Optional RCM for TLD project

[Ron Losey]

Yeah, I didn't change names of any equipment in RCM for Native, or TLD optional.  Fujiwara handles names in ONR.  We did put "arbalest" into Mesoamerica.  If we put any larger crossbows into that fictional-setting mess we're building - "Cult of the Big Lizard" , in the suggestions thread under "the mod of mods" - I'll be sure to clean up the names there.

That's a pretty much fixed name policy.  I don't really want the Native names changed around so much that people can't see what I did.  It was put there as a developers' tool, after all.

And it's possible I got anything in the RCM-native .zip file.  I did those fast.  After we're sure there won't be another version for a few weeks, I'll get a final version on the Repository (Fujiwara always uploads them for me, he has upload access there), and I'll make sure it's good.

I've considered doing some mini-mod kinds of stuff that would take Native and clean up the worst imbalances - balance all the troops and such to a single tech level and make weapons match armor (maybe several versions, each at different tech levels), clean up names, stuff like that - but I never get back to it because there are usually more quality productions that could use the attention.

And don't laugh about the "Sniper Crossbow" ... In China, several units of the PLA special forces, and sometimes the People's Armed Police, DO in fact use sniper crossbows for stealth operations.  They're getting similar range and accuracy to silenced subsonic rounds for rifles, slightly better stopping power against humans and a lot better penetration of ballistic cloth armors.  Of course, you only get one shot, so they have to double up on targets in case somebody misses ... but that's true of bolt-action rifles as well (and automatic rifles have crummy accuracy no matter what you do with them).

[Demonic Spoon]

Alright. I'm not sure if I screwed up somewhere, or that Native RCM version is just buggy.

I extracted the new module.ini and the other file to my Native directory...and there's a whole lot of screwed up stuff. Troops wearing dresses, farmers with mail gloves, and river pirates with some very strange equipment (forget the exact name) and more.

[fujiwara]

extracted the new module.ini and the other file to my Native directory...and there's a whole lot of screwed up stuff. Troops wearing dresses, farmers with mail gloves, and river pirates with some very strange equipment (forget the exact name) and more.

Sounds like an index shifted somewhere, but I don't see it on mine.

[Ron Losey]

Alright. I'm not sure if I screwed up somewhere, or that Native RCM version is just buggy.

I extracted the new module.ini and the other file to my Native directory...and there's a whole lot of screwed up stuff. Troops wearing dresses, farmers with mail gloves, and river pirates with some very strange equipment (forget the exact name) and more.

That's the .890 troops file.  Upgrade to .892 first, and that will clean up.

[Demonic Spoon]

Erm...

I do have .892

[Ron Losey]

Erm...

I do have .892

Odd ... since the only time I got what you describe was when I accidentally dropped the .891/.892 item.txt file into my old M&B .890 directory.  Then, I got exactly what you describe - river pirates wearing noble outfits and armed with greatswords, obviously male merchants wearing dresses.

Re-install everything and try again.

[mtarini]

I'm asking this general question here because I assume Ron (an ideal answerer for this) will read it here sooner:

Q: in fantasy depictions, blades with "teeth" (like a saw) are not unheard of, especially for for evil fellas. I got the explanation about the sword slashes working like knife cuts in kitchens (pressure + lateral motion); OTOH, to cut a few rigid stuff (like hard-crusted bread, or a tree), teethed tools are normally preferred. So I wonder: it is just in the fantasy worlds that you have swords of that kind. Wikipedia did not answer to this (at least, I did not make it). Forgive me if the answer is totally obvious. If plausible, what about giving orks the occasional teethed blades?

[Ron Losey]

I'm asking this general question here because I assume Ron (an ideal answerer for this) will read it here sooner:

Q: in fantasy depictions, blades with "teeth" (like a saw) are not unheard of, especially for for evil fellas. I got the explanation about the sword slashes working like knife cuts in kitchens (pressure + lateral motion); OTOH, to cut a few rigid stuff (like hard-crusted bread, or a tree), teethed tools are normally preferred. So I wonder: it is just in the fantasy worlds that you have swords of that kind. Wikipedia did not answer to this (at least, I did not make it). Forgive me if the answer is totally obvious. If plausible, what about giving orks the occasional teethed blades?

