Melee combat

[No name]

Hi i'm new here but i played M&B since June. And i already got the full version so i want to give my 2 cents worth in improving the game. I play all sorts of comp games except sport, cos i think it stinks (dives under couch) so here is one of my suggestion.

I was thinking about troops, and i think they are very disorganised and very unenthusiastic about it. come on, they stroll into a fight. And i cant have fun tactics like flanking or archers pinning enemies when i only got rudimentary commands. So to solve this i came up with some solutions( though not original): Assign them into units.

So you put all unmounted melee troops into a unit, and to get them into position during a battle, you bring down an expanded map like in Battlefield 2. Then you set up waypoints with your mouse for commands like Attack Move, Firing On Area or Charge through Enemy for mounted troops. You can press for commands with the F1-F12 keys.

Then of course, we cant lead all the units, so we can attach leaders (think Marnid) to each group for extra bit of performance. For enemies without commanders, like bandits will just beeline for you, which will give use the edge to spring a trap and surround them.

If this cant be done then just use a "point with the crosshair and press command" style. That should solve tactics right?

Ok next point on enthusiasm. If any one of you ever played Kingdom under Fire: Crusaders, it will help. See when a unit (unmounted) moves around normally on the map, they will jog to where you want them. But when they are close enough to engage an enemy, every guy run into a charge and smash into the enemy shouting about the enemys ancestors. i think that should liven up the party right? We can all give extra bonuses like more damage if engaging an already engaged or flanked group cos we surprised them.

So this basically sums up my idea of improving melee. Of course, if this game only limits to skirmishes and raids, all this cant be fully planned out. But maybe higher levels with alot of troop, we can do this. It'll make Tactics skill much better and stop all the gang fights(complete with driveby archering) i always see.

What do you think?

 

[GonZ]

I think interesting wouldn't have made it a poll though.

I know where you’re coming from and agree we should have more control of our troops - up to a point anyway.

Having a point and click Head Up Display to move troops around (putting waypoints down) would not be realistic imo.

As I've suggested elsewhere (and similar stuff from others in the community):

I'd like orders to be issued by voice command:

Select key 1 "Archers" > Select key A "Hold"
Select key 2 "Infantry" > Select key B "Defend" Select key 1 "Archers"
Select key 4 "Cavalry" > Select key C "Follow me!"
Select key 8 "Companions" (Marnid and Borcha) > Select key E "Ambush"

etc

For orders involving a location on the map:

Select key 1 "Archers" > Select key "Move" > Then your player character could point with their weapon at the Hill

Would be even cooler if the the interface could determine your selected terrain too.

"Guards" point and click at hill "Take the hill"

In the heat of battle there would be times when you were too busy or too far away from your troops to issue effective orders. Basically leaving your troops to fend for themselves and get into all sorts of trouble.

---

Having said all that I do like the idea of creating groups of units too. I'd like to see a pre-battle screen that allowed you to do that. Once in battle I'd like to see your groups ordered about using shouted orders as above (or similar).

 

[No name]

Hmm.. I personally feel that by shouting commands instead of a map to control, the game becomes abit crude, cos you dont have total control. Thats very important as a single ill planned position can ruin your strategy, and i am coming as a guy playing KUF which is similar to M&B but lot more tactics.
Yeah but anyway its true that it might take too much time especially during a battle. Maybe use my second option of point and press command? Besides, it removes the need for insane AI since it must know which or even what a hill or river or valley is.

 

[GonZ]

Hmm.. I personally feel that by shouting commands instead of a map to control, the game becomes abit crude, cos you dont have total control.

That's my point really. I think it should be crude.

In a skirmish situation you don't have full control.

I think it's more realistic if there room for error, for troops to do dumb things. Especially if you're on the other side of the map decapitating the enemies second line.

Course, experienced troops should work together and make formation. But that army of 50 peasants should have no formation and be **** scared running round like...well running round like soon to be headless peasants.

