Upgrading troops

[Kelpo]

This subject has been touched in some of the battlefield loot discussions, but it never had a proper thread of its own, so here is one.

I think it might be good to have separate upgrade buttons for ability and equipment in the party screen. Currently you select the vaegir veteran that's ready to upgrade and upgrade him into, say, vaegir infantry and he magically gains new equipment in the process. I think there should be the option to just improve his skills or just improve his gear, so there would be the buttons: 'Upgrade level' and 'Upgrade equipment', where the former would be free (but would require experience) and the latter would cost money and could only be done in cities. When you press 'Upgrade equipment' the soldier gets some standard set of weapons and armor which is somewhat better than what he formerly had. Maybe there could even be a separate 'Upgrade weaponry' and 'Upgrade armor' (and maybe even 'Upgrade mount') buttons, but I don't know about that.

So basically there would be different levels of equipment, maybe something like follows:

Level 1 - Tunics, sicles, silly looking hats
Level 2 - Nomad armors, spears, clubs, skullcaps
Level 3 - Padded cloth, padded leather, leather jerkins, swords shields
Level 4 - Heraldric armours, lamellar cuirasses, better swords & better shields

And so on. This wouldn't cause extensive micromanagement, but would still allow you to customize your troops better. You could have a party of complete novices, but if you have money, you could give them the best equipment that money can buy, while on the other hand, it would be possible to have battle hardened veterans fight with very meager equipment if you should so choose.

Any thoughts on the subject?

 

[Roach]

A good idea, provided you got the equipment back after they got iced.

Otherwise there's not much point buying a low level guy decent kit, you're just throwing good money away..

 

[Kelpo]

A good idea, provided you got the equipment back after they got iced.

Otherwise there's not much point buying a low level guy decent kit, you're just throwing good money away..

Yes, this kinda goes hand in hand with the full loot thingie, so equipment doesn't appear or disappear out of nothing.

Also, your troops should automatically collect and use equipment from fallen enemies, so their equipment level would steadily increase if you defeat well equiped enemies. The new equipment level could be determined based on total armor points or total equipment price or something like that.

 

[Archonsod]

Was thinking a similar thing myself.

The change I would have is to upgrade equipment by levels.

Take a Swadian crossbowman for example. Lets say the basic equipment is light armour (leather or scale), light crossbow and normal bolts.

When you upgrade to marksman, they upgrade to medium armour (lower plate types), heavy crossbow and normal bolts.

When you upgrade their equipment, they move up to the next level. So if you upgrade a crossbowman's equipment, he moves to the marksman equipment. If you upgrade a marksman, then they move up to say sniper crossbow, heavy plate and large bags of bolts.

 

[ThVaz]

Good idea, I like it. I don't like the current upgrade system, it's too unrealistic. Say, before you could afford a mail hauberk you already have soldiers with it.
I was thinking in another kind of recruiting too, but I don't know it's worth a new thread. The troops, instead of being upgraded to another kind of troop, would be upgraded to a rank of experience, like "Novice", "Regular", "Veteran", "Elite". Sou you could contract a Watchmen, but instead they upgraded all the way to Hired Blades, you could have a Elite Watchmen. I think this way makes alot more sense.

 

[Vachir]

There's so much loot after each fight now, a lot of it just goes to waste anyway. I'd much rather click "distribute to soldiers" and have them automatically pick out the items that they can use to upgrade themselves with (from the higher ranks on down), passing on their old stuff to others, with only the most useless gear going to waste.

 

[Kelpo]

There's so much loot after each fight now, a lot of it just goes to waste anyway. I'd much rather click "distribute to soldiers" and have them automatically pick out the items that they can use to upgrade themselves with (from the higher ranks on down), passing on their old stuff to others, with only the most useless gear going to waste.

Also, your troops should automatically collect and use equipment from fallen enemies, so their equipment level would steadily increase if you defeat well equiped enemies. The new equipment level could be determined based on total armor points or total equipment price or something like that.

So the manual upgrading would be an option in addition to your soldiers taking the gear of defeated enemies.

 

[Klokkwork]

I feel obligated to point out that we're talking about pulling the armor off of dead guys. Creepiness aside.. they're dead for a reason. Might wanna check the slew of arrows sticking through the dude's leather armor... the leather armor that DIDN'T keep him alive. Basically, we're talking about battle damage. I think the reason you don't get full loot is because most of the armor has been ruined in battle. And if not ruined, soiled. Bottom line, the loot you're getting is basically salvaged material. You can't go to a junk yard, pull apart an old car, and expect to get a full set of usable parts. So that's what I do. I just pretend that most of the armor was ruined.

 

[Manitas]

How do you think, what's the chance of shooting an arrow through the same hole in the armor again? Does a coin-sized hole or two make it less useful?

Armor in the game consist of 3 parts, some guys die of just 1 hit - 2 parts left intact. Next thing, some guys are supposed to be unconscious - it's not that easy to damage armor with a blunt weapon.

Estimated percentage of damaged armor pieces would be somewhere between 30-50%

Whatever happens to armor, it does not vaporize. Even if some parts are damaged, they should be there for taking, if you wish.

 

[Kelpo]

Maybe a 'broken' modifier would come in handy, it might make the armor or weapon unusable, but still worth at least the price of the iron it was made of.

 

[Ceaning agent]

hmm i like it but maybe a better idea would be to alternate upgrades so that one level it is level up then it is equipment up as (and i know this only too well) you need to have strangth to use certain items so at level one they could not use lammelar cuirasses

 

[Klokkwork]

Maybe river pirates and sea raiders are really vampires, and when you kill them, their armor turns to dust with them. You might want to fletch your arrows with fabric softener sheets.