Fast and fun combat

[the butcher]

I havent seen those suggestions in the common suggestion threads:


Charge for humans.

Right now if you are faced with a horde of enemies you have to hit and run no matter how bad they are. If all humans could give a hard instantaneous shove you would fix this. The shove will be similar to the horse charge, disrupting the block of your enemy (or enemies) or even knocking them down, depending from your and their strength and athletics. You will be able to do this with the shield up.

Shields..

Shield parry is horrible! You can block any weapon and arrow with any shield as long as it comes from the front. I think the following would be better:

Shields will protect their own area only, whether they are raised or not.

Shield absorbs only an amount of damage. Any damage from one strike beyond what the shield and gloves can absorb is inflicted normally. The durability of the shield is reduced as before.

You should be able to use a lot of weapons with the shield up. Swords will only have two attacks available, thrust and overhand (overhand for the swords without thrust). Short blades and spears can be used with the shield raised too. Spears should do more damage and short blades should be faster and have thrust only.

Pikes, halberds and large axes should do more damage

Power strike should add a speed bonus to very large weapons.

I have also placed a suggestion on the parry thread.

I realise that a lot of new work will be needed but combat will be much faster, closer to reality, give more useable weapons (spears, pikes, short blades, halberds and hammers are totaly outclassed now) and better fun.
I would like some feedback on whether those suggestions are possible.

 

[the butcher]

Cmon, no responce people? What do u think?

 

[Kelpo]

Shield absorbs only an amount of damage. Any damage from one strike beyond what the shield and gloves can absorb is inflicted normally. The durability of the shield is reduced as before.

I like that one, at least with missiles. Don't know what would it do to balance though.

 

[Roach]

Spears should definately be un-nerfed. They should be a lot faster and be able to slash and whatnot when used in two hands. Or even just lightning fast pokes. I already really rate them on horseback, but on foot you're better off with a rusty hammer. Maybe make them like staffs (staves?) with more damage on the thrust.

I thought axes already did the most damage, follwed by bardiches and voulges and other axe-wannabes? And while we're on the subject of axes: bonus vs. shield. Nice, realistic, but I've never (ever) had a fight with a enemy last long enough to destroy his shield: either he or I die long before it happens. It really seems inconsequential for the player

 

[barbaros]

Right now if you are faced with a horde of enemies you have to hit and run no matter how bad they are. If all humans could give a hard instantaneous shove you would fix this. The shove will be similar to the horse charge, disrupting the block of your enemy (or enemies) or even knocking them down, depending from your and their strength and athletics. You will be able to do this with the shield up.

I always thought sprint is necessary. Currrent running speed is extremely slow if you have heavy armor or low athletics. This is boring. And your idea of disrupting the block can make sprinting (or call it charge) even more interesting. But this should depend on some conditions. An ordinary footman shouldn't be able to disrupt the block of a dark knight. Stamina should also be implemented to prevent the excessive use of this.

 

[Can O Soup]

IIRC Armagan did say that he was plaaning on putting in stamina eventually.

 

[the butcher]

I didnt have sprint in mind, rather a powerful dash for 1-2 meters which would knock aside and stun your enemies if you are strong enough, like a charging horse. If sprint & stamina are planned it would be even better if they do it right

 

[Talon68]

I must say, it is incredibly unrealistic how crap some of the weapons are. Why you can't slash with a spear is beyond me, and a stave is far better for whacking people with than poking them.

I think that staves are truly underestimated. This is coming from someone who has not trained with a staff, but practised for about a year infrequently, and they are a formidable weapon. If I hit someone with this (albeit with no hard armour like plate or chain) they are most certainly going to go down, possibly be killed. A solid Oak Staff can quite easily kill someone, and a blow to the head with one is either unconsciousness,brain damage or death. Make them spinny as well, make it so that you can ward people off with them, and possibly have a function to switch between holding it in the middle (faster attacks) or at one end (much more range).

I don't agree with the shield only blocking a bit of damage, but I can see where you're coming from. Instead, perhaps it would be better if lower level shields blocked all damage, but you recieved a maximum of 2 from the impact. I don't think this should be the case with arrows, as they would most certainly be blocked by the shield. I also think that arrows shouldn't stick in metal shields.

A lot of the weapons need to be much better balanced, for example, a heavy warhammer. Whatever your belief is about balancing the game and weight, if you try to use one of these you will instantly become aware of how you can't actually hit anyone. You swing, and they have a good 2 seconds to attack back, and so the only way to actually get a hit in is to be lucky or have them focussed on someone else. Make them much faster, as in reality, you have the momentum to carry it, and you would swing it by the end when you hit someone (very fast) and when you walk you would hold it near the hammer, making it not so encumbering to carry.

That is all

 

[Roady]

A possible balance for heavy weapons can be that you can swing it faster, but after the swing, you're open to attacks until your weapon loses enough momentum that you can parry or swing again.
If an opponent is hit, that opening doesn't quite matter because they're stunned/on the ground, but if they dodge/block/parry then they can exploit the opening in your defense.

If/when stamina is introduced, heavy weapons can have rebound attacks where you swing left and once the weapon is slowed, rebound with a swing to the right.
Stamina lost from the attack would prevent prolonged use of such an attack.

