Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Armour. The more advanced your armour tech and the more resources you put into it, the worse it is. Ok, a little hyperbolic, but this is a pretty well known issue in dom3, which is best represented by the longtime red headed stepchild of dom3, MA Ulm.

The fact of the matter is, the cons outweigh the pros when talking about any armour over medium on infantry.

I could go into great detail here, but since I think you know all of this already, I'll just list the cons without exploring just how bad or good they are.

Cons

High enc
Def penalty
High res cost
Low mapmove

Now to me, three of these same pretty fair in dom3, because they don't erode the point of having the armour in the first place. They make medium, light and heavy infantry very different. But one of them, I'm sure you know which one, makes all that prot kinda pointless. I'm not saying it should be removed entirely as a factor, but right now it is waaaay too bad a con.

So what's the answer? Reduce enc across the board? Well yeah, that isn't a bad idea. Compress the enc difference between armours? Ah yes, that's the ticket. So that's what this mod will do. No messing with units, no tinkering with anything but basegame armour enc values, at least at first.

I'm now going to delve into edi's DB and see what I can see. But my gut feeling is that all (non forged) armour should range from 0 enc to 3 enc and no higher.


Now a disclaimer: I don't care about 'historical accuracy' or 'physical properties of blah blah' or any kind of realism. What I care about is game balance which promotes variety. I'm modifying the world which Illwinter created, so I'm sticking to the basic tech advance set by Illwinter, but compressing the enc values. That said, my starting point is the armour in CBM1.6, where some sensible changes have already been made.

The tech levels:

Leather
Ring
Scale
Chain
Plate
Blacksteel
Other stuff

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Will this include adjusting shield enc?

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I think shields are a lesser problem, because the enc is lower in general and because they generally do provide a pro to match the con. I mean tower shields are enc 2 but they're also a really nice thing to have available to recruit. Can't say the same about a unit in full chain mail (enc 5).

But I could move the enc in certain cases.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I attach my first workings in spreadsheet format. Please do have a look and critique.

Basically it works like this:

Light Armour = 0 enc and has prot below 10
Medium Light = 1 enc and has prot 10-13
Medium Heavy = 2 enc and has prot 14-17
Heavy Armour = 3 enc and has prot 18+
Stone Armour = 4+ enc

I also plan to change the hoplite helm to 0 enc, in line with every other helm in the game (other than the crown of might).

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Okay I had a quick look. Reasonable. I'll tell you more tomorrow. But on a quick glance it looks like the required resources are also out of wack. They should have some relation to the difficulty of production.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Truly this sounds beautiful. I can't wait to mess around with nations like Oceania and Atlantis and Abysia to see how much more viable their heavy armor units are. I can't wait to try Centaur Cataphracts now, too. I also like the idea of making the light forgeable armors 0-enc so people are more inclined to use them.

Are you going to lower heavy cavalry encumbrance accordingly as well? Also, I sorta want to hear your thoughts on why especially Heavy Samurai Armor goes to 3 enc instead of 2.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I was planning on changing some cavalry enc, yes, probably to an enc 3 - 5 range.

Heavy Samurai Armour is a bit of a borderline case. It's at 17 prot with a -3 to def, exactly the same as Plate Hauberk (a really bad piece of armour on a foot troop) but at a much lower res cost.

I chose to put Plate Hauberk in Medium Heavy because:

a) plate is high tech and full plate is definitely the heavy one in that group
b) the high resource cost needs an offset
c) prot 17 is borderline of MH/H

So why is Heavy Samurai Armor in Heavy then, with 3 enc?

a) 'Japanese' armour in dom3 seems to be from a lower tech than the Plate series, similar to "Bronze Hauberk" which offers 17 prot but is still in the Heavy category, rather than MH
b) To differentiate it more from Samurai Armour, which at prot 14 def -2 is definitely Medium Heavy
c) Because CBM gave it a resource cost of 12, compared with plate hauberk's 20

I think it's very arguable and I would be happy with it at either 2 enc or 3 enc.

