Recruitable Unit Rebalance Version 7.51 Released.

[BigDaddy]

I couldn't find anything about historic ranges for heavy crossbows. They where never widely employed, and because of targeting issues (they had no scopes after all) the range of the other weapons was really already adequate.

I assume they fire somewhat farther, but likely not alot. The short draw lenght would still really limit any medieval x-bow.

[Endoperez]

One thing that would really help would be adjusting long/short distance accuracy. At the moment, crossbows can only be accurate or not accurate, while being accurate in short range but fastly becoming less accurate when the range increases would seem to work well for them. Longbows might be less accurate, but wouldn't suffer as badly from increased distance, because they are fired in an arc(ballistically?) anyway.

[Alneyan]

On a slightly unrelated topic, for Saber Cherry: I was considering hosting a game with limited research, as there were a few players who expressed an interest in "not being able to go beyond level 4 in research", as in the demo. Your null mod would be very useful for the purpose (though there remains the matter of magic items).

Such a game would really be better with a unit-balancing mod like yours, however. Do you believe your mod is ready enough for this kind of setup, or that it would benefit from this sort of test field, or should I wait for the results of the current "uncontrolled lab experiments"? (That is, the MP game using the mod)

[Sandman]

Gygjas are a bit of a lottery, compared to the Utgard witches, but they have loads of hitpoints, and are also cold-immune, so you'll have fewer flukey mage deaths, which in turn makes mage-booster items a more reliable investment. Gygjas also have lower encumbrance, stategic move 2 and forest survival.

With their toughness in mind, I'd mainly use them on the battlefield, laden with items, casting whatever suits their magic picks. Exceptions to this would be a blood-3 gygja who might as well stay at home doing blood stuff and astral gygjas if there was a magic duel danger. When not fighting, they'd be forging items or casting spells the vaetti hags couldn't.

As a final note, I always seem to recruit Gygjas in pairs, so they can cover each other's weaknesses.

[Endoperez]

Alneyan - A series of mods that remove spells over levels like 4 has been made, but I don't know where you could get it. It was announced on the forum, so Arryn or someone might have it, though.

[Arryn]

Endoperez said:
Alneyan - A series of mods that remove spells over levels like 4 has been made, but I don't know where you could get it. It was announced on the forum, so Arryn or someone might have it, though.

From what I recall, someone mentioned the feasibility of doing such a mod, but AFAIK, it's not been released. Or if someone actually went through with making it, I never saw a thread where it was made available. Else I'd be hosting it as I do so many other files.

[Saber Cherry]

Arryn said:

From what I recall, someone mentioned the feasibility of doing such a mod, but AFAIK, it's not been released. Or if someone actually went through with making it, I never saw a thread where it was made available. Else I'd be hosting it as I do so many other files.

Haha, I've got one =) I made it for use with the Recruitable Rebalance Test Game, but it uses an older version of Daesthai's Spell Tome (1.15) and thus some of the spells were slightly off (a couple site-search spells had incorrect costs, and a couple spells were the wrong level, and a couple of names were mispelled). So it's good that you're not hosting it because it still has a few errors, though they have not affected the game at all.

Alneyan said:
On a slightly unrelated topic, for Saber Cherry: I was considering hosting a game with limited research, as there were a few players who expressed an interest in "not being able to go beyond level 4 in research", as in the demo. Your null mod would be very useful for the purpose (though there remains the matter of magic items).

Since the Recruitable Rebalance game started, Daesthai has released a new Tome revision, and I've examined every spell in the Tome and compared them to the in-game spellbook, so if there are any errors, they have escaped both Daesthai and myself (and some other people who looked at the Tome). I strongly doubt there are any major errors, or more than 1-2 trivial errors. That data is the basis for the current Magic Null Mod.

I set up an excel file to easily generate mods based on certain parameters... but unfortunately, it only affects spells, not magical artifacts Still, if you give me some rules (like "No spells whatsoever above level 4" or "all spells over level 4 should cost double, and all spells over level 5 should cost triple" or "all blood summons should cost at least 100 slaves" or "all Death-gem summons should be disabled" or "No evocation over level 5") I'll be happy to generate a mod to the specifications. It will take way less time than manually editing every spell in the "null mod," as long as the rules are very general like the examples I gave.

Such a game would really be better with a unit-balancing mod like yours, however. Do you believe your mod is ready enough for this kind of setup, or that it would benefit from this sort of test field, or should I wait for the results of the current "uncontrolled lab experiments"? (That is, the MP game using the mod)

In my opinion, version 7.31 is ready to roll . Boron noted a bug (I intended and claimed to give Jaguar Warriors regeneration, but they do not, in fact, regenerate), which is the only known outstanding issue, and I'll fix it before you start the game. Otherwise... everything seems fine. There will be changes in version 8.0, of course (especially based on the archery thread), but 7.31 does not seem to have any exploits, unbalance any units, or contain any bugs (other than the one I mentioned). So if your group wants to play with it, then please do so! And yes, BTW, it would benefit from this sort of field test, especially since not all nations and themes (notably Ermor, Ryleh, Atlantis, Ctis, and Mictlan) are present in the current test game. No pressure, of course, I'm just very enthusiastic

[Alneyan]

Well, I will likely start that game soon then. If the spell reduction is something like "no spells above level 4", it will be easy enough to do on my own (find #researchlevel 5, replace all with #researchlevel 12, wash, rinse, repeat). Other, harder changes would be interesting too: maybe something like "double cost to all spells", for another kind of game... Hmm.

Now to the big one: compiling all item names on level 6 and 8.

[wombatsSAR]

Endoperez said:
One thing that would really help would be adjusting long/short distance accuracy. At the moment, crossbows can only be accurate or not accurate, while being accurate in short range but fastly becoming less accurate when the range increases would seem to work well for them. Longbows might be less accurate, but wouldn't suffer as badly from increased distance, because they are fired in an arc(ballistically?) anyway.

Where does this idea come from? I'm really puzzled by it. Given that the quarrel was an aerodynamically efficient projectile, it's going to have better ballistic characteristics than an arrow. The only reason I see "sniping" being a common usage for a crossbow would be the slow rate of fire - if you can't shoot often, try to make each shot count.

[wombatsSAR]

BigDaddy said:
I couldn't find anything about historic ranges for heavy crossbows. They where never widely employed, and because of targeting issues (they had no scopes after all) the range of the other weapons was really already adequate.

I don't understand why a crossbow suddenly needs a scope to fire at distant targets. The quarrel arcs out into the air, just an arrow, just as bullet. As for ranges, Payne-Gallway has fired one to 400 m. This matches up with the known draw weight and aerodynamic efficiency of the quarrel. If you would like, I can repost the literature references so you can peer at them yourself.

I assume they fire somewhat farther, but likely not alot. The short draw lenght would still really limit any medieval x-bow.

The short draw length is only relavent in considering quarrel design and the rate of fire. Once the bolt is accellerated to its 60+ m/s, it doesn't matter. The fact that the old designs did this in such a short span meant that the quarrel had to be particularly stout. The rate of fire issue is related because an efficient bow means that it can have a lower draw weight for a given effective power and can therefore be recocked faster. A man can only put out so much work in a given period of time.