Lance couching seems useless right now.

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Puerkl8r

Sergeant at Arms
Sure it does a lot of damage, but why when just stabbing while charging does enough to kill as well. On top of that, the hit window for a couched lance is tiny and harder to aim, as well as having to be charging directly at the person you want to hit, rather than at enough distance that you can safely stab and avoid a reprisal hit. The fact that you have to charge at the person means that they have a good chance of stopping you in your tracks as well.

I think the main problems with couching right now are that the lances that can be couched are too short for it to be effective. The Vlandian Heavy Lance is 197 length, which sounds decent but when you actually look at it while couched, it barely sticks out past the horses head, meaning you basically have to be on top of a person to hit them. you get more reach when you stab your lance.

I definitely remember Couching being more usable and useful in Warband.

TLDR: Couch-able lances need to be longer and the hitbox window needs to be more forgiving, or easier to aim.
 
Definitely needs work. The available lances are way to short, and even when you use smithing to make a longer one the hit detection seems off, half the time it just seems to phase right through enemies.

Anything shorter than 240 is completely pointless with the current animations, a looter with a pitchfork can outrange you and stab you before the lance hits with the standard lances.

Not to mention half the lances in the game can't be couched at all.

I made a comparison of the lengths vs warband here

I think it boils down to lance skill, from what I've seen. At low skill, the lance point moves around a lot more than at higher skills. Seems logical to me.
It starts wobbling more the longer you stay couched. If you uncouch and couch again it is steadied. This does make sense but all the other problems still exist.
 
I use a common spear instead of lances, because a decent lance is hard enough to find and, as the TS mentioned above, they're almost at the same distance with the horse's head and very often, instead of killing an enemy rider I just hit his horse with my horse's head and do basically nothing.

The overall mounted combat looks a bit off right now. Sure there are some great things like the ability to send you horse to a gallop, but the combat itself is quite uncomfortable - to hit an enemy with a sword you literally need to look at the ground (and still there's a big chance that the character will just swing the sword over the enemy's head), couch lancing is uncomfortable due to lance's lenght, so the only decent ways to fight on the horse is some spear or some glaive-like weapon. The last is super-comfortable to use with mounts since it has the ability to swing it and not only poke, and has a decent lenght to make the grim reaper out of your character.
 
I can couch my lance and kill a looter with 900+ damage or I can just stab him for 230 damage. Either way he is just as dead.

Using a spear freehand is more accurate for some reason. I can also kill multiple enemies in one pass if I am dexterous enough. I consider couching a lance to be obsolete at this point.
 
I think it is related to the fact that this game is supposed to be set in dark ages/early middle ages equivalent, and while lances were common, what you guys are refering to with the lenght and way of combat, is more late middle ages. I couch lance anyways as I like doing 600 damage to enemy footmen. For other riders - I would use lances with LMB :wink:
 
For lances to be useful they need to make other things more realistic. Like armour has to be more effective, spear walls need to be more effective. Then the couched lance would shine more.
 
I think it boils down to lance skill, from what I've seen. At low skill, the lance point moves around a lot more than at higher skills. Seems logical to me.
It has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with lances being ridiculously short in bannerlord.
The whole point of a lance was to engage the enemy while keeping the rider out of reach.
In Bannerlord lances barely extend past the horses head which makes them essentially worthless.
Part of the problem is the lance being held at centre mass which is just outright wrong.
23bd5758acdd60bdbb38a23f3cc143f6.jpg


I think it is related to the fact that this game is supposed to be set in dark ages/early middle ages equivalent, and while lances were common, what you guys are refering to with the lenght and way of combat, is more late middle ages. I couch lance anyways as I like doing 600 damage to enemy footmen. For other riders - I would use lances with LMB :wink:
Nothing to do with the time period lance evolution changed things like the grip and handguard for impact transferance and better accuracy.
10-facts-norman-knights-medieval_9.jpg


Lance rest on later plate armor
Armor_MET_154046.jpg
 
It has nothing to do with skill and everything to do with lances being ridiculously short in bannerlord.

You realize if lances were even longer, the problem would be even worse? By skill I meant character skill, not player skill. What I've seen is that at lower skill, the lance point moves around a hell of a lot more than at higher skill, which makes landing strikes harder even if the player aims perfectly. Which is fine with me.

Longer lances wouldn't fix this at all if the mechanics are indeed as I deduced it from playing.
 
You realize if lances were even longer, the problem would be even worse? By skill I meant character skill, not player skill. What I've seen is that at lower skill, the lance point moves around a hell of a lot more than at higher skill, which makes landing strikes harder even if the player aims perfectly. Which is fine with me.

Longer lances wouldn't fix this at all if the mechanics are indeed as I deduced it from playing.
This isn't even a problem, the tip only starts wobbling when you leave the lance couched for too long. You can just reset it to get it steady, or only couch just before impact.

That is not the problem people are having. The problem is that they are too short and you get out-ranged by a looter with a pitchfork.

