Fixing ladders needs to be the very next thing

[Danny5]

Defenders would ignore me like I'm invisible and just run past me even when I hit them. They are sooo desperate to get to their position. It's their priority!

 

[kreamy]

it'd be pretty interesting for this game to be adequate

 

[lukkyb]

cant rember which dev it was but they said its a combination of mutiple things that are cuasing issues and there isnt just a simple fix but that they are working on it

 

[Roy1012]

It gives me the chills, reminds me of Medieval 2 siege pathfinding.

 

[vonbalt]

sieges need improvement ASAP, it's like1/3 of the game and it's bugged and almost unplayable in many most maps since the begining of the early access.

Defenders need to defend much better and react more dynamically to treats while attackers need to learn how to use the damn ladders/towers.

for real, sieges should be terrifying if you don't badly outnumber the enemy or have a large amount of elite troops, the breaches/gates should be a complete meatgrinder for the attackers, not once i've lost a siege as an attacker yet even when badly outnumbered, not once i've been forced to retreat from an unsuccessful assault.

 

[CrazyElf]

sieges need improvement ASAP, it's like1/3 of the game and it's bugged and almost unplayable in many most maps since the begining of the early access.

Defenders need to defend much better and react more dynamically to treats while attackers need to learn how to use the damn ladders/towers.

for real, sieges should be terrifying if you don't badly outnumber the enemy or have a large amount of elite troops, the breaches/gates should be a complete meatgrinder for the attackers, not once i've lost a siege as an attacker yet even when badly outnumbered, not once i've been forced to retreat from an unsuccessful assault.

Yep - there are huge issues right now.

I think that the game favors attackers too much. Adding things like Realistic Battle mod into the base game would be nice as well (that would favor the defense as well in some regards, because they have walls and would take fewer hits, so having each hit be more survivable favors the defense).

Historically it took 4-5x as many troops to storm a well fortified position.


----

Then after that it may be time to ask the devs to look at mods like Freelancer, but that's a different conversation.

 

[michigogo]

not returning to the game until it is fixed.

also it is something I mention in my review and not changing it until it is fixed

 

[momo1]

There is nothing more immersion breaking in this game right now than how badly AI units do pathing up ladders. A lot of the main gameplay is at least up to levels of rough adequacy. But sieges and the ladder mosh puts are pre-beta level broken. It's not reasonable to expect fans to put up with this problem indefinitely. I don't think there's anything left in the game as horribly broken as the siege AI.

Which is a real pity because if it could just get that polish it needed on sieges, this game would be in amazing condition. It would remove the single biggest remaining frustration players have with the game and may wind up solving the siege performance problems along the way (pathing calculations for a large battle are one of the things that eat up a lot of CPU cycles, bad pathing -> requiring more frequent recalculations -> extra load on the CPU)

That said -- it's time, TaleWorlds. If you can't fix the existing module start the process of ripping it out and replacing it. Some legacy spaghetti code is probably at the core of why it performs so badly in siege right now anyway when the pathing isn't all that bad in general.

The core of the problem in my mind is based in my observation of how things are NOT working, everyone is trying to get to the spot at the bottom of the ladder so they can climb up, but the spot is only just big enough to accomodate one person and collision is making it impossible for anyone to get to that precise point as a result.

The solution could be as simple as widening the snap-to-ladder aperture so that if soldiers are at the base of the ladder, at least one soldier sticks to the bottom of an empty ladder at any given time, and assigning a FIFO priority chain in terms of who goes next rather than making them all engage in a mass shoving match to get to the exact spot of the bottom of the ladder at the exact same time.

Alternatively, make them cluster 3 paces back from the ladder and only release one soldier from that position at a time, and that only when a certain group of pixels on the ladder is clear at the moment. We know this can be done because the method is used in other siege functions, such as assaulting the gate where a group of reserves hangs back while specific members of that group are assigned to points in front of the door.

Either way would be a simpler and more effective solution than the spastic mosh pit we have going on at the bottom of our ladders right now.

It would also be useful if there was a column formation in the game in general. If there was, it could be adapted to make the troops line up and take turns on the ladder.