 

[No name]

Ok. Though my main gripe about the gameplay is that sometimes my troops do stupid things that get themselves killed for nothing, and i cant do a thing about it. Like when i ask them to hold position, the melee guys faithfully stand behind while the range ones stand somewhere very forward to welcome the mob. And when i order them to charge, the mounted ones run and get slaughtered, and the slow troops pile in later.

Really annoying.

 

[WipperSnipper]

I want a morale system befor this. Since i mean , 1 peasent against 15 knight's is not just going to stand there and get his head cut off , he would run away , yet they tend to charge at the knight's exactly as if he had 100 other knight's behind him.

 

[kaitsu]

I stongly agree, that by having more precise commands for each unit, that would make the combat a fight of outmaneuvering the opponent (and more fun). Like No Name pointed, you could before the actual battle, set your units to the map (like Warhammer Fantasy Battle), and then give them few way-points etc. to maneuver on the field. The game is now great, but the own units do not take any advantage of their treats (archres specially). Also I would like to see the possibility to choose weapons/armor for each of your unit having the limitations of their weapon branch. That would make your army more personal than it is now.

 

[No name]

My people love me!

Anyway yah, like kaitsu said maybe allow choices for weapons of each troop cos there are some cases where troops of the same type carry different weapons, like some sword sisters carry bows while others do not. That makes the troops abit messy.
And yeah, as an army we should be able to carry out tactics to win larger opponents like using pike formation and such.

 

[pzler]

just had an idea that was worth reviving this OLD thread for.

commands could be bound to characters.
for example:

before the battle you can place your infantry under the command of marnid and your cavalry under the command of borcha. during the battle you could give marnid the hold this position order and all the infanrty will follow him. but you can give borcha the order to charge. you don't really have to choose between infantry or cavalry when you are placing the troops at someones command. you could also give all characters a mix of different kinds of troops if you want to.
this makes characters far more valuable. the los of a character would also mean it will become more difficult to command your troops.

(btw thanks @ okin for making this thread easy to find)

 

[Bearhugger]

i like pzlers idea!

make heroes command seperate smaller troops.

well...theres nothing for me to add to that marvellous suggestion, really...

 

[kkrizan]

I just wanted to make a comment regarding giving precise commands to your troops and being obeyed.

I've never been on battlefield of any kind, but I'vbe played few soccer tournament games. Once me and couple other guys were sitting on the bench, and my team was playing badly. We were shouting out throats out at them, but nobody heared us. This lasted for more than 10 minutes (not exaggerating). On occasion, some of our teamates in play would SEE us and only then would he realize that we were shouting at them. It was an unreal experiance, and I imagine undisciplind troops would behave similarly on battlefield.


btw, I like the idea where Marnig and Borcha would command their own units.

 

[Bearhugger]

apart from that, once engaged in combat, your vision tends to tunnel. you wont see much above or below the "point" youre looking at. AFAIK there is no way to avoid that.
so it might be even harder/impossible for unexperienced/untrained soldiers to concentrate on anything except their closest foe.
i can see the situation you pictured before me...it might seem unreal, but its a very logical thing to happen. (frustrating if youre the one on the bench though )

 

[barbaros]

I would like to expand the noname's point and click system a little. This system was used in Brothers in Arms (a FPS game). I think this is the most suitable way and requires minimum keyboard involvement. You press group command key (1,2,3..) and click a point in combat map with mouse to order this to move this area.

To order group 1 to move to a position.
1. Press 1
2. Mouse click to desired position

To order your second group to attack to a group of enemies
1. Press 2
2. Mouse click to desired enemy.

You click on one enemy soldier but your troops engage the all enemies in the vicinity of this target. Attack command would work as "attack move" in RTS games. Your troops will move to designated enemy and they will stop and engage any enemies on their way. Right click can be used if you want your troops to reach the specific target quickly without stopping to fight on their way.

