Arrow proof plate armour and helms

[Higgs007]

I dont think TW would put this in the vanilla game because i think it would clash with gameplay. However I think it would be a pretty neat mod. We have seen in previous seige videos for bannerlord arrows bouncing and ricocheting off of castle walls, I think it would be pretty cool to see one glance off a helmet rather than unrealisticaly pierce steel. Do you think this could be in the base game? thoughts?

[Higgs007]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej3qjUzUzQg

[bloodymonarch]

Originally posted by Higgs007:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej3qjUzUzQg

Lindybeige is awesome.

[Scottx125]

No. Why? Gameplay reasons. Plus there are no forms of heavy armour as this is the equivelant period of between 300ad-1100ad. The heaviest armour generally was a padded gambeson and chainmail. And if there are, I imagine they will still do damage to you, but significantly reduced damage.

[Mikey]

Also these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3997HZuWjk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRXwk4Kdbic

[EpyonComet]

I learned something new today, thanks OP and contributors. Those results in the videos were not what I expected.

[Mikey]

Originally posted by EpyonComet:

I learned something new today, thanks OP and contributors. Those results in the videos were not what I expected.

They really aren't, are they? Hollywood really has played a trick on most of us (me included). But once you start to "scratch the surface" as it were, it gets really interesting - if you're into that kind of thing.

[Neme]

Originally posted by bloodymonarch:

Originally posted by Higgs007:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej3qjUzUzQg

Lindybeige is awesome.

Agreed,

I don't visit often.. but when I do, I find myself staying for longer then I intended :)

[Callum]

This comes down to a gameplay vs. realism issue, and in my opinion, gameplay should always come out on top.

If arrows bounced off armour then the ranged classes would be practically useless in multiplayer, making them unviable as a unit choice and boring to play. If you made it so they didn't bounce in multiplayer then we would lose the consistency between the sandbox and multiplayer, which isn't desirable.

[VonBarb]

These 'brilliant' videos all fail to take into account range, angle, and material quality an layering. They shoot at modern breastplates, of unknown metal quality and manufacturing technique, at medium ranges and at perfect 90° angle. Realities of the battlefield would have been quite different.
Heavy armor was also not worn over naked skin, and even though the arrowhead DOES go through, it does so after having lost A LOT of velocity, and may not have enough left to pierce through thick canvas, leather or even the human skin, only inflicting superficial wounds if they do.
Arrowhead design and material quality also evolved through time, and would not have been the same according to time or place. There are several examples of Flint and even Bone arrowheads being used in medieval times when besieged armies started running out of supplies and had to turn to lower quality materials.

Same with mail. They always show you modern chainmail, arranged so the mail is taut against the target, therefore removing the "curtain" effect of loose hanging mail from the equation, even when said curtain effect was a big part of how chainmail works and was so effective it was used for body armor as late as WW1.

At any rate, heavy plate armor does not belong in the timeframe Bannerlord is based on. Chainmail and metal scale armor would actually have been rare enough in some areas in those times, and would be subject to the availability of iron and wealth of the faction/lord.

[Mikey]

Originally posted by VonBarb:

These 'brilliant' videos all fail to take into account range, angle, and material quality an layering. They shoot at modern breastplates, of unknown metal quality and manufacturing technique, at medium ranges and at perfect 90° angle. Realities of the battlefield would have been quite different.
Heavy armor was also not worn over naked skin, and even though the arrowhead DOES go through, it does so after having lost A LOT of velocity, and may not have enough left to pierce through thick canvas, leather or even the human skin, only inflicting superficial wounds if they do.
Arrowhead design and material quality also evolved through time, and would not have been the same according to time or place. There are several examples of Flint and even Bone arrowheads being used in medieval times when besieged armies started running out of supplies and had to turn to lower quality materials.

Did you actually watch them, or just fast-forward? Because they acknowledge all of your complaints, at least in the ones I linked. It's "see how little damage they do, even under highly idealized circumstances", rather than "plate armor is useless" as you seem to think they're saying.

Originally posted by VonBarb:

At any rate, heavy plate armor does not belong in the timeframe Bannerlord is based on. Chainmail and metal scale armor would actually have been rare enough in some areas in those times, and would be subject to the availability of iron and wealth of the faction/lord.

True, except Bannerlord is not a historical simulation, it's a fantasy land based on history, and I'm quite sure that (like Warband) it'll include weapons and armaments from a much wider range of history than the period it's ostensibly set in.

[EpyonComet]

Originally posted by VonBarb:

Complaining that videos make the armor look weaker than is realistic

Yeah, no, the point of those videos was exactly the opposite of what you seem to think it was. In two of them the arrow has no significant penetration, and in the other, it makes a hole in the armor but no longer has enough force to damage the gambeson underneath. Also, one of the ones with no penetration does in fact mention the material of the arrow (ash wood), which they seem to think ought to have been quite strong, and I am in no position to contradict that.

[Higgs007]

Originally posted by Callum:

This comes down to a gameplay vs. realism issue, and in my opinion, gameplay should always come out on top.

If arrows bounced off armour then the ranged classes would be practically useless in multiplayer, making them unviable as a unit choice and boring to play. If you made it so they didn't bounce in multiplayer then we would lose the consistency between the sandbox and multiplayer, which isn't desirable.

Thanks for the respond and I understand completly. I know the time line for plate armor dosent match Bannerlord and even if it did making plate armor historicaly acurate and protective would not be fun gameplay wise. ( Mordhau has allso brought up this argument) still I just wanted to put the idea and knowledge out there for any would be single player modders. I think it would be interesting to see how effective plate armor would change gameplay in a 100 years war or War of the roses mod. Thanks for all the responses!

[bloodymonarch]

Originally posted by Callum:

This comes down to a gameplay vs. realism issue, and in my opinion, gameplay should always come out on top.

If arrows bounced off armour then the ranged classes would be practically useless in multiplayer, making them unviable as a unit choice and boring to play. If you made it so they didn't bounce in multiplayer then we would lose the consistency between the sandbox and multiplayer, which isn't desirable.

Pretty sure crossbow and their bolts could penetrate armor. Perhaps if the person wearing plate armor sacrifices movement speed, the archer should have to sacrifice shooting speed if they want to kill a heavily armored target from a safe distance?

[redwitch]

hmmm.. I'm no expert at this, but from what I've read on different supposedly expert sites there is a consensus that longbows af that time were not able to penetrate high quality (plate) armor, yet they were nevertheless very effective on the battlefield.

Firstly, what you say is generally correct. French armour at the time was extremely well manufactured and using slopes and various inclinations in the armour, arrows were generally ineffective at full penetration of steel plate even at short distances. With that said, because high quality steel was expensive many soldiers especially footsoldiers, who were generally lower in rank then their mounted counterparts, could not afford full steel plate armour of the grade necessary to prevent arrow penetration. In this case, wrought iron armour or armour mix and matched from different craftsmen was used which a) decreased the overall effectiveness of the armour and b) caused certain parts of the armour, especially limb armour, to be relatively much weaker than breastplate armour. In this case it would be safe to say that while the French had superior armour, the prohibitive cost allowed English longbowmen to still remain effective at least on ground troops.

With that, running in 50 - 80 pounds of plate armour made footmen easy targets. Fatigue, heat exhaustion, and time wasted stepping over fallen comrades also hampered the effectiveness of French ground troops, giving longbowmen time to fire at the French line. In addition, like you said, I can't imagine those who did make it with a chest full of arrows being particularly effective at swinging a weapon.

As per the rest of the French army, English longbowsmen trained their arrows on the horses of charging knights. Because horses were generally less armoured, crippling a horse and throwing the rider was an effective way of eliminating mounted knights' combat effectiveness. In this case, the longbowmen excelled, but at an effective range of about 220 - 300 yards, a horse in full gallop could cross that in under a minute giving the archer about a dozen shots before the enemy was upon them. Furthermore, equipped with better armour, I'm unsure if the longbow was effective in crippling the mounted knights of the French.

In short, I theorize that longbowmen were quite effective in disrupting the attack strategies of French footmen. But as per the horse back riders, without more data it's hard to say.

Likewise, it's impossible for modern researchers to replicate the effects of the historical longbow. We don't know for certain how the longbows were constructed, methods were usually craft secrets or handed down through families. We don't know how representative museum samples are or how time may have altered their composition. Likewise, it's difficult for use to replicate the low and varying quality of the metal used in armor and the arrows. Most of all, no living recreator, no matter how dedicated can duplicate the nuances of warriors trained from the age of five to shoot bows or fight as armored knights. Niether can we accurately evaluate the effects of actual combat of the effectiveness of the warriors and their weapons.

Still, based on modern experiments I would hazard that the longbow weren't really that lethal but instead had two primary effects on the control of the battle field and the ability of the French to advance.

Firstly, the longbow did allow the English to sweep from the field or prevent the taking to the field of any of the unarmored French units. The Genoa crossbowmen never got close enough, none of the French peasant infantry, nor their era's version of light calvary could stand the archers. The French knights were left like modern tanks attacking without infantry support.

Secondly, a longbow arrow didn't have to kill, wound or even penetrate the armor to become an important factor on the battle field. It wasn't just a matter of arrows either growing deep into flesh or bouncing off. The majority, or at least a large number of the arrows, would have penetrated slightly into the armor, and then lodged there. Period descriptions of the French dead definitely mention that the bodies seem festooned with arrows.

However, it's likely that the arrows functioned like the Roman Pileum spear, immobilizing the opponents armor rather than killing outright. As