I'm also starting to think I should expand this mod somewhat to encompass changes to prot (though very minor ones) and the def malus too. I have absolutely nothing against heavy armour causing some serious def malus - to me this makes way more sense than it causing your guys to gas out and collapse after three swings. For one thing when you're wearing heavy armour you have much less reason to worry about def, dodging or parrying enemy attacks. It makes sense that you would trust your armour to deal with the minor spear jabs and the like, far more than a guy with no armour on at all, or just a ringmail cuirass.

So I'm currently thinking:

Cuirass/breastplate = -1 def
Hauberk = -2 def
Full body = -3 def

With big weight differences adding to or taking away from that malus. So while full chain mail is now at enc 2 (MH) I think it would be either def -3 (as it currently is) or def -4.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I may be wrong but under cbm at least most nations tend to be balanced now. While this mod goes in the right direction, it clearly makes life harder on those light armoured nations.

To even things out, couldn't you trade fatigue for defence? I mean less enc is ok but you'd also get a defence malus.

Heavy units under this mod would not collapse so soon and still be able to attack efficiently but not become invulnerable tanks.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Kheldron: You are definitely wrong. Compare CBM1.6 MA Ulm with MA Pythium. MA Agartha with MA Ashdod. But that's besides the point. This mod isn't designed to deal with major imbalance like that. The point is to make heavy armour less craptacular, so the pros might actually weigh up to the cons.

Units with heavier armour aren't going to be invulnerable tanks.

Let's take a unit with seriously heavy armour. MA Ulm blacksteel infantry with tower shield. In basegame he has enc of 7 (3 base, 4 plate, 2 shield). With this mod, he has an enc of 6. It helps, it's true, which is good because considering the cost of the unit in resources, it sucks. But does it make it invulnerable? Not even close.

Heavy infantry is still going to be beatable by tiring them out. Even if they had armour and shield enc of 0, this would still be true, because they'd have the base 3 enc and they'd represent a higher cost than the chaffy units they're up against. Remember that this heavy armour isn't coming for free - it has to be paid for. 90% of the time, in current dom3, people are choosing to not pay for it. Medium armour, yeah, sometimes. Shields? Sure. But heavy infantry? Only very rarely, when they are expected to die before fatigue really comes into play, and people want them to absorb as much fire as possible before that happens.

Regarding def malus - heavy armour already has it. I will tweak it in some cases, but a big part of this mod is flat out boosting it, because currently it just isn't a smart thing to have. I mean you have to pay resources for something which is /worse/ in many cases.

Is this going to make things worse for the lightly armoured nations? I don't think so. For one thing a lot of lighter armour is also dropping enc, just less overall. But more importantly, heavy infantry wasn't actually a real advantage to nations that had it before - they were avoiding it and getting the medium or light troops, or cavalry. Really all that this will do is diversify the stuff lighter nations will be dealing with, rather than handing everyone else a new superweapon.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

If you are seriously considering technical skill, then higher end heavy armour is both lighter and more mobile. I know you don't want to debate realism, but that's not my point. You could give benefit to say Ulm that the advantage of black steel is higher strength to mass ratio and much better joint design. Which is both historically and scientifically accurate. Additionally later tech armour had small geometry changes like boat hull shaped breast plates that vastly improved effective protection.

My preference with samurai armour would be to improve the defence malus and maybe even drop protection a bit. It wasn't light, but it was very mobile. However, coverage was quite uneven.

It seems to me that Dom3 is equating armour mobility to defence, mass to encumbrance, and amount of armour to protection.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I agree with that last point. It would be interesting to do something more meaningful with armour than have it all like this.

Light = low prot, 1 enc, -1 def
Medium = medium prot, 2 enc, -2 def
Heavy = high prot, 3 enc, -3 def

There could be armour which is fairly encumbering, but doesn't restrict mobility that much. However I think armours like this should be a relatively special case and the basic symmetry between enc and def should be maintained, most of the time. It might not be 'realistic' but it is intuitive.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

That's why I mentioned the two special cases of samurai and blacksteel. Both seem potentials for special cases.

