Suggest of 'Real Combat' in SS7.0

[vadar0503]

Hello, I am an old SS player from Hong Kong.

OK....I will talk about the cavalry charge
In SS6.4, when the heavy cavalry charges towards a light infantry, it can only penetrate 2-3 layers of soldiers. According to The LORD OF THE RINGS, cavalry charge should not be stopped so easily. At least, when a horse running at full speed crashes on a guy, the victim should bounces back 2-3 meters.
After checking descr_mount and EDU, i found some troubles:

In reality, a pony in warfare weights 375kg (from wiki), while for a human in modern world he should weights 66.5kg, so the ratio between them should be 375 / 66.5 = 5.64
In vanilla, all infantries has a mass 1.0. In SS6.4 EDU, I take 'longbowmen' as reference because it has no armour , no shield or heavy weight weapon, longbowmen weigh 0.7 while in descr_mount, fast pony has a mass 1.75, due to the ratio of 5.64, the mass of a pony should be 0.7x5.64 = 3.95. As fast pony has the least weight among other horses, I take it as the lowest reference point, just like taking the temperature of ice melting as 0 degree Celsius. How about the highest reference point or the temperature of steam forming? 'Frensh armored horse will do this job:

In descr_mount, french armored horse weights 4.5. A heaviest medium horse in warfare in medieval age weights 590KG, with heaviest gothic plate barding (41KG), the weight of armored horse should be 631kg, using simple mathimatics: 631 / 66.5 = X / 0.7, X = 6.64m which is the mass of french armored horse in descr_mount. For the other horses, their weight can be calculated by ratio with this formula:

new weight in d_mount = 3.95 + [ (old weight - 1.75)/(4.5-1.75) ] * (6.64-3.95)
take early heavy horse as example, its new weight would be 5.24. After testing in game, I found the result is quite acceptable and realistic, french Lancers can nearly penetrate the longbowmen troop and only a few of them being bounced up to the sky. While it is charging towards full plate armor infantry like Templar Guard, no victims 'fly' to the sky and only 1-2 layers can be penetrated.

This is one of the approach, the second approach is by multiplying a factor. As the new mass of fast pony is 3.95 and the old value is 1.75, 3.95/1.75 = 2.26, and I simply multiply 4.5 (mass of french armored horse) by 2.26, and the new value would be 10.17, but I afraid it will be too 'heavy'.....

[vadar0503]

2. move_speed_mod of cavalry in EDU
I think the speed of horses are too slow, even it is a fast pony! A running infantry troop can catch the cavalry easily, especially the armored horse. It can be easily seen that Gothic Knights have to run far far away in order to conduct another charge, otherwise the infantry troop can kiss their ass when the knight are turning direction. move_speed_mod 1.15-1.2 would be much better.

3. power of archers and power of full plate armor
Once again, I use longbowmen to shoot at Scots_Pike_Militia, who has no any armor, at very close distance in order to eliminate the chance of inaccuracy. It is funny to find that even though the Scots_Pike_Militia only wears clothes, only 15-19 soldiers die in every shoot, however the a longbowmen team has 152 soldiers, how come 152 arrows being shoot at same time only causes 15-19 deaths? Ironically, when the longbowmen shoot at Lancers, 1-2 Lancer can die. According to Battle of Agincourt and Forbidden, the longbowmen cannot kill any cavalry or pikemen who are full plate armored, only 3 cavalries died because they charged on the wood pole, not by arrows. Arrows can give harm to chain mailed armor effectively, however, in SS6.4, it cannot be reflected.....only a few dismounted feudal knights dies under arrows. From my point of view, the solution is to raise the attack of archers and raise the armor value of troops in plate armor.

