Messages

91

Suggestions / Re: Buff metal armor, nerf leather and furs

« on: March 19, 2021, 05:45:47 PM »

Thanks for taking interest Sami.

I'm mainly concerned that there is no sense of progression in acquiring most pieces of metal armor, particularly the body armors which are together with the mail leggings the most expensive pieces of equipment available in the game. They are not weight effective protection compared to cheap and easily available furs, leather and clothing. There are currently three situation where you'd want to wear metal armor 1) It protects some critical body part (like the neck, which AI targets with called shots) that is hard to stack protection on with furs, leather and clothing 2) You have equipped every fur, leather and cloth garment possible but want to be even better protected 3) You are using it for sake of roleplaying, knowing it's suboptimal choice over just wearing same weight of furs, leather and clothing.

The lengthy historical part was ultimately more of a digression, just something to demonstrate that the suggested rebalance has some historical justification to it as this is a game that does tend to take history seriously. I did not really concern myself with absolute values there, the comparison between the 6xleather and 1xmail + 2,5xlinen was more looking at relative protection. This was also part of the reason I tried to maintain the existing armor-weapon balance in my suggestion, the intent is to buff metal armor and not to buff overall protection, indeed for most* part very heavy protection is nerfed since stacking leathers etc. becomes less weight effective.

That being said, while I did not mention it above, the 18 protection from 6xleather did seem way too much to me. In my experience value of 18 in URW starts getting into territory where that body part is immunized vs. human warriors, while the leather in the real life tests was consistently penetrated and still risked critical organ damage. My suggested values in the 10-12 range for these setups tend to mean, in my experience, well protected but by no means immune in the game.

Actually trying to balance URW around those Jones' studies in an absolute sense and with exactness would have many problems. It would be tons of work first of all, and I think there are more pressing improvements to make. And those studies, while some of the best of that kind I have seen (his detailed documentation is scholarly and he is aware of statistics) aren't really conclusive in my opinion. He still takes shortcuts like using mild steel as stand in for bloomery iron. I used them as basis because they were of good academic quality, topical (i.e. actual test on hyper thick organic armor) and translatable (he gives weight/area of the material he uses). That they were on arrows was incidental.

As for the quality bonuses (I address point and edge only), as far as I'm seeing leather currently gets nothing at fine and +1 to both point and edge at masterwork (becoming just as good as rough mail for point), furs get nothing at fine and +1 edge at masterwork, for mail I don't have fine piece available right now but masterwork seems to have +1 point while the edge protection is off the graphical scale of game's armor coverage screen (though I'm guessing it's at least +1). My suggested revision in my previous post follows it's overall theme and buffs the quality bonuses for point and edge protection for metal armor while nerfing the leathers etc. by completely removing their quality bonuses to point and edge protection. Are you saying there is some additional bonus to quality armors than what is apparent on the armor coverage screen (beyond being more resistant to wear and tear)?

*The big exception is where you manage to wear double layer of metal armor, which would basically immunize that body part with my suggested values even if you aren't wearing any backing. I'm not actually sure if it's possible to wear multiple mail/lamellar body armors currently, if it is I'd suggest removing that ability if those values I suggested or something similar to them are adopted (which is itself regretful, since it's historical to wear mail + lamellar, or even to wear two mail shirts, but disallowing that is better than leaving metal body armor weak).

92

Suggestions / Buff metal armor, nerf leather and furs

« on: March 17, 2021, 07:40:54 PM »

So as I'm finalizing my collection of masterwork mail set in my current game, I find myself wondering the same question that I always do: why bother?

Leather (or bear fur) gives you protection of 3 against point and 3 against edge. Point is I think overall more important since it includes normal arrows, and NPC archers seem more likely to carry them than broadheads. Two layers of this is 6 point and 6 edge. Mail is 5 point and 8 edge, which is at best slightly better. The problem is that mail is heavier for that protection. Leather shirt is 6 lbs, bear fur shirt is 7 lbs and together they are 13 lbs. Mail habergeon weights 22 pounds. It's simply not weight effective, and in addition to that you can repair the leather and furs yourself and they are easier to acquire.