I agree with the basic symmetry. It's pretty valid for nearly all cases and both realistic and intuitive. Most heavy armour is just plain heavy. You are including quite a bit of realism. From experience, putting on more armour (ie more mass and protection) both tires and reduces mobility. It also reduces vision which is pretty critical to defence.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I was thinking the same thing about the Samurai armor, and given that you're accepting the lower resource cost from CBM there's no real way to make it lower encumbrance. Unfortunately, that makes Samurai Armor inferior to the Bronze Cuirass and Heavy Samurai Armor inferior to Bronze Hauberks, which sounds just wonky.

Full Chain Mail: 17 res, 17 prot, -3 def, 2 enc
Plate Hauberk: 20 res, 17 prot, -3 def, 2 enc
Bronze Hauberk: 18 res, 17 prot, -2 def, 3 enc
Meteorite Armor: 25 res, 17 prot, -2 def, 3 enc (plus ~3 MR to units that get it)
Heavy Samurai: 12 res, 17 prot, -3 def, 3 enc

Those numbers seem a bit...off, just from a 'which armors are supposed to be better' standpoint. Full Chain Mail is used by almost exclusively Knights and Ulmish infantry(also Wardens, Agarthan Heavy Inf and Asherite soldiers), whereas the Plate Hauberk is the 'standard' heavy armor for infantry. Bronze Hauberks are almost exclusively for Myrmidons(both from Arcosephale and Oceania) and Gadite Swordsmen.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Point made.

That sounds quite intuitive.
btw, will you change values for magical armors as well as ordinary? How would you treat monolith and such?

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Holy crap! I just joined cripple fight. Fix Atlantis encumbrance PLEASE!!!!! I thought Ulm was bad.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I'll put together the mod file today.

I will be tweaking a couple of prot values. I think heavy samurai armour will get a little bit lower prot, enc 2 and less def penalty. I like the idea of samurai keeping reasonable def, since they don't have shields.

So samurai armours will be unusually light on def penalties. And I'll make some stuff like full chain a bit higher on def penalties.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I love the idea of samurai armor being light on the def penalties. Jomon's troops are unusually high on defense baseline but their armor negates this so you don't really notice. It'd be nice to make that high defense(and the nice defense on the katana) actually visible/meaningful.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I done made the mod, dawgs, just testifying it.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Testify!

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

PRAISE HIM!

-seizures-

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Is Sombre banned or why is it showing banned below his name ? I wanted to PM him.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

He's been permanently banned. He was given an infraction for being flaming and abusive in another thread and he made it clear in no uncertain terms to two different moderators that he could not care less and that he essentially had no intention of either heeding warnings or refrain from behavior that violates the board terms of service unless he feels like it.

Given his contributions to the board and the community in the past, he was not banned outright but the issue was forwarded to the administrators. The decision to permanently ban him came from them.

We aren't pleased that things turned out this way, but it did, to everyone's loss.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Well that is really a loss. According to my general impression he didnt seem outright friendly, but it didnt appear to be all hostile as well. thanks for answering.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

I will continue this mod, but:
Continue= i will work on it, do not expect this to be finished soon, it will be very similar to the excel sheet sombre released, i will not touch rcost unless someone point it out
Of course, i will give up if someone else want to work on it.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

That's the worst news since I joined the fora. Sombre is clearly one of the top 5 contributors to Dom3.

Sure he's got a bit of a mouth sometimes, but on the other hand he's always helpful and answers a lot of questions. It's not like he's really been mean to anyone, just a bit impolite.

Permanent ban seems extremely harsh, why not just mute him for a month or so. Or a 3 month ban or something.

I mean, shrapnel is even indirectly making money on his mod nations. They're so good they could just as well be an official expansion pack.

I'm really really disappointed, bad bad moderators.:mad:

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Good effing job Shrapnel.

good to know that the moderators are looking out for us and banning the jerks who make this forum worse and add nothing to the community. mod nations, who needs em? helpful, if mouthy, members? screw them. we really only need moderators. then they can ban each other.

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

To hopefully allow this thread to get back on track, here's two divergent threads... one for reinstating Sombre:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45498

and my own to get ideas about how people feel about the "realism" of armor in Dom3, since Sombre requested that we not discuss that here:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45500

Moving along...

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Just forget what i said baout "i will continue this mod", i just discovered i do not have the time

Re: Mod plan: Revising the armour of dom3
 

Version 0.1 released. My testing with MA Ulm and MA Pan say YES!