HA used to counter cav and that's what it should still do. Then it would have a perfect place in a rock-paper-scissors -balancing world. I remember from two years ago when we regularly tried to get one or two HA mercs on our side for the pure purpose of dismounting the enemy cav and stop them from harassing archers and spawnraping infantry. HAs used to do very little damage on heavy armored guys targets, but were easily able to take down any light to medium targets, like horses.
I never quite understood why this balance was changed. With the current soak and reduce values it seems like the options are that HAs do no damage at all on anything (current), or become overpowered due to ability to kite and kill anything (what we had half a year ago). Do we still have active devs that could look into the possibility of tweaking the values so that heavy armor would actually protect against horse archers, but not so much against regular longbow+bodkin archers? It seems like this balance is tough to get perfect with the Warband engine though...
Anyway, HA needs a buff as it's not usable atm. My archer char survives four headshots from a HA - and he has no head armor.
Yea so, making the HA a counter to melee cav is not a good Idea. Cav already are countered by basically any player who knows how to deal with them. If they become a substantial threat to cav again, then all the cav will just go HA (as i did) if they still want to ride a horse, on top of that many other players will go HA, because the only counter to them will be other range.
With arch limitations at least they can't kite and shoot which otherwise made them un-counterable by other cav or any other class not range for that matter, and this would require actual skill in terms of riding and maneuvering to actually make the shot. The damage should still be substantially limited with that but definitely increased from the current cap.
Cav v Cav fights are one of the most fun things about this mod imo (ive played every class). HA's had and still do, although futility, attempt to ruin those engagements. HA should not be a viable counter to Cav or anything else for that matter but rather a limited support class if its made viable at all.
I hate the notion of rock paper etc. as it puts too much emphasis on the class instead of the skill of the individual, which is what makes this game fun.