Hey guys, I just reworked this  thread's title and OP a little bit, so I just wanted to let everyone know.

Well, that and I thought I'd just expand upon the point of Better Skill/Stat Application.

I think that not only could some things like the Greenskins' scrap mechanic stand to be reworked, but I do think that some of the red line army skill trees could also use some reworking, and not only to make them a bit more thematic but also to really make them a bit more meaningful rather than just trying to make it feel purely gamey.

I think that the only army skill that Chaos Dwarf lords should have that effects their slave and hobgoblin units is the Fervent Fodder skill, and all the others should be able buffing units that actually matter to them.

But I'll come back and explain a bit about that later.

Ehh... no. 

The background stats are for everything so changing them per unit wouldn't add anything and I don't think you actually understand how the stats work as it is not the same as adding 35 MA to every unit's MA stat. 

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bli-nk#6314 wrote:

Ehh... no. 

The background stats are for everything so changing them per unit wouldn't add anything and I don't think you actually understand how the stats work as it is not the same as adding 35 MA to every unit's MA stat. 

No, I know enough to know that having regular and background MAs is just plain stupid, when having the regular version absolutely would work just fine.

And if it's not adding 35 MA or whatever, then how does it work exactly?

Again, what's really wrong with 15 MA being 15% to hit?

I'm just saying, this whole thing with backgrounds just comes off as needlessly complicating things when they shouldn't be.

Plus, I'm pretty sure that if there were no background stats, the regular stats would probably feel a lot more meaningful than they are. 

That's not even mentioning things like how some army skills just feel plain silly.

I'm not saying they need to give like 10 different +20 buffs, but I think that they should certainly be reworked to be less restrictive.

I mean, instead of the level 3 Emperor's Finest skill only giving a measly +6 MA and MD to only part of the infantry, it should either give a bigger buff to all melee infantry and Free Company Militia as well, or be a skill that only Karl Franz gets, giving a nice big buff of +5 Leadership, MA, and MD to all melee infantry in his army, or something like that.

And giving a skill called the Emperor's Finest shouldn't have such a weak default buff to begin with.

But my point is that, in this case, the application of stat buffs in the army skill trees could just stand to be improved.

Eh stat wise mostly just two things needs to be fixed 

1. REMOVE armour piercing attacks from most ranged units unless they're explicitly supposed to pierce armour like Handgunners. Bows and Slings should do 0 ap.

2. Take out Fatigue armour penalty because this is just nonsense garbage. Oh no, I'm tired, now my chaos plate armour softened to the consistency of marshmallows.

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GreenColoured#3418 wrote:

Eh stat wise mostly just two things needs to be fixed 

1. REMOVE armour piercing attacks from most ranged units unless they're explicitly supposed to pierce armour like Handgunners. Bows and Slings should do 0 ap.

2. Take out Fatigue armour penalty because this is just nonsense garbage. Oh no, I'm tired, now my chaos plate armour softened to the consistency of marshmallows.

I have to completely disagree with those two things.

I mean, I think it depends on the bows and other ranged weapons in question. Though I would say that skaven slings should probably have little to no AP, as they are not exactly the best slings wielded by truly efficient slingers, as it's just Skavenslaves or Night and Gutter Runners, and only the Gutter Runners might actually have some decent accuracy and slightly better AP, but not much, still just 5 at most.

But I will say that goblin bows should obviously not have any more than 5 AP at most, as they're small bows wielded by small goblins, so not really the most powerful bows. But I will say that human bows shouldn't have super low AP, though it shouldn't be ridiculously high, no more than 10, but elven bows and such should absolutely have more AP, and not just to show their accuracy and such.

But as for fatigue, I will say that it certainly shouldn't effect the unit's armor, unless it was maybe undead, and even then, they don't exactly tire out in the same way.

But I do think that the fatigue system could stand to be improved or even reworked.

I would personally much prefer it if instead of percentages and such, it should just be made to be a fairly simple system that's a scale from 1 to 20 and that determines just how quickly the unit tires out or not.

I would think that you could simply factor in what type of unit it is and just apply a level to that type of unit. Like most basic orcs and savage orcs are known to be pretty tough, so they might have a stamina level of 10 or maybe 12, with their bigger and tougher Big 'Uns having like maybe 14-16 stamina, and Black Orcs, being the biggest and baddest orcs have a full on 20 stamina.

I would say that the undead units should probably have locked 20 stamina or something, but have the whole stability thing effect their stats instead, like if they're fully animated and all, they have full stats, but if they get really beat up and all, their stats start to lower bit by bit.

But I do think that stamina should really only effect maybe MA, MD, and maybe leadership, but not armor and other things.

