Is it even worth it to be a Horse Archer?

[Midnitewolf]

So I just started a New Dawn and so far I really like the look of the mod but I can't seem to do squat for damage with a bow, many times hitting for 0 damage.    I did some reading and supposedly bow damage is way reduced in this mod so is it even worth it to go for my favorite horse archer build?

 

[Service_Disconnect]

Unfortunately probably not. I love being a horse archer, but when I played with the mod I decided to be a knight. To me at least it seemed as though heavy armor won most of the time. Except against Kolkar...

 

[iStealth2387]

Bow damage itself isn't reduced. It's the damage model that has changed. The result is that bow's in this mod do almost no damage.

armor_soak_factor_against_cut      = 0.55
armor_soak_factor_against_pierce    = 0.45
armor_soak_factor_against_blunt    = 0.35

armor_reduction_factor_against_cut      = 2.75
armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce    = 2.05
armor_reduction_factor_against_blunt    = 2.25

Above are the New Dawn damage values. Below are the native damage values. If you want bows to do more damage, I would recommend that you lower the reduction factor of pierce, cut, and blunt damage. Be warned: The AI will also do more damage to you. For example, if you lower the values to the native ones below, Vaegir archers will suddenly become huge threats.

armor_soak_factor_against_cut      = 0.8
armor_soak_factor_against_pierce    = 0.65
armor_soak_factor_against_blunt    = 0.5

armor_reduction_factor_against_cut      = 1.0
armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce    = 0.5
armor_reduction_factor_against_blunt    = 0.75

In order to change these values, go to modules / A New Dawn / and open module.cfg with the note pad. After that scroll down to where you see these values and change them to your liking.

This post is basically a copy-pasta of a post by Light_gemini in the thread below so please give credit to her.
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,322862.0.html

 

[harlehus]

Everything does less damage because of the higher armor values and higher armor soaking. The only problem with bows is that there's a problem with the reticule which makes bows and crossbows quite inaccurate no matter your level of power draw and profficiency. You can easily change the values back to native standards in the module.cfg file in the module's folder if you think it's too much to handle.


Ninja'd by better answer 

 

[Eriktheread]

With the lower accuracy, damage, and huge amount of troops per battle, the biggest issue that needs balanced is the available ammunition.

With an Amazon bow, seven power draw, and 350 proficiency, it takes about three head shots to kill tier five troops. Who knows how many times you have to fire to get those head shots. I had a battle last night. 3300 sarranids troops sieging my town with 900 defenders. With the sieges as slow as they are, and everyone eventually getting stuck under the ladder, I eventually gave up in frustration. My 200 arrows were enough to get maybe fifty kills. It took something like two hours to grind through 1000 troops with strategic retreats to reload, and finally I died and they overran my defenders. The accuracy penalty with low health is brutal in this type of situation.

 

[Midnitewolf]

Hmm.  Not really a modder myself, just a player so having to try to figure out how to change values in the config values is a challenge mostly because I don't know what I am doing or even what those values reflect.

Damn I think this is the most frustrating thing about M&B, it is so damn hard to make the game play like you think it should play.  Seems every great module I pick up has some game breaking (for me) factor that I can't easily overcome <sigh>.

Note: Obviously not the fault of the Modder, because these all are great mods, rather just the fault of my personal preferences not being in line with the modders grand vision of how the game should play.  Hopefully M&B II will be a bit more user (meaning non-modder) friendly.

In any case, I might try to mess with the values a bit.  What can go wrong right?  HEHE.

 

[Baskakov_Dima]

Relax, men -- the mod is completely unbalanced.
What you actually need is just a good lance -- it will always deal descent amount of damage and XP. You need a shield and a 1h weapon. 4th slot is going to be saved for a strong 2-handed or polearm weapon. You don't need any ranged because you will run out of ammo very quickly. That's how you win in that mod.

 

[Service_Disconnect]

You could always just change the armor values back to the originals, or just lessen them for piercing damage.

One of the goals of this mod was to make troops a lot more resilient, able to take a lot more hits, especially in heavy armor. It's not really unrealistic that arrows might not penetrate top grade armor. I didn't mind it in my game as a mounted knight type character, but I can see how this would get frustrating as an archer - having to shoot the same target several times gets kind of boring.