But you can put the mail on after you wear the leather and fur shirts right? You can sure, but the trend continues. Bear fur cloak and overcoat are still at least as good as long mail hauberk. And after you have finished wearing every possible fur and leather garment, the next step after that is not the mail, but the linens. At some point along there you end up wearing heavier protection than early modern period cuirassier in bulletproof plate, all while not touching metal armor. And the northerner lightweights I like to play find themselves unable to bench press a squirrel fur.

Something is very very wrong here.

Now there are some useful pieces of metal armor, namely those that are otherwise hard to stack protection on: mittens, coudes, cowls (downright essential) and the spectacle helm. But other than those metal armor is a vanity project, equivalent to collecting silver accessories. If somebody has an argument why expensive (and at least in masterwork quality, hard to find) metal armor being for vanity makes for good gameplay I'm all ears but I can't figure why.

It doesn't strike to me as realistic either. Combatants used metal armor if it was available and affordable, and they wore it with ultimately fairly light clothing (equivalent to about single layer of furs here). If it wasn't available, people didn't wrap themselves into leather and fur balls.

One possible solution would be to make wrapping your joints in multiple layers of heavy clothing more penalizing than just the weight, but this would require new coding. However it seems more simple solution would work because the whole premise that leather is more weight effective than metal armor seems questionable at best.

Three links of interest:

https://todsworkshop.com/blogs/blog/arrows-v-s-armour-agincourt-myth-busting

Shooting late medieval warbow (i.e. something we arguably don't really have here in URW) with period accurate wrought iron and case hardened wrought iron arrows at period accurate 2,5-1,5mm thick steel breastplate. The arrows break and fail against the armor.

https://www.academia.edu/5520314/Arrows_Against_Linen_and_Leather_Armour

A study of arrows against linen and leather. Of particular interest because he actually stacks the leather so far it's heavier per square meter than 2mm plate. The 76 lb draw weight bow is also probably good approximation of our longbow.

https://www.academia.edu/7691143/Arrows_against_mail_armour

Study against mail by the same author.

What I first want to address is that I'm fine with plate being weaker than it should be. By all accounts it was tremendously effective and fighting styles evolved for getting around rather than through it. But we have only a few pieces of plate armor in URW, there is no mechanism for transforming non-penetrating edge/point hits into some blunt damage and there is no possibility for Njerp or bandit to grapple you while another stabs you into weak spot. Additionally the plate we have can be assumed to be weaker, e.g. helmets could be of segmented type with lots of holes in the plates and blade traps on the surface.

The comparison between the mail and the triple layer leather is very topical and I think something that can be translated into URW. I'm assuming it ​takes about square meter of material to make shirt covering torso, shoulders and upper arms. In practice it seems making a T-shirt tends to need bit more depending on the cut of the cloth being used and of course the person being clothed, but I'm assuming there is some wastage and that this figure is a good enough approximation. Using this assumption I convert the armor used in David Jones' linked studies above into URW terms and briefly examine whether the protective qualities of the materials in URW are reasonable in light of Jones' studies.

So the scenarios:

Three layers of thick shoe sole leather for weight of 16,4 kg per square meter, that is to say a theoretical (if utterly impractical) shirt made of them has weight of 16.4 kg or 36 pounds. This is 6 URW leather shirts for total protection of 18 point and 18 edge. All arrows penetrate this assembly, however the leather seems quite effective at reducing the depth of penetration. The bodkin does better than the broadhead.

Layer of mail (of 7-10.3 kg per square meter) with 8 layers of linen cloth to 2,92 kg per square meter or about 6,4 pounds to a shirt. I take this as representing mail habergeon and two and half linen shirts in URW, for total protection of 7,5 point and 13 edge. This setup does seem to do slightly less well against the bodkin (which consistently penetrates), however I think it's not nearly enough to justify 8.5 point difference, more like couple. Against the leaf shaped arrow it adopts completely different mode of protection, it reduces penetration much less than triple leather however it rejects 25%-33% of the arrows, something the leather doesn't do at all. This is hard to quantify, but I'd say it does not support difference of 5 points in edge protection. This armor setup is also hard to quantify in the sense that it's working like composite armor that is more effective than sum of it's parts, but since you aren't really supposed to wear mail without backing and mail is the expensive part I think it's worth attributing the effect to the mail. Worth also remarking that if you add 9 kg/square meter linen padding under the mail instead of the 3 kg one it becomes very effective.

