the pace of the game down a little, as armies wouldn't be able to wage war 24/7/365 anymore.
A bit of the map-stamina would be consumed per battle as well, as fighting is indeed very tiresome.
You can consider the battle and map stamina as Stamina and Fatigue for the map version, which would be the short-term and long-term stamina.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
| Duties & Chores |
I've suggested in another post some alterations to the perk trees and the effects of the attributes, which currently don't serve as much purpose beside influencing how fast your skill levels raise.
One of those suggestions was the extinction of the "Marsh Hunter" and "Forest Hunter" perks.
Instead, these could be replaced by a mini-game while camping, that can also be skipped by ordering a companion to take some troops and do it for you.
A "hunting game" mini-game, where you are on your current map with a few troops of your choice and the "enemies" are animals scattered around the map with little armor, rated according to hide strength, and they get spooked if they see you, get attacked or anyone gets too close, after which they will try to run from the map in "retreat".
For every animal hunted, you'd get a small amount of meat, besides hide, fur and the likes.
Sending your companion would be like a simulated battle. The resulting loot would depend on how many units they kill, where the enemy troops are the wild animals.
Besides this hunting mini-game, you'd also have a tree cutting mini-game, which also could be given to a assigned and troops to do.
You would be equipped with only a two handed axe and trees across the map would have a life bar and count as enemies to your troops, but only one troop would engage each tree.
You'd be allowed to exit at any time and each tree felled would provide some hardwood, which would be consumed every time you camp to create the campfires in proportion to how many troops you have.
Assigning your troops or companions to cut trees would simply provide a fixed value of hardwood relative to if you are in a forest or not and their two-handed skill value.
Lastly, a "cooking" mini-game, similar to the "Smithy" system with a difficulty where your "skill" level is calculate by you Social + Control or Intelligence attributes and your Steward skill level. You'd use resources like meat, oil, flour, grain and so on to make cooked dishes that would stay in your inventory's Misc. section and be consumed before the raw ingredients by your troops. Cooked food would provide morale boosts and the better/higher-tier the food, the bigger the morale boost.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
| New Positions |
There'd also be a new clan position called "Cook" where if you have someone assigned as your cook in your party, every time you were to be camping or waiting in a settlement resting, your cook would automatically begin to convert raw food and resources like oil, salt and the like into cooked food based on his Control or Intelligence, Social and Steward levels.
Which is to say that just by having a cook in your party would already mean to have a higher morale.
Other positions could include:
The Body Guard: I've seen someone suggest this before but I don't remember who or where, which would be the companion that follows you around when you walk on maps. He'd also stick close to you in battles and not follow or be assigned any formation or command. The body-guard would be permanently in "Follow me" command and in sieges, would also be on horseback like the player does.
The mount or dismount command would also be automatic as soon as the player mounts or dismounts his/her horse.
The navigator: Would increase the party's map movement speed based on their cunning and intelligence attribute and possibly a new skill added later on, following the suggestions down below.
The smith, who would automatically convert resources like Iron ore and Hardwood into Iron and Coal and auto-forge random weapons while waiting inside towns, raising his Smith level and possibly usable to forge good weapons for you inside the smithy.
Having a smith could also possibly give a small raise to both melee and ranged damage due to better quality and well maintained weapons based on his smith skill level.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Taking into consideration the changes I suggested in that post I mentioned before, I'd also like to suggest unlocking the Skills from a single specific attribute and make their learning rate more multi-attribute, possibly giving more effects to the attributes like control raising your extra ammunition, instead of leaving it to perks.
It could visually be something as simple as leaving attributes on the left and putting skills to the right of the Character screen, removing the standing character and leaving the perk trees in the middle.
This would be advised as some skills make sense for more than one attribute, for example, trade depends as much from social as it does from cunning and intelligence, so its growth rate should be based on all 3 of these atributes.
Bow and Cross-Bow depend on some degree of cunning while Throwing should take into consideration your Vigor as well as you need muscle strength to throw as much as you need control to aim.
This could also possibly mean to create perk trees for the attributes as well.
It also opens the possibility to create as many new skills TW might want later on, for example, a Cooking specific skill so that your cook clan member effect and the cooking mini-game's difficulty I suggested could be based on this new Cooking skill level, instead of Steward, Control and Social.
