Ranged Combat needs a tweak.

[Zajcew]

I started the game with a new char, and I want her to focus more on the ranged combat. But there are a lot of problems with it.

1. Arrows should do more dmg. I understand my char is fresh, and her bow skills are not that high. But I also fight easy opponents (river pirates) and it looks really dumb, when a naked (no armour) river pirate charges at me with 1 arrow stuck in his stomach, second in his chest (exactly in the place where his heart should be) and third in his throat! How is it, that with a godd sword swing (dmg discription says it does 32 dmg) I can kill with one, well placed shot, while I need 3 hits with a bow (with 35 dmg) for the same effect?
2. There is some kind of bug, that sometimes compleatly messes up the direction of the shot. Let's say my horse moves in one direction, but my char is facing to the left. When I reach for the arrow and start to aim, the char model clearly indicates that I'm aiming in the direction that my char is facing. But when I release the bowstring, my char makes a very quick 90 degree turn to face the direction the horse is moving, and then shoots. Strange thing is that it doesn't happen all the time, and I can't figure out what it depends on.
3. As mentioned multiple times already, the limit of arrows you can use during one battle should be increased at least 2 times.

 

[Pavlov]

Agreed on all those points, it just looks odd sometimes seeing a bandit in a tunic with 4-5 arrows sticking out of various places. Altho if the arrows were doubled and the damage increased there would really be no more need to melee. Since with a bag of 50 arrows and more damage you could pretty much level a whole army all by yourself. That would really kill the difficulty factor.

 

[armagan]

Archery required a tremendeous amount of skill and strength. Therefore I increased the importance of the power-draw skill. If you buff up that skill to level 6 and increase your archery proficiency to a high level, you can double the damage of your arrows. Combine that with a good bow, and you can inflict some serious damage.

 

[Zajcew]

I just discovered something. You have 4 slots for weapons, usually you use 2 for sword and shield, and another two for bow and arrows. If you get rid if the shield (and use two-haded weapon instead) you can put another pack of arrows in there, increasing the limit to 50 per battle. If you get rid of the melee weapon aswell, you have 75 of them, that's more then enough. Taking that in to consideration, I don't think increasing the amount of arrowes in single pack is neceserry, maybe just a little, so it's 30-35 of them.

Pavlov, I have to disagree that with increased dmg from arrowes, there will be no need for melee. Mouted archers are great against unarmored footman, cause you can get as close as possible, shoot and get away before they can close in and kick your ass. But against horse riders, especially heavily armoured, their efficiency drops drastically, because it's much more difficult to hit a target that moves so fast, and they have armour. So ranged combat should be reserved for weaker footman units, while you still need melee for stronger, mouted opponents.

A question: Is there any modificator that changes the chance of hitting an opponent with a bow, while standing still, riding slowly, riding at full speed etc? Cause that would be in order.

 

[armagan]

Whether a missile hits an opponent is determined solely on collision detection. There are no modifiers or stats involved. However those factors you mention effect the NPC AI. NPCs shoot less acurately if their target is moving fast, is far away etc...

 

[Pavlov]

Pavlov, I have to disagree that with increased dmg from arrowes, there will be no need for melee. Mouted archers are great against unarmored footman, cause you can get as close as possible, shoot and get away before they can close in and kick your ass. But against horse riders, especially heavily armoured, their efficiency drops drastically, because it's much more difficult to hit a target that moves so fast, and they have armour. So ranged combat should be reserved for weaker footman units, while you still need melee for stronger, mouted opponents.

I guess maybe that just depends on how good you are personaly at ranged combat. However, with a lvl 24 "Archer" as my main avatar I can take down a dark knight in 2 shots. Horseback or foot.

 

[Kalamar]

For me ranged dmg is way too powerfull as it is. If you bump it up so it's good a low levels it'll be overwhelmingly powerful when you are good at it.

Besides you would start getting pissed if your character insta-died to enemy archers.

 

[ShadowMoses]

Mouted archers are great against unarmored footman, cause you can get as close as possible, shoot and get away before they can close in and kick your ass. But against horse riders, especially heavily armoured, their efficiency drops drastically, because it's much more difficult to hit a target that moves so fast, and they have armour.

My character is mainly an archer and in combat i always go for mounted enemy first. To be successfull, i tempt them to chase me then just turn round and fire at them. The relative movement is almost as if they are standing still!

