Armour

[Apostrophe]

A couple of questions:

- Pike militia can be upgraded from no armor to mail but with each upgrade
they get +1 armor. So they end with 2 armor, instead of five which is the
base value of mail armor. Is this a bug?

- Does armor upgrade affect speed (example upgrading Arab calvary to heavy
mail).

- Are desert penalties (or any other armor penalty) based on type of armor
or numerical value.

- Javelin armed horseman have in their unit description that they are excellent
against armored units but that they are less useful against lightly armored
troops because they are more agile and can evade javelins. I haven`t seen
any major difference in kill ratio when using them against lightly or heavily
armored units but i don`t use javelins that much to really know the difference.

- And based on this how does armor piercing work? Does AP just divide armor
numerical value by 2 and works on all units, or attacked unit has to be heavily
armored for AP units to receive any bonus in combat? I remember that in
Medieval 1 dismounted chilvaric knights killed other knights or heavy infantry
much faster than light infantry, which made sense because when you are hit
with giant halberd you are dead no matter what armor you are wearing and it
is easier to evade it when you are not in 30 kg of metal.

- Is unit with 5 armor and 5 shield better in defending against arrows than
unit with 10 armor and 0 shield? Does type of armor (plate, mail..) affect
missile defense?

Well this is all.

[Rhyfelwyr]

It appears that CA intended armour upgrades to work correctly. For example, an unarmoured unit with an armour value of 0 should get +4 armour when upgrading to leather armour. However, each level of armour upgrade only gives +1 armour, regardless of the upgrade type. Based on the research of several people here at the Guild, it seems that although the armour values from upgrades are not displayed correctly, they do in fact work correctly. So a unit with 0 armour upgrading to leather amour would in fact have an armour value of 4 in combat.

Armour upgrades do not affect speed and do not give heat penalties as far as I know.

The reasons javelin units are better against armoured units is that the armoured units are slower than lighter units and so will not be able to catch the javelinmen.

The AP attribute means that when a unit attacks an enemy, only half of that enemies armour bonus applies.

Types of armour have no specific effects other than the value they give. The current system is something along the lines of:

Unarmoured        0 armour
Leather armour    4 armour
Light Mail        5 armour
Heavy Mail        7 armour
Partial Plate     8 armour
Full Plate        9 armour
Advanced Plate   10 armour

Armour gives a unit total protection from any angle for both melee and missile attacks. Shield gives a unit protection from the front and left side for both melee and missile attacks, although the shield value in melee only applies when a unit uses the shield blocking animation. Defense skill protects a unit from its front and right hand side, although it only applies during melee and I think only when a unit is using a blocking animation.

Therefore, armour is generally the best of the values to have, although its weakness is AP enemies.

This table shows a units total protection against missiles from each side:

      UNIT             FRONT   REAR   LEFT   RIGHT
5 armour, 5 shield       10      5     10      5    
10 armour, 0 shield      10     10     10     10

[Ragnor_Lodbrok]

I think it's around 2 to 2.5 for each armour upgrade, regardless of the level.

[Guru]

The reasons javelin units are better against armoured units is that the armoured units are slower than lighter units and so will not be able to catch the javelinmen.

Can light troops actually "evade" javelins? I remember in Rome the game told me that some light javelin-armed skirmishers are not good against other light troops as their javelins can be evaded.

Types of armour have no specific effects other than the value they give.

I think the starting armour sets/affects the speed of most infantry. The slowest infantry unit, as far as I know, is dismounted gothic knights and they are the only ones who start with advanced plate. Anyone confirm or evert?

Armour gives a unit total protection from any angle for both melee and missile attacks. Shield gives a unit protection from the front and left side for both melee and missile attacks, although the shield value in melee only applies when a unit uses the shield blocking animation. Defense skill protects a unit from its front and right hand side, although it only applies during melee and I think only when a unit is using a blocking animation.

Shield gives full protection from the front and half from BOTH right AND left. Gunpowder weapons ignore shields. I dont think the blocking animation affects the shield protection in melee. I think it's the other way; the protection values affect animations. For example they affect the possibility if the man blocks the attack or not. I'm not sure about this but it would seem logical... Defence skill protects from the front, left and right with its full value. In melee that is. Missiles and gunpowder ignore defence skill. It's a bit different to Rome for example. I'm sure some of our modders know better than me so feel free to correct if I got something wrong here.

Good topic...
Cheers, Guru

[Rhyfelwyr]

I'm not fully up to date on how much things have changed since RTW, so I guess Guru you will be right.

