The Shield Problem(s)

[JaM]

I dont think shields are bugged. They are working ok against missiles,bigger is the shield - bigger is the drawback to have it in melee. Right now Pavises working as they should.

Way out of this is to lower all armor values, shields attack and missiles to half. That way, armor upgrades will mean something (if your armor is 2 and you upgrade it to 5,it will definitelly help you if arrow has attack value 2)

Then you need to leave defence value for every unit as it is and add a bonus to all units with small to medium shields to benefit them in close combat (dismounted knights for example).

example dismounted knight has: 2/6/2 (armor/defence/shield) so in melee he will have defence 2+4=6,against arrows 4, spear infantry with attack 1 or 2 will have hard time to beat them. as it has to be.
armored seargants will be 2/5/2 melee defence 5, arrow defence 4.
spear unit with attack 1 (+4 against cavalry) will have enough of power to fight against cavalry and will be not so good against heavy infantry armed with swords or axes.

My suggested values are: 0 unarmored, 1 leather, 2 light chain, 3 heavy chain, 5 partial plate,6 full plate,7 adv plate. 1 small shield,2 medium shield,3 or 4 pavise.
swords 4, axes 6, spears 1,polearms,halberds 2+AP, maces 4+ap, arrows 2,longbow or composite arrows 3(+ap for bodkin arrows),normal bolts 3+ap, steel bolts 4+ap (or 5), lances 4 (5 for knights heavy lances) etc...

I will post my EDU soon, it is based on Darth Vader work (using his arrows), you will be suprised how god it works in game.

[Lusted]

They are working ok against missiles,bigger is the shield - bigger is the drawback to have it in melee. Right now Pavises working as they should.

Big shields are not a darw back in melee, they are very useful. If they were a drawback the roman legions would not have been half as useflu in vombat as the large shield was a key part of their equipment.

[grinningman]

I dont think shields are bugged. They are working ok against missiles,bigger is the shield - bigger is the drawback to have it in melee. Right now Pavises working as they should.

Maybe you would like shields to subtract def in melee, but it doesn't change the fact that it's bugged. A CA programmer posted in this thread agreeing they are bugged and giving a suggestion on the best workaround for it. SHIELDS ARE BUGGED!

Yeesh.

[Foz]

I dont think shields are bugged.

I just have to laugh when people say this. It's like people who deny the holocaust. Against mountains of evidence, and everything reasonable, they still don't see it. Apparently even a dev commenting on the problem and proposing a solution is not enough to get some people on board. Sad.

The dev has spoken. We mortals hear and obey.

AMEN BROTHER DOPP!

Now we just need a nice little exe program to help us change all shield values to 0 and put half into armour (with the option of then putting another half into defence skill)! *hint hint* ;)

lol.

It called WordPad.

LMAO @ the comment. Trust me Dopp, you don't really want to sit there and shift numbers around with WordPad. I did about 3 lines of that the first time before I decided it would be way easier to automate it... which it undoubtedly was. And that's not to mention the computer can't forget to change something or do math wrong. You're bound to screw something up trying it by hand.

I'll be on it when I'm done with dinner tonight guys, as I work til then. I'm initially not going to give the option for half to go again into defense skill, just going to send half to armor, as it will make discussion difficult if people are not using the same unit stats. Then we can open up discussion on it and try to determine if the affected units warrant the added defense skill points or not. I apologize to those of you who may be itching to get the skill points in there too, but it would make discussion too confusing and possibly impossible, so you'll have to wait.

[Midnight]

I'm a little confused about something - if AP halves the shield value which it seems is currently being subtracted from the total defence, does that mean that AP is now a bad thing, as it halves the amount subtracted from defence, leading to a higher defence vs AP than vs non-AP for shield-bearing units?

I've not been following this thread overly closely (but it does interest me), so sorry if I've just not understood something!

[Jambo]

I'll be on it when I'm done with dinner tonight guys, as I work til then. I'm initially not going to give the option for half to go again into defense skill, just going to send half to armor, as it will make discussion difficult if people are not using the same unit stats. Then we can open up discussion on it and try to determine if the affected units warrant the added defense skill points or not. I apologize to those of you who may be itching to get the skill points in there too, but it would make discussion too confusing and possibly impossible, so you'll have to wait.

Great, thanks.

How will you deal with those units that have an odd number for shield bonus?

[CeltiberoMordred]

Well, there are 3 types of shields: +3, +4 and +6.

Using half of these values, it looks fair a +1 for the smallest shield creating logic steps, so:

+1 bonus for small
+2 for medium
+3 for big

[Jambo]

Well, there are 3 types of shields: +3, +4 and +6.

Using half of these values, it looks fair a +1 for the smallest shield creating logic steps, so:

+1 bonus for small
+2 for medium
+3 for big

[Carl]

@Midnight: No, what it is is that in RTW the sheild was unaffectd by AP. The diagrams and in files notes say this is still the case, when in fact CA have changed it.

Before a unit with 6 armour and a 6 sheild got 9 defence vs AP attacks (because the AP halved the armour to 3 points of effective defence).

No the sheild is also being halved so the sheild only provides half it's value against AP attack as apposed to the full value. That is a pretty big change overall and is tottaly undocumented as far as i know.

[Musashi]

Like I said, a lot of the comments in the files are outdated :)

And I knew I was right all along

*gloats*