Is this mod insane, or is it just me?

[DamienZharkoff]

lulz@liberalcomiargument!

I love how so many people take things out of context. While this mod keeps to psuedo realism, if a bow is 1 hit killing you like a .50cal sniper round, or a mob of archer only factional troops are making assaulting the castles more of a chore or boredom, nerf it or adjust it, it may not be realistic for the mongols to not have every freakin guy with a bow, but, if it balances them and makes them more fun to play with, and as, then do it, because realism no matter what the circumstance does need to take a backseat to fun.

 

[Momaw]

Thank you to those of who you agreed with my points, or at least took them seriously.

Some comments:

- It is primarily the overabundance of elite troops that causes the mod to be extravagantly difficult. A "captain" would have men under him, probably at least 20.  If you change the party compositions so that only 1 in 20 troops is an elite, and maybe 5 in 20 are veteran, the mod would make a lot more sense.  At least for the NPC parties.  How to prevent the player from forming a band of all-elite troops is left as an exercise for the module developers. Perhaps captains, khans, paladins etc will leave your party if you do not have enough troops for them to "command"?  Some troop types should only be available to the player through their factional contacts, for example the ivory archers and ivory guard.


- Since my topic got hijacked by a physics discusion:  An object can never gain more energy by falling than was invested to raise the object in the first place.  If you send an arrow up using X amount of energy in an airless environment, it will never hit the ground with more than X energy.  In an environment with air (like, earth), the arrow slows down as it plows through it, hence an object's terminal velocity, the point at which the pull of gravity is exactly counteracted by air resistance.  For an arrow, its terminal velocity is much lower than that at which it left the bow string. The arrow will use X energy to reach maximum height, and when it comes back to ground it will have less than X energy left because it is being slowed by in air resistance the whole time.

- Crossbow and handbow draw weight is not even remotely comparable. Crossbows, because of their very short limbs, are a far less efficient machine than handbows, and a great deal of their power is wasted because there is insufficient time to accelerate the bolt before it leaves the string.  Also, reality check, handbows did not have a 250 pound draw.  They didn't even have a 200 pound draw. Well preserved English longbows recovered from the sunken wreck of the "Mary Rose" are estimated as having a draw between 160 and 180 pounds, and to shoot a bow like this required a lifetime of focused practice.  More typical war bows would have been half that.  Take away fact:  A 1000 pound crossbow is not ten times more powerful than a 100 pound handbow.

 

[ThunderClaw]

I forgot earlier:

One thing I do to limit bow damage is to wear 1 shield that's size 60 (a Heavy Kite) and one shield that's bigger (a Board shield).  The kite shield I use..well, like a shield.  The board shield remains on my back while I'm on horseback and provides an extra layer of protection against arrows hitting me from behind.  This actually does work!  The engine will specifically say "Hit shield on back!" when you take an arrow hit that is softened by the shield on your back.  I've never seen an arrow strike for more than 5 damage when it hits the shield on my back like this.

This obviously won't help you with hits from the side (the most common type during a siege format), but since I don't carry a ranged weapon in general combat, it's a nice failsafe.

 

[Mini Marine]

- It is primarily the overabundance of elite troops that causes the mod to be extravagantly difficult. A "captain" would have men under him, probably at least 20.  If you change the party compositions so that only 1 in 20 troops is an elite, and maybe 5 in 20 are veteran, the mod would make a lot more sense.  At least for the NPC parties.  How to prevent the player from forming a band of all-elite troops is left as an exercise for the module developers. Perhaps captains, khans, paladins etc will leave your party if you do not have enough troops for them to "command"?  Some troop types should only be available to the player through their factional contacts, for example the ivory archers and ivory guard.

this I actually agree with, while i do like my force of 50 paladins that can take on anything I've come across, I'd hardly call it a realistic system...One battle I was outnumbered by such a large margin that in the battle itself I had 8 against the opponents 80, with each stage of the battle it became more and more evenly matched but throughout the whole ordeal i only had 1 paladin wounded and that was in the initial skirmish.

 

[Vympel]

Thank you to those of who you agreed with my points, or at least took them seriously.

Some comments:

- It is primarily the overabundance of elite troops that causes the mod to be extravagantly difficult. A "captain" would have men under him, probably at least 20.  If you change the party compositions so that only 1 in 20 troops is an elite, and maybe 5 in 20 are veteran, the mod would make a lot more sense.  At least for the NPC parties.  How to prevent the player from forming a band of all-elite troops is left as an exercise for the module developers. Perhaps captains, khans, paladins etc will leave your party if you do not have enough troops for them to "command"?  Some troop types should only be available to the player through their factional contacts, for example the ivory archers and ivory guard.