GreenColoured#3418 wrote:

Eh stat wise mostly just two things needs to be fixed 

1. REMOVE armour piercing attacks from most ranged units unless they're explicitly supposed to pierce armour like Handgunners. Bows and Slings should do 0 ap.

2. Take out Fatigue armour penalty because this is just nonsense garbage. Oh no, I'm tired, now my chaos plate armour softened to the consistency of marshmallows.

1. Eh both slings and even shortbows should have some AP. Slings irl at close ranges are plenty capable of creating significant dents to even fully metallic cuirass plate armor. The wearer of the cuirass (or a dude wearing something with less protection) certainly would be feeling the damage. They are pretty scary weapons for how simple they are.

With bows it varies but even the smallest warbow should have enough kick in it to have a chance of piercing basic infantry armor such as gambeson or chainmail. Longbows and crossbows can even pierce heavy duty stuff like knight plate armor. 

Not to mention no armor protects every spot. All ranged weapons having a small bit of AP represents lucky hits into weak areas quite well imo.

2.  The armor penalty from high fatigue is intended to represent the armor/equipment of the unit being damaged over the course of the fighting. It's not perfect solution as plenty of noncombat scenarios cause fatigue but something more complex would take a lot of coding effort for little benefit.

VikingHuscal1066#5774 wrote:

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Asamu#6386 wrote:

​You seem to be under some misconceptions here:

1. Accuracy, reload skill, ect... all still exist. They mostly use standard values because there are just base values that they work off of, which are adjusted instead - notably Calibration parameters and base reload time for accuracy/reload skill.

Shields don't affect armor, but units with shields always have more melee defense than unshielded counterparts.

As for melee attack - that's never how it worked. Rome 2 used the same game engine as this, with different base values. There's a base hit chance of 35% if melee attack and the target's melee defense are equal, +/- 1% to hit for each difference in attack or defense. IE: If a unit has 30 attack, and the target has 35 defense, then they an attack has a 30% chance to hit. Rome 2 has a base chance of 40%, and otherwise works the same as TWWH (WH1 launched with a 40% base probability - it was later reduced to slow battles down a bit).

To get what you're asking for would just mean setting that base hit chance for equal attack/defense to 0, then raising the melee attack of everything by 35, but that would inflate attack compared to defense, which looks weird in game.

I know that there's those things, but I just don't get why they had to change some of them and such. It just seems dumb to have gotten rid of them.

I mean, even if they just kept Shots Per Minute, like in Rome 2, that could've probably worked just fine.

Well, they did back in Rome 2 and Attila, and Pharaoh as well. They add to both armor and MD, which they should've done in the TW:WH games as well. So the shielded units just having MD and a dumb missile resistance does seem like a dumbing down of a these games.

And there's plenty of ways in which they could make units still be susceptible to getting hit, without resorting to a stupid "lethality" system like in Thrones and Pharaoh.

And I'm not saying that they shouldn't do anything like that with melee attack and such, as I would think that they'd no doubt do the same with melee defense and other such stats too.

It just feels like having all those base chance to hit and such stat just makes it more complicated than it really needs to be. And I'm sure that if it were just the base stats, that it would still work well enough, in part because those stats are made more meaningful by being all that's factored in, for the most part anyway.

Shields do actually behave differently from just normal missile resistance. Depending on the quality of the shield they have an X% chance of completely blocking any damage from a projectile that hits the unit. However, that block chance only works when the unit is pointed in the direction of the incoming fire. Sides and rear don't have any block chance even with shields. Artillery or spell projectiles also can't normally be blocked. 

Missile resistance merely lowers the amount of damage from a ranged projectile of any type by X% up to a minimum of 1 AP damage afaik. No matter how high the resistance is, the projectile still will deal some damage whilst shields have a chance of mitigating the damage entirely.

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Asamu#6386 wrote:

​They didn't really. The only thing that notably changed is just the unit card display. I do think that shots/minute, or fire interval + per volley damage would be better for projectiles than the current display of damage/10s (which isn't even accurate because of animations and fatigue impact the real fire rate, but aren't accounted for in the unit card; though on that note, the shots/minute value from R2 isn't accurate either), but you can see all the per volley damage and reload time by hovering the displayed value, so it's not that big of a deal. It's just an attempt to condense information.

As far as shields adding armour - that didn't really make any sense. It's not like a hit to something other than the shield is in any way affected by the existence of the shield, so having it provide a block chance/melee defense fits better than increasing the armor value.

Sorry, I forgot to mention the whole shots per minute thing, which is what they did in Rome 2, but I think that reload skill could still probably factored in and made to work.

Maybe it could be like, 20 reload skill equals 1 more shot per minute, or something like that, and maybe vary  between ranged weapon types.

But I just think that they should absolutely bring back the accuracy stat if nothing else, as Elven archers should absolutely be far deadlier than most other archers, but especially goblin archers and skaven slingers, and not just because they have better default range.

And I guess you've never played Rome 2 before, as CA literally brought in having shield stats really mattering in Rome 2, and they're even back in Pharaoh. But I'll just give a simple example of why it actually does make a lot of sense for shields to add to a unit's armor stats.

I mean, if you have a nice helmet and chain mail shirt or even a bronze or iron breastplate, that'd probably give you some decent armor, but throw in a nice medium or heavy shield, that would no doubt make the unit considerably more durable, especially to most small arm ranged weapons of the ancient world.

And I know that the Warhammer world has a lot of things that can smash armor, but that doesn't mean shields shouldn't factor into a unit's armor and MD stats.

That's kinda why I feel like they should do away with background stats and just allow the main stats to be more meaningful, in that there could be more done with them if there weren't a bunch of background stats to factor in as well.

For instance, I think that they could probably make the different types of ranged weapons have a little or possibly a lot more punch to them, but have them have some drawbacks to each type of weapons, within reason of course. Like most mid to high level bows having pretty good damage, but still not having as much AP damage as most guns, but most basic gun units have less shots per minute and all. But I'm sure you get the general idea.

But my point is that, again, even if the dwarf Ironbreakers had a whopping 150 armor from both their high quality armor and shields, there'd still be quite a lot of things that could deal a lot of damage to them and even kill them.

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TV-94#7431 wrote:

Shields do actually behave differently from just normal missile resistance. Depending on the quality of the shield they have an X% chance of completely blocking any damage from a projectile that hits the unit. However, that block chance only works when the unit is pointed in the direction of the incoming fire. Sides and rear don't have any block chance even with shields. Artillery or spell projectiles also can't normally be blocked. 

Missile resistance merely lowers the amount of damage from a ranged projectile of any type by X% up to a minimum of 1 AP damage afaik. No matter how high the resistance is, the projectile still will deal some damage whilst shields have a chance of mitigating the damage entirely.

Well, that's actually the problem.

​Even if a unit were to have a golden shield stat, that'd still mean the unit just takes some damage anyway, regardless if they put up their shields or not. And that just annoys me.

Because back in Rome 2, unit's shields would actually block missile damage for a bit from the front angles, which I think depended on armor as well, but they had like shield durability or something. 

But that's kind of the point.

Shields would be so much more impactful if they actually added to a unit's armor and MD stats instead of just reducing the missile damage they take. 

And I would be so bold to say that it would be objectively better for these games if they did that instead of just being missile resistance alone.

The average gamer do not see the numbers, they just feel the in-game effects and the numbers on the unit card just informs the gamer in a representative manner.  Your main gripe seems to be that because you're looking at the numbers, you want the numbers and formulae to be simplified or changed to how you would like it, whether or not it improves the gameplay.  That is never going to happen; CA will never ever care whether you like the formulae when you look at the code with a 3rd party modding program.  For the most part, nobody else cares whether you like the formulae either.  And I say this as someone who uses mods and makes mods.

Accuracy and shots per second are still being used in TWWH, just not much.  There are a few abilities which increase Accuracy and Reload Time.  I modded projectile accuracy for my Skaven (I wanted more friendly fire), and the effects are visible.

Wanting shields to increase armor would be a pet peeve.  It's neither a good idea nor a bad idea.  But shielded units in the game usually have higher MD, if compared to an unshielded variant.  For example standard spearmen vs spearmen with shields.

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GreenColoured#3418 wrote:

Eh stat wise mostly just two things needs to be fixed 

1. REMOVE armour piercing attacks from most ranged units unless they're explicitly supposed to pierce armour like Handgunners. Bows and Slings should do 0 ap.

2. Take out Fatigue armour penalty because this is just nonsense garbage. Oh no, I'm tired, now my chaos plate armour softened to the consistency of marshmallows.

Agree much, should be a huge reduction in missile-AP

For point 1, as a reminder. A unit will need 200 armour for it to be 100% blocking non-AP damage.

But Elven archer have better accuracy and calibration than goblin archers.... I do think some low-tier units is too accurate though, and all those stats are "hidden"

twwstats-link

If I was balancing ranged meta, I too would drastically reduce most archery AP.  But I can understand VikingHuscal’s reluctance for that, knowing how strong historical archery can be.

But AP is simply too widespread in this game.

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VikingHuscal1066#5774 wrote:

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TV-94#7431 wrote:

Shields do actually behave differently from just normal missile resistance. Depending on the quality of the shield they have an X% chance of completely blocking any damage from a projectile that hits the unit. However, that block chance only works when the unit is pointed in the direction of the incoming fire. Sides and rear don't have any block chance even with shields. Artillery or spell projectiles also can't normally be blocked. 

Missile resistance merely lowers the amount of damage from a ranged projectile of any type by X% up to a minimum of 1 AP damage afaik. No matter how high the resistance is, the projectile still will deal some damage whilst shields have a chance of mitigating the damage entirely.

Well, that's actually the problem.

​Even if a unit were to have a golden shield stat, that'd still mean the unit just takes some damage anyway, regardless if they put up their shields or not. And that just annoys me.

Because back in Rome 2, unit's shields would actually block missile damage for a bit from the front angles, which I think depended on armor as well, but they had like shield durability or something. 

But that's kind of the point.

Shields would be so much more impactful if they actually added to a unit's armor and MD stats instead of just reducing the missile damage they take. 

And I would be so bold to say that it would be objectively better for these games if they did that instead of just being missile resistance alone.

But shields do already provide extra melee defense. It just is already baked into the unit's stats and not visible as a buff. Hand weapon&shield version of an unit always has more melee defense compared to its great weapon, halberd, and dual weapon versions. For example Dwarf warrior with Axe&shield has an MD of 40 whilst its great weapon variant has an MD of 30.

Now as for shields (or any other resistance for that matter) not providing 100% protection, that is intentional. WH3 is purpose built in a way that no matter how many resistance buffs you stack, you can never totally become immune to any singular damage type. This is to reduce the possibility of one building an über buffed unit that is totally invulnerable to all damage. There are a lot more major buffs flying around in WH3 than there are in historical titles so that has to be accounted in game design.

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Sandboxhead#8494 wrote:

The average gamer do not see the numbers, they just feel the in-game effects and the numbers on the unit card just informs the gamer in a representative manner.  Your main gripe seems to be that because you're looking at the numbers, you want the numbers and formulae to be simplified or changed to how you would like it, whether or not it improves the gameplay.  That is never going to happen; CA will never ever care whether you like the formulae when you look at the code with a 3rd party modding program.  For the most part, nobody else cares whether you like the formulae either.  And I say this as someone who uses mods and makes mods.

Accuracy and shots per second are still being used in TWWH, just not much.  There are a few abilities which increase Accuracy and Reload Time.  I modded projectile accuracy for my Skaven (I wanted more friendly fire), and the effects are visible.

Wanting shields to increase armor would be a pet peeve.  It's neither a good idea nor a bad idea.  But shielded units in the game usually have higher MD, if compared to an unshielded variant.  For example standard spearmen vs spearmen with shields.

​But the problem with your argument is the fact that CA literally has done this sort of stuff before.

Yeah, they literally had units in Rome 2, Attila, and even Pharaoh now have stats for shields factoring into both armor and MD. So it's literally not impossible or anything to do.

And what I want is simply for the stats to be applied more efficiently rather than being made needlessly complicated.

I say that because as much as some people may try to claim that no one likes to look at the numbers, we all know that that's not entirely true. Yeah, some dumb kids just want to jump into any game and get quick and easy wins, as if they're all CoD games or whatever, but there are plenty of us TW fans who know the value of at least checking the numbers from time to time. So let's not pretend that everyone always feels  the same way and doesn't care about the numbers.

I mean, more elite ranged units like Dwarf Ranger units, HE Shadow Warriors, and WE Waywatchers absolutely should have pretty high accuracy, as they're clearly far higher quality troops than the likes of goblin archers or skaven slingers. And I hate t sound cliché, but the idea of them should be like an ambush in the movies, where they unleash actually accurate volleys from from the trees and such.

Understand, I'm in no way saying that such units should be outright killing half a unit of Chosen of Nurgle with a single volley of arrows or crossbow bolts, but rather that they have a lot higher chance to hit what they're shooting at. And there's another things that bringing back the Accuracy stat could help with.

I'm not sure if you know this, but back in Thrones, they had what I thought was a rather stupid feature, which they called "critical hits", or something like that, which was basically a random chance for a volley of arrows or whatever to automatically kill the soldier they hit. It was basically the whole random arrow through the eye holes of a helmet type of thing. And they're apparently brining it back in Pharaoh's upcoming update and all, but calling it "Lethality" or something.

But what I'm trying to get at is the fact that the Accuracy stat could have a somewhat dual purpose, in that it's not merely the unit's chance to hit, but also the unit's chance to get a critical ranged hit. And they could balance out such a thing by having 20 Accuracy only equals like +5% critical hit chance.

I don't mention the idea of critical hit chances stuff for melee because I would much prefer for melee fights to be settled by armor, MA, MD, and those sorts of stats.

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cloudy_skies#6339 wrote:

​Agree much, should be a huge reduction in missile-AP

For point 1, as a reminder. A unit will need 200 armour for it to be 100% blocking non-AP damage.

Mitigated Damage Taken = Icon Stat Damage Base Base Damage * ( 100 - Icon stat armour Armour * random(0.5, 1) ) from the fandom wiki 

But Elven archer have better accuracy and calibration than goblin archers.... I do think some low-tier units is too accurate though, and all those stats are "hidden"

twwstats-link

Is that with a mod or something? Because I wasn't aware that the base game actually showed most of those stats at all, be it in the menus or otherwise.

And to be clear, I said 150 armor, and the 150 was also factoring in the extra armor of a strong shield as well. But I do think could maybe just be 1 point of non AP damage that could possibly be blocked, and there are plenty of units that have pretty darn high damage, be it base or AP damage, and could make a mockery of the Ironbreakers' possible 150 armor.

I just think that if the background stats were removed, then all the regular stats could not simply shine on their own, but also be allowed to be truly impactful, and that 150 armor may seem sky high, but like I just said, there are plenty of units and ways to make that 150 start to crumble and all, like factoring in some things like the Sundering Armor and Shield Breaker debuffs and such onto many firearms.

But there's plenty of ways in which they could make these sorts of things work well enough in the game.

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TV-94#7431 wrote:

​But shields do already provide extra melee defense. It just is already baked into the unit's stats and not visible as a buff. Hand weapon&shield version of an unit always has more melee defense compared to its great weapon, halberd, and dual weapon versions. For example Dwarf warrior with Axe&shield has an MD of 40 whilst its great weapon variant has an MD of 30.

Now as for shields (or any other resistance for that matter) not providing 100% protection, that is intentional. WH3 is purpose built in a way that no matter how many resistance buffs you stack, you can never totally become immune to any singular damage type. This is to reduce the possibility of one building an über buffed unit that is totally invulnerable to all damage. There are a lot more major buffs flying around in WH3 than there are in historical titles so that has to be accounted in game design.

I know what they do, but I also know that that is really just them having a higher default MD rather than the shields actually being factored into the unit's stats.

And just because something is intentional doesn't always mean it's not a stupid decision.

And honestly, the basic Dwarf Warriors should have like 50 MD, which could just be split down the middle 25 25, as in 25 base MD and 25 MD from the shield.

But realistically, anything short of guns and maybe decent crossbows and elven bows would probably just plink off the dwarf's shields, or other such more sturdy shields for that matter.

And there's plenty of things in the game that could make a mockery out of the dwarf Ironbreakers, even if they had 150 armor thanks to their shields being factored into their stat line. 

I mean, what will the Ironbreakers do against a Dread Saurian or Star Dragon's like 600 weapon damage, even if it's split down the middle equally?

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VikingHuscal1066#5774 wrote:

Sorry, I forgot to mention the whole shots per minute thing, which is what they did in Rome 2, but I think that reload skill could still probably factored in and made to work.

Reload skill IS a thing. It's gained by veterancy ranks, and is a flat 1% reduction to reload time per point. The base reload interval is shown when you hover the missile Dp10 on a unit card.

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VikingHuscal1066#5774 wrote:
But I just think that they should absolutely bring back the accuracy stat if nothing else, as Elven archers should absolutely be far deadlier than most other archers, but especially goblin archers and skaven slingers, and not just because they have better default range.

​The same goes for accuracy it is still a thing and is gained with veterancy. I'm not sure on the exact formula, but it reduces the calibration area. Base accuracy for elves IS higher than goblins, because they have better calibration parameters. 

Most units have a base combined accuracy stat of 20, though some, like waywatchers and most artillery, have higher, not that the stat's base value matters all that much anyway because it's dependent on calibration parameters.

VikingHuscal1066#5774 wrote:

Well, that's actually the problem.

​Even if a unit were to have a golden shield stat, that'd still mean the unit just takes some damage anyway, regardless if they put up their shields or not. And that just annoys me.

Because back in Rome 2, unit's shields would actually block missile damage for a bit from the front angles, which I think depended on armor as well, but they had like shield durability or something. 

Shields work the same in TWWH as they did in Rome 2. They add a chance to completely negate the damage of small arms projectiles, including the AP damage.

Shields don't give missile resistance. They give missile block chance.