 

[the butcher]

I still believe that the damage threshhold is best for shields. It should be high ever for the weakest shield and block all single handed weapons. Double handed heavy weapons when swung hard enough can break arms through the shield, dodging them is the best defence. As for arrows, the more powerful bows have no problem going through a moderate shield. The romans when fighting the parthians found that arrows from their powerful composite bows could nail arms on the shield or even shield to foot to the ground ;they layered two shields for protection. I dont know about metal shields but I dont think the metal was thicker than a sheet (wood underneath). An english longbow can penetrate a breastplate all the way through. Besides the shield threshhold will fix the couched lance issue too and would give some sence in choosing different shields.


As for balance, my original suggestions (including parry) will unbalance the game if implemented on their own.

 

[The Pope]

I'd say only a few attacks would be able to do any damage through shields, and that should be an item specific ability rather than being tied to raw damage. Those items would be the heavier lances and firearms. An arrow would be slowed down constantly as the whole shaft passes through the shield, rendering it harmless by the time it hits flesh (except the shield arm itself, which is why they put thick metal bosses over the grip). A bullet doesn't have a shaft, so this doesn't apply, and a lance is still being pushed when it hits.

Another suggestion for arrows - damage type should be tied to arrow, not bow. That way you could have broadhead arrows with high cutting damage and piercing bodkins for armor. I think regular arrows have too much armor penetration as it is - if they went through armor then no one would have bothered inventing bodkins.

 

[Sir Huggles]

An english longbow can penetrate a breastplate all the way through.

actually, thats incorrect. I watched a thing on the History Channel about the battle of agincourt (sp?), and they did a test to see how well period arrows held up against period arms, and many of the arrow tips actually broke on impact with the plate armor, and that the English longbow wasn't the real reason for the victory. What supposedly did happen was the french knights in their heavy armor were bogged down in the mud while the lightly armored English longbowmen stayed above the mud, and the french ended up either drowning in the mud or being stabbed in the face while they couldn't move.

But anyways, the moral of the story is that arrows can't pierce plate.

 

[Kynes]

You should be able to use a lot of weapons with the shield up. Swords will only have two attacks available, thrust and overhand (overhand for the swords without thrust). Short blades and spears can be used with the shield raised too. Spears should do more damage and short blades should be faster and have thrust only.

I like all those ideas.

Shields will protect their own area only, whether they are raised or not.

I'm not too sure about this. It might unbalance things quite severely. Maybe just reduce the invisible 'edges' of the shield slightly. At higher levels I can drop arrows on soldiers that have just spawned- if they weren't completely shielded they'd have a snowball's chance in hell.

But definitely shields should be weaker and the bonus against shields should be noticeable.

 

[Manitas]

Shields leaking a portion of damage is a bad idea.

Although I'd like the shields to respect the newtonian laws.
E.g. when hit with couched lance, or a heavy blunt weapon, the shield bearer would be pushed back, and knocked down, probably. And yes, minor blunt damage could be dealt, but I think a better idea would be to implement fatigue at last, and make the impact subtract from fatigue rather than hitpoints.

At higher levels I can drop arrows on soldiers that have just spawned- if they weren't completely shielded they'd have a snowball's chance in hell.

It is overpowered archery that's to blame.

 

[the butcher]

An english longbow can penetrate a breastplate all the way through.

actually, thats incorrect. I watched a thing on the History Channel about the battle of agincourt (sp?), and they did a test to see how well period arrows held up against period arms, and many of the arrow tips actually broke on impact with the plate armor, and that the English longbow wasn't the real reason for the victory. What supposedly did happen was the french knights in their heavy armor were bogged down in the mud while the lightly armored English longbowmen stayed above the mud, and the french ended up either drowning in the mud or being stabbed in the face while they couldn't move.

But anyways, the moral of the story is that arrows can't pierce plate.

In a demonstration on english TV, some guy fired a longbow at a breastplate placed on a stand from about 100m. The arrow went straight through. Why do you people think that breastplate is so tough? It was ment to be light and comfortable and protect from cuts, the metal was not too thick.

I dont find archery to be too powerful, the AI rarely bothers me. Perhaps capping power draw for the weaker bows would be better. And if people still cant handle it, a further modifier on archery according to arrow type (as someone else said) will make it ok.

Anyway ill keep bumping this to make sure more people see it.

 

[Roach]

In a demonstration on english TV, some guy fired a longbow at a breastplate placed on a stand from about 100m. The arrow went straight through. Why do you people think that breastplate is so tough? It was ment to be light and comfortable and protect from cuts, the metal was not too thick.

I think Sir Huggles has it right, sure a bodkin arrow will go through a steel plate if it's close enough (or maybe coming down at an angle fast enough - IIRC aimed firing wasn't the name of the game, it was high-angle saturation fire), but the odds are good the arrow is not going to hit a piece of angled/rounded/fluted armour exactly perpendicularly (is that even a word?), it's going to be deflected. Possibly into your eye-slit, shoulder joint or horse, screwing you over anyway, but not punching through your armour plating. Don't trust TV (especially the Discovery Channel, I have no idea how they got a reputation for accuracy, it's history lite. It really is.)

 

[Christoad]

Forgive me if this has been mentioned before, but has anyone ever considered the concept of dual-wielding weapons?

 

[dirtbag]

Yes.

And I agree with more damage with arrows. I get irritated over troops getting hit in the throat and still running around

 

[Manitas]

And I agree with more damage with arrows. I get irritated over troops getting hit in the throat and still running around

Then they will drop dead if you hit them in their toe.

What you want is not more damage on arrows. It's more sophisticated hit location check.

 

[The Pope]

An arrow could easily get lodged in armor and look like it was sticking out of someone without having caused any damage - Islamic histories of the crusades mention knights continuing to charge with many arrows protruding from their armor, and that was just chainmail.