No thx .

 

[Momaw]

No thx .

Your terse, apunctuated, and unexplained objections were noted several pages back, when you suggested I go play on an xbox.  Which incidentally I don't own.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

I never said the weight of a crossbow. I said the weight of the pullback. Crossbows had more power (And therefore capability) to puncture armordue to the fact the winding motion allowed for much further pullback.

"Take away fact:  A 1000 pound crossbow is not ten times more powerful than a 100 pound handbow."

Ahhh, so scorpions were just a ****ing pointless investment then? :p

 

[Night Ninja]

I love how so many people take things out of context. While this mod keeps to psuedo realism, if a bow is 1 hit killing you like a .50cal sniper round, or a mob of archer only factional troops are making assaulting the castles more of a chore or boredom, nerf it or adjust it, it may not be realistic for the mongols to not have every freakin guy with a bow, but, if it balances them and makes them more fun to play with, and as, then do it, because realism no matter what the circumstance does need to take a backseat to fun.
[/quote]

If your idea of fun is to get consistently knocked out by random projectiles, I sympathize.

~

I never said the weight of a crossbow. I said the weight of the pullback. Crossbows had more power (And therefore capability) to puncture armordue to the fact the winding motion allowed for much further pullback.

"Take away fact:   A 1000 pound crossbow is not ten times more powerful than a 100 pound handbow."

Ahhh, so scorpions were just a ****ing pointless investment then? :p

'pullback' my ass. Crossbows were drawn a far shorter distance than bows because of the length of their respective projectiles. The power of crossbows derived from the the greater tension that that the composite (later steel) crossbow prods provided, along with the invention of mechanical devices to span it.

A crossbow with a 1000 pound draw weight is not ten times more powerful than a 100 pound handbow. Physics doesn't work that way. It certainly packs more punch, but you have to consider the respective projectiles that they are launching. Crossbow bolts tend to be heftier than comparable arrows, and they also have different flight characteristics. The effects of a rain of sustained arrowfire are also quite different from the sporadic shots fired by a comparable group of crossbowmen. This difference in rate of fire became more pronounced as the crossbows grew more powerful.

Also, you may wish to upgrade the ol' processor. Scorpions look like scaled-up crossbows, but their roles are quite different. Your comparison of what are effectively the medieval equivalents of a rifle and a field gun is absurd.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

A scorpion and crossbow are much the same build. Its more like comparing a .50 cal turret on a hummer to a .50 cal anti aircraft gun. Different uses, different looks, but in the end its the same damn thing.

 

[azul]

Thank you to those of who you agreed with my points, or at least took them seriously.

Some comments:

- It is primarily the overabundance of elite troops that causes the mod to be extravagantly difficult. A "captain" would have men under him, probably at least 20.  If you change the party compositions so that only 1 in 20 troops is an elite, and maybe 5 in 20 are veteran, the mod would make a lot more sense.  At least for the NPC parties.  How to prevent the player from forming a band of all-elite troops is left as an exercise for the module developers. Perhaps captains, khans, paladins etc will leave your party if you do not have enough troops for them to "command"?  Some troop types should only be available to the player through their factional contacts, for example the ivory archers and ivory guard.


- Since my topic got hijacked by a physics discusion:  An object can never gain more energy by falling than was invested to raise the object in the first place.  If you send an arrow up using X amount of energy in an airless environment, it will never hit the ground with more than X energy.  In an environment with air (like, earth), the arrow slows down as it plows through it, hence an object's terminal velocity, the point at which the pull of gravity is exactly counteracted by air resistance.  For an arrow, its terminal velocity is much lower than that at which it left the bow string. The arrow will use X energy to reach maximum height, and when it comes back to ground it will have less than X energy left because it is being slowed by in air resistance the whole time.

- Crossbow and handbow draw weight is not even remotely comparable. Crossbows, because of their very short limbs, are a far less efficient machine than handbows, and a great deal of their power is wasted because there is insufficient time to accelerate the bolt before it leaves the string.  Also, reality check, handbows did not have a 250 pound draw.  They didn't even have a 200 pound draw. Well preserved English longbows recovered from the sunken wreck of the "Mary Rose" are estimated as having a draw between 160 and 180 pounds, and to shoot a bow like this required a lifetime of focused practice.  More typical war bows would have been half that.  Take away fact:  A 1000 pound crossbow is not ten times more powerful than a 100 pound handbow.

This mod is not extravagantly difficult. As a matter of fact, it's extravagantly easy. You, however, must be extravagantly bad at M&B.

 

[Bunduqdari]

Y'know what?