Waypoints can be implemented. To give waypoints to group 1,
1. Press and hold 1
2. Click the multiple points that you want.

 

[SirBobTheMerciless]

I think things can get mighty complicated when you start putting mapped waypoints in. For a start, you would have to program the AI to be smart enough to use them too, or it will be even more disadvantaged than it already is. And frankly, as someone else pointed out, it wouldn't be that realistic anyway.

I would be satisfied with simply picking a really basic battle line and tactic (flank, frontal assault, ambush/defend) in the pre-game menu and then have the existing in-battle orders with the caveat that only troops within a certain range (determined by leadership level) will respond.

On top of that, being able to select between the 3 main troop types would certainly be a bonus, but not super important. This is primarily an action game afterall; for those Caesar-wannabes there's a whole galaxy of RTS games out there with complicated battlefield tactics. I'd sooner this game kept its gritty, whites-of-their-eyes style battle chaos than become some high-brow, animated game of chess.

 

[Othello]

My idea is very similar to GonZ's and others, but I think it's a bit simpler.

Currently on the party menu, troops are sorted by type into different slots. If this is there, that means the game recognizes them as seperate parties. As such, I think the first step to gaining more battlefield control would be assigning F keys to each party slot (if you can get more slots than fkeys, use a modifier like shift for the rest). F1 would be all, F2 would be slot 2, etc. By selecting a specific party, you could then use the standard commands, and only the current party would do them.

That's all, very rudimentary and simple, but I think it's the best place to start.

So, as a gameplay example:

F1 > Order Hold (all troops hold position) F2 (group 2, assigned to this key via the party screen and mobing them up/down in the slots) > move to a new position > Order Hold, F3 > Order Follow.

This would make everyone hold original positions, then you use your character to assign a new hold position for group 2, and have group 3 follow you.

Eventually you could expand on the basic commands, such as Order Range and Order meelee, thus having troops switch their weapon type.

 

[Sir Huggles]

I like these ideas. I think that the heroes should be able to have groups assigned to them, and then maybe some of the troops (I seem to remember there being a lieutenant troop in the game, but I haven't gotten that far so I may be wrong) that can have other troops under them, then depending on your tactics skill, you could either have the very basic commands for 0 tactics to a map of the battlefield at the very beginning of the fight that lets you choose your starting position and assign orders to the troops (not waypoints though, more like take this hill, more around to here and flank these guys, form a spear wall and advance, something along those lines). Then, after the battle is begun, depending on your tactics skill, you can issue different spur of the moment commands, divided up in the different divisions through the heroes and any other commanding troop type. I'm not sure on this, but from what I've seen on the History Channel, I think that would be somewhat similar to how battles were actually planned back in the day.

 

[jrawlings]

I like the idea of giving Marnid and Borcha command of smaller units.

I also like the idea of giving commands to subset of units... archers under marnid's command get the "hold position" while borcha's Cavalry get the "charge" command.

Adding waypoints and all that would IMHO turn this into Mount&Starcraft, which I don't want.

From a realistic standpoint, if you are IN the fighting, you wouldn't be able to have much command and control over your entire army, much less multiple groups. You'd have to have some sort of horn blower to send signals to your other groups, or have some sort of banner system (Darius used this in Persia?).

 

[Archonsod]

How about a menu based system similar to Operation Flashpoint?

I.e. rather than pressing a button to issue a command, you instead get a menu. In Op Flash you can use the scroll wheel on the mouse (although keyboard shortcuts are possible too, for laptop owners)

For example, lets say you press the middle mouse button. The following menu appears:

Archers
Cavalry
Infantry
All

Selecting one of these gives you a sub menu of orders (could be the existing orders, with one or two added for specific groups, eg fire at will or melee to archers).
One advantage of this system is that it would also allow different commands to different groups. You could have your archers set to hold position\fire at will on a hill, while your infantry are holding position at the foot of the hill to defend them. Meanwhile, your cavalry are following you in a charge.