Reallistic Combat Model for Native

[The Yogi]

Hey Ron, one thing that I found a bit disturbing with RCM was the increased speed of horses. I've been doing a little bit of riding myself, and the speed and maneouvrability in Native felt about right, but in RCM the horses pretty much fly - it just feels too fast!

So knowing that you wouldn't have made such a change just because "fast is fun", can you tell us something about the reasons behind this increase in speed? Have I just been riding really slow horses?

[Ron Losey]

You must have been riding lame horses.

Seriously, the RCM horse speeds are based off of the ratio of human speed to horse speeds.  A horse gallops at roughly 30 to 40 miles an hour, depending on the horse.  A running man averages 3 miles an hour over rough terrain.  If anything, the horses are slow - I did not model a true run for them.  Their top speeds are based off of a common gallop.

Everyone else, including myself, who has ever been on a horse has agreed that the new speeds better reflect real horses.  The original M&B horses ... well, I've seen horses swim faster than those could run.

Heck, as a little kid, I remember a fool barrel pony that could literally turn in its own tracks from a dead run - 40 mph one way, and suddenly 40 mph the other.  Staying on that horse was next to impossible.  It was probably "Angry little pony: minimum ride skill 9" ... but still... it was a little Indian pony, not a race horse.

So I'm going to say you have been riding really pathetic horses.  The ones with humps are camels ... they run slower.  (I did the camels for the Holy War mod too.)

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Edit:  I mean the camels for the Holy War .808 beta, not yet in public release.  Only the developers and beta test team have seen them so far.

[The Yogi]

So I'm going to say you have been riding really pathetic horses.

Icelandic ponnies, mostly, but also huge breed called "Nordsvensk" (not quite a draught horse). The ability of not being able to turn so quickly I always saw as a limitation of the riders ability to stay in the saddle in a high speed turn. That feeling of "shit, if I turn any tighter I'll go flying" I felt was quite accurately modeled. Had I been a better rider maybe I would've felt more constrained in M&B.

Well, anyway, I'm sure your numbers are accurate. I'll get used to it, no doubt.

[Ron Losey]

Well, "accurate" might be giving me too much credit, but I figure they're better than they were.

Staying on the horse is not easy.  That's why they have a "minimum ride skill" rating.  A good horse will accidentally throw a bad rider, even if he doesn't mean to.

Sounds to me like your personal riding skill was too low for your horse.  I still remember that feeling all too well, and I haven't been on a horse since I was pretty young.  Granted, I remember the feeling because the little appaloosa pony I was using was just plain dangerous (it was an old rodeo barrel pony) ... but still, I know the feeling.  I spent some time flattened against the horse with both hands on the saddle horn, while that critter decided to turn in its own tracks or jump over a car or something.  (The fact that the blasted little pony did whatever it bloody well wanted, as if I wasn't there at all, didn't help much.  My dad, who had done some rodeo riding, tried to ride it and ended up in a tree.)  Really quite a tame horse - it seemed to like the attention of having a rider ... but you had to have nerves of steel to stay on it.  Angry little pony: minimum ride skill 9.

Put in some more time on the real horses ... you'll get better.  You may fall off a few times, but that comes with the territory.  You'll find out that, if you know when to lean and when to hang on, you can stay in the saddle through a lot of crazy stunts.  Although I was never really that good, I've seen it done plenty of times.

You can bet that warriors of the ancient world had few problems staying on the horse.

[Ron Losey]

General announcement:

Hero and Blade is now using a modified RCM version.  It is not one of my conversions, and the skill and hit points start out kind of fantasy, but it still plays pretty good.  Kind of an addictive little mod.

First post updated.

[Agent Griff]

It would be cool if some of the major mods on the Taleworlds forums used RCM. I especially like Battle for Sicilly but it is sad that the combat is the native version. A test I use to see whether a mod uses RCM or not is to shot a merchant in the head with an arrow. If the arrow pokes him in the eye, but he still talks to you then something is obviously...native.

[Ron Losey]

It would be cool if some of the major mods on the Taleworlds forums used RCM. I especially like Battle for Sicilly but it is sad that the combat is the native version. A test I use to see whether a mod uses RCM or not is to shot a merchant in the head with an arrow. If the arrow pokes him in the eye, but he still talks to you then something is obviously...native.

Due to some very bad experiences with Onin-no-Ran and the lack of moderators and/or regulations on the Taleworlds board, I will not deal with that forum.  (That's also why ONR is over here.)  If any of those mods wish to convert to RCM, they will have to contact me over here.

However, the standing policy is that the RCM was created for the mod community.  Any wishing to use it are free to contact me.

Note, however, that you will find a substantial block of people over on Taleworlds who hate the RCM for various reasons.  The most common cited one is "game balance" - which usually translates "failure to use any tactics at all".  (Or else their only test case was that fool retrofit I did for native, that due to plate armor in the game, had no long-term play balance at all ... it was a test case for modders, not intended to be playable.)  The other deal is from people who get angry over the word "realistic", as they apparently actually believe that a lot of people keep fighting with a hatchet embedded in their chests, or that the difference between a jacket and a coat of armor is about 3 points.  Or they blame me for every shortcoming of the M&B engine or the AI.  I suspect a couple of them are just angry that they didn't think of this themselves.  If you suggest this publicly, you will get a backlash from that crowd... expect it.