I think this whole thread will never prove a point to anyone

The only useful thing that I've heard so far, was the suggestion of making troop promotion based on a ratio of superior:inferior troops
This would mean that, for example, you can only promote a troop to Knight, if you have 4 Squires or something,
so a ratio of 1:4 for squire to knight, with different ratio's for different troop upgrades

This is actually a pretty good idea, because this will help both realism-wise(as medieval armies were in ranks) and gameplay-wise
I hope Jinnai or Merc read this and think about it, as I'm too lazy atm to post it in the suggestions thread.

 

[Momaw]

I never said the weight of a crossbow. I said the weight of the pullback. Crossbows had more power (And therefore capability) to puncture armordue to the fact the winding motion allowed for much further pullback.

"Take away fact:  A 1000 pound crossbow is not ten times more powerful than a 100 pound handbow."

Ahhh, so scorpions were just a ****ing pointless investment then? :p

1.) I said quite clearly at the beginning of that paragraph, "Crossbow and handbow draw weight is not even remotely comparable."

2.) Crossbows have a greater string tension, but projectile energy does not directly relate to string tension.  Crossbows have a bow that supplies energy to them, called the prod.  Any man-portable crossbow drawn by a winch will have a very short prod, made of very thick, stiff, and heavy materials.  Which means that a significant amount of energy is needed just to accelerate the tips of the prod itself, before any is given to the bolt.  Second, prods are small: in combination with their high stiffness, this means that their draw length is very short.  An arrow might be drawn upwards of 30 inches (based on the user), while a crossbow bolt is shorter, perhaps even as short as 6 or 8 inches (varies by region and weapon).  What this means is that a crossbow only has a fraction of the time to accelerate its projectile that a bow does.  Arrows and bolts don't just suddenly leap into full-speed flight from a dead standstill, there is a measurable span of time as the elastic material of the weapon straightens, overcoming inertia of both itself and the projectile.

3.) Scorpions are torsion powered, they don't operate on the same principles that crossbows do.  They are also so large and awkward that it took two men to carry the weapon, and ideally a wagon. This was much more portable than larger artillery, but it's still a crew served weapon. Different order of magnitude than something that one man is going to carry and ready by himself.  If you want a tension-powered "super crossbow", then you need to go to an older greek weapon: the oxybeles.  Which was abandoned when they realized that torsion power was just plain better for field artillery.  Here's a link to a recreation of various Roman field artillery, which should make size and complexity more apparent.

 

[Night Ninja]

Momaw put it very well, but I'd like to use another example.

An E-11 looks like a Sterling SMG with fins and an upside-down scope, but it's not a Sterling SMG with fins and an upside-down scope.

 

[DamienZharkoff]

Y'know what?

I think this whole thread will never prove a point to anyone

The only useful thing that I've heard so far, was the suggestion of making troop promotion based on a ratio of superior:inferior troops
This would mean that, for example, you can only promote a troop to Knight, if you have 4 Squires or something,
so a ratio of 1:4 for squire to knight, with different ratio's for different troop upgrades

This is actually a pretty good idea, because this will help both realism-wise(as medieval armies were in ranks) and gameplay-wise
I hope Jinnai or Merc read this and think about it, as I'm too lazy atm to post it in the suggestions thread.

Well I pray not because then that would destroy the power of high tier troops. If you want to balance them more, up their cost by 4x and boom, lets see you manage an army of 150 paladins when they cost 400denars a pop a week.

 

[Mirick]

That's not nearly expensive enough. You can use a single tourny's payout for 50 Paladins for a week. If you really want to discourage people using mass Paladins by making them expensive you need to go all the way.

Frankly, I think Mercenary's idea of simply making them harder to get is the best, although it might be a good idea to raise their cost as well since you'll still eventually get a huge army of Paladins if you're patient enough.

I also do like Bund's idea of 1 ratio Squiresaladins, it has merit, though of course it needs to be fleshed out more.

 

[Vympel]

No thx .

Your terse, apunctuated, and unexplained objections were noted several pages back, when you suggested I go play on an xbox.  Which incidentally I don't own.

Lol dude this mod is already easy for me but harder then most other mods , that's how I want it to stay.

 

[Vympel]

Y'know what?

I think this whole thread will never prove a point to anyone

The only useful thing that I've heard so far, was the suggestion of making troop promotion based on a ratio of superior:inferior troops
This would mean that, for example, you can only promote a troop to Knight, if you have 4 Squires or something,
so a ratio of 1:4 for squire to knight, with different ratio's for different troop upgrades

This is actually a pretty good idea, because this will help both realism-wise(as medieval armies were in ranks) and gameplay-wise
I hope Jinnai or Merc read this and think about it, as I'm too lazy atm to post it in the suggestions thread.