You have to be carefull that they are more to your left side than your right because your character looks over his left shoulder and so can't reach the right side even though the cross-hair can!

I've been really enjoying the archery, it's very satisfying! but it might be good to have something that indicates it's path through the air... not sure what it's called.

 

[Zajcew]

I guess I just suck at using bows.

Oh well, majority rules, if most say arrows dmg should not be increased, then I guess it shouldn't.

 

[Anonymous]

I just discovered something. You have 4 slots for weapons, usually you use 2 for sword and shield, and another two for bow and arrows. If you get rid if the shield (and use two-haded weapon instead) you can put another pack of arrows in there, increasing the limit to 50 per battle. If you get rid of the melee weapon aswell, you have 75 of them, that's more then enough. Taking that in to consideration, I don't think increasing the amount of arrowes in single pack is neceserry, maybe just a little, so it's 30-35 of them.

Pavlov, I have to disagree that with increased dmg from arrowes, there will be no need for melee. Mouted archers are great against unarmored footman, cause you can get as close as possible, shoot and get away before they can close in and kick your ass. But against horse riders, especially heavily armoured, their efficiency drops drastically, because it's much more difficult to hit a target that moves so fast, and they have armour. So ranged combat should be reserved for weaker footman units, while you still need melee for stronger, mouted opponents.

A question: Is there any modificator that changes the chance of hitting an opponent with a bow, while standing still, riding slowly, riding at full speed etc? Cause that would be in order.

use a two handed sword , that way you increase your melee damage and get rid of the shield. Then use your arrows for mounted archers only, because only they can suffer you damage , if they are heavily armoured aim for their horses to unmount them. once you killed all the horses you can kill all the footman by your sword easily.
And get a speedy horse that way horseman cant catch you while you are running and when directly escaping them they follow you in a line, that way it is easy to shot back to bring them down.

btw Armagan you should limit the heavy armor turn ability over a horse. And it would be nice to see a head/heart - shot script which instantly kills

 

[Thormac]

I'm talking about v.2.40 here. Just downloaded v.2.50.

This suggestion could make archery more realistic. Not more or less powerful.

I agree that arrows do too little damage. It WAS funny in the beginning seeing topless bandits running around with multible arrows sticking trough their torso. It's kind of unrealistic though. I don't know how MISSILE damage is calculated, but it should NOT be something like randomly between 1-32 points for example (with 32 damage bow). I think that when arrow hits it should hit hard! The median damage should be near the max with missiles. Very occasionally there could be less damaging hits and when hit in correct location even critical (multiplied damage) ones. To get these critical hits it would be good if there were hit boxes to check critical hits like head/face and center of chest.

On the otherhand player can shoot arrows with too high rate of fire and become too accurate way too quickly. Player can shoot like Legolas way too soon. In the beginning there should be much much more dispersion where the arrows were flying. When running and definately when riding there should always be much more waving and therefore dispersion. I played for 3 days and there is no dispersion in the arrow flightpath anymore. I have 263 archery skill. Maybe player should shoot that accurately when he had about 1000 skill. By the way arrows are not flying to the center of the crosshair but to the upper right hand corner.
Non other than Legolas should reload that quickly either. The time between shots should be doubled. There could even be a random time to get another arrow and place it correctly to the bowstring (character might fumble a bit). Maybe this time could be calculated from players archery skill and AGI. Skill could determine the exact time to reload and AGI could produce the random delay. Reloading while running or riding could take a bit longer. Finally player shouldn't be able to carry too much arrows to battle. So please don't increase arrow capacity too much.

I know you can't please everyone but I just had to say my opinion. Keep it as realistic as possible, please.

EDIT: And I think it would be good if player had some chance to get killed by AI archers. Atleast in v.2.40 AI rarely hit anything and if it did my character never died on them. I used a shield to parry many arrows though and increasing arrow damage could make shield more useful. option.

 

[armagan]

Yes, I would like to make archery realistic as well...

Archery damage is calculated as follows:

Assume base damage of the bow is 30. A random number is made up between 15 and 30. Then power-draw modifier is applied to this (10% per skill point). Then archery proficiency modifier is applied (15% per 100 points). If shooter is on horseback, a penalty of 30% is deduced. Finally, we account for armor. If the victim's armor is, say, 20 on the hit spot, first 20 is halved to 10 (since arrows inflict piercing damage), and then a number between 5 to 10 is subtracted from the damage.

