Vanilla Armor vs RBM Armor

[LyonExodus]

You're telling me you can get all your combat-sided skills ~250 each before age 25?

5 Attributes and 5 Focuses and the right farming method can get any combat skill up there. siege defense are the main way to go. so easy racking up 100 kills if you give the right orders and place them in the right spots. on some attacks even, like the Syronea layout, you can with patience, kill most of the enemies while your infantry sits in the tower in shield-wall blocking them for you.

i always aim at the 250 ATH perk as it doesn't only make you stronger but also it's a great captain bonus for your infantry lines. that perk alone makes a huge difference in the tankiness of your troops as it does add 5 armor to each piece so it's an extra 10 body armor if they use shoulders, 10 leg for cavalry and 5 for the head. it's stupidly OP.
then you combine it with the other perks you have unlocked that either increase HP or the combat ability of your formation and yeah you feel the difference.
you can start farming athletics as soon as you get a few horse archers in your party. tell them to stay behind and fight looters on foot with a spear. i can get 200 ATH in around 1 year of farming. the HA are there in case you go down, that will happen especially early but you roughly get 1 Athletics point every 2 to 3 looters.

that's the tactic i use not only in every game but especially if you are aiming for a exploitless speedrun conquest. the 200 perk improves your party speed and saves a bunch of time.

From my testings having all of the infantry perks makes them as good as having only the 275 medicine perk, which is very long to get.
That's why i am a huge believer than improving the AI perk selection can be that good in the short term. imagine finding any faction leader and they bring all of these perks, i have tried it myself and that's way more enjoyable than vanilla. it's actually hard to fight them even with the best troops Calradia can offer.
you can find the effect of such a small change on my YT channel. i have a video of a huge fight against Vlandians and it takes a long time and right decision making but i had to be pretty passive, couldn't risk losing it.

A fking gambesson stops warbow which is 140 pounds

it could stop from penetrating but the blunt force is still delivered. the only way you can simulate that in the game is by having a character receiving damage ( of course that value can also be reduced accordingly )

I wouldn't want to be hit by a Longbow no matter the armor i am wearing, soldiers today feel the same about bullets. an helmet can stop a .50 cal but that doesn't mean you can fight after receiving such a blow. you'd be lucky to walk away with just a concussion.

changing an armor's value from a 50 to a 70, or polearm's swing factor from x1.5 to x1.1 cannot be as complicated as writing/adding a couple more behavioral scripts for AI.

yes it isn't but if you use the cheat mode you can find a dummy armor they use for testing. if they haven't brought the change yet it means there is a lot they aren't happy with.
We can only speculate on what they test behind the scenes but one thing is certain they are looking for solutions

 

[Bjorn The Dead]

of course that value can also be reduced accordingly

Yeah, that is what we want. I am aware of other facts you mentioned. The video I shared also mentions it.

We can only speculate on what they test behind the scenes but one thing is certain they are looking for solutions

So what? I am a consumer who do not like what I am experiencing in the game. My job is to complain about these thing, not deciding if it is the right time for them to change it nor speculating if they are making tests about it.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

it does show a clear difference altough yes, 4 shots ain't much but if you have the time can you also please show us the difference in shots it would take to kill a looter and a Cata from an Iperial archer ( hunting bow ) to a Fian Champion ( Woodland Longbow ) .

This should show an even clearer difference between low and High tiers.
thanks for your time @Terco_Viejo

If I were to carry out these tests, the result would be quite similar to what five bucks showed in his graph. Obviously, a 2.0 model of what we have in Warband would satisfy a broad spectrum of Bannerlord players... that's basically why many of us are pushing for it.

 

[LyonExodus]

dude's just arguing for the sake of arguing
straight up said no to everything

Let the evidence argue then:
All battles were performed in Custom battles, the 100 Imperial recruits ( Who are said to trade well enough against high tier troops ) performed against each tier of units ( except themselves ) . Spoiler alert they lost all fights, were competitive in just one.

Link

 

[five bucks]

i am happy with most aspects of it, some not. does that satisfy your question? can't answer yes if i like some of it.

Well you kind of can, I like some of Bannerlord's damage calculation and only dislike small aspects of it that ruin an otherwise good system (mainly, the amount which pierce and blunt damage ignore armour). But to each their own.

Also one of the things i always keep in mind when it comes to "issues" is how many resources and time would it take for the team to fix and balance it. As stated before, this is an "issue" that shouldn't be addressed at this stage, unless what you want is an even slower release and slower patches.

The amount of time it would take to fix armour, at its most basic level, is half an hour to change a handful of numbers in the code. Or if they want something more complex, there are mods people have made and/or example code they have written which TW is legally allowed to just copy+paste into the game and see how it works. Or they can recycle their Warband armour formula with minor changes.

