Just nerf ranged damage by 30%

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Yertyl

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I have seen endless discussion about the specific instances of this, but to me it always boils down to the same theme:
  • regular archers/crossbowmen are way more powerful than melee infantry. We all fear sharpshooters and fians, but laugh about axemen.
  • horse archers are way more powerful than melee cavalry. I think just saying "Khuzait" is enough to demonstrate this point, even with their less than optimal tactical use of those troops.
  • This also contributes to the fast pace of battles, as melee units either rush archers or die trying (mostly the latter)
  • it is usually way easier for the player to rack up more than a dozen kills with a ranged weapon, even if unskilled in the weapon
  • when I go down on the battle field, it is more often than not to a random arrow to the face -- less fun than avoidable melee damage
  • A glancing hit with a melee weapon can be reduced to single digit damage in heavy armor, but arrows always really hurt.
  • And lastly, looter rocks are more dangerous than their pitchforks
Putting aside all discussions of realism, the ability to fire from a distance is such a huge tactical advantage that if you ever want to make melee viable for reasons other than role-playing, ranged damage output can't be on par with melee. If it is, like in the current implementation, we effectively go from medieval to modern warfare in which the effectiveness of an army is largely decided by their number of ranged troops. Ranged weapons should be tactical and supportive, but as it is, ranged troops get kills and melee troops get killed. Even heavily micromanaged melee troops don't come close to the effectiveness of "fire and forget" mass ranged weapons.

The only ranged weapons that seem to be in a good place to me are throwing weapons, but their use is obviously much, much more limited than that of a bow or crossbow. Otherwise, I cannot think of a single instance in which the game would not be drastically improved by significantly slashing ranged damage across the board. I think this would bring the game much closer to what I feel the balance should be: A ranged fighter is more effective if they can shoot unimpeded for a long time and use most of their quiver -- otherwise, the melee fighter should win.

So please, just reduce those numbers? I am tired of every game being a decision of "Do I want to mass ranged units or do I want to make it artificially harder for myself?"
 
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I find just increasing armour values does the trick well enough. Solves a lot of other problems too.

I agree.

An arrow or crossbow bolt is absolutely deadly to any poorly armoured soldier. It should be that way. An arrow will penetrate a shield, and the arm holding it, or the chest that it is pressed against, even through mail.

If there's a problem with people being killed by being shot with an arrow, it's a problem of armour. Although in our time period, I'd suggest that even mail and lamellar should be vulnerable to arrow fire - with that in mind, I have seen my character riding with high tier imperial lamellar and literally looking like a hedgehog. So I don't think armour is as bad as the forum narrative suggests.
 
I find just increasing armour values does the trick well enough. Solves a lot of other problems too.
i dont mind being shot to death in about 4-5 arrows if you have no armor,

but the heaviest armor in the game should take alot of arrows to take you down, even to the point of being invulnerable to arrows,

would it make sense for cataphracts to not carry shields if arrows could kill them?
 
I find just increasing armour values does the trick well enough. Solves a lot of other problems too.
I've found that swapping arrows to Cut damage works about as well. Really easy to implement any time you feel like through XMLs. It doesn't fix other issues though, just makes archers a lot less effective against heavily-armored troops.

But you don't have to go through every piece of armor cranking up the values.
 
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I find just increasing armour values does the trick well enough. Solves a lot of other problems too.
Most melee weapons (that are viable, looking at you pikes) do cut damage, while arrows and bolts do pierce damage, which is relatively better against armor. While I guess an armor increase would give a melee more time to close in on a ranged fighter, it would also buff the relative damage of bows and crossbows. Although I cannot say for sure, I do not think the first effect would be enough to offset the second one -- currently, archers are also pretty decent melee fighters. So I do not think this would help this problem a lot, if at all.
I agree.

An arrow or crossbow bolt is absolutely deadly to any poorly armoured soldier. It should be that way. An arrow will penetrate a shield, and the arm holding it, or the chest that it is pressed against, even through mail.

If there's a problem with people being killed by being shot with an arrow, it's a problem of armour. Although in our time period, I'd suggest that even mail and lamellar should be vulnerable to arrow fire - with that in mind, I have seen my character riding with high tier imperial lamellar and literally looking like a hedgehog. So I don't think armour is as bad as the forum narrative suggests.
I did not really want to get into the realism discussion, since it seems to be pretty endless and ultimately not that relevant. But you have to see the problem that in-game, ranged damage being this powerful just makes melee units pointless. In every single playthrough I plan on going melee heavy, I end up with massed ranged units anyways, since they are just so much, much more effective. It's boring, and does not feel very medieval, even if it truly is realistic.
I also do wonder about the implications of this: If not even shield + armor protected you, how were melee units ever viable at all? I am pretty sure most ancient and medieval soldiers were not walking around in heavy plate armor. But without knowing the details, it seems pretty straightforward that pre-gunpowder combat was still not dominated by ranged weaponry the same way it became after the introduction of gunpowder. Say a Roman Legion looked very different from an optimal bannerlord army, which is 80+% ranged units.
 