For concrete suggestion (and start here for TL;DR) I think it's important that this is kept simple. It must not upset existing armor-weapon balance in the game. It should be quick to implement so it doesn't end up as something pushed a decade down the development plan. I do not touch any other numbers except edge and point except for the bear fur which needs to be kept as rewarding fur to get.

So here are my suggested numbers:

Furs/Leather

Reindeer/Elk: 2 point 2 edge
Generic fur: 2 point 2 edge (remove edge bonus from masterwork)
Bear fur: 2 point 2 edge 6 warmth (rather than armor fur, bear fur is re-imagined as alternative for fine+ generic furs, and it's now simple upgrade on elk/reindeer)
Leather: 2 point (remove masterwork bonus) 2 edge (remove masterwork bonus)

The non-functional furs (squirrels and such) and leathers don't really matter, just as long as they aren't better than above. That being said by weight leather and fur clothing here always represents rather sturdy clothing.

Metal (add to all +1 bonus for both point and edge at fine; add another +1 to both at masterwork for total +2 both):

Mail: 7 point 10 edge (or 9 point 12 edge for masterwork mail)
Lamellar: 7 point 11 edge
Iron: 10 point 12 edge

And for cloth go for 1 point 1 edge for all except the magic nettle shirt which is probably good as is (though I don't quite recall what that was as I don't have one right now).

I do get that 2-2 or 1-1 everything looks pretty boring, but there isn't really lot of wiggling room and single point represents a huge change at these numbers, particularly when stacked.

The basic idea is that every metal armor gets buffed +2, and leather and bear fur are dropped to 2 protection only. Hence, wearing mail and two layers of bear furs or leather gives identical protection as before, but it's made more mail centric. Mail alone is buffed and mail and extra thick padding is made weaker, this is really opposite of what it should be but the synergy is currently impossible to represent. Unarmored NPCs become slightly weaker protected, but they didn't wear much anyway. Clothing remains somewhat effective if you layer it enough due to being light. Since metal armor is heavy, the quality bonuses layer based (which is why I'm suggesting to remove them from everything else together with +50% being too much), the price difference in it considerable due to high base price, the sheer rarity of masterwork armor and the historically variable quality of metal armor I think +2 to both point and edge at masterwork is reasonable.

With these changes, the 36 lb leather coat would be reduced to 12 point 12 edge protection, while the mail plus 2,5x layer of linen would become 9,5 point and 12,5 edge. More reasonable I think?

Lastly it might not be bad idea to rename the leather cuirass into leather vest due to now being less of a piece of armor and more like clothing.

Thanks for reading.

93

Gameplay questions / Re: Active hunting tips?

« on: March 16, 2021, 12:06:01 PM »

I don't ever really go out to specifically hunt (unless I'm going after some animal I spotted near my settlement), instead I simply hunt animals that I encounter when doing my regular activities like trading exploring, gathering and small game trapping. I then load the meat and furs (or sometimes whole carcasses) on my dogs for further processing.

To find animals, climb on hills and mountains on the zoomed out (world) map. If you don't have any, the lichen forests are the next highest elevation. If you don't have any of those or have very few (Reemi territory and the area around it has problems with too low elevation, notably), I recommend hunting elsewhere. You don't often actually see the animals around from your high vantage point, but you sometimes do and this is the most hassle free way of finding them. If you don't at first see any try the next hillock or recheck ones you have already been to. If you are really desperate to find animals right now, don't just randomly walk around on the world map, but zoom in occasionally to check if you see anything. Almost equally important is picking the right terrain where to hunt: I consider hunting animals in spruce mires and conifer forests act of desperation (excepting bears since they hold aggro well). Open mires on the other hand are great places to hunt as you often find yourself cornering animals against the numerous ponds that dot this terrain and they offer clear lines of fire.

