Just nerf ranged damage by 30%

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+1 Dabos37

Your small mod makes the battle look much better, the pacing feels more genuine compared to the crack addict vanilla xbowmen.
 
Yea the vanilla xbows reloads too fast, it's like a machine gun lol. You mod looks more realistic. Link? Lol
Here our little conversation started, but it can be that @Dabos37 found some new parameters(look at site 5 till 6)

Thread 'Archers and Crossbowmen performance insanely good in 1.5.5' https://forums.taleworlds.com/index...en-performance-insanely-good-in-1-5-5.435273/

Yep, I have just changed what @Medivhtratos suggested in the linked thread, plus I have created an script to check the weapons.xml script, and reduce thrust speed 25% just for bows and crossbows. The first time I did it manually and it was a pain to be changing every bow and crossbow parameter. I can share the Python script if someone is interested, but I do not know how to create a new mod and upload it in Nexus.
 
Yep, I have just changed what @Medivhtratos suggested in the linked thread, plus I have created an script to check the weapons.xml script, and reduce thrust speed 25% just for bows and crossbows. The first time I did it manually and it was a pain to be changing every bow and crossbow parameter. I can share the Python script if someone is interested, but I do not know how to create a new mod and upload it in Nexus.
Nah all good, maybe the devs would be interested, but they should know what to change from the video
 
I don't need to establish anything. I'm stating opinion. And as such, nothing you have said has changed it.
You were clearly stating, as if it was fact, that the game's weapons are from the Renaissance (wrong) as an argument for why high damage to armor is appropriate.
That's like saying the Earth is flat, and when people show you space photos of the globe you say "I'm just stating opinion. Nothing you've shown me has changed it."
But by all means... carry on hunting for wikipedia articles or what ever. Blah.
Yeah ew, how dare someone show you actual evidence that shows you're wrong. They should be spouting random nonsense they literally made up instead, that's the Antaeus way™️.
I think that changing the values and balance for every ranged weapon would result in repeated iterations and testing far beyond adding new armour would. new armour is added to every iteration of the game already.
A couple of individual pieces of new armor are added with each new iteration of the game, your proposal would need multiple entire new sets made, I guess it could be done but the work would be much better used adding variety to mid-tiers. As I already said, later period plate would clash with the existing aesthetic of the game, so there's very little chance TW would do it. In addition, since you said it was just for really high tier units, it would make barely any difference to the problems of archers being overpowered or battles ending too quickly. Your idea makes zero sense.
What you're suggesting would just lead to more testing, more claims of unbalanced something or other and endless cycles of "this thing is out of balance! nerf it!" Which we already have, because people complained last time.
Of course it would lead to testing, as would any change to the game. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing, because the current weakness of armor and overpoweredness of ranged troops causes many problems with the game (troop type imbalance, irrelevance of tier, immersion breaking, shallow tactics, short battle lengths, armor not being worth its cost, various perks being worthless, nobles and companions dying very easily) that lots of people complain about frequently.
It's incorrect to say the cycles are "endless". The game is more balanced than it was in 2020. Granted, the progress isn't much, but that's only because TW works very slowly.

Armor is absolutely worth fixing and I still don't get why you're so opposed to doing so. Maybe just to be contrarian, seems like a theme with your posts.
 
Yep, I have just changed what @Medivhtratos suggested in the linked thread, plus I have created an script to check the weapons.xml script, and reduce thrust speed 25% just for bows and crossbows. The first time I did it manually and it was a pain to be changing every bow and crossbow parameter. I can share the Python script if someone is interested, but I do not know how to create a new mod and upload it in Nexus.

I'm glad you've refined everything that was brought up in your thread, I really enjoyed participating ? :wink: . However, I think the devs were a bit too conservative when they finally decided to do some of the changes that were suggested.

The latest videos you have shared are the way to go, however I stand by the opinion that every bow and crossbow needs a fitted "thrust_speed" for each. We discussed it there... To me looks OK and plausible that for example a Palatine guard could have a better bow with better accuracy and better projectiles than a T1 archer.

A powerful bow which is supposed to be superior in shooting range-power is drawn with more energy (string resistance), that's why translated to gameplay it would need a longer draw time by the AI, imho... a reminder of this video of the tests we carried out.




I know we are talking about nerfing ranged damage here, I understand that; however that really isn't the root problem. Many of us agree that:
  • There needs to be a comprehensive reformulation of the damage-protection formula, both for ranged weapons, melee and different armors.
  • No more machine guns. Shots per minute should be rescaled (both for archers and crossbowmen) by modifying the "thrust_speed". High level tiers should be differentiated with low level tiers simply with higher accuracy-better weaponry/armor.
  • Ranged troops should be adjusted to fulfil their role by function; to be ranged. It cannot be that a ranged unit handles melee combat as well or better than a unit intended for infantry or cavalry.
 
Great points Terco, I think we can all agree there are a lot of balance issues in general and many overlap and even compound issues. While I agree reload speeds are over tuned and not balanced, it looks even worse because armor is under tuned. As to the thrust speed it looks way better at 35 compared to vanilla and bows with more damage should be slower to draw.
 