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I find just increasing armour values does the trick well enough. Solves a lot of other problems too.
I acuallty went through and doubled every armor value for everything and the battles felt closer to 1298. It was amazing not seeing battle lines melt away in 5 seconds. I would have kept it but the way armor prices are calculated it made armor way too expensive like double what it is now.
 
Make armor significantly more effective against ranged weapons and somewhat more effective against melee weapons (depending on type of weapon) and it will be in a good spot.

Perhaps arrow damage to shields can be increased a little bit after that to compensate (or if you want to take the more realistic route, have chip damage through shields)

also no more of this meme of blunt damage totally ignoring armor, please. obviously it should be effective, but under-armor padding exists for a reason
 
Maybs it could depend heavier on the distance between the archer and the target. The shorter the distance the higher propability to cause damage & pierce armor. An arrow shot from 10 meter distance against an unarmored torso would be a killshot, from 120 meters a mere "dang, ouch!" -5 health.

Edit: also, perhaps somewhat slower rate of fire could help.
 
It makes sense for arrows to do pierce damage, they are pointy sticks after all. But only a super lucky arrow to the head should do heavy dmg (or one shot kill for those without helmets). Other areas of the body, even if the arrow pierces the armor, it shouldn't deal so much damage. So nerf the damage per body part (keep it high for head, and significantly lower for other parts)

This would keep elite archers somewhat deadly (since they can hit a lot more headshots) but newbies would have a hard time, which makes leveling up to an elite harder anyway.
 
I find just increasing armour values does the trick well enough. Solves a lot of other problems too.
+1 Absolutely. Again, the problem is the relation of damage-protection formula.

I have seen endless discussion about the specific instances of this, but to me it always boils down to the same theme:
  • regular archers/crossbowmen are way more powerful than melee infantry. We all fear sharpshooters and fians, but laugh about axemen.
Agreed. Within regular troops, no matter how T5 (not to mention lower tier, ofc) they are, an archer cannot (Palatine guards, Sharpshooters, master archers...etc) have the same one-handed weapon skill (130) as another T5 melee unit. Good armour (in line with their role) + panoply (in line with their role) + distinguished skills for their task-role; a ranged unit no more, no less.

(*) I am not at all a fan of the noble branch of Battania and less of the Fiann units. However, as this system is currently contemplated by default (I mean, if it were up to me I would change it without hesitation), it is plausible that the fiann campion T6 are superior in melee than for example a Mameluke Palace guard (T5)... simply by the fact of being an elite/noble troop.

  • horse archers are way more powerful than melee cavalry. I think just saying "Khuzait" is enough to demonstrate this point, even with their less than optimal tactical use of those troops.
  • This also contributes to the fast pace of battles, as melee units either rush archers or die trying (mostly the latter)
  • it is usually way easier for the player to rack up more than a dozen kills with a ranged weapon, even if unskilled in the weapon
  • when I go down on the battle field, it is more often than not to a random arrow to the face -- less fun than avoidable melee damage
  • A glancing hit with a melee weapon can be reduced to single digit damage in heavy armor, but arrows always really hurt.
  • And lastly, looter rocks are more dangerous than their pitchforks
This all boils down again to the damage/protection issue.
 
SE9SYtt.png

How about something like this for hits-to-kill, as a guide for how damage should average out with the armor/damage model? I made it ages ago when I was annoyed at arrows.

With a damage scale like this, a good archer with a good bow can kill lower tier enemies easily; but low tier archers can do little to well armored enemies. When an archer is attacking an armored enemy of equal tier, it should take 10 shots on average to kill.

Regarding what danEN said, you wouldn't have to shoot a looter 5 times to kill them (at least, not after the early game). Headshots would also still do increased damage.

This would be a mid-point between the uselessness of armor in Bannerlord, where looter rocks take about 11 hits-to-kill on the best armor in the game; and the slight overpoweredness of armor in Warband (where looter rocks and low tier bows could take 200 hits to kill good armor on the max damage setting).

The tiers of material are just an example, I would place, say, Heavy Lamellar over Hauberk in the T6 category since Coat of Plates is surprisingly underwhelming in Bannerlord (buff when).

Edit: Also, make looters shirtless. Bandits should have shirts but looters shouldn't (they didn't in Warband). It's appropriate to their goomba status of being the weakest enemy.
 
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SE9SYtt.png

Regarding what Danen said about not having to shoot a looter 5 times to kill them. How about something like this for hits-to-kill, as a guide for how the existing damage model should be averaging out? I made it ages ago when I was annoyed at arrows.