Two answers to that question:

One, I don't design the weapons for TLD.  Blades with teeth would be a question of concept art, and should be sent over to Merlkir in the "concept art" thread.

Two, yes, serrated and serpentine cutting edges have been used for a very long time.  However, there is still great debate on their usefulness.  Without making a major study of it, I'll try to summarize the principal points of the debate:

* serrated blades cut better in a long slice against many materials.  (See bread knives and wood saws.)

* serrated blades don't make hacking attacks worth a dime.  The teeth hang in meat or bone and the blade stops.  (Why you never see serrated butcher's cleavers.  They won't work.)

* Serrated edges leave a rough cut, which causes much less bleeding than a clean incision.  (A big deal with modern arrowheads of late.)  Blood is much more likely to clot around the wound.

* Serrated edges are harder to make and make well.  They must withstand increased pressure on the tips of the teeth, greatly increasing the chance of the blade chipping against armor.

* Serpentine blades somewhat avoid many of the above problems, while still providing a reverse curve for sawing cuts.  However, they are murder to make and harden properly, and very few smiths would even try to make one.  They also tend to feel funny when used, throwing off amateurs' ability to estimate damage and control the weapon in an attack.

* If you need a reverse curve for slicing attacks, a single curve on the blade (i.e. falcata, yatagan, or kukri) is usually more reliable.

* That said, serrated and serpentine blades have been used historically in more places than can be counted.  To name a few, the German flamberge, the Kris knives of Indonesia, and German bayonets in the First World War.  As far as is recorded, each of those performed quite well.  (The bayonets worked so well that both sides quit using them by mutual agreement.)  The ultimate serrated blade was the Aztec macauhuitl - a row of one-inch-square obsidian triangles down the edge of a board.  It would take off a horse's head (that's recorded).  Pretty impressive for a neolithic weapon.


And so the jury is still deliberating on that one.  I don't have an answer.  I try to avoid serrated razor inserts in arrowheads, but I have no problem with the last inch of a utility pocketknife blade being serrated.  If I do have to use the pocketknife for combat purposes, the serrations will probably neither help nor hurt significantly enough to notice.  I would probably not advise putting serrations into the blade of something long and sharp (say, a katana), as I think it would hang, but something like an axe head, I don't know.  I have used serrated blade designs for some bladed fist loads and other weapons I have personally made over the years, and they seemed to work well enough in those limited applications as well.

Feel free to make a million test cuts on meat in the kitchen, and tell everybody your findings.  Mine are inconclusive.

[Merlkir]

we do have one orc scimitar that has teeth. I believe.

[Ron Losey]

we do have one orc scimitar that has teeth. I believe.

Yeah, I think so, now that you mention it.  I've run so many stats lately that I forgot about that one.

[hayate666]

New version 0.893 is out! http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/topic,27440.0.html

There seem to be some changes to the combat variables. Archery is more accurate, weapons swing smoother and there has been messed with couched lance damage. Let's hope it doesn't influence the RCM in a significant way.

[Ron Losey]

New version 0.893 is out! http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/topic,27440.0.html

There seem to be some changes to the combat variables. Archery is more accurate, weapons swing smoother and there has been messed with couched lance damage. Let's hope it doesn't influence the RCM in a significant way.

Yeah, I saw it.  The couched lance thing was a bug (sometimes it would flag as couched lance damage when the lance was not ready, or sometimes when it was nowhere near the target) that I hope they fixed.  Archery being more accurate is a good thing ... we can adjust accuracy downward, we can't increase it over 99.

Problem is that .893 re-enabled the AI forces using formations and such, and apparently this results in some forces just standing there and taking fire.  Also there are some other strange glitches, so I'm advising all mods to stay with .892 for a bit until they get a bugfix for their bugfix.  (Shouldn't take long - these are reported bugs.)

[mtarini]

Thanks Ron for the clear and exhaustive answer on (what I learn are called) serrated blades. Interesting. Funny that it a typical subject of debate.