This is a 270 length crafted couchmaster, it is only as long as the shorter lances in warband, and doesn't even use a proper lance head, had to use a blade to get maximum length. It still does not have as much reach as it should, although it 100 times more useable than the default lances. At 200 length they are just too short and barely reach past the horse's nose. The animation being completely wrong does not help.

t5OlvIc.jpg
 
I think it is related to the fact that this game is supposed to be set in dark ages/early middle ages equivalent, and while lances were common, what you guys are refering to with the lenght and way of combat, is more late middle ages. I couch lance anyways as I like doing 600 damage to enemy footmen. For other riders - I would use lances with LMB :wink:

^^^ this.

In the period this game seemingly models after, which would be somewhere around 7th century to maybe 11th century at most, the "lances" at this time were just spears (or rather, there really wasn't any distinction between the word 'lance' and 'spear' in the first place). Around the time of the Battle of Hastings the cavalry spears were literally one handed spears that would be very normally wielded as a one handed thrusting spear. These "lances" weren't the longer types of the latter eras, which would snap off upon impact, and were used primarily for couching and way too long to be used as a normal thrusting spear.

I do think the couched lances are a bit too short, but even if the devs fix it, I wouldn't expect it to be as long as the ones we had in WB. The pic above is a good example: if the game remains faithful to history, the lances would be elongated to maybe around 220~240 length at max, similar to the 2h cataphract lance we have in game.

In other words, yes, the couched lances are too short, but even if properly elongated it would be around half the length of protrusion from the horses head, as you see in the picture above.
 
(ps) In other words, based on the period of history this game is modeled after, the heavy shock cavalry were not yet the fully armored knights capable of smashing well armed infantry positions with a frontal assault of barrage of lance charges, like how they did in Marignano (1515).

Rather, the cavalry we have in the game are "getting there"... and would probably "get there" in 200 years... in the age of Warband. I think, if the short cavalry lances we have in the game (180-190-ish) are a result of conscious choice from the devs, then I think it would be for the reasons above.
 
You realize if lances were even longer, the problem would be even worse? By skill I meant character skill, not player skill. What I've seen is that at lower skill, the lance point moves around a hell of a lot more than at higher skill, which makes landing strikes harder even if the player aims perfectly. Which is fine with me.

Longer lances wouldn't fix this at all if the mechanics are indeed as I deduced it from playing.
Nah the Lance starts to move around after it is couched for too long hence me saying it is nothing to do with skill (in any way) which is actually realistic for accuracy a lance is brought down as close to the target as possible to avoid that wobble.
Lances are too short it really is that simple as i already stated a lance that barely extends past your horses head is utterly pointless and negates one of the biggest reasons to use one.
Lances were second only in length to pikes and the occasional long spear.




^^^ this.

In the period this game seemingly models after, which would be somewhere around 7th century to maybe 11th century at most, the "lances" at this time were just spears (or rather, there really wasn't any distinction between the word 'lance' and 'spear' in the first place). Around the time of the Battle of Hastings the cavalry spears were literally one handed spears that would be very normally wielded as a one handed thrusting spear. These "lances" weren't the longer types of the latter eras, which would snap off upon impact, and were used primarily for couching and way too long to be used as a normal thrusting spear.

I do think the couched lances are a bit too short, but even if the devs fix it, I wouldn't expect it to be as long as the ones we had in WB. The pic above is a good example: if the game remains faithful to history, the lances would be elongated to maybe around 220~240 length at max, similar to the 2h cataphract lance we have in game.

In other words, yes, the couched lances are too short, but even if properly elongated it would be around half the length of protrusion from the horses head, as you see in the picture above.
Actually at the battle of hastings the Norman cavalry used throwing spears fighting from horseback with a spear is crap going over the horses head is awkward a sword is a far better option for that situation.
As for time period i seriously wouldn't get too caught up on that we have counterweight trebuchets, coats of plate, stone castles, mail and plate horse barding to name just a few items that are from later dates.
 
This idea that lances are some sort of high technology that wasn't invented until the 1700s is silly, it's just a piece of wood. You can make long one, you can make a short one. Lances were used in ancient times.

The whole realism thing is dumb and leads nowhere. I can make a 300-length spear and thrust it one-handed from horseback. But for some reason it can't be couched. This makes no sense, part of the reason for couching in the first place is that a stick that long is so unwieldy and can't be held or thrust effectively.

The lack of long lances in the game is not based on logic or realism, and I don't think it's intended. You can't couch the cataphract lance, for instance.

are a result of conscious choice from the devs
Citation needed?
 
This idea that lances are some sort of high technology that wasn't invented until the 1700s is silly, it's just a piece of wood. You can make long one, you can make a short one. Lances were used in ancient times.

The whole realism thing is dumb and leads nowhere. I can make a 300-length spear and thrust it one-handed from horseback. But for some reason it can't be couched. This makes no sense, part of the reason for couching in the first place is that a stick that long is so unwieldy and can't be held or thrust effectively.

The lack of long lances in the game is not based on logic or realism, and I don't think it's intended. You can't couch the cataphract lance, for instance.


Citation needed?
Pretty much this early couching was just getting the end of the shaft under the arm advancements came later that allowed for better more stable grips and better transferrance of energy into the blow.
All lances should be couchable but unuseable on foot and they certainly need to be longer sorting out where they are held will go some way to addressing the issue.
 
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