insanecoyote
Recruit

Right now, it appears that couched lance and warrider damage is based only on the speed at which the attacker is travelling. This allows me to, on my spirited charger, come up at top speed behind a mounted bandit traveling almost as fast as I am and do 110 lance damage while it looks like I'm only barely nudging him. It would make more sense if the relative speed of attacker and victim was used to determine damage bonuses, so that a full speed head on attack would do a lot of damage while a couched lance attack to something with little relative speed difference would do almost none.
A few other random thoughts:
-It would be nice if party encounters were much more flexible than they are now. For instance, on the post-battle prisoner/party member capturing screen, you can split up the released prisoners however you want, but if you encounter a released prisoner party, you have to either take all of them or none if you don't have room. Perhaps you should be able to pick and choose, party size permitting. Also, I'd think it would make sense to be able to attack anything you come across, with appropriate faction standing penalties. And you should definitely be able to enter battles between two enemies and either have a threeway or choose to help one side, depending on how much each side hates you.
-A system of land capturing for factions and for the player would be, of course, awesome.
-It would also be awesome if you could split separate parties off of your main one, like autonomous friendlies under your command that you could give certain orders to, like defending something or attacking a certain enemy.
-The stack system for party members and prisoners seems a little clunky and is not very believable. Why should you have to choose between taking ten crossbowmen prisoners or one nobleman? And why, if your party slots are full, couldn't an upgradable member upgrade without all his buddies having to as well? On a related note, group experience after battles should be distributed before the capture/recruit screen, since it affects how you can sort out your party (this is the same issue that would be remedied by being able to selectively enlist released prisoners encountered on the map).
-I don't know if you have your own ideas about how to do this, but as far as integrating a storyline into the sandbox-ish gameplay, I have a few thoughts. If anyone has ever played "Privateer 2," you'll know what I'm talking about. The game has a storyline, but it mostly revolves around a completely free, unscripted, open gameplay world in which you can go wherever and do whatever you want. The storyline is basically progressed at the pace the player chooses to progress it, by going to certain places and performing certain tasks. Thus there are two spheres of gameplay, the open game and the storyline game. You go about your business taking missions, buying ships, and blowing things up, but whenever you feel like it, you can travel to the next storyline location and make some scripted progress. What I think might lend itself to M&B would be a system similar to this, but with an open-ended story where the storyline-game and the free-game overlap and affect each other. For instance, the factions with which you align yourself could determine the direction of the story, and in order to progress, you might have to perform certain tasks in the open world. To add variety to gameplay, certain elements could change depending on where you are in the storyline (new wars erupting, famine, invaders, natural disasters, political intrigue, etc).
And one more thing: on "supply" quests (e.g. rivacheg wants ten nomad boots / five footmen / six enemy knight prisoners) you should be able to deliver in increments. It just seems logical and would eliminate some frustration with inventory and party size limits.
Oh, and at the beginning of battles, it would be cool if you could choose which units came with you, like a tactical planning screen.
Now I know this is your game, not mine, but it seems so cool that I just wanted to put down all my thoughts so that maybe, hopefully, something I've said will give you an idea you might want to implement. Anyway, I think the game's gonna be great. Many kudos.
A few other random thoughts:
-It would be nice if party encounters were much more flexible than they are now. For instance, on the post-battle prisoner/party member capturing screen, you can split up the released prisoners however you want, but if you encounter a released prisoner party, you have to either take all of them or none if you don't have room. Perhaps you should be able to pick and choose, party size permitting. Also, I'd think it would make sense to be able to attack anything you come across, with appropriate faction standing penalties. And you should definitely be able to enter battles between two enemies and either have a threeway or choose to help one side, depending on how much each side hates you.
-A system of land capturing for factions and for the player would be, of course, awesome.
-It would also be awesome if you could split separate parties off of your main one, like autonomous friendlies under your command that you could give certain orders to, like defending something or attacking a certain enemy.
-The stack system for party members and prisoners seems a little clunky and is not very believable. Why should you have to choose between taking ten crossbowmen prisoners or one nobleman? And why, if your party slots are full, couldn't an upgradable member upgrade without all his buddies having to as well? On a related note, group experience after battles should be distributed before the capture/recruit screen, since it affects how you can sort out your party (this is the same issue that would be remedied by being able to selectively enlist released prisoners encountered on the map).
-I don't know if you have your own ideas about how to do this, but as far as integrating a storyline into the sandbox-ish gameplay, I have a few thoughts. If anyone has ever played "Privateer 2," you'll know what I'm talking about. The game has a storyline, but it mostly revolves around a completely free, unscripted, open gameplay world in which you can go wherever and do whatever you want. The storyline is basically progressed at the pace the player chooses to progress it, by going to certain places and performing certain tasks. Thus there are two spheres of gameplay, the open game and the storyline game. You go about your business taking missions, buying ships, and blowing things up, but whenever you feel like it, you can travel to the next storyline location and make some scripted progress. What I think might lend itself to M&B would be a system similar to this, but with an open-ended story where the storyline-game and the free-game overlap and affect each other. For instance, the factions with which you align yourself could determine the direction of the story, and in order to progress, you might have to perform certain tasks in the open world. To add variety to gameplay, certain elements could change depending on where you are in the storyline (new wars erupting, famine, invaders, natural disasters, political intrigue, etc).
And one more thing: on "supply" quests (e.g. rivacheg wants ten nomad boots / five footmen / six enemy knight prisoners) you should be able to deliver in increments. It just seems logical and would eliminate some frustration with inventory and party size limits.
Oh, and at the beginning of battles, it would be cool if you could choose which units came with you, like a tactical planning screen.
Now I know this is your game, not mine, but it seems so cool that I just wanted to put down all my thoughts so that maybe, hopefully, something I've said will give you an idea you might want to implement. Anyway, I think the game's gonna be great. Many kudos.