In the next version I'll increase power-draw modifier to 15% and add a 2x multiplier to hits to the head. I am planning to add some special arrows with damage bonuses sometime. All together, these should make it possible to inflict decent amounts of damage...

You are quite right in the points you have raised. I am working on making the accuracy and rate of fire model more realistic.

By the way, a weapon proficiency of 1000 is practically impossible . The maximum is 300 which can be only be reached with a weapon-mastery skill of 6. It is possible to go beyond 300 but progress will be terribly slow... Generally, the number can be interpreted like this:
100: competent
200: pro
300: master
(So Legolas should be around... 500???)

 

[Thormac]

Sounds great armagan! Especially about the accuracy and fire rate. Could you also put certain delay when chaging melee to missile weapon and vice versa?

Could it be difficult to add a cylinder or a box inside characters torso too. This box could be from navel level to neck and be only about 1/3 the width of torso. So that arrows that penetrate it should go trough center or near center of torso. This could make 1.5x damage. Arrows that only go trough the side of character (not hitting the "hitbox") would do normal damage since they only go trough skin and flesh.

With this the damage model would be even better, but I understand the benefits for doing this could be too low for the workload. You must be overburdened already.

 

[armagan]

Yes, that would be nice.

I'll add it to my TODO list (which unfortunately has more items than a dictionary ).

 

[Thormac]

By the way arrows are not flying to the center of the crosshair but to the upper right hand corner.

Well, that was dumb. * makes note to self; "Don't post on forums when tired"*

In v.2.50 archery is gotten very bad, but you said you will correct it so enough about it. I will make a suggestion soon about adding some player options in the menus, that would try to deal with different playing tastes.


Few additions to archery:

It would be good if you could make the mouse sensitivity go smaller whenever player uses zoom.

Maybe torsoshots could be also x2 damage (remaining damage that has gone trough armor) like headshots. If you can't make any hitboxes or whatever, can you use the same system to make whole chest a separate hit area like you did with the head? I just want that the best archer in the world could have more that 0% chance to kill heavily armored opponents with even one arrow. Maybe the multiplier could even be a random 1-3.

Just that no one gets me wrong; There should be more dispersion with arrow trajectories when shooting while running or riding. Aiming shouldn't get stable this soon. I currently have only 152 archery skill and arrows seem to fly straight to same point. I can hit AI easilly but do little damage, so enemies look much like hedgehogs when they finally die. I think this should be the opposite; Harder to hit + more damage.

About cosmetics. Can you adjust how deep the arrows penetrate? Are you able to change it to something like this: Current full arrow penetration = 100% and arrow's head just touching the AI surface = 0%. Now if the damage that has gone trough is lets say 50 points (without the multiplier) the penetration could be 100%. If armor subtracts all damage there could be ricochet and the arrow could just fall off spinning. So in this example the penetration would be 2% per damage point. So if the average damage (average archer average target) gone trough would be something like 5-15 points, arrows more realisticly wouldn't always stick out from the back of the target.
Additionally I think that arrows look a bit too thick and black to be real looking. I'm no expert though.

 

[armagan]

It would be good if you could make the mouse sensitivity go smaller whenever player uses zoom.

Good idea. Doing it.

Just that no one gets me wrong; There should be more dispersion with arrow trajectories when shooting while running or riding. Aiming shouldn't get stable this soon. I currently have only 152 archery skill and arrows seem to fly straight to same point. I can hit AI easilly but do little damage, so enemies look much like hedgehogs when they finally die. I think this should be the opposite; Harder to hit + more damage.

I hope version 0.260 will be closer to what you'd like.

About cosmetics. Can you adjust how deep the arrows penetrate? Are you able to change it to something like this: Current full arrow penetration = 100% and arrow's head just touching the AI surface = 0%. Now if the damage that has gone trough is lets say 50 points (without the multiplier) the penetration could be 100%. If armor subtracts all damage there could be ricochet and the arrow could just fall off spinning. So in this example the penetration would be 2% per damage point. So if the average damage (average archer average target) gone trough would be something like 5-15 points, arrows more realisticly wouldn't always stick out from the back of the target.

I get what you mean. It's just that arrows that do not stick too deep don't look very convincing on the character. In reality, you would have to break them or pull them out to be able to move. The other option is not displaying them at all if they inflict less than, say 15 damage. In other words, we can't display stuck arrows completely realistically. We can either display them sticking out from the back or not display them at all.