Taiji's weapon upgrade system explained

[Taiji]

Vanilla's approach doesn't make sense, so here's mine. If you don't yet know anything about EDU and EDB then you will probably need to go find some tutorials. I'm not going to waste our time explaining things that have already been explained.

Firstly here are the building capabilities:

weapon_melee_blade
weapon_melee_simple
weapon_missile_mechanical
weapon_artillery_mechanical

weapon_missile_gunpowder
weapon_artillery_gunpowder

And now here are the weapon technology types:

melee_blade
melee_simple
missile_mechanical
artillery_mechanical

missile_gunpowder
artillery_gunpowder

Note that I separated the gunpowder technology. This is because the gunpowder technology type causes fear on successful attacks. So, without using the gunpowder types, we have 4 distinctions we can make for melee weapon upgrades.

In my mod I define them as Spear, Axe, Sword and Mace. Gunners use missile_gunpowder and all artillery uses artillery_gunpowder. All that's left to do is revise strat.txt so that the names of the tech types reflect the weapons of the units that use them.

To introduce them into the campaign I duplicated the Swordsmith Guild, so now I have Axesmith, Macesmith and Spearsmith Guilds too. It's a nice but unnecessary touch, the system is my coding and really nothing to do with making new buildings. Another example of using this system might be to have a distinction between high, medium and low quality weapons, or something like that. The important thing to focus on is the mechanic the system creates, not the specific way I used it.

So the only problem I still have in my system, with missile units being upgraded according to their missile weapon (the vanilla nonsense), is with gunners. And the benefit is a more detailed upgrade mechanic = Better gameplay.



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Please feel free to ask questions

[Úlfhéðinn]

Good work on specifying what weapon type the different guilds will upgrade.
One question though: Earlier tests have shown that weapon upgrade provides, not the +1 bonus to attack as shown in-game on the unit card, but actually an approximate +6 bonus based on the unit's effectiveness in a series of tests.
This is the reason most major mods have removed the possibility of upgrading weapons as a +6 bonus would be overpowering.
It's the same with armor upgrades, instead of the obvious +1 bonus in armor as seen in the unit card, tests has shown that it provides an approximate +2,0/2,5 bonus in armor.

My question is do you know how to alter the hardcoded actual weapon and armor bonus? Or are you satisfied with the +6 bonus in attack-rating since you have narrowed down the weapon types upgraded?

[Taiji]

The bonus is +1 attack, or around that, it's obvious if you test it.

[Úlfhéðinn]

No longer needed. Bad information, reportedly from CA, had led me to create this mod. Since through testing it turns out the weapon upgrade is only worth around +1 to +2 attack it does not upset balance.

Giving me this link would have saved me the trouble of figuring out how you reached your conclusion
I've been away from modding almost a year and when I left it was commonly agreed that weapon upgrades gave a +6 bonus and should be removed.

Anyways, great news! I can use weapon upgrades again

[Taiji]

You're welcome

[Taiji]

Revised the guide to make it clearer.

[Úlfhéðinn]

When using all 4 categories on specific melee weapons, what do you categorize bow-, halberd-, etc units?
Is there a way in M2TW to get several weapon upgrades?

[Taiji]

I use axe, sword, spear and mace. Pikes and lances fall into spear, halberds into axe.
If you refer to the system as it was in RTW then no, that seems impossible.

[Úlfhéðinn]

Thanks, that makes sense and was actually what I was thinking about too.
+rep
To make the upgrade system more realistic, I was thinking og not calling the upgrades new weapons, but rather new skills taught by a weaponmaster of sorts. Like: "A master of the sword comes to the settlement, offering to teach its warriors the ways of the sword few others master". So not really experience but new skills.

[Taiji]

I like your idea regarding skills/weapon upgrades. I think it would be a nicer idea if we could have more than 1 upgrade. 10 levels of experience and 2 levels of skill doesn't make much sense to me. And it would mean not using the feature whereby weapon models change (by editing the soldier models). Still a cool idea though, thanks for sharing it.