[Chivalry]

3. power of archers and power of full plate armor
Once again, I use longbowmen to shoot at Scots_Pike_Militia, who has no any armor, at very close distance in order to eliminate the chance of inaccuracy. It is funny to find that even though the Scots_Pike_Militia only wears clothes, only 15-19 soldiers die in every shoot, however the a longbowmen team has 152 soldiers, how come 152 arrows being shoot at same time only causes 15-19 deaths? Ironically, when the longbowmen shoot at Lancers, 1-2 Lancer can die. According to Battle of Agincourt and Forbidden, the longbowmen cannot kill any cavalry or pikemen who are full plate armored, only 3 cavalries died because they charged on the wood pole, not by arrows. Arrows can give harm to chain mailed armor effectively, however, in SS6.4, it cannot be reflected.....only a few dismounted feudal knights dies under arrows. From my point of view, the solution is to raise the attack of archers and raise the armor value of troops in plate armor.

Maybe they can increase the "armor value" of all armours and add penalty to defence skill for heavier ones because having heavier armor means it's harder to make maneuver to defend yourself.

[PT_ReVoLuTioN]

Yeah the results seem pretty acceptable indeed even though i didn't test them XD SS team should look into it

[Chazz1225]

I can agree whole-heartedly with this, if the SS devs take these factors into account, it'll add a whole lot more realism to the battles.

[Andytheplatypus]

It doesnt work that way. You sure put a lot of time into that but real world statistics do not work when plugged into m2tw. Not forgetting that cavalry charges are already over powered. Plus you used lord of the rings as a historical basis?

[vadar0503]

Yup, I know what you mean. As we do not have any video tape about cavalry charges in medieval age, we can only imagine it ourselves or by movie...
You can see that I approach it by using scale or ratio, surly we cannot know the exact value in M2TW to reflect the reality, however we can still know the deference or relationship. Assume the ratio between horse weight and human weight is true, this ratio should be applicable to M2TW once we have defined a referencing point in M2TW (here I use longbowmen: 0.7). In fact, no one can sure 0.7 / 0.8 or even 1.5 is appropriate.......Just like degree Kelvin +273 = degree celsius, the relationship (+273) is true, with one variable, we can find the others.....
If the mass difference in M2TW is not a linear relationship,, I have nothing more to say, haha

In order to eliminate the advantage of charging, I simply double click the cavalry behind the infantry, so that the cavalry only run towards and try to pass through the infantry, without using the lance/spear.....even through the horse runs fast, it can still stops by human body! The infantry just like rocks laying on the ground and cannot be pushed by the running horse.....

[Gigan]

"average man of modern world weighs 66.5 kg" thats like 145 pounds LOL more like average man weighs 190 lbs of lard

[Chazz1225]

Humans were smaller back then, take William Wallace for example, he was credited of being a large man of over 6 foot, back then being over 7 foot was very rare for us humans.

[k/t]

"Yeah the results seem pretty acceptable indeed even though i didn't test them XD SS team should look into it"

Why don't YOU look into it? You want to help the mod? Do some research. It's easy to snap your fingers and say "someone do it".

"As we do not have any video tape about cavalry charges in medieval age, we can only imagine it ourselves or by movie..."

Yeah...by movie...great idea... [slow, measured clapping]
By "imagination" is what the first guy said...cause it's easier than testing.

"It doesnt work that way. You sure put a lot of time into that but real world statistics do not work when plugged into m2tw. Not forgetting that cavalry charges are already over powered."

Exactly. The real world is fine and good (except for Africa and parts of Asia and South America), but you have to consider the engine limitations.

"Arrows can give harm to chain mailed armor effectively"

No, they can't.

What is the Battle of Forbidden?

Take a look at the Real Combat 2.0 manual uploaded by Point Blank in the RR/RC subforum.

[Ichon]

Not quite sure I understand this... you want cavalry to be even more powerful?

Yes it is true a horses can outrun men over short-medium distance but horses don't gallop constantly around the battlefield either as they would be exhausted. Unfortunately we can't have 3 speeds (walk, canter/trot, gallop) using different rates of stamina. Current speeds are portrayed as a canter which most horses would be moving at to cover ground without burning to much energy. Also charge would most often be conducted at canter or slower than a gallop which would endanger the horse on impact.