The Realistic Battle Mod completely fixes ladder issues.

 

[UK-Tranquillity]

Good luck we have been asking for sieges and ladders to be looked at since the dawn of EA.

It's literally banging your head against a brick wall. You know it isn't going to move but you kept trying until you gave up.

 

[Fate]

Then after that it may be time to ask the devs to look at mods like Freelancer, but that's a different conversation.

They won't, the mods are just free labor for them that they don't then have to troubleshoot, update or expand

 

[vonbalt]

The Realistic Battle Mod completely fixes ladder issues.

the ladders yes but the rest of the siege AI is still horribly bugged and siege towers are so broken the modder disabled it since he can't access that part of the code (and there are problems in the scenes aswell that modders can't edit)

 

[Philozoraptor]

If the devs would by a chance look at this thread. Increase the queue bots from 3 to 15 (thats how we improved the ladders) and generally rework the queue code, putting the side ladders on siege towers further away from the middle ladder might help too. Other way of fixing or at least improving this issue would be scripting / forcing the bots to always climb up on the ladders instead of having freedom of choice to climb down - this would prevent the Monty Python scenarios that are hapenning on the towers (defenders climbing down and fighting on the ladders) and would force bots to always climb up. This would probably require to remove ladders from general pathfinding, which migh make this solution more clumsy and hardcoded but it would probably work efficiently.

 

[Philozoraptor]

the ladders yes but the rest of the siege AI is still horribly bugged and siege towers are so broken the modder disabled it since he can't access that part of the code (and there are problems in the scenes aswell that modders can't edit)

To be honest, I tested 1.6.0 vanilla AI and attackers seem to use one ladder fully on each side of the castle, this aplies to siege towers too, which is improvement. But since in RBM AI uses 2 ladders at roughly 75 % efficiency we end up with 2 normal ladders that work better than 1 siege tower with one functional ladder so we keep them disabled in 1.6.0 for now.

 

[vonbalt]

To be honest, I tested 1.6.0 vanilla AI and attackers seem to use one ladder fully on each side of the castle, this aplies to siege towers too, which is improvement. But since in RBM AI uses 2 ladders at roughly 75 % efficiency we end up with 2 normal ladders that work better than 1 siege tower with one functional ladder so we keep them disabled in 1.6.0 for now.

It's atleast some progress lol

Hope TW manages to fix it for real soon, attackers should use all the ladders they can while defenders should really try to push them out of the walls/gates instead of being stuck there in a defensive position that's absolutely the worst performing in BL right now be it sieges or field battles (and the reason why shieldwalls are so bummer right now too, defensive ai is really bad, the game is basically "move to win" in fights)

 

[Agroplode]

Can you make them work like escalators, so that troop that step near them are pulled up but make it look like they climbed of own free will?

 

[bestmods168]

wonder if i should look into this issue or not. ?

 

[CrazyElf]

If the devs would by a chance look at this thread. Increase the queue bots from 3 to 15 (thats how we improved the ladders) and generally rework the queue code, putting the side ladders on siege towers further away from the middle ladder might help too. Other way of fixing or at least improving this issue would be scripting / forcing the bots to always climb up on the ladders instead of having freedom of choice to climb down - this would prevent the Monty Python scenarios that are hapenning on the towers (defenders climbing down and fighting on the ladders) and would force bots to always climb up. This would probably require to remove ladders from general pathfinding, which migh make this solution more clumsy and hardcoded but it would probably work efficiently.

You could use the @ an include the developer - or message the section moderator directly.

I agree though that this is an urgent issue and needs to be resolved.

With 2 siege towers, there should be 6 ladders in theory being used.

 

[Eneas21]

Well there'll be plenty for you to shoot since nobody's going up the ladder ?

I'm not seriously trying to excuse the siege situation, but I do find it hilarious that you can actually push them into the ladder and it makes them go!?

they are a little shy, they just need a little bit more confidence to throw themselves in those walls full of enemy soldiers that will rip his guts out

 

[badman]

fixing ladders is hard bro, almost as hard as putting a cap on the price of crafted weapons.

 

[Twezie]

+1