Stamina in Viking Conquest

[StevieLee7132]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvWDIVTvTDE
Watch an old heavy man jump over an electric fence with a Mail shirt.

Nice video! Althought my mail weight 16-17 kg 



But with latest open beta update stamina is ok or no? 

I think it it may be slightly under represented for heavy armor.  As a soldier humping 70+ lbs of gear will kill you going up and down steep hills, no matter your level of conditioning, also doing hand to hand.  I would make light armor very easy (not so tired even after several minutes of hard exertion), medium armor (gambeson, etc.) having a small effect, but heavy armor a severe penalty with heavy exertion, and mild penalty just walking on the level.  Also, recovery is different when you are exhausted vs.  just tired; tired you catch your breath in a short bit and drive on, like in the game.  But if you push it and get truly exhausted (e.g. anaerobic), it should take much longer to recover.  Just my thoughts, but this would also help game balance-- now there is effectively no meaningful penalty for heavy armor... it should really slow your speed (footwork too for hand to hand), AND tire you on exertion. 

 

[Falconian]

As someone who does medieval combat IRL and sub, I can tell the stamina system is off.
Even with 20kg of equipment, if you breathe properly and don't overdo it you can keep fighting for more than a little walk and 10 swings, and even when you start getting tired, you're not completely out of breath and you can still fight.
That is, after at least a month of heavy armor training and athletic body.
I recall fighting for an hour straight wearing lorica hamata which is not very different from the viking chainmails.
The way stamina works reminds me of rookies who try medieval combat for the first time, don't breathe properly and end up completely starved of energy  after a few charges.
But why would any soldier let alone a leader of an army do such a rookie mistake? It's the first thing you learn in medieval combat so I assume it was the same back then.

I think the devs overstimate a fair bit the struggle of wearing chainmail, it's not that bad. I've slept in chainmail a few times during medieval re-enactments.
Actually, chainmail is great because the weight is evenly shared on your body so you don't really feel like you have a 20kg armor on.
Sure you could say "but you're trained and a big guy so your perspective is skewed" but if I can pull this off and I'm not even a Viking or a professional soldier, I assume real, actual soldiers should be able to do at least twice as good as I do.
Afterall they spent their lives in much rougher conditions than I did.

PS: Forgot to add, this is assuming you don't fight uphill. THAT is tiring, mostly on your legs and back.
But fighting in plains is a nobrainer if you're used to wearing chain to the point it feels like it's just your skin.

 

[Yeyo]

I have been re-enactor since 1996 and, sometimes, I have worn chain main ten hours per day in a filming of two weeks (the guy of the avatar is me). You obviously carry the weight of the hauberk with all the body, but the heaviest part of the gear is the shield, because you hold it just with an arm and the historical ones were heavier than the modern replicas. Actually, in the Antiquity the type of the warrior depended of the shield he carried (hoplite, peltasta, scutati, caetrati, etc) which determined if he was a heavy infantryman or a skirmisher. It wasn’t the lorica hamata the only difference between a principe and a velite.

The first time I tested the stamina in VC I had a similar impression than yours, but if you consider the circumstances of the game in a real context, sometimes you are forcing the character to charge 300 meters to the top of the hill with a full armor. In the megaHastings of 2006, I took part in the Norman left wing, we had to go up to the Abbey’s hill over and over again and I felt exhausted. I’m a kendo practitioner and I have trained with a bogu during two hours without stopping, and now I practice longsword in HEMA style, but even if you are well trained and you know how to breathe in the stress of a combat, your performance goes down after an important aerobic effort.

In Viking Conquest the stamina recovers each 3 seconds when the player is not attacking or running. I think this is realistic as, in an actual combat, the warriors probably fought in a conservative way and the shifts between lines existed during the whole battle. Therefore, I think this kind of stamina force the player to imitate the normal develop of a Medieval battle. Though this is just my opinion.

 

[CeltiberoCaesar]

Hi guys,
I just want to remind you guys that a battle in VC can long... 10min max? Obviously if a "realistic" warrior would be able to stay with a heavy armour longer than that... the feature would be worthless, you would be able to be running the whole battle without penalty. So, in addition of what "realistic" might mean, in this case, we had to fin a representative values that make the feature interesting.

 

[SmattlePattle]

Just wondering - not suggesting we attempt this - but what are the factors that cause real life battles to be so extended? I'm just curious, and I guess wondering if any of those factors would make compelling/fun gameplay or if its all the sort of stuff best left out.

 

[PerXX]

90% of a "real battle" is maneuvering, not actually fighting.
In real life people rarely want to engage in hand-to-hand combat if any other way is possible. Hand-to-hand means likely grave injuries.
Once actual battle happened, it was usually no more than 10-20% that actually fought before one party fled the scene.
Most of the time the outcome of the battle is quite obvious very early in the fight.