Just out of curiosity: am I right assuming that the "rough cuts", while leading to a less severe blood loss, are harder to heal? Not that this has any influence in the game: the healing process, in any case, is totally unrealistic (it has to be, as was discussed elsewhere).

[Ron Losey]

Thanks Ron for the clear and exhaustive answer on (what I learn are called) serrated blades. Interesting. Funny that it a typical subject of debate.

Just out of curiosity: am I right assuming that the "rough cuts", while leading to a less severe blood loss, are harder to heal? Not that this has any influence in the game: the healing process, in any case, is totally unrealistic (it has to be, as was discussed elsewhere).

Medically, a laceration (cut or tear with a somewhat blunt or erratic surface) tends to scar worse than an incision (a clean cut from a sharp edge).  The other major type of trauma wound to soft tissue is a puncture, which is any wound that is significantly deeper than its length, and may be either incised (made by a sharp point) or lacerated (made from something dull).  Well, then there are bone fractures, contusions (bruises), sprains, strains, torn tendons or ligaments, burns ... the list goes on.

Each are treated differently.  Incisions are easier to sew up, but also more likely to have completely severed major nerves or blood vessels (which can be a big surgical problem, especially if you can't find or reach the other side to sew it back together).  Lacerations look worse - more bruising and swelling - and can sometimes be ugly to get cleaned up and sewed back into place, but again are less likely to have completely severed something (either the entire limb or various nerves or blood vessels.

In the case of a serrated blade, the wound is generally not a true laceration.  (Mace, hammer, and tire iron wounds would be lacerated.)  It's just a slightly uneven incision.  In minor wounds, this means the blood clots faster, and the injury is more likely to take care of itself with little or no additional care.  In the case of deeper incisions, the slightly improved ability of blood to clot to the sides of the wound will likely be insignificant next to the massive blood loss from arteries, so it will likely make little difference there.

But if you just mean, if you slip and cut yourself with both a serrated steak knife and a smooth-edge razor blade, which one will heal fastest?  Hard to say.  Would depend on the exact location of the wound and exactly how they were treated.  If sewed up tightly or sealed down with superglue or something like that, the clean incision will probably heal a little faster.  If you just stick a piece of tape over them, the rough cut will be less likely to re-open itself when you move the injured limb. 

That's my problem every time I fool around and cut myself in the kitchen - I never take it seriously and treat it like a wound, and so the injury keeps re-opening on me.  I mean, I would feel stupid stopping what I was doing and getting a needle and thread to sew up a little scratch like that.  Back where I came from, we laughed at people who thought they needed medical care for a lot worse injuries.  Then two days later when it's still trying to bleed, I feel stupid for not sewing it up.

I'm actually not much of a surgeon, so if you're talking about a really deep torso injury ... I couldn't tell you.  I would guess it is the same as the minor first-aid kind of stuff I've done, but I don't have the experience to say that for sure.  If I had to treat something along those lines, that would certainly be my working assumption.  (Most of the bad wounds I ended up having to treat were lacerations and/or bone fractures from car or motorcycle accidents and the like, not blade incisions.)

When I said it is a typical subject of debate, I meant among blade designers and people who choose weapons and equipment for military or paramilitary groups.  Toothless rednecks and hillbillies all have an opinion, of course, but hearing what they have to say really doesn't count as "debate" ... in spite of the fact some of them have seen a lot more edged weapon combat than the blade designers.

And my answers are far from "exhaustive"... unless you mean people will be exhausted by reading all of them.  These last few have been kind of hit-and-miss, really - along the lines of "Couldn't rightly say ... not for certain, anyway".  I'm usually more accurate than this.

[The Yogi]

Ron, the weapon size reduction project is all but done now. You can start having a look at the RCM source file any time you like.

The only things left to do is pour through the length stats on unchanged weapons for length errors, i e not errors made by me original ones, like the 1H axes that were assigned length 90(!) when actual model length was 48 and 61 respectively!

EDIT:That has been done too in latest v1.31

I hope you like what I've done with the axes, especially the double axe which was drastically reduced in size (60%) and made into a 1H axe. There was some rebalancing needed there,