Game balance

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So I'll unload some things here that don't really belong in the bug thread.

Horses. Horses have too much armour. In fact, most of them have the same armour stat - 18. Even the "Worn out hack" horse has 18 points of armour. I suggest on getting rid of armour for most horses, with the heaviest ones having no more that 5.

Muskets. A bit inaccurate. Yes, they were inaccurate historically but the Warband AI can't deal with it. Increasing the accuracy rating by 10 points for all muskets (rifles are fine as they are) seems to have improved the battles quite a bit for me. Also, the M1777 carbine deals a lot more damage than the standard version.

Musket melee damage. It's quite low. A strike to the head from a butt of a musket would fracture a man's skull, here it takes 3-4 hits to down even the weakest opponents. I suggest upping melee damage of muskets by 15 points across the board. Also, the hunting rifle, which does not have a bayonet, can use the stab attack.

Peasant training. Maybe sometime in the future this can be changed. Right now you train the peasants with polearms like in native. I think a better option would be to train them shooting and reloading somehow (maybe spawn a target, and you "show them" how to shoot by destroying the target). For melee I think wooden swords would be a better option.

Anyway, those are my minor annoyances. Awesome mod so far. Wasn't able to enjoy it for long because every time I spotted an animation error I closed the game and opened up 3ds max, but what little playtime I had was fun as hell :smile:
 
Aye, also perhaps non-skirmisher units should be assigned to infantry and not archers so that ai armies might have some semblance of tactics to them. To tie in with this the formations could do for a little tightening up as the soldiers seem to just kind of move into position at their leisure as in native.
 
RanGer_SLO said:
Also, the hunting rifle, which does not have a bayonet, can use the stab attack.
I would keep this.  Even though you don't have a bayonet, you could still jab it at people to keep them away, even if it only does let's say, 10 blunt damage.
 
Sir_Newton said:
Aye, also perhaps non-skirmisher units should be assigned to infantry and not archers so that ai armies might have some semblance of tactics to them. To tie in with this the formations could do for a little tightening up as the soldiers seem to just kind of move into position at their leisure as in native.

Good point.

Doc, you can use make a script and use  troop_set_class to assign troops to different squads.

Example from module_triggers:
(0.1, 0, 1.0, [],[(troop_set_class, "trp_rhodok_tribesman", 4)]),

The last number is the squad number. They start with 0 (infantry).
 
RanGer_SLO said:
So I'll unload some things here that don't really belong in the bug thread.

Horses. Horses have too much armour. In fact, most of them have the same armour stat - 18. Even the "Worn out hack" horse has 18 points of armour. I suggest on getting rid of armour for most horses, with the heaviest ones having no more that 5.

Muskets. A bit inaccurate. Yes, they were inaccurate historically but the Warband AI can't deal with it. Increasing the accuracy rating by 10 points for all muskets (rifles are fine as they are) seems to have improved the battles quite a bit for me. Also, the M1777 carbine deals a lot more damage than the standard version.

Musket melee damage. It's quite low. A strike to the head from a butt of a musket would fracture a man's skull, here it takes 3-4 hits to down even the weakest opponents. I suggest upping melee damage of muskets by 15 points across the board. Also, the hunting rifle, which does not have a bayonet, can use the stab attack.

Peasant training. Maybe sometime in the future this can be changed. Right now you train the peasants with polearms like in native. I think a better option would be to train them shooting and reloading somehow (maybe spawn a target, and you "show them" how to shoot by destroying the target). For melee I think wooden swords would be a better option.

Anyway, those are my minor annoyances. Awesome mod so far. Wasn't able to enjoy it for long because every time I spotted an animation error I closed the game and opened up 3ds max, but what little playtime I had was fun as hell :smile:

ahh, you beat me to it. I was going to say some strange number like 12 or so, maybe 8 would even be good...just something. Inaccuracies are a given with smoothbore firearms but I'd go for gameplay over history in this instance. when I get a line set and open up on a rabble I want the to get cut down, not kill one or two for every dozen muskets I fire at 50 paces.
 
Another thing to take into consideration, if a musket ball hits you, it doesn't mater where, you are going down (either wounded or dead) and wont be able to fight on. In this mod, i've seen some guys take 2 or 3 shots and still fight on.

Same can be said about swords, killing even the simplest of enemies (pirates, raiders, bandits) takes a long time.
 
Horses. Horses have too much armour. In fact, most of them have the same armour stat - 18. Even the "Worn out hack" horse has 18 points of armour. I suggest on getting rid of armour for most horses, with the heaviest ones having no more that 5.
Armour is not so much the problem as HP in my opinion. Most horses take more than two bullets to kill because they have that much health.
Mind you, yes horses should have less armour, but I don't think we need to worry as much about anything around 15 or less.

Heavy horses should be able to survive two gunshots, imo, and have higher armour.
Light horses should die in one shot and have maneuver/speed in the high 40s.

Muskets. A bit inaccurate. Yes, they were inaccurate historically but the Warband AI can't deal with it. Increasing the accuracy rating by 10 points for all muskets (rifles are fine as they are) seems to have improved the battles quite a bit for me. Also, the M1777 carbine deals a lot more damage than the standard version.
Muskets definitely need to have the baseline for accuracy bumped up to 60 or higher. I'd advise 70 honestly.
Musket melee damage. It's quite low. A strike to the head from a butt of a musket would fracture a man's skull, here it takes 3-4 hits to down even the weakest opponents. I suggest upping melee damage of muskets by 15 points across the board. Also, the hunting rifle, which does not have a bayonet, can use the stab attack.
Sideswings from muskets should be around 25-30 damage imo, and stabs with bayoneted muskets should be about 40.

joer5835 said:
Another thing to take into consideration, if a musket ball hits you, it doesn't mater where, you are going down (either wounded or dead) and wont be able to fight on. In this mod, i've seen some guys take 2 or 3 shots and still fight on.

Same can be said about swords, killing even the simplest of enemies (pirates, raiders, bandits) takes a long time.
On the contrary, it does matter pretty heavily where you get hit when shot by a musket, and secondly swords are very deadly weapons against unarmoured opponents.

A musket shot just as much a sword relies on hitting an enemy in a vital location to kill them. Even then, dying or going unconscious takes some time. The only thing that is medically guaranteed to instantly stop a man is a hit to the brain stem. Even a heartshot or thrust leaves the person alive a few more seconds.

I think if anything there should be a bleedout for any mortal wound except headshots, at least for players. This will give the player a moment to give out a final order or a final attack.
 
joer5835 said:
Another thing to take into consideration, if a musket ball hits you, it doesn't mater where, you are going down (either wounded or dead) and wont be able to fight on. In this mod, i've seen some guys take 2 or 3 shots and still fight on.

Same can be said about swords, killing even the simplest of enemies (pirates, raiders, bandits) takes a long time.

Have you made sure that in the options that the settings point to having npcs or yourself taking full damage?
I always play with full damage and Good A.I option, whatever attempts to make my experience more challenging, although having said that,
I have noticed a few enemies at times surviving from like 2 shots at most unless they are members of Horse guards and Guard Cavalry as they have pretty high armour ratings due to having a cuirass. Swords, you can chip at em unless you have a Heavy cav sword or such with like 25-35 damage and one hitting em
 
Now that you mention it, that could indeed be the case.

EDIT: nope, just checked, everything is set to normal.
 
Agree on most of these. I had a party of about 70 line infantry I think they were grenadier de Pied and Fusiliers de Ligne? (level 2 french recruit?)

I had 2 Six pounders and was raiding an English Village and then I got attacked by an English Army consisting of about 50 men, I thought I had the battle won but the enemy was mostly mounted even though my guys shot  a couple of volleys they missed most of them the cav closed in most of my men ran on impact (maybe fix morale a bit?)

and then we got slaughtered :grin: I got mad and raged quit :razz: I wanted to play an only infantry game but as it is its quite hard so now i have a party of about 110 of like 70 cav and 30 infantry and I'm kicking ass mostly because of the Cav. 

So, in conclusion, changing musket damage and horse armor and musket/bayonet bracing would be really good :grin: 
 
I might as well dump one of my observations here instead of making a new thread.

As well as the cavalry/item balance that is being mentioned I'd like to add that the Duchy of Warsaw seems to lack enough lords to survive against Austria.  I tried to help out with about 30 cavalry picking off smaller Austrian forces right from the start of the game, but the Polish still got swamped.  Within a couple of hours of playing all Polish cities were taken over by Austria and they were besieging the military depot with overwhelming force.

I understand that the Duchy of Warsaw probably shouldn't have enough troops to fight off Austria, and most of the troops in the French side ought to be actually with the French, but I think something ought to be tweaked so that they can survive for more than a few hours.  I think I'd prefer the Duchy to have more troops than appropriate compared to history than see the Duchy get destroyed immediately.  I assume it is outside the scope of the mod to give the French special AI to protect their dependencies (such as sending French armies into Polish land to protect Polish cities), so it might be a lot easier just to balance out the amount of lords for different factions.
 
i couldn't agree more with OP's points on horse resilience and musket melee damage.

after plundering around Russia for a time deciding what i wanted to do I joined the Prussians and raised a small company of hussars, I was shocked when a daring charge against a russian line brought a grand total of 0 of my men dead, while we slaughtered around 150 russians with a force of 30 hussars, the muskets are not accurate enough for the AI who do not seem to aim long enough for the full accuracy and the melee damage is pathetic vs horses, even on full damage to player i find my horse taking 5-8 stabs to go down.


I recall mentioning and asking what would be done to combat warbands tendancy to make cavalry insanely OP, it seems that nothing was actually done  :neutral:

*disclaimer*
I am aware that cavalry will be more powerful than infantry but in no way should they be demons of 4 legged monsters who can ride around a battle with impunity cutting down all in their path
 
I'd imagine that has something to do with the fact that melee anims aren't currently in a very good state. Infantry will probably be able to defend themselves better when they can actually hit things with their swings and stabs.
 
In the party menue you can change what troop slot different troops go into and even rename them. So all my dif light inf types I kept in archer and renamed "light inf" and put all the line in infantry and renamed "line inf" So doc doesn't need to add it as it is a base feature in game. Also there are unused slots you can use, so you you put all your men in different companies
 
Yeah the player can do that but the ai doesn't so armies just end up being mashed-together lines. Maybe fusiliers of line and grenadier guards could find themselves in a line together but a chassuer or jager should not be standing next to the burliest foot guard in formation.
 
Okay, time to report my findings!!!

Increased the accuracy of all firearms by 15 points. Casualties are steady but misses are frequent from volley fire.

Increased damage of all firearms by 20 points. They hurt now.

Increased melee damage of all muskets by 10 points.


In line combat losses are about 35-50% of enemy forces encountered (you have 100 soldiers, you fight 50 enemy soldiers, you lose about 20-30 men, give or take luck of course) battles are a bit faster overall and a bit more intense I think

Why I really did this was for the cavalry though. before any adjustments 3>1 Infantry/Cavalry ratio would see Cavalry win every time taking minimal losses, around 10% of their forces. they are just too strong!

Now 3>1 sees infantry winning when set and prepared to fire with moderate losses and cavalry winning when infantry is scattered and unorganized, again with fairly moderate losses. (Moderate I consider anything between 30-50% dead)

I hope someone can try these numbers out and see how it feels, mostly custom battles but I did play a campaign with around 95 Soldiers wandering around getting into fights.

Remember to try different factions, i noticed the british field Dragoons in custom battles which doesn't really represent heavy cav charges I think

 
Dropping feedback here too, I agree with OP's opinion, I was going to post the same thing here.

Also, badit melee proficiency should be checked, they're way too fast, just too fast with those butchering knives, even for my level 25 imported character fighting with a sabre.

That along with fixing the accuracy of firearms will improve the gameplay by a lot, I've been slaughtered by 45 bandits in a village while I had 96 men under my command plus the villagers, no logic in that, volley fire causes no damage and melee animations needs to be further developed, their too short I think and actually very unreliable to use, a bandit using a club can take down several professionally trained soldiers.

EDIT: Could any of you guys who tweaked your game files upload said archives so I can apply this to my build while we wait for updates? I'm just not versed in doing such things, would be greatly appreciated, send it through PM if possible, thank you.
 
Ambrush said:
EDIT: Could any of you guys who tweaked your game files upload said archives so I can apply this to my build while we wait for updates? I'm just not versed in doing such things, would be greatly appreciated, send it through PM if possible, thank you.

**

As I think about it though it would probably just be easier to wait for Doc to patch it if you aren't capable of doing it yourself. I don't intend for that to sound mean but I don't really feel comfortable messing with someone else's mod by posting changed files, if that makes sense
 
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