Various Battle Tweaks
TWW2 is no longer getting patches or DLC, so my mods are also considered final and will not receive any more updates. Therefore I disabled comments on all of them to avoid constantly getting notifications for the same dumb questions that have been answered a thousand times already. Any comments or announcements I might make in the future will be posted under my collection here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1766089433
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Various experimental tweaks to how units perform in battle. Edit the mod file in RPFM to tweak the variables for yourself.
1. No obstruction for ranged units from friendly units
Units, especially ranged characters, were often "obstructed" by just a single friendly entity standing between them and their target. Units will now no longer care and shoot anyway. Note that this does indeed cause them to shoot their own units much more often, so you should still try to move them into a better shooting position.
2. Armor is more effective
Usually when units receive damage, they roll a die and if they roll low, as little as 50% of their armor value is used to reduce non-AP damage. Now this minimum threshold is 75%, so armor is significantly more effective against non-AP damage.
3. Hit chances in melee are generally lower
Usually units have a base chance to hit of 35%, a maximum chance of 90% and minimum of 8%. This is now 25/80/6, respectively. The main purpose is to slow down combat and make engagements last longer. But it also helps superior elite units perform better against cheap chaff units, because the unit stats have a larger effect on hit chances, especially on the lower end.
(To offset the relative buff this provides for ranged units, use my other mods "Better Shields & Accuracy Nerf" and "Progressively Harder Battles" with missile resistance buffs.)
4. Fatigue has a much more severe impact on performance
Units perform as usual at the early stages of fatigue, but their stats really fall off a cliff at "Very Tired" and "Exhausted". Their melee defence and armor values are much lower (representing that units usually are fatigued because they have fought a lot, and getting many hits that have damaged their armor). This offsets the slight buff for (fresh) elite units and allows for swarm tactics where you overwhelm superior units with many weaker units. The elites will dominate at first, but once they get very tired, they start losing against even much weaker units – if those are still fresh.
Fatigue from being in melee or shooting is accumulated slightly more slowly. This is to compensate for the longer engagement times resulting from change #3.
5. Fatigue recovers much quicker when a unit is not fighting
Units pulled back from the frontline and given time to breathe will now reduce their fatigue much faster, so that it is viable to pull a unit away from a fight and replace it with a fresh unit, and then let them switch places again. Keeping fresh units in reserve can now actually be more effective than fighting with everyone at once.
Also running now causes only minimal fatigue. It’s of course not realistic, but the AI usually just sits still and waits for the player, and it’s very easy to just walk up to them to not get fatigued on the approach – it’s just very boring and a total waste of time. Therefore I don’t see the point of punishing the player for running to engage the enemy. Units do not recover while running though, so to reduce previously accumulated fatigue they still have to walk or stand still.
6. Melee cavalry, monstrous cavalry and monstrous infantry are significantly buffed
I always hated how the coolest units in the game – heavy cavalry and monstrous infantry – are the squishiest wimps who always melt as soon as they come into contact with the enemy. With this mod they have +100% Melee Defence in the first 20 seconds of melee, so that they will take much less damage as long as they avoid being bogged down in melee. This ability activates automatically but once the 20 seconds are over, the unit needs to spend 5 seconds out of melee to recharge it. It only recharges when all entities of the unit are disengaged from melee, so if parts of the unit are trapped, it cannot regain this defensive bonus.
7. Most anti-large infantry units have been modified so they are stronger against large but weaker against non-large units
Their melee damage has been reduced by about 10% but they got +50% added to their anti-large bonus. So they are better at killing large, especially after the initial melee defence bonus has worn off, but are less of a swiss army knife because they do less damage against non-large.
Tip for editing the mod: Most of the tables contained in the mod are just for the effect that is applied to cavalry and monstrous infantry on the charge. That is by far the most complicated change in this mod and required edits in 12 tables. All the other changes are in just three tables:
_kv_fatigue
_kv_rules
unit_fatigue_effects
So if you for example want to get rid of the charge effect, just delete all the tables except those listed above. And if you want to edit any of the other changes, they’ll be found in the three tables listed above and it should be very easy to see which value does what. Deleting a row will restore vanilla behaviour. To keep a change but make it stronger or weaker, edit the value.