With a damage scale like this, a good archer with a good bow can kill lower tier enemies easily; but low tier archers can do little to well armored enemies. When an archer is attacking an armored enemy of equal tier, it should take 10 shots on average to kill.

This would be a mid-point between the uselessness of armor in Bannerlord, where looter rocks take about 11 hits-to-kill on the best armor in the game; and the slight overpoweredness of armor in Warband (where looter rocks and low tier bows could take 200 hits to kill good armor on the max damage setting).

The tiers of material are just an example, I would place, say, Heavy Lamellar over Hauberk in the T6 category since Coat of Plates is surprisingly underwhelming in Bannerlord (buff when).
Quite interesting and plausible from a gameplay point of view.

I know I'm a pain in the ass always spamming, however while the damage-protection formula absolutely must be rethought asap I think Taleworlds should rethink some minimum and logical ranges in terms of what protects more than what... something I commented on here.

There are quite a few other examples, but in 1.6.0 we find this

HZWDs.jpg

... to me it's quite striking, for the worse I must say.
 
SE9SYtt.png

How about something like this for hits-to-kill, as a guide for how damage should average out with the armor/damage model? I made it ages ago when I was annoyed at arrows.

With a damage scale like this, a good archer with a good bow can kill lower tier enemies easily; but low tier archers can do little to well armored enemies. When an archer is attacking an armored enemy of equal tier, it should take 10 shots on average to kill.

Regarding what danEN said, you wouldn't have to shoot a looter 5 times to kill them (at least, not after the early game). Headshots would also still do increased damage.

This would be a mid-point between the uselessness of armor in Bannerlord, where looter rocks take about 11 hits-to-kill on the best armor in the game; and the slight overpoweredness of armor in Warband (where looter rocks and low tier bows could take 200 hits to kill good armor on the max damage setting).

The tiers of material are just an example, I would place, say, Heavy Lamellar over Hauberk in the T6 category since Coat of Plates is surprisingly underwhelming in Bannerlord (buff when).

T6 archer takes 10 shots to down a T6 infantry? I think it's a bit much, I would spam full infantry armies and rush enemy archers if that was the case. Remember, a good amount of infantry also has shields, so its really tough to actually land 10 shots on a guy...
 
T6 archer takes 10 shots to down a T6 infantry? I think it's a bit much, I would spam full infantry armies and rush enemy archers if that was the case. Remember, a good amount of infantry also has shields, so its really tough to actually land 10 shots on a guy...

There are accounts of people having 20-30 arrows in their body before falling, one of the famous ones was Benkei, an adjutant of Yo****sune, who died looking like porcupine because of all the arrows
 
T6 archer takes 10 shots to down a T6 infantry? I think it's a bit much, I would spam full infantry armies and rush enemy archers if that was the case. Remember, a good amount of infantry also has shields, so its really tough to actually land 10 shots on a guy...
Keep in mind that some archers are fairly capable melee combatants. So if they do 10% of the enemy's HP per hit, and manage to get, say, 7 hits on the enemy while they're charging across the battlefield, then that's 70% of the melee unit's health gone by the time they get in melee fighting range.

Although the archer isn't killing a same-tier unit outright before they close the gap, they weaken them enough for a fair melee fight in which both have a good chance of winning. The archer's "free" ranged damage before the fight balances out the melee unit's superior armor, weaponry and combat skill during the fight.

In addition, when your archers are defended by a wall in a siege, or by your infantry in a field battle, the enemy infantry can't directly charge them, so they get to keep dealing damage and picking up kills, and so are useful in that way as well.

Regarding shielded units, I would also do the following:

* Increase the damage of arrows to shields a little (as said further up in the thread). However, troops with large shields are intended to outright counter ranged infantry- that's their gameplay role.

* Buff melee cavalry (fix their inaccurate charges and their horses getting bogged down so easily in infantry) so they're a bigger tactical threat.

* Add polearm bracing as a counter to this tactical threat.

* Change the troop trees so that no units can have both a shield and a braceable pike at the same time. If you want to counter archers, you pick shielded troops. If you want to counter melee cavalry, you pick pike troops, who have no shield.

In addition to shock infantry with two-handed weapons, ranged cavalry who don't have shields, and melee cavalry's exposed horses, this means there will be plenty of shieldless targets on the average battlefield for ranged infantry to shoot at, and so they will still be useful; just not overpowered like they are now.
 
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Quite interesting and plausible from a gameplay point of view.

I know I'm a pain in the ass always spamming, however while the damage-protection formula absolutely must be rethought asap I think Taleworlds should rethink some minimum and logical ranges in terms of what protects more than what... something I commented on here.

There are quite a few other examples, but in 1.6.0 we find this

HZWDs.jpg

... to me it's quite striking, for the worse I must say.
It's known through all the empire that a period blood soaked cloth is way more protecting than chainmail.
 
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