It's growth rate would be tied to Social + Control or Intelligence though.
You Vigor could influence your hit damage and you HP, Endurance could influence HP and Stamina, both Cunning and Social could influence dialogue chances, both Intelligence and Cunning can influence simulated battles results, Social and Intelligence can give discounts in trade...
There are several benefits from unlocking the skills from attributes and giving more functions to the attributes.
I'd also suggest a few perk changes, but I feel like I've already written too much and already said quite a few on that other post, though it was more focused only on ranged skills perks, so I'll leave it to another day to make a post specifically on top of perks.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
deGoucan Scrolls Index
One suggestion I liked and support very much here in the forums is @tane's "Bring back Camps" as I very much liked Warband's camp mechanic, where you could interact and talk with you companions and troops to raise their relation to you.
Yet this would probably make less sense without something like Exhaustion and Stamina being a part of the game, but it also would be very bothersome to have to stand still for hours every ingame day.
Medieval armies everywhere on the world used to march for days, yet they also had to rest for half to a full day after that and from time to time or soldiers would start to defect, would die marching or would be too exhausted to fight.
Mounted armies could march for longer, yet sometimes, the horses would die and that was a SERIOUS issue.
I think something like that could be added to the game together with an inbattle stamina mechanic as well, for added realism, immersion and so that you don't chase a 7 men steppe bandits over the whole map for an entire ingame year.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Exhaustion & Stamina
| Stamina |
Your troops and your character would all have a stamina bar based on your attributes and skills.
More precisely: Atributes [Endurance & Vigor] Skills [Athletics, One Handed & Two Handed]
The higher your maximum stamina is. Every second sprinting on foot, every swing of a weapon and every attack blocked would consume a small amount of stamina, but a few seconds after, it would start to recharge, and it would recharge faster if your character would be walking instead of running, on top of a horse and faster still if you were to be completely stopped. This would be true to every character, including the AI and would have to be taken into consideration by both the AI and player to not get tired in a bad situation.
If your stamina bar were to be depleted, your attacks would get slower and have reduced damage, due to reduced muscle strength and being out of breath, you'd also not be allowed to sprint anymore.
| Exhaustion |
While on the world map, your party/army's stamina would be the mean value between the max stamina of all of your troops.
While walking, that stamina would slowly be consuming, allowing for to walk for 2 to 3 days without resting even at the very start of the game before starting to get exhausted.
This army stamina bar would be recharged by standing still and recharge even faster by waiting inside settlements or camping.
As long as you have any amount of stamina in the party/army bar, if a battle were to start, your troops would have a full maximum battle-stamina bar.
If your party/army's stamina were to be depleted though, a red exhaustion bar would start to grow from the opposite side of your stamina bar and you'd start to lose move speed little by little.
If a battle were to start, that red bar would be present inside the battle-stamina as well, reducing the maximum battle-stamina of you and your troops.
After 50% filled, the exhaustion bar would start to turn troops into wounded troops and create a small probability of defection.
After 75% filled, a few wounded troops would start to die, more troops would be wounded and you'd have a bigger defection rate.
At 90% you'd have a chance for a mutiny event, which would be a mini-game where only you and your companions and a very small amount of your troops would have to fight the majority of your troops, with EVERYONE exhausted and only 10% or less of their stamina bar. Either way, you'd either lose over 80% of your troops or everyone and be captured by the mutineers.
This would also be true and real for the computer as well, so even bandits would have to rest or force exhaustion in order to escape, if they were already to be tired when you start chasing them.
It would also be a big reason to stop and rest from time to time, which would slow the pace of the game down a little, as armies wouldn't be able to wage war 24/7/365 anymore.
A bit of the map-stamina would be consumed per battle as well, as fighting is indeed very tiresome.
You can consider the battle and map stamina as Stamina and Fatigue for the map version, which would be the short-term and long-term stamina.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Immersion Mini-Games
| Duties & Chores |
I've suggested in another post some alterations to the perk trees and the effects of the attributes, which currently don't serve as much purpose beside influencing how fast your skill levels raise.
One of those suggestions was the extinction of the "Marsh Hunter" and "Forest Hunter" perks.
Instead, these could be replaced by a mini-game while camping, that can also be skipped by ordering a companion to take some troops and do it for you.
