Scripting demo release candidate

[Omigoshe]

Guys...
What if the xbows were made double this accurate? Bolts missing the target also causes them to be less "useful" or powerful. Making them as manoeuvrable as bowmen isn't a solution, that way the latter would become useless again imo. "Why making something that is half that powerful and shoots just as fast as the one which deals damage on the double percentage?" Sorry if I have misunderstood something

They wont be manoeuvrable because shoot-forward/back option for xbow is blocked - you can do it only with archers now. So you will get only one fast shot from xbows - attack speed and attack power will be the same.

So when they are firing you cannot cancel it and move them?

[dicsoupcan]

you can, but you still need to reload when they stepped back.

[EDMatt]

I don't like the idea of making crossbowmen faster firing/better at being micromanaged. That makes them the same as bowmen, and we'd be back to the state where nobody ever makes bowmen. I think it's good to keep a different between the units, archers are good at being micromanaged, and crossbowmen aren't. This makes sense because crossbows are heavy and take longer to reload, bows are light and can be reloaded and fired very quickly by skilled soldiers.

So I think crossbowmen should be left as the slow firing and less manoeuvrable ranged units, but they should do much more damage than bowmen.

If we made crossbowmen fast firing and easy to micromanage why would anybody make bowmen? The only change we made to ranged units since the last public release was to make bowmen slightly faster at aiming/reloading. The purpose of that change was to make bowmen useful, since previously nobody used bowmen when crossbowmen were 2x better in every way. Maybe the best solution to this problem would be to slightly increase bowmen aiming time, to make them closer to what it was in the last release. Our initial change might have gone too far so we can scale it back slightly. That involves the minimum change from the last public release.

I'm also kind of confused about why this suddenly became a massive issue in the past few weeks, when the bowmen changes were made in early December, over 6 months ago

I agree , that might be the result of this change.

[Ben]

I'm also kind of confused about why this suddenly became a massive issue in the past few weeks, when the bowmen changes were made in early December, over 6 months ago

Most of my online KaM experience was from the beginning of February to the beginnings of the scripting demo. The reason why bowmen were not as imbalanced before the scripting demo is really quite simple: Farm Patch. Now that farmers are smarter, it is way easier to spam archers, making them much stronger. I remember people complaining about archers being too good almost right after the scripting demo came out, but it wasn't as easy to see back then because most of the best players were on break.

[The Dark Lord]

Personally I don't think Xbows are extremely weak and useless... Maybe they need a small boost, but wanting the so broken and abusive 'halt and shoot' back is the worst solution of all.
I like Lewin's 'more piercing' idea.

[Romek]

Personally I don't think Xbows are extremely weak and useless... Maybe they need a small boost, but wanting the so broken and abusive 'halt and shoot' back is the worst solution of all.

Shoot and halt is a ugly glitch. No one want to come that scary thing back. We just want to make xbows better without adding them more dmg or more attack speed.
We think about 2 options :
1.] Bring back shoot and move to the game (but block somehow shoot and halt) - now is like bowmans can use that shoot and move tactic but x bows cant
2.] Make xbow shoot almost immediately when they will see target. - Now its like they aiming time is just to long. The best idea will be to decrease that aiming time to make them react faster. We also want to incrase his reloading time. In overall he will be shooting at the same speed but he will just react faster.
Any other ideas can be danger and propably will destroy balance in game

[Pizzaisgood]

Personally I don't think Xbows are extremely weak and useless... Maybe they need a small boost, but wanting the so broken and abusive 'halt and shoot' back is the worst solution of all.

Noone wants halt and shoot back that was just a big big abuse.
My idea is giving this small boost , x-bows will take aim as fast as bowmen , so they won´t get easily outmicroed by bowmen , because at the moment bowmen aim twice as fast as x-bows , which gives x-bows really no chance in those frontlinefights. The actual strength of x-bow won´t be changed by this change , only the reactiontime will be higher .
So bowmen will still have a place in the game as main support range units, while x-bow do the microjob. As i said before , before the rangefix came archers and x-bows were in use because x-bows could still stand against bowmen because they had a good chance at challenging bowmen in microfights. So at that point every unit was in use and thats how it should be. Ofcourse we shouldn´t bring shoot and halt back but we can give the x-bows more micropotential so they are useful again, like they were in the prefix-releases.

What is wrong with my idea that people dislike it ? Is it because im always talking about micro ? ( I really can´t find another word to describe it ) It would be nice if someone can disprove my idea or something ...
Let 30 swordfighters, 15 militia and 30 bows fight against 30 axefighters and 45 x-bows ( same costs )
Swords will win that fight and that x-bows will shoot their first shot faster won´t make a big difference - So i can´t see why people are saying that noone will build bowmen anymore with that little change.

This change will make x-bows handy in fights again without touching the balance of units.

[Menszu]

Just thought of something easy.
How about making the crosbow bolts much faster? I mean an animation. This way thy will shoot with same speed overall, but probably more accurately against moving targets, and also the bolt might catch archers trying hit and run tactics. I wonder if it can make a difference, yet I always noticed how gracefuly and slow those missles fly, maybe we can take advantage fixin that. Bow arrows can still fly slower since bowman shoot at much higher arc, while crossbowman aim more straight-foward.

[EDMatt]

Personally I don't think Xbows are extremely weak and useless... Maybe they need a small boost, but wanting the so broken and abusive 'halt and shoot' back is the worst solution of all.

Noone wants halt and shoot back that was just a big big abuse.
My idea is giving this small boost , x-bows will take aim as fast as bowmen , so they won´t get easily outmicroed by bowmen , because at the moment bowmen aim twice as fast as x-bows , which gives x-bows really no chance in those frontlinefights. The actual strength of x-bow won´t be changed by this change , only the reactiontime will be higher .
So bowmen will still have a place in the game as main support range units, while x-bow do the microjob. As i said before , before the rangefix came archers and x-bows were in use because x-bows could still stand against bowmen because they had a good chance at challenging bowmen in microfights. So at that point every unit was in use and thats how it should be. Ofcourse we shouldn´t bring shoot and halt back but we can give the x-bows more micropotential so they are useful again, like they were in the prefix-releases.

What is wrong with my idea that people dislike it ? Is it because im always talking about micro ? ( I really can´t find another word to describe it ) It would be nice if someone can disprove my idea or something ...
Let 30 swordfighters, 15 militia and 30 bows fight against 30 axefighters and 45 x-bows ( same costs )
Swords will win that fight and that x-bows will shoot their first shot faster won´t make a big difference - So i can´t see why people are saying that noone will build bowmen anymore with that little change.

This change will make x-bows handy in fights again without touching the balance of units.

its not about micro, its about game balance

[Ben]

Just thought of something easy.
How about making the crosbow bolts much faster? I mean an animation. This way thy will shoot with same speed overall, but probably more accurately against moving targets, and also the bolt might catch archers trying hit and run tactics. I wonder if it can make a difference, yet I always noticed how gracefuly and slow those missles fly, maybe we can take advantage fixin that. Bow arrows can still fly slower since bowman shoot at much higher arc, while crossbowman aim more straight-foward.

This is an interesting idea, but I notice an immediate effect: Bowmen will become 100% useless in mico against crossbowmen. Should we not try to avoid making bowmen useless in stand-off-fights, or is that not a problem for you guys?

I also want to say that Pizza seems to have very good thoughts. Originally, bowmen and crossbowmen had the same rate-of-fire, but bowmen were changed to have a higher rate so they weren't so weak. If I am understanding Pizza correctly, he proposes to revert back to the traditional way of KaM, and make the rate-of-fire for both ranged units equal again.

I think that this is a worthy test. It isn't directly making bowmen weaker, and it won't change a large battle too much (I'm just going off my head, I haven't actually tested that), and will give crossbowmen a mico boost against bowmen. In my opinion, the only downside is that this takes out some kind of special "bonus" in the game-- a bonus that gives archers more to the game than just a simple weaker version of crossbowmen. However, if this reanimates crossbow warfare, then I see only gain.

[sado1]

Pizza means frontline battles - where who starts shooting first, matters. Now, bowmen start shooting faster, so they can just shoot and escape, avoiding being hit by crossbowmen. So, bowmen can be used offensively well, when the enemy has crossbows.

[Mixons]

I have some other question:
In last release serfs were bringing first timbers and then stones. And now its again like they are bringing timbers and stones randomly. Why?

[Krom]

There's no strict order really

[sado1]

The question was "why". I'm not sure but I think that in one of RCs the order was set to "first wood if possible", which would be the best option (maybe 10 seconds lost on start because stupid serfs bring stone first, isn't a big deal, but it's SO annoying!)

[Lewin]

There's never been any strict priority on it. In the distant past (I mean about 2 years ago) I think wood might have often been taken first because it was added into the delivery queue before stone, but since we've changed the way deliveries work that no longer happens. It's not really possible to make it first because even if we make it a higher priority, serfs from the far side of the village might become idle first and claim all of the wood, then a few moments later closer serfs become idle and claim the stone. But it would certainly help, and maybe we can look into doing that later.

If you thought you saw them taking wood first in one of the RCs it was probably just a coincidence (since it's currently random).