Someone posted a little while ago a suggestion about making lances breakable, and this is my expansion regarding cavalry in general on that.
First of all, I do am of the impression that lancecav is too powerful atm, but I am even more of the impression that their role needs to be redefined. The extremely mobile, destructive and fragile nature of lancecav, and the removal of every mans ability to effectively defend himself point-blank (pocket pikes, throwing; mind you, I don't want that to return) has led to an imbalance, and all this now causes a need for lancecav to be changed imo.
These are my suggestions (explanations below):
Massive hp buff for horses (like 100-150% (!) depending on horse)
Breakable lances (1 couch or 100-200 smth raw dmg worth of poking (including blocks!), 150 length spears the new option if you want to continue poking ppl from horseback) Shields no longer break from couches.
1-slot lances (Still unsheathable! So that people can use heavier shields from horseback with a 1h)
Charge buff across the board
Horse heirlooms redone so they now primarily add hp
Heirloom respec (for lances atleast)
Massive hp buff for horses:
The current rate at which your horse dies (primarily to ranged, but also in melee) is just insane. Horses in c-rpg are made of glass atm, which gets reflected in that they are most effective as backstabbing ninjas who scurry away at first sight of a ranged weapon aimed at them. This should not be the case imo, I would like to see cav delivering powerful, mobile, close-range support and for this they need some serious meat on their bones. The current way of balancing lancers for head-on combat has been to give them insanely long weapons, which has led to lancecav combat turning into a boring contest of who can outrange who (hint, increasing amounts of xbows, HA), and facing the wrong opponent (Lancer vs. HA = HA autowin, Lancer vs inf with short wep = lancer autowin, Lancer vs camping ranged = ranged autowin) means that you're fucked from the start. I want cav to be able to go in, kill and stay in, I want them to be a powerful supporting force in melee and not be forced to be some fargile cowards whos main abilities are to backstab and hit without getting hit themselves.
Breakable lances
Lances are incredibly potent weapons atm, but mostly because their range allows them to outrange almost all melee weapons, leading to this previously spoken of bullshit contest of who can outrange who. But to do an effective charge, outranging the melee guys (esp the polearms) is crucial, and removing this ability from cav would be a sensless overkill nerf. Therefore the idea of breakable lances is great, it allows for cav to get some extra "oompf" into their charge, while combined with the previously suggested buff, makes 1h/spears the weapon of choice for cav when the time comes to fight in melee. If you want to have some additional range for continuos poking, the spear would now be your choice, great for cav v cav combat, better range than 1h, but not as effective in cqc. This would also mesh pretty good with the diffrent weapon types, for melee, poles would be used to stop the horses while 2h would be more effective at sniping the rider (as they will now have the range to do so), ranged would be encouraged to aim more at the rider, and shieldwalls could be used to break the lances. (The idea of having a rack to resupply you with a new lance is also a interesting, maybe make it something constructable?)
1-slot lances
In the process of giving cav more staying power, the rider most ofc also be considered, and allowing the use of heavy shields with 1h wep + lance, heavy shield + spear or light shield + spear + lance would go a long way to improve suvivability (both mounted and on foot), and diversity (dimounting knights!).
Charge buff
I said powerful close-range support, and I meant just that. To make cavalry truly fearsome opponents in cqc, and charging cavalry an intimidating sight, a significant buff to charge damage is needed. This would allow cav to get out of sticky situations (remember, no more glass-cannon horses), allow them to use their horse as a weapon in cqc (bumping at slower speeds), and would make coordinated cav charges more deadly (no more just downblocking and jumping infront of their horse to avoid damage! Proper, coordinated defence needed.) A maneuver nerf might be needed on certain horses to discourage permanent bumpslashing/shooting, I dunno exactly how it will play out. (Next paragraph)
Horse heirlooms redone
The real annoying horses of today are the "jetponies", and nefing speed/maneuver on the x3 horses would go a long way to fix this. Redoing heirlooms to be primarily a HP buff would still make them attractive choices.
Heirloom respec
If lances were turned into limited-time weapons, giving the players a respec option sounds fair to me.
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Comments much appreciated! (But please read it before you post)