I am not sure what you are talking about running infantry can catch fast pony, even Scholari with the slowest speed of any cavalry can outrun running infantry. When the scholari are exhausted vs fresh infantry the speed is nearly identical but not slower.

As for mass- that is more open question, I don't know how MTW2 engine calculates the mass but I doubt it is physically accurate representation. Far as I understand it increasing mass would not directly cause more kills in a charge but because most cavalry attack to the sides not to the front, disrupting enemy formation would put more cavalry in striking distance with the bonus of the shock and kill infantry even more quickly. That doesn't seem balanced to me where now infantry already die extremely rapidly and a few men in a good charge fly backwards through the air.

If you look around for videos online or grew up around horses a single horse moving quickly can certainly bump 1 man or a couple ranks backwards pretty good. I've been knocked back about 4 meters by a horse not even moving full speed, however that was a direct push into my body- glancing blow would often not even knock someone off their feet. There are some video out of galloping horse hitting a person and in every video I have seen the horse falls down as well and often both the horse and person hit sustain serious injuries. Cantering or horse moving much slower than a gallop can keep its feet as the change in acceleration is much less when going 15mph vs 30mph and hitting something. The same effect applies to multiple ranks of men- the energy of acceleration and inertia mean a horse massed 3x the man will barely notice the first impact but there is a small slowing down, 2nd rank again slower, 3rd rank the speed is now enough slower that the man might not even be knocked back more than a step or so. Lances would add to penetration of a charge by absorbing some of the initial impact in the first 2 ranks and so a horse might penetrate a formation of men even a rank or 2 deeper. In lower trained/morale men most likely the 4th and beyond ranks would momentarily be cowed having seen the first 3-4 ranks knocked down/lanced and not react immediately allowing cavalry to disengage. If the infantry formation was only 6 ranks deep the cavalry might even be able to push past the final 2 ranks more easily than turning but MTW2 engine doesn't really allow that very well. Well trained and high morale men would respond instantly and often dodge just enough that fewer are knocked down immediately or manage to catch the lance on their shield etc and start counter attack as soon as cavalry is in range. In that case the cavalry is going to take some heavy losses in turning around unless it is well armored.

Horses would not send a person flying up and through the air which would require lift of some sort, but knocking men down is quite realistic as you point out the mass difference should have a real effect. Personally I feel comfortable where it is but people are free to mod EDU themselves if they prefer to see men unrealistically knocked soaring upwards after a charge. As it is now men are bowled over and sometimes a couple in the front rank are knocked up into the air, unrealistically but given the engine lowering mass much more from current settings would also have other negative effects from what I have seen as going too far from 1 causes the engine to behave strange in some impacts and in pushing match in melee crowds.

As for your test of horse unable to push through man when clicking to run behind- that seems more an artifact of pathfinding issue and unit formation cohesion than mass. You can see the larger mass of units easily is different at gates or melee in streets during a siege. Horses can push lighter units back just as heavier infantry can also push lighter infantry backwards but cavalry have the heaviest masses though some heavy infantry are also fairly high compared to other infantry.

[k/t]

Horses were smaller too, no?

People over 2.1 metres are still very rare.

[Sar1n]

Well, I'd just like to point out that weight calculation, at least for humans, is wrong. You are not considering his equipment weight, even unarmored he has helmet, bow, arrows, clothing and secondary weapon, so he's probably somewhere between 70-80 kg.

It's a simplification, but I'd go with 0.01 weight=1 kg.

[k/t]

In the EDU or somewhere it says that the masses appear to be in kg already, so mass 1 means 100 kg.

Unarmoured men have mass 0.7, leather armour = 0.8, light mail = 0.9, heavy mail = 1, heavy lamellar = 1.1, then big shields add 0.1 and pavises add 0.15. Those are the RC numbers.

[Andytheplatypus]

I set all my infantry mass as 1.5 to counter act problems with missile cavalry charges