Well I pray not because then that would destroy the power of high tier troops. If you want to balance them more, up their cost by 4x and boom, lets see you manage an army of 150 paladins when they cost 400denars a pop a week.

Good idea 400 is too much though maybe 250-300?

 

[bobross419]

A problem you will run into with a promotion requirment is the 38 troop type cap.  If you figure on the basic categories of medieval warefare with the troop tree of each you will quickly hit that 38 troop cap (Light infantry, heavy infantry, ranged, light cavalry, heavy cavalry).  I would enjoy a promotion type system, but with the unchangeable cap I don't think it would really be viable

You'd also be hitting a wall with troop numbers.  As an example lets say you need 4 troops of a given level before you can move another troop to the next level (a total of 5 with one being upgraded to the next level).  1 paladin needs 4 knight commanders (5 total troops).  Each knight commander needs 4 knight captains (21 total troops).  Each Knight captain needs 4 knights (85 troops).  Each Knight needs 4 squires (341 total troops).  341 troops is a massive party requiring constant food and fighting to keep folks from deserting... and we still have Acolytes (1365), Prolesytes (5461), and Initiates (21845) to consider.  Even a system requiring two of each would mean an army of 255 troops just for 1 Paladin   Not to mention that these troops would be eating up 9 troop type slots.  Granted, this is a very basic algorithm for troop upgrades and doesn't take into account the kinds of things that could be done with some ingenuity.

I'm not bashing the promotion system by any means... I think it would be a good idea to have, but I just don't see how it could be implemented.  A massive revamp of the payment schedule might be better.  400 isn't enough?  Bump it up to 1000 or something.

 

[Momaw]

The only guys that ought to require subordinates are the sergeants and higher officers.  And they shouldn't necessarily require a specific type of subordinate.

In other words, you can have as many spearmen or veteran spearmen as you want. But if you want to upgrade some to master spearmen (moving into elite/officer class), you would need 7 infantry subordinates. You can have 7 spearmen, or 7 veteran spearmen, or 4 spearmen and 3 conscripts, etc etc.  It doesn't matter, the master-spearman just have to have enough men to form a squad and justify his rank.  A captain (high officer) might require 3 master spearmen (low officer) in order to keep:  that's 1 super-elite infantry for 21 infantry of some kind and 3 elite infantry.  This seems fairly realistic to me, if all factions obey the same rules.  If the enemy is not fielding 50% elite troops, then you won't need 50% elites to put up a good fight.

 

[Bunduqdari]

A problem you will run into with a promotion requirment is the 38 troop type cap.  If you figure on the basic categories of medieval warefare with the troop tree of each you will quickly hit that 38 troop cap (Light infantry, heavy infantry, ranged, light cavalry, heavy cavalry).  I would enjoy a promotion type system, but with the unchangeable cap I don't think it would really be viable

You'd also be hitting a wall with troop numbers.  As an example lets say you need 4 troops of a given level before you can move another troop to the next level (a total of 5 with one being upgraded to the next level).  1 paladin needs 4 knight commanders (5 total troops).  Each knight commander needs 4 knight captains (21 total troops).  Each Knight captain needs 4 knights (85 troops).  Each Knight needs 4 squires (341 total troops).  341 troops is a massive party requiring constant food and fighting to keep folks from deserting... and we still have Acolytes (1365), Prolesytes (5461), and Initiates (21845) to consider.  Even a system requiring two of each would mean an army of 255 troops just for 1 Paladin   Not to mention that these troops would be eating up 9 troop type slots.  Granted, this is a very basic algorithm for troop upgrades and doesn't take into account the kinds of things that could be done with some ingenuity.

I'm not bashing the promotion system by any means... I think it would be a good idea to have, but I just don't see how it could be implemented.  A massive revamp of the payment schedule might be better.  400 isn't enough?  Bump it up to 1000 or something.

Yeah I'd kinda figured that problem already, but my point was that something similar to such a system could be implemented, with obviously not every troop requiring lower level troops. Only the highest tier troops would require such a thing.

Well I pray not because then that would destroy the power of high tier troops. If you want to balance them more, up their cost by 4x and boom, lets see you manage an army of 150 paladins when they cost 400denars a pop a week.

Leaving this matter up to the player like that will not work in preventing 80-paladin armies, because even if the price of a single paladin would be 500 denars a week, players can still theoretically be rich enough  to support many of them. And if they aren't rich enough, they will not be satisfied with the troop upkeep system and start decreasing it for themselves anyway, so it's useless.

If you want the troop system to succeed in delivering it's share of complexity into NE, new rules need to made for them
and that's exactly why I like the changes that will be made in the next patch.