Character wise, speed and endurance are the most important stats, even more so than the weapon skills as active hunting in URW does ultimately come down to some variety of persistence hunting. Some animals like lynxes and badgers can be simply run down with fast, high endurance character and some educated guesswork, even in the summer when they don't leave tracks on most terrain. Also keep mindful of your encumbrance, for example the difference in fatigue buildup between 1-2% and 5-6% is already huge and apparently non linear.

For archery the most important thing to ensure is to have a clear line of fire: don't shoot the pines. If you are after some forest reindeer for example it's a good idea to hang back a bit so that they don't start running and wait for a good opportunity. Though if you encounter the reindeer via the sudden encounter type where the game pulls you in a middle of the herd, don't waste your opportunity for the close range shot. I think shooting (with bows, javelins are short range only) at the max range is not to be underestimated. You'll often miss sure but this often doesn't send the animal running yet and you can make several attempts. Just keep the line of fire clear. Since the changes to cord economy some time ago arrows are really cheap up to whatever level you can craft them at with even modestly successful bird trapping.

There are also some kinks to keep in mind that you can exploit: for example animals often like to run in diagonal zig-zag pattern that you can learn to predict to a degree, and herd animals in particular like to rebound back towards you after they stop running. This is particularly useful when persistence hunting forest reindeer. First you scare the animal, then you alternate between running and walking after it using both your observation of the animal, it's tracks and some guesswork to minimize time loss. You'll soon see the animal again rebounding towards you after it stopped running. Run towards it to scare it again and then resume your usual mix of running/walking and following it. Rinse and repeat and you'll soon have an otherwise unharmed breathless forest reindeer.

Ultimately successful hunting can take patience and the "I think I'm going to give up on this animal. Too much of a bother. But no, not just yet! And now I finally killed it!" is the greatest gameplay experience in URW.

Lastly, if you are getting fatigued from just walking around you'll need a pair of skis and a ski stick, or you'll need to practice your skiing skill. I don't actually recommend starting in spring as new player since it really starts you in the last days of winter, start in summer and autumn instead.

94

Gameplay questions / Re: How do you take a sauna bath with the new fire mechanics?

« on: March 06, 2021, 04:00:19 PM »

4 branches and 30 firewood has been about the minimum for me. Mild steam after about hour and half of burning and proper steam for a while after three hours and the fire dies around the same time. Tested in end of Soil with temperature around zero, with a pre-existing burnt-out fire in the fireplace.

95

Gameplay questions / Re: 3.63 New fire mechanics

« on: March 04, 2021, 10:40:47 PM »

15 firewoods a day for how long?
This prevents from traveling and exploring the world.

 Well it takes less wood then that, like 3 firewood once per day.

I do agree that I felt much the same way about being lashed to my settlement. The old method was way OP, so I can't argue to much with the smoking change being more realistic/harder.

Next one up: cut the possibility of drying when the temperature is dry AND freezing. Or more generally, restrict drying to Swidden, Dirt and Dead months.

96

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: Wool mittens don't spawn in shops

« on: March 04, 2021, 09:54:13 PM »

Ok, I completed my promised tour of newly generated Driik lands (actually two, just that the first one ended with a neck biting wolf right outside the first settlement ), 38 settlements in total. Final tally was 1 masterwork linen cowl, 1 masterwork linen footrags and two regular linen footrags. Maybe slightly less than what I expected and I was bit surprised they were all linen, but ultimately sufficient. Zero woolen mittens (though there were 4 mail ones...), undergarments, aprons or veils.

97

Solved'n'fixed bug reports / Re: Wool mittens don't spawn in shops

« on: March 04, 2021, 08:05:36 PM »

In my current game I have visited essentially every settlement in Driik, Koivula, Sartola, Kiesse, Reemi and many in Kaumo. Of those Driik, Koivulais and Kiesseläis settlements have been revisited once they have had their first major restock (happens after x amount of time, generally several months after you first visited it, rather more muted in Driik, but immediately obvious in Koivula and such when you suddenly see tons of metal armour around where none was before). I have seen maybe half a dozen pairs of regular woolen footrags (I bought two and have two more on my map notes, but I kinda stopped taking notes on that), one par of fine woolen footrags, two pairs of woolen socks at least two pairs of regular linen footrags and a pair of fine line footrags. I have also seen at least two woolen cowls, one masterwork and one fine, but since I found the masterwork early I might have skipped noting one or two regulars.