Then for balancing, leave players to decide whether armour is too strong/weak still for a month, and change the numbers slightly up or down as necessary. It really isn't hard, which is why untrained modders did it within weeks of Bannerlord's launch.

lots of things in the end come down to speculation

Of course you are right we don't know what is 100% truth, but we do know what the sources from both sides say, we also know what other sources say about armour in other historical conflicts, and we know the results of plenty of modern tests into the effectiveness of armour. We also have common sense, that tells us someone would not buy very expensive armour and wear 20kg of it on them frequently if it did not provide good protection. These combined are enough to form an opinion for a video game.

The evidence-based conclusion that has been drawn - see that "Mail: Unchained" article I linked earlier - is that padded double mail was considered almost arrow-proof, and padded single mail was considered quite good protection from all but the best bows.

So what's up with all of this weekly "armor is big issue" threads that pop up each time? just impatience?

Can't we lay back and let them work is peace? Would you like to constantly be told if you are already there while driving or if you fixed that something yet while you are working on it? that's just annoying man.

Most of these threads were made before they actually told us that they were testing it. They only told us quite recently after much pestering and noise making.

Before that, they said they were "discussing" it one year ago, and then the most recent update was Callum saying "don't expect any significant changes", with the reasoning that "only a subset of players are upset about this", and that pissed people off enough to make this and other threads to show that a majority of people wanted it fixed.

These threads are old now, they are only coming up in Page 1 because there is still discussion to be had.

yet again, you don't find me in disagreement but the issue is "time" it takes time to get things done and balance them (...) can't be done overnight or in a few weeks

It's been literally a year since they said they were discussing it, as well as the 9 years of development before that. It's not fair to call us impatient when we've been waiting for a decade.

The real reason it's taking so long is this:

There are definitely people at TW who work very hard, but there is also, from other reviews and what we know from other employees have told us, much time wasted and a lack of clear organization.

You can't compare 2 modders who work and balance one mod and what they are able to do to 50 Devs who work om an entire game

You kind of can. Bannerlord's gameplay work is split into the following areas -
1 Combat AI
2 Tactical and siege AI
3 strategic overworld AI
4 political and defection AI
5 weapon and armour balance/stats
6 Troop balance
7 overworld battle/governance simulation
8 overworld economic simulation
9 RPG mechanics skill gains and effects balancing
10 quests creation
11 modding tools
12 performance
13 bugs/crashes
14 modding tools and docs

If two unpaid amateur modders, working in their spare time, can massively improve three areas of combat AI, tactical AI, and weapon and armour balance in the space of two years, as well as fixing the bugs that arise from that, that means 1 modder can handle 1.5 areas of gameplay in 2 years. So even 10 full-time employed professional Taleworlds employees should have been able to do what those modders did and still get their other work done. Let alone 50 (I don't think that many are coders).

This is of course massively oversimplifying it, but there is no denying Taleworlds works slower than it should be.

They might bring some changes you guys consider good but for the rest of the team just isn't or brings many smaller problems with it. even in the most simple code change you can create new bugs in the system, unbalances and occasioanl forced crashes in the worst cases blocker crashes. all of that is time consuming

can you just reply if you understand what i am trying to say here. cause it seems like you guys think changing this is as simple as flicking a switch.

I get what you're trying to say, now can you get what we're trying to say?

 

[LyonExodus]

I get what you're trying to say, now can you get what we're trying to say?

I think i do.
I also think it's clear where our lines of thought diverge. We can only see if anything happens moving forward. 7.3. shouldn't be too far away and Bannerlord needs an update, as been too long since the last one

 

[JunKeteer]

Regardless the differences in solutions above, clear impetus is from TW to make the change (or at least let us know what direction their though process is like) before we recreate a whole new combat system for their game.
Should be sooner than later, I don't want to come back to this discussion again or another similar post in 2023 about 'TW will discuss internally'.

 

[vonbalt]

a 2.0 model of what we have in Warband would satisfy a broad spectrum of Bannerlord players... that's basically why many of us are pushing for it.

That's all i wanted from vanilla bannerlord really, it worked great, made sense and most important of all was fun and rewarding, no need to reinvent the wheel.

 

[five bucks]

I think i do.
I also think it's clear where our lines of thought diverge. We can only see if anything happens moving forward. 7.3. shouldn't be too far away and Bannerlord needs an update, as been too long since the last one

We can hope!

 

[Philozoraptor]

Lyon dude, try fighting with only t2 units in native for awhile and you'll see what we mean

you should see very quickly and clearly tier has no impact at all
difficulty, tactics, or loosing units is meaningless. it's bland and boring once you notice it

if you don't see it your either in denial or being contrarian


ahh, bad ui...
so the ai uses a different skill system? or did you guys balance around the minor increase in damage?

There are same rules for AI and player (player, followers and lords use perks on top of skill level). The bonus damage is simply not shown in UI (inventory) but it is shown when you hit somebody. So actual damage is scaling but it is not shown properly when you open your inventory but it works correctly in combat for both player and NPCs.

 

[Maximum997]

Tell me what is wrong with useless against armor swords?

You 4 slots for weapons.

If you see bunch of pesants - cut them with sword fast
If you see armored knight - change it to mace.

BTW - sword swings are absolutly useless against gambeson+mail. Damn - even just a gambeson has good protection against sword.