Okay, this is something that's been percolatin' in my brain since I first started playing M&B a couple years ago.
I've always felt the recruitment/advancement mechanic in M&B is a little *too* abstracted. All the recruits
cost 10d to equip, be they Vaegir Recruits with little equipment or a Khergit Tribesman with a horse. Those
things cost more than 10d! Also, promoting someone is free. Who pays for the Swadian Man-at-Arms' horse?
This is the kind of thing that bothers me.
I don't know if this is even possible to change. I imagine you could change the recruitment costs of the various
village levies without too much trouble. But could you assign a cost to advancing a troop to recognize the
difference in price between their old equipment and their new equpment? I don't even know. There's a
couple of ways you could do it: you could do a direct cash deduction, which would probably be harder,
since presumably you'd have to check how much cash a person has and all that other stuff. One other
way to do it would be to just create a debt, as is created when you don't have enough cash to pay your
troops. Then, when payday comes around, it's just added to your total expenses. If you can't pay,
morale goes down, and troops start deserting with all that valuable equipment you paid for.
Of course, the main effect of this change would be a huge increase in expenses; such that having more than a
couple dozen troops would be practically impossible. There'd have to be some balancing increase in income.
Well, as it happens, that's *another* thing that bothers me. Say you get in a fight and defeat a couple dozen
Steppe Bandits, for instance. What happens when you get to the loot screen? You get a bent lance, a
cracked kerghit bow, a tattered nomad armor, and, if you're lucky, a lame steppe horse. Really? That's it?
Poppycock! You defeat a group of warriors, at least half their gear ought to be salvageable, and in pretty good
shape. Now, with the current inventory system, it's not feasible to handle that much stuff, but there's no
reason you can't abstract that somewhat as well: just give the value of most of that loot in cash. Say your troops
carried it out; you've certainly got enough manpower.
So, anyway, that's my big idea for improving Mount & Blade (I know it's not specific to this mod, but what the hey).
Make the whole bookkeeping system a tad more realistic. Not real exciting, I know.
One big advantage to this is that it would make for new trade-offs between different troop types. You want
Swadians? Well, you're going to have to *pay* for all those horses, bub. Makes Vaegir infantry a tad more attractive.