This matches my previous experience, which includes at least two other games of similar extent and few ones I started just to check on all Driik/Reemi shops. The socks/footrags are there, they may be as rare as masterwork tool axes but you can consistently find them. Cowls are occasionally around. Woolen mittens, never. I think I'll throw another Driik shopping test right away to see what I find.

It's quite possible I'm wrong and I have had unusually unlucky experiences, but at this point I'm kinda begging evidence of someone having a pair of (taken) or (unpaid) woolen mittens in their inventory. If I'm wrong, then take this as suggestion to increase spawn rate of woolen mittens in settlements.

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Suggestions / Re: More ancient weapons.

« on: March 04, 2021, 11:36:29 AM »

A casual look at Oakeshott type XIIs seems to indicate some longer bladed swords did exist in the period, they at least belong as much here as mail mittens/leggings and kneecops and coudes. I would kill the battlesword as anachronistic though, make bastard sword the big sword (though I hate the name, I'd use great or long sword) and buff it with +1 edge damage to make up for removal of battlesword (I'd also cut the weight of bastard sword by a pound).

While atlatls weren't used as throwing aids in historical Europe, leather straps (called amentum by the ancient Greeks) were used for same purpose in antiquity at least. The wiki page states they have been found in 200–450 CE Danish bog finds. Barely plausible I suppose?

99

Suggestions / Repurpose fisher's knife as boning knife

« on: March 04, 2021, 10:54:09 AM »

Currently the fisher's knife doesn't really have a point. It's not a fighting knife like Kaumolais, northern and hunting knives are. It's not the skinning knife the broad knife is and it's not crafting/utility knife the small knife is. It's not cheap and cheerful like the regular knife is.

In practice in real life there is some overlap between filleting knives and boning knives, with the latter tending to be more stiff but often not to the degree it doesn't work for filleting anymore. As such I'd suggest to rename the fisher's knife to narrow or narrow-bladed knife and treat it as a boning knife that also works for filleting. In present state make it the optimal knife for cutting a carcass for meat, and if in future an actual filleting knife role is added that can then be applied to the narrow-bladed knife as well.

100

General Discussion / Re: Hardest things to find...

« on: March 04, 2021, 10:36:03 AM »

Throwing axe. As far as I'm aware the only way to still get one of any quality in the recent versions is to start the game with the shelter scenario and have one laid down as one of the useful items before you.

Getting any of the cultural weapons in fine or better is indeed annoying. The only one's I'd count on are fine Northern Spear and maybe fine Northern Knife.

I'd actually suggest to:

Make northern settlements spawn occasional masterwork melee weapon, just like they currently do with bows. Their current weapon repertoire is pretty restricted already (northern spear, staves, tridents, northern knife, fisher's knife, handaxe and maybe regular knife and woodman's axe) so it shouldn't be a biggie.

Give Kaumo a similar weapon inventory as above, just replace the two Northern melee weapons with the Kaumo ones.

Add Ango and Skarmasaksi to regular repertoire of foreign traders. I have certainly not ever seen them carry any despite going through what must be several hundreds of them in recent (post Steam release) versions. Both weapons are clearly foreign in URW as they have loanword names (Angon and Scarmasaex).

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Solved'n'fixed bug reports / [Adjusted] Wool mittens don't spawn in shops

« on: March 04, 2021, 10:13:13 AM »

As per title, wool mittens do not seem spawn in shops in settlements. I have gone through all the towns in Driik and Reemi in multiple recent versions including the current 3.63 and they are never, ever available, I have kept close eye on them. As wool mittens are a rare supplement to fur mittens for for winter wear (it's easy to get frostbite with just fur mittens when the temperature plunges) and are also involved in a spell, I think this qualifies as a bug.

Other piece of clothing that I have never seen in shops is undergarment, though perhaps that's intentional since it has rather imba weight-warmth coverage. (Veils and aprons might be, but I'm less sure, I think I might have seen them rarely though there are none anywhere in my current game)