[Miracle]

Infantry running speed is affected by weapon, starting armour, and shield:

Running Speeds:

• Very Slow - 2.63 m/s
  - Dismounted Gothic Knights
• Slow - 2.99 m/s
  - All infantry units with partial or full plate armour except Obudshaer
  - All 2H Sword units except DGK
• Normal - 3.59 m/s
  - Most infantry units
  - Most mid to upper-tier missile infantry units
  - All spearwall polearm units
• Fast - 4.27 m/s
  - All unarmoured missile infantry
  - All missile infantry with padded armour except Norse Archers
  - All crossbow infantry without shields
  - All gunpowder infantry except Hand Gunners
  - Naffatun
  - Sudanese Tribesmen and Highlanders
  - Most Aztec infantry

Environmental modifiers including heat penalty are assigned individually to each unit, but heavily armoured units correlate heavily with high heat penalties.

[Ciaran]

As a matter of fact, the unit speed depends on the animation set which the soldiers use.
If you unpack the animation data and open a movement file in whatever is the the correct 3d editing program in this case you´ll see that any movement is an animation cycle during which the model moves a certain distance from its starting position.

[Husar]

As a matter of fact, the unit speed depends on the animation set which the soldiers use.
If you unpack the animation data and open a movement file in whatever is the the correct 3d editing program in this case you´ll see that any movement is an animation cycle during which the model moves a certain distance from its starting position.

And if you change that, you'll get little Michael Jacksons like I've seen in some RTW mod.
As someone who likes the nice and shiny graphics, I can't stand that.

[Tran]

...Armour upgrades do not affect speed and do not give heat penalties as far as I know...

Infantry running speed is affected by weapon, starting armour, and shield:

Environmental modifiers including heat penalty are assigned individually to each unit, but heavily armoured units correlate heavily with high heat penalties.

As a matter of fact, the unit speed depends on the animation set which the soldiers use.
If you unpack the animation data and open a movement file in whatever is the the correct 3d editing program in this case you´ll see that any movement is an animation cycle during which the model moves a certain distance from its starting position.

Okay, so which one is true?

[sapi]

Miracle's list is correct.

Armour upgrades do not effect a unit's speed; but starting armour level roughly determines which speed group a unit falls into.

The speed itself is determined by the game through use of walk/run animations.

[Miracle]

The speed itself is determined by the game through use of walk/run animations.

I'm not so sure about that. This is what Lusted said regarding faster pike units in Kingdoms:

No their animations haven't been changed, other things have that result in a better speed.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...t=89698&page=2

[sapi]

I'm not so sure about that. This is what Lusted said regarding faster pike units in Kingdoms:

Whoops, may be wrong then.

Was just going off what Ciaran said on the matter...

I guess that means that there's a (hardcoded?) variable that also effects speed...

[Ciaran]

Well, there´s the battlemap_movement_modifiers.txt to consider as well. And if you edit that you do get the "moonwalk" effect Husar mentioned. My knowledge, though, is mostly of RTW, so if things have changed for M2TW my statement might not be valid any longer.

[Husar]

I think calculating their speed using the polygon speed of their feet or something like that sounds like a rather demanding task for the processor, simply using a tweaked variable that lets their bodies move forward at a certain speed should be a lot easier to program and saves ressources, the end result is pretty much the same, you just have to tweak the variable so you don't get the moonwalk effect, I think that's how pretty much every game does it. If you have adjustable unit speeds you will usually see that the animation slows down as well, that doesn't give the moonwalk thing but the unit looks like it's moving in slow motion. The only thing that is affected by animations are follow-up actions which have to wait until the current animation cycle is finished, otherwise you'd mess a lot of things up.

Of course the easiest way to find out would be a CA dev sharing some of their knowledge, but that's the best I can come up with using my limited programming knowledge. To make it short, yes, there should be a variable that determines speed, it seems the most logical to me.

edit: Hehe, just thought about it again, if you somehow calculate the unit speed using the animations, you inevitably end up with a single variable anyway so you just add a lot of calculation for the CPU with not real gain, if you just put someone in front of a computer for a day to tweak the variables manually, you should get much better results.

[John_Longarrow]

Husar,

Instead of having one person sit there tweaking the variable, just open up the animation and calculate the distance and count the number of frames. That gets you your movement for that animation.

ie, if it takes 10 frames to move 2m, your speed with that animation is 6 meters per second. If it takes 30 frames to move 2m, your speed is 2 meters per second.

[Husar]

Husar,

Instead of having one person sit there tweaking the variable, just open up the animation and calculate the distance and count the number of frames. That gets you your movement for that animation.

ie, if it takes 10 frames to move 2m, your speed with that animation is 6 meters per second. If it takes 30 frames to move 2m, your speed is 2 meters per second.

That should work fine as long as you don't alter the frames per second of the animation. I don't know enough about 3D engines to say how exactly they use animations.