If you really want to see this happen, you might try contacting the developers of those mods by PM and asking them what they think about it.  Personally, I'm not going to hunt them down, as I have enough irons in the fire already.... but if they come to me about it, I'll do what I can.

[Ron Losey]

RCM for TLD is up!  Version number is 2.4 - it is optional, you will have to rename the item1.txt files to get it working.  Instructions included with TLD.

[Ron Losey]

General update, before someone asks:

The RCM for Native copy currently up is for .808

The RCM will be ported to .890, starting with the major mods.  First round will likely be direct port, i.e. copy of the current results, and tweaks will be made to take advantage of the new features later.

RCM Retrofit for Native .890 is NOT a priority.  It may eventually exist, but it is secondary to the major mods.

[Ron Losey]

General announcement:

Alpha release of RCM-Native for .891

http://rapidshare.com/files/58546359/RCM-Native-891.zip.html

This is an alpha version with the primary intention of gathering data for the RCM work on the major mods.  Most of the new features have been nullified or are not being used, in order to retain previous balance.  (We may play with them more later.)  I had to guess at horse speeds, as they have been completely reworked and no new data could be found on how the computation works.

This was obviously done very quickly (the module system only came out a few hours ago), so there may be some bugs.

I need to get some eyes on this thing ... get me some feedback.  The RCM versions for a number of major mods depend on what we learn here.

[Fisheye]

Did you get soak and reduction reversed?

These are my guesses based on the descriptions.

I think soak is the old model, it subtracts directly from the damage. So a 30pt plate mail will almost always neutralise the damage from a rusty dagger, since it soaks (0-30) points of damage per hit.

Reduction is the factor that the damage is reduced by... I'm guessing after it gets through the soak value. So if your rusty dagger rolled 30 damage, and the reduction of leather is 0.5 with 0 soak, then the dagger will do 15 damage. It may be independent of the armor value.

So basically (this is weird) if you set soak to 0 then all your armors are the same (i.e. awfully thin).

Yes I think you have it reversed:

Thank you for the suggesting it. The workaround I found for this is adding two new variables to module.ini file: armor_soak_multiplier and armor_percentage_reduction_multiplier. I am setting these to 0.5 and 1.0 now respectively for the native module. You can set them to 0.0 and 1.0 to make a fully percentage based system. To return to the old system one can set them to 1.0 and 0.0.

So my guess for returning it to the old system is:

armor_soak_factor_against_cut       = 1.0
armor_soak_factor_against_pierce    = 0.5
armor_soak_factor_against_blunt     = 0.5

armor_reduction_factor_against_cut       = 0
armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce    = 0
armor_reduction_factor_against_blunt     = 0

[Ron Losey]

Fisheye:  You caught it the same time I did....


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Everybody:

Got a bad bug.  The module.ini file should read:


armor_soak_factor_against_cut       = 1.0
armor_soak_factor_against_pierce    = 0.5
armor_soak_factor_against_blunt     = 0.5

armor_reduction_factor_against_cut       = 0
armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce    = 0
armor_reduction_factor_against_blunt     = 0

Due to confusing descriptions, I got these backwards in the distributed version, and it was why armor was acting real funny.

There are still some odd bugs with extremely high damage numbers where they should not be.  I noticed that the bows were up to 12% bonus per point of power draw, up to three above required.  That's a lot of variation to work in.  Strike damage is also way too high in places, even at the 1.0 speed multiple.  I'm still trying to run that down.

Stand by, everybody.  We will get this working.  By the way, any insights would be appreciated.


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Edit:  check the discussion thread.  I am getting high damage numbers on just about everything.  Something is seriously not adding up.  I think the entire formula has been changed.  Any information on this ... I needed it yesterday.

[Ron Losey]

Sent a note to the M&B dev team ... haven't heard back yet.  I did, however, find one of the problems.

It seems Power Draw has been increased to 12%.  Plus, note that it is up to three PLUS the PD requirement of the bow - i.e. a long bow with PD requirement 3 can go up to PD 6, or 72% above listed rating.  It was only like 6% before ... the increase is phenomenal. 

(I only figured that one out when I noticed that crossbows didn't have this problem.)

That means I have to rework all of the bows to account for this.  A mathematical nightmare.

Still can't explain why certain melee weapons do way too much damage.

Everybody stand by ... We'll have a working RCM version soon enough.  Or if not, it won't be for lack of trying.


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Edit:

Here we go again.  Alpha 2.  Check it out, tell me what you think.

http://rapidshare.com/files/58818909/RCM_Native_891_alpha2.zip.html

I think I got the bows back to reasonable.  There is a lot of variation because of PD skill, but at least it's within a reasonable range now.

Also lowered speed bonus again.  It was still too high.

Plus that backwards armor number thing, noted previously.

This is still Alpha test ... help me test it, don't assume it's ready for anything just yet.

And, as before ... we need some eyes on this thing.  The more people who help test it, the sooner we can get it debugged in time for the major mods porting to .89x ...

[Fisheye]

I'm merged it into Band of Warriors. There's a feedback thread here:

http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/topic,26849.0.html

I hope I don't alienate the whole player base by making a big change like this. *crosses fingers*

[Ron Losey]

I'm merged it into Band of Warriors. There's a feedback thread here:

http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/topic,26849.0.html

I hope I don't alienate the whole player base by making a big change like this. *crosses fingers*

I hope that was not extremely premature.  We are still dealing with an obviously bugged version.