Stamina/fatigue system for horses in Bannerlord

[Mirabelle]

There are two advantages and one disadvantage (that I could think of) to adding it.
Advantages:
- Would make the use of heavy cavalry more tactical. Because you wouldn't want to let your heavy cavalry get tired without a good reason.
- Would help balance horse archers. They wouldn't be able to just keep running forever and pouring down arrows on the enemy.

Disadvantage:
- People don't seem to like the idea of stamina overall(?).

 

[FBohler]

A solution to cater the community would be adding stamina to NPC troops while players and AI lords would keep the "infinite stamina" feature.

This would make the formations behave cautiously to not waste stamina without undermining the combat gameplay.

 

[Mirabelle]

A solution to cater the community would be adding stamina to NPC troops while players and AI lords would keep the "infinite stamina" feature.

This would make the formations behave cautiously to not waste stamina without undermining the combat gameplay.

Yep, I agree with everything.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

There is no feasible way to force the player to keep all the horse archers or cavalry in a cohesive unit, but at the same time it would be impossible for the player to keep track of 100 individual stamina levels, making it impossible to make informed decisions about how to avoid low stamina, thus making stamina more of a randomised debuff in the player's perspective. Bannerlord just isn't this kind of game.

 

[hruza]

It's a nice concept ...but not with current AI. AI would blow their horses in the first minute of combat.
Current AI have difficult time handling features already in the game. Adding another layer of complexity to to combat would cripple AI even more.

 

[aerendhil]

Actually both humans and mounts should have stamina.

 

[LeChat]

Actually none should have stamina.

It's a nice concept ...but not with current AI. AI would blow their horses in the first minute of combat.
Current AI have difficult time handling features already in the game. Adding another layer of complexity to to combat would cripple AI even more.

I agree.

 

[Younes]

I think a lot of warband players don't like the idea of stamina. I mean it sounds really good but i don't think a lot of people like the idea of stamina.

 

[Mirabelle]

There is no feasible way to force the player to keep all the horse archers or cavalry in a cohesive unit, but at the same time it would be impossible for the player to keep track of 100 individual stamina levels, making it impossible to make informed decisions about how to avoid low stamina, thus making stamina more of a randomised debuff in the player's perspective. Bannerlord just isn't this kind of game.

I was talking specifically about horses, but since people are expanding the idea to infantry as well, I will too.

When you press backspace, you can see how many units you have and some general orders. What if that menu also showed the overall stamina level of the troops? The game would still calculate the individual stamina level of each unit, but you would only see the big picture. This way you could make informed decisions to avoid low stamina, for example, if the "stamina bar" was depleted you wouldn't order your units to just charge. And about the cohesive unit part, I think formations would solve that problem, e.g. making cavalry use wedge, infantry a shield wall, etc.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

But horses in both warband and bannerlord run around the field like crazy. After a couple of minutes the horses might have wildly different stamina levels. It would be infuriating to charge your cavalry and see a handful of them unable to, or see them all spread out because some of them used up all their stamina getting into position while others didn't. Most importantly this isn't something the player can really prevent in a meaningful way unless they just choose not to use their cavalry in the first place, which is lunacy.

When making a game system you have to ask yourself, what is this mechanic trying to achieve?

1. Prevent cavalry from dominating the battlefield
2. Prevent horse archers from running around infinitely
3. Make the player more careful

There are much less obnoxious ways to do this. You could easily just give horse archers a little bit less ammo or make them less accurate (currently they score headshots like crazy even while moving). You could make horses more fragile. You could give them less penetration power against infantry. All these things would work much more naturally than a stamina system which this game isn't really designed for.

 

[Phalnax811]

No thank you.  I also don't want slower movement when horse or player is injured. It's just annoying (in certain mods).

 

[Mirabelle]

Even if the game is not designed to use that system, couldn't they try to change it?

What if they added a new command called "march" that would make your units walk slower to not lose/recover stamina? This would give the player a lot more control of his units stamina.

By the way, I'm not really a big fan of reducing the amount of arrows the horses archers have(assuming that it's not extremely high). And making horses more fragile? That sounds bad to me. I know this is one of those cases of realism x gameplay, but horses should be difficult to kill(in my opinion). The other options of balancing cavalry are fine to me, moreover, the devs don't need to use only one or two of those options, they could use the stamina system+make horse archers less accurate+reduce the penetration power of cavalry against infantry, or any other combination that they want.

 

[Younes]

It just does not fit mount and blade imo.

Its really annoying to play with stamina in certain mods in warband that have it.

 

[FBohler]

There is no feasible way to force the player to keep all the horse archers or cavalry in a cohesive unit, but at the same time it would be impossible for the player to keep track of 100 individual stamina levels, making it impossible to make informed decisions about how to avoid low stamina, thus making stamina more of a randomised debuff in the player's perspective. Bannerlord just isn't this kind of game.

How about using statistics to consider the "average" stamina level for the formations, so the player can manage it?

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Even if the game is not designed to use that system, couldn't they try to change it?

What I mean is that it can't work with the "core" of the game, which is a player-character-centric RPG with some light tactical elements. You could very easily code something like what you're suggesting, but would it complement the current game mechanics or be detrimental to the player experience?

In total war troop stamina works because moving troops around is the core mechanic, and troops are always in the same unit so it makes sense that they all get tired at once. The entire game is about micromanaging your troops and making sure they aren't getting flanked or whatever. But in warband and by extension bannerlord the soldiers run around on their own a lot and you're basically encouraged by the game design to leave them alone for most of the battle so you can have fun fighting on your own. Having to worry if your guys are tired or not is just an extra layer of micromanagement on a game that really isn't focussed on tactics at all.

How about using statistics to consider the "average" stamina level for the formations, so the player can manage it?

Okay, so let's assume your guys run out of stamina. What do you do? Ignore them for a while? How does this make the game more interesting if troops are basically on a cooldown?
Even in total war, having the lowest amount of stamina doesn't make your troops unusuable, it just debuffs them a bit. I wouldn't be opposed to a system like this, but in a game like bannerlord where you never have an overview of the battlefield, most players would just ignore it and charge their guys anyway.

 

[FBohler]

Where did I ask for the troops to become unusable when out of stamina? Stats debuff and morale drop would be totally fine for me.

 

[Mirabelle]

Where did I ask for the troops to become unusable when out of stamina? Stats debuff and morale drop would be totally fine for me.

What if the units lost half of their proficiencies, half of their power strike and half of their power draw? Would that be a good penalty?

 

[Younes]

Half seems too much. I would not make the stamina make it be a core gameplay feature in native. A bit perhaps but not half

 

[FBohler]

Half seems too much. I would not make the stamina make it be a core gameplay feature in native. A bit perhaps but not half

Agreed.

 

[Mirabelle]

What about losing 15-25% of the proficiencies and only one in power draw and power strike?