Archers are not op, but those darn rock throwing looters are!
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Great points Terco, I think we can all agree there are a lot of balance issues in general and many overlap and even compound issues. While I agree reload speeds are over tuned and not balanced, it looks even worse because armor is under tuned. As to the thrust speed it looks way better at 35 compared to vanilla and bows with more damage should be slower to draw.
A simple, historically accurate solution (other than increasing armour values) would be to significantly increase the cost of recruiting, upgrading and keeping ranged troops vs foot melee, and increasing the xp values for archer upgrades. It should be prohibitively expensive and time consuming to train up a big T5/6 archery corps. In my view, "reload" speeds for top tier archers are probably too slow for realism, but it's probably right that heavier crossbows are too fast. If TW could add a mechanic that meant your had to manage ammunition stocks, that would even better. Economics and logistics (as well as culture) are the main reason archery was relatively limited on European battlefields and why firearms replaced them relatively quickly despite being largely inferior in terms of killing capacity until the early to mid 19th century.
As for nerfing ranged troops' melee combat, I can't agree, at least not for T4 and up. It's much quicker to learn to fight than it is to shoot a bow, and often takes less strength and stamina.
 
A simple, historically accurate solution (other than increasing armour values) would be to significantly increase the cost of recruiting, upgrading and keeping ranged troops vs foot melee
Fixing armor values should be more than enough without messing with ranged troop progression and throwing the balance of archers from "overpowered" to "underpowered". This thread and many others have made it clear that armor is the core issue.
 
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Fixing armor values should be more than enough without messing with ranged troop progression and throwing the balance of archers from "overpowered" to "underpowered". This thread and many others have made it clear that armor is the core issue.

While I do agree with armor is parto of the issue, I find the ranged rate of fire a biggest issue here. Anyway, this is something we could perfectly test if increasing armor effectiveness (it is only necessary to change a parameter) and check the result. I did it some time ago and the difference was not great when fighting AI lords who usually have +50% light armored units.

Reducing rate of fire AND improving armor effectiveness against ranged units is the way to go in my view. This keeping in mind that the most relevant change would be reducing the rate of fire.
 
personally I think the ranged damage in Bannerlord has always been op for the reason of speed bonus. they always hit at a high speeds. whereas melee "glancing blows" are those that hit with low speed. melee on foot i have seen hits at 0.5m/s but also 7-8m/s. and the damage difference between those are huge. but for arrows they have a base speed of like 60-80m/s, and even if your target is riding on a fast horse away from you it only reduces the speed by 20m/s which is a small fraction of total.

in order to help I propose a change in hitbox integration for ranged attacks.
realistically. the human skull is the most protected area. assuming there's no armor. a headshot would do minimal damage compared to anywhere else. which is why bow hunters aim for the lungs and heart in the chest. however, the neck. and exposed face are vulnerable. and could be different hit zones for ranged attacks.
introduce "glancing hits" for ranged by having zones towards the outer edge of the silhouette taking less % of damage from all ranged by default. kinda like a target with rings expanding outwards worth progressively less points. the neck and face would be critical zones, upper chest area (heart/lungs) worth a lot of damage. lower chest much less and even less for limbs. almost no damage if hitting hand/feet/shoulders/head (especially if you have a helm) getting shot in the hand might really hurt and suck, but it really couldn't kill you right the way.

one problem with increasing armor is it runs the risk of marginalizing 1h melee weapons. currently 2h weapons are as overpowered as ranged if not more so often able to 1 shot anyone through heavy armor. I've tweaked with realistic battle mod settings and realized by increasing armor, you may have "balanced" ranged damage, but in terms of melee there's a huge disparity. the 2h weapons still pack a punch often able to 1-2 shot anyone. but the 1h weapons now are extremely weak, doing 5-10 damage with a good hit. so in reality. the power disparity between archers vs infantry has maybe been exacerbated rather than reduced. and Khans guards and Fian champions are still the most powerful units, while most melee cavalry with their spears hit for even less.
 
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I strongly disagree with breaking up the head hitbox in such a way that some headshots are worse than body shots. From a gameplay perspective, it is intuited that headshots are best, and typically they are the most difficult so it is self-balancing. From a realism perspective, some head injuries are debilitating even without breaking the skin, as the brain is susceptible to trauma in unique ways (concussions, for one). This can't be accurately modeled in the game with the available systems, though, so the solution is finding an appropriate combination of base damage and typical damage bonus that makes for consistent, acceptable results which are proportional to other options in the game.

As others in the thread pointed out, the real issue isn't that archers do a lot of damage, it's that they do so much more damage relative to other options. Balance is inherently relative, so the correct approach is to adjust archers proportionally to others. Buff the lower end (infantry), and nerf the high end (archers). Neither needs a big shift, but the cumulative effect would narrow the entire spectrum.

Side note, I also think the damage/armor calculation is a big part of the problem. Damage & armor constants (in a range without outliers) matter less than the formula which is using them.
 
I strongly disagree with breaking up the head hitbox in such a way that some headshots are worse than body shots. From a gameplay perspective, it is intuited that headshots are best, and typically they are the most difficult so it is self-balancing. From a realism perspective, some head injuries are debilitating even without breaking the skin, as the brain is susceptible to trauma in unique ways (concussions, for one). This can't be accurately modeled in the game with the available systems, though, so the solution is finding an appropriate combination of base damage and typical damage bonus that makes for consistent, acceptable results which are proportional to other options in the game.

As others in the thread pointed out, the real issue isn't that archers do a lot of damage, it's that they do so much more damage relative to other options. Balance is inherently relative, so the correct approach is to adjust archers proportionally to others. Buff the lower end (infantry), and nerf the high end (archers). Neither needs a big shift, but the cumulative effect would narrow the entire spectrum.

Side note, I also think the damage/armor calculation is a big part of the problem. Damage & armor constants (in a range without outliers) matter less than the formula which is using them.

Head hitbox should of course be broken down to two hitboxes, but neither should be worse than body shot.

Archers/xbow hit for way too much, so they need to be nerfed. Lower end infantry need some slight buffs.
 
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