Luckily Deathwhisper included an option to change the damage multiplier from 25% to 400%. If you don't like that troops are harder to kill and want arrows to drop a guy in one shot you may want to up the number a bit to at least 200%.

 

[Russe]

i normali also play as a horse archer but in this mod that is almost impossible not so much because of the damage but the lack of acuracy even if you dont have the penalty for encumbrance and good archery acuracy is bad i know the mod is suposed to make everithing harder but at the same time it makes things more chalenging it also limits the build options i would like to know if there is a way to improve acuracy
sry for bad writing can´t find the spell check

 

[harlehus]

As of yet no, if you're not a modder yourself. The developer is looking into the accuracy problem for ranged weapons as we speak. It seems to be occuring because (i think) the accuracy is tied to weapon damage. And since the weapons do more damage than in native the accurracy is somewhat off in comparison.

 

[Midnitewolf]

Relax, men -- the mod is completely unbalanced.
What you actually need is just a good lance -- it will always deal descent amount of damage and XP. You need a shield and a 1h weapon. 4th slot is going to be saved for a strong 2-handed or polearm weapon. You don't need any ranged because you will run out of ammo very quickly. That's how you win in that mod.

It is not about winning, it is about having fun. 

 

[iStealth2387]

Hmm.  Not really a modder myself, just a player so having to try to figure out how to change values in the config values is a challenge mostly because I don't know what I am doing or even what those values reflect.

Damn I think this is the most frustrating thing about M&B, it is so damn hard to make the game play like you think it should play.  Seems every great module I pick up has some game breaking (for me) factor that I can't easily overcome <sigh>.

Note: Obviously not the fault of the Modder, because these all are great mods, rather just the fault of my personal preferences not being in line with the modders grand vision of how the game should play.  Hopefully M&B II will be a bit more user (meaning non-modder) friendly.

In any case, I might try to mess with the values a bit.  What can go wrong right?  HEHE.

Look at Light_gemini's post in the thread I linked if you need help. This a common problem in the mod especially for people like me and (maybe you?) who like to play archer and ranger type characters.
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,322862.0.html

In my game I have simply reset the values to native, but that produces some really OP archers. Most will one-shot you if you are playing on a higher difficulty. Good Luck.

 

[Deathwhisper]

Do keep in mind that there is an option to increase (or decrease) everyone's damage. This tends to favor ranged weapons over melee ones.

 

[Alfred of Gloucester]

Try horse crossbow, they reload fast, got good damage and you don't use as many skill points.

Don't tell DeathW but you can use the jelkalan sniper bolts with horse xbow and almost 1 shot everyone 

 

[iStealth2387]

Try horse crossbow, they reload fast, got good damage and you don't use as many skill points.

Don't tell DeathW but you can use the jelkalan sniper bolts with horse xbow and almost 1 shot everyone 

I never seem to be able to find those Jelkalan Sniper bolts. I wonder if those are a unique drop or if they just have a really small chance of appearing in the lists at weapon merchants.

 

[Alfred of Gloucester]

I've only seen then to buy 1 time in Jelkala.

I got mine by joining the Rhodocks King Graveths army and levelled up to sniper then gave them to a companion b 4 I retired from his service, then swapped them back to myself.

I did it a second time and gave them to Alayen the companion, he has a repeating crossbow as well  pew pew pew

 

[Midnitewolf]

Well I decide to change the damage values and was having a ton of fun and overall it seemed more balanced.....until.... 

Was in a siege and the enemy had crossbowmen that literally managed to head shot our entire garrison.

So now I understand why the armor damage reductions values were made so ridiculous, it is because of the ridiculous skill values of troops.  I am guessing everything would be pretty perfect it the top troops skill values were dialed back to around the 250 range so that they would occasionally miss with arrows. 

 

[Bennio]

I this mod balanced? or are the archers pretty useless in this mod? If they are, what advantage is there to defending sieges? I wanted to start a campaign but got a little put off by this thread.

 

[harlehus]

I would say it's very well balanced. Only problem is that YOU will experience difficulty being an archer since there are some problems with the accuracy. This has been fixed in the upcoming patch though so it shouldn't be a problem in the future.

 

[Service_Disconnect]

Archers are relatively useless against heavily armored opponents. To be fair though, I don't know well the Mongols would have done against mounted knights of that era.