A "hunting game" mini-game, where you are on your current map with a few troops of your choice and the "enemies" are animals scattered around the map with little armor, rated according to hide strength, and they get spooked if they see you, get attacked or anyone gets too close, after which they will try to run from the map in "retreat".
For every animal hunted, you'd get a small amount of meat, besides hide, fur and the likes.
Sending your companion would be like a simulated battle. The resulting loot would depend on how many units they kill, where the enemy troops are the wild animals.
Besides this hunting mini-game, you'd also have a tree cutting mini-game, which also could be given to a assigned and troops to do.
You would be equipped with only a two handed axe and trees across the map would have a life bar and count as enemies to your troops, but only one troop would engage each tree.
You'd be allowed to exit at any time and each tree felled would provide some hardwood, which would be consumed every time you camp to create the campfires in proportion to how many troops you have.
Assigning your troops or companions to cut trees would simply provide a fixed value of hardwood relative to if you are in a forest or not and their two-handed skill value.
Lastly, a "cooking" mini-game, similar to the "Smithy" system with a difficulty where your "skill" level is calculate by you Social + Control or Intelligence attributes and your Steward skill level. You'd use resources like meat, oil, flour, grain and so on to make cooked dishes that would stay in your inventory's Misc. section and be consumed before the raw ingredients by your troops. Cooked food would provide morale boosts and the better/higher-tier the food, the bigger the morale boost.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Clan
| New Positions |
There'd also be a new clan position called "Cook" where if you have someone assigned as your cook in your party, every time you were to be camping or waiting in a settlement resting, your cook would automatically begin to convert raw food and resources like oil, salt and the like into cooked food based on his Control or Intelligence, Social and Steward levels.
Which is to say that just by having a cook in your party would already mean to have a higher morale.
Other positions could include:
The Body Guard: I've seen someone suggest this before but I don't remember who or where, which would be the companion that follows you around when you walk on maps. He'd also stick close to you in battles and not follow or be assigned any formation or command. The body-guard would be permanently in "Follow me" command and in sieges, would also be on horseback like the player does.
The mount or dismount command would also be automatic as soon as the player mounts or dismounts his/her horse.
The navigator: Would increase the party's map movement speed based on their cunning and intelligence attribute and possibly a new skill added later on, following the suggestions down below.
The smith, who would automatically convert resources like Iron ore and Hardwood into Iron and Coal and auto-forge random weapons while waiting inside towns, raising his Smith level and possibly usable to forge good weapons for you inside the smithy.
Having a smith could also possibly give a small raise to both melee and ranged damage due to better quality and well maintained weapons based on his smith skill level.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Attribute & Skills Alterations
| Unlocking |Taking into consideration the changes I suggested in that post I mentioned before, I'd also like to suggest unlocking the Skills from a single specific attribute and make their learning rate more multi-attribute, possibly giving more effects to the attributes like control raising your extra ammunition, instead of leaving it to perks.
It could visually be something as simple as leaving attributes on the left and putting skills to the right of the Character screen, removing the standing character and leaving the perk trees in the middle.
This would be advised as some skills make sense for more than one attribute, for example, trade depends as much from social as it does from cunning and intelligence, so its growth rate should be based on all 3 of these atributes.
Bow and Cross-Bow depend on some degree of cunning while Throwing should take into consideration your Vigor as well as you need muscle strength to throw as much as you need control to aim.
This could also possibly mean to create perk trees for the attributes as well.
It also opens the possibility to create as many new skills TW might want later on, for example, a Cooking specific skill so that your cook clan member effect and the cooking mini-game's difficulty I suggested could be based on this new Cooking skill level, instead of Steward, Control and Social.
It's growth rate would be tied to Social + Control or Intelligence though.
You Vigor could influence your hit damage and you HP, Endurance could influence HP and Stamina, both Cunning and Social could influence dialogue chances, both Intelligence and Cunning can influence simulated battles results, Social and Intelligence can give discounts in trade...
There are several benefits from unlocking the skills from attributes and giving more functions to the attributes.
I'd also suggest a few perk changes, but I feel like I've already written too much and already said quite a few on that other post, though it was more focused only on ranged skills perks, so I'll leave it to another day to make a post specifically on top of perks.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
deGoucan Scrolls Index
Last edited:
