Note: First, I have been playing cav on Crpg for over a year now and i feel that A) Getting kills with cav is very easy. B) Cav is overall balanced, but to be effective cav must have use a playstlye of a kill stealing ninja living in fear of archers and throwers.
Cavalry as of now
-In my experience an average lance or sword cav gets roughly half of their kills from either direct kill steals or easy peasent kills. (players that will have little or no effect in the outcome of the round)
-Although the best cav top the scoreboard, new and otherwise shitty cav usually do really well also, better than they should.
-Cav dont fight other cav at the beggining of the round
1) lance cav head to head is very risky and unpredictable
2) any cav can avoid being killed by blocking and running away
-A large amount of cav are strength based hybrid cav that really give up very little on the ground to still have 5 riding
-Couching is unrealistic and overpowered.
-Killing cpu lag spawners is a cancer to the community. (and ya I do it too)
My Theory
If you changed the mechanics of cav to where they can be just as, if not more effective by attacking infantry head on as they are attacking them in the back, you took away free afk kills, and sped up cav vs cav combat, you would add more skill to the cavalry class and less gay.
The changes
1) get rid of couching from everything but the couch only lances
2) reduce the base charge of all heavy horses except for the plated charger by 25%
3) reduce the base charge of all unarmored horses by 50%
4) add in a "full canter" or "gallop" feature for almost all horses
- by definition this is when a horse opens its stride to increase their speed while giving up maneuverability and causes the rider to experience more vertical movement.
- this gallop (activated by "x") can be triggered while the horse is at full speed
- this feature ends when: a) the horse slows down more than 10%
b) the horse turns more than 45 degrees
- the more speed a horse has, the more the gallop increases their speed
- the faster the horse is going in gallop, the more the maneuverability is reduced
- the more maneuverability the less this stat is reduced by gallop
5) During gallop: (stats based on current values, not ones in previous suggestion) a) All armored horses get 50% more charge b) unarmored horses recieve 25% more charge
6) bumping reduces a horses speed based on their body armor (in both normal and gallop)
6) While a horse is in gallop lances cannot be downblocked (can still be chambered) and side swing weapons have crushthrough at a percentage based on their weight. ex. The morningstar would be like 80% chance
7) add a unenterable barrier in spawn like in rageball goals that automatically kicks people in it after a minute or so
So what should happen is something like this
- the unarmored fast horses (courser, destrier arabian) will have a nice speed bonus in gallop, a restricted turn rate, and a pretty big reduction of speed for running over consecutive bodies.
- Heavy horses (mamlukes, cataphracts, both warhorses) will have a minimal gain in speed bonus while in gallop but a nice charge buff while in gallop.
-all horse will really only be able to stay in gallop while doing straight line charges (similar to couching)
- shitty cav, the "im to afraid to fight you so i will downblock and continue to your spawn" cav will have no choice but to man up and fight since they can no longer downblock your lance
- overall cav v cav is buffed.
- buff for cav in strat, because of organized cav charges already take place head on
Planned result
The best cav should dominate both other cav and unorganized infantry. Cav team work will be rewarded just like infantry team work
Also some other small unrelated things
- add a slot for horses so that horse arhcers, who desperatly need a buff can have an extra slot of arrows and wannabe knigts can have their shield their lance and their bastard sword. However if you get off your horse you lose the item you had in the slot.