Yes melee cav needs some buffs, but it will be ridiculous if they make heavy damage to knights.
Yes melee cav needs some buffs, but it will be ridiculous if they make heavy damage to knights.
well if you remember shogun 2,Yari cav was rly good vs cav and Katana cav was rly good vs inf,maybe same could happen in this mod.
1. 10/01/17
2. The unit(s) that is to be changed, and it's faction(s). All units which have either Coats of Plate, Brigantine and Full Plate.
3. What is the proposed change to the unit(s)? Add Missile Block Chance.
4. Explain why the change of the unit will benefit and improve gameplay. Plate armour replaced the need for shields as a primary protection in pitched battles against light projectiles. At around 1340s, we begin to see knightly effigies drop their knightly shield in favor of two handed weapons, which is reflected in Medieval armouries. This is because their body armour consists of domed sheets of steel which deflect arrows. When you have sheets of steel over your body, the need for a shield is no longer a must-have at all occasions, but instead become situational (pavises in sieges, shields on horseback, etc.).
Click image for sources.
Since this is a new change, I propose that the units receive similar Missile Block Chance stats to normal shields. One idea is to have Early Coats of plate may have similar value to a standard heater shield, while late 15th century full plate is closer to 'Pavise' rating. I'm flexible and open to suggestions on what numbers to use. Hopefully nothing fancy or out-of-this-world.
To compensate for the added Missile Block Chance, slightly lower health or armour rating of the unit.
Conclusion. Men-at-Arms should be able to operate as a front line unit, which they historically were, without being more concerned with arrows than any other front line unit. With a given % of Missile Block Chance, the armoured units should hopefully be better at deflecting light missiles from the front. The unit will be more vulnerable from the back, which is consistent with how most plate armour functioned.
5. Describe the situation. Describe the environment settings if possible. How can somebody else besides you recreate the scenario that resulted in your appeal to change the unit(s)? If you use a Full plate Men-at-Arms with pollarms, one of the most elite units in the game, you're actually susceptible to arrows from a peasant. That's not appropriate.
~Wille
Last edited by Kjertesvein; January 11, 2017 at 07:33 AM.
Thorolf was thus armed. Then Thorolf became so furious that he cast his shield on his back, and, grasping his halberd with both hands, bounded forward dealing cut and thrust on either side. Men sprang away from him both ways, but he slew many. Thus he cleared the way forward to earl Hring's standard, and then nothing could stop him. He slew the man who bore the earl's standard, and cut down the standard-pole. After that he lunged with his halberd at the earl's breast, driving it right through mail and body, so that it came out at the shoulders; and he lifted him up on the halberd over his head, and planted the butt-end in the ground. There on the weapon the earl breathed out his life in sight of all, both friends and foes. [...] 53, Egil's Saga- The pranks played on the knight Jean de Joinville, 1249, 7th crusade.I must tell you here of some amusing tricks the Comte d'Eu played on us. I had made a sort of house for myself in which my knights and I used to eat, sitting so as to get the light from the door, which, as it happened, faced the Comte d'Eu's quarters. The count, who was a very ingenious fellow, had rigged up a miniature ballistic machine with which he could throw stones into my tent. He would watch us as we were having our meal, adjust his machine to suit the length of our table, and then let fly at us, breaking our pots and glasses.
http://imgur.com/a/DMm19
I want to adress some of the reports:
1. Javelins
Yes, it'll be harder-hitting, the normal damage doubled, and AP damage multiplied by factor of 6 (it was previously miniscule, mind you). Seems it was previously based on the wrong type of vanilla projectile stats.
These strengthened javelins are already in the dev testing version pack.
2. Plate Armour Missile Block Chance.
There's debate on how to apply it - whether we apply all-around stat overhaul or practical adaptation of shield missile block chance. If it only applies to missile attack from the front, would that be satisfactory enough?
3. Melee Cav effectivity
Yes, would be increased. It was found out that the spears used by melee cav did not have bonus vs. cav, and now have been adressed. The bonus amount are about 3/4-1/2 of the normal spear damage, depending on the spear type. Already in dev testing version pack.
Shock cav actually used swords as their melee weapon from the start, its only on their unit's charge stat they have tremendous bonus.
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We also would add in more unit stat info that was previously hidden; like missile block percentage, bonus vs. cav, reload skill, accuracy skill, etc. The problem is the info box can only contain so much (about 10, 12 if forced to go out of the box a bit), so we have to think on which stats should be shown for a particular type of unit.
This may helps to identify balance problems in the future for the regular users, without needing for users to be modding-savvy (opening the database using PFM)
BTW, Ayyubids would get several new units - wait till warman announces them.
Last edited by You_Guess_Who; January 11, 2017 at 10:56 AM.
As for the plate armour missile block you can just give bonus vs missiles in armour tables.
Also the mod does not contain kv_rules or kv_morale so those are loaded from vanilla which can make stuff not as you want them to be as they are not set to rather "authentic" standards.
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Curious, because in DaVE, the bonus vs. missile is just a boolean "true" or "false", which we already set as "true" - but when opened in PFM it doesn't look like its boolean?
Yeah, we need to utilize the _kv tables. Our battle system is still rather rudimentary compared to other more developed battle system mods.
At least in Rome 2 it was working as intended. When I open armour tables with PFM they look exactly like in Rome 2 so it might still work.
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I use mutltiple values. For example 100 bonus meant they were fully protected from ranged fire. Not sure how that is handled in Attila though. Missile block chance is only value for front and left.
Of course if you have properly balanced health values with armours bonus vs ranged damage then even that is not needed as high enough armour rating will make lower damage bows nearly useless against them while same bow will perform well vs unarmoured or light troops. Then of course you need proper scale of said armour value so you won't end up with messed up melee casualties.
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If it only applies to the Front, then that's an improvement. Ideally, it could follow a somewhat gradation of effectiveness, with slightly better stat on the left side.
A distribution of Missile Block Chance on an average soldier with plated defenses.
Reasoning
Ideally, it would be a gradual variation, from front to back. If that's not within range of possibility, then resistance only from the front is still better than the current model.
The front would always have the resilience and would allow the plate to resist a lance strike with the force of a car crash. The left side was often slightly better protected than the right side. The degree to the difference between left and right side can be argued, ranging from minimal to noticeable. If an armour needed a weak point (welding seem, visor perforation, leather buckles and straps, etc.), it was generally placed on the back side or right side of the soldier. The weakest point of a plate armour was generally on the back side of a soldier. At times, the plated soldier had no significant back protection, relying on mail and padding. Not until the early 15th century do we see a gradual shift to a one-piece back-plate for the average Man-at-Arms. Due to how the back of a human is larger and flexible (compared to the front), the back plate was often constructed in minor plates joined together. This made the plate structurally weaker. Coats of Plates/Brigandine on the other hand generally did have plated back protection. Based on these aspects, the image above give suggestion on how to distribute the stats in an ideal manner.
~Wille
Thorolf was thus armed. Then Thorolf became so furious that he cast his shield on his back, and, grasping his halberd with both hands, bounded forward dealing cut and thrust on either side. Men sprang away from him both ways, but he slew many. Thus he cleared the way forward to earl Hring's standard, and then nothing could stop him. He slew the man who bore the earl's standard, and cut down the standard-pole. After that he lunged with his halberd at the earl's breast, driving it right through mail and body, so that it came out at the shoulders; and he lifted him up on the halberd over his head, and planted the butt-end in the ground. There on the weapon the earl breathed out his life in sight of all, both friends and foes. [...] 53, Egil's Saga- The pranks played on the knight Jean de Joinville, 1249, 7th crusade.I must tell you here of some amusing tricks the Comte d'Eu played on us. I had made a sort of house for myself in which my knights and I used to eat, sitting so as to get the light from the door, which, as it happened, faced the Comte d'Eu's quarters. The count, who was a very ingenious fellow, had rigged up a miniature ballistic machine with which he could throw stones into my tent. He would watch us as we were having our meal, adjust his machine to suit the length of our table, and then let fly at us, breaking our pots and glasses.
http://imgur.com/a/DMm19
Missile block chance does not apply to the right or back, it is always zero there. Block chance for front and left use same value.
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No, I was talking specifically about bonus v. missile of unit_armour rather than missile block chance of shields. That's why I talking about boolean, because in both in R2 and Attila shield missile block chance are always percentage.
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Armour scaling is promising, but rather need complete overhaul than what can be done until this month's release time schedule. Maybe next release. That's also need rescaling of melee and missile AP damage as well.
No, that is what I was exactly talking about in that post, armour bonus, not shield block chance. With my scale of armour and ranged damage, when I set that bonus in armour values at 100, it was high enough to make units impervious to ranged damage.
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Whoops, you talked about the base armour value rescaling all this time, and I thought you're talking about the bonuses. Oh well.
Here is my idea so far in terms of armour value. I was thinking of reducing projectile damage for arrows and javelins to a pitiful level, but increase their ammunition and fire rate. Still, do you think this is a good start, or should I exaggerate the armour levels more? I don't want to exaggerate the difference of tiers in armies and keep it realistic, but I don't want a fast and arcade-like play style.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
If you will reduce that damage to pitiful levels and increase ammo it will most likely mean that AI ranged units will not be able to do you any harm as AI will rush you into melee so their ranged units will stop being useful for them after 3-4 volleys and AI will never flank with them while player with increased ammo count will move ranged units around the enemy and use that extra ammo to score huge casualties. Sadly in Attila I don't think you can make AI to engage you in multi staged battles like I did for DeI 1.2, where AI starts with manouvering, then there is a skirmish phase, followed either by another manouvering or attack, while AI will keep formation and hold units in reserves. With that AI, idea with increased ammo and lowered damage could work but with AI rushing, it will just make AI ranged units useless for it. Unless there will be a way to improve BAI enough to force it into multistaged battles.
In DeI 1.0 we had that idea with ranged units but it meant that AI archers would score around 2-10 kills as AI was unable to change a target and if said target was in melee, then the archers would not fire until their line of fire got cleared. Obiously at the same time, player was able to score huge amounts of kills due to changing targets and flanking with ranged units.
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Then for the sake of an interesting multiplayer gameplay, I'll resume with my idea of archers. If the AI is already that dumb with ranged units to begin with, I don't feel the need to change my direction. I'll just hope that somebody will eventually reverse engineer, or create new scripts that make AI decisions more intricate.
You can also make bows and other ranged units slow down attacking enemy so it might prolong the time before AI line clashes with yours.
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Sly, you can't simply "reducing projectile damage for arrows and javelins to a pitiful level". What we should do instead, is rescaling. For Armor, make the armour value between armours more pronounced, or in your own words, more exaggerated.
Its also not just a simple projectile damage reduction - but also rescaling to proper effectiveness against different kind of targets. On how you talk about projectile damage its as if you're not aware that missiles have 2 damage values: normal and AP. Normal damage should be rather unchanged assuming we do not change battle entity HP as well with the armour value, but the AP value should be recalibrated against which kind of armour its effective against, and what its not.
Making Javelins weak but having a lot of ammunition doesn't make any sense either. Javelin are slow compared to arrows and bolts, but they are big and heavy, means it still packs quite a kinetic punch. Also because they're big, an entity would only carry 3-5 tops. Making javelins weak means rendering an entire class of units useless.
Last edited by You_Guess_Who; January 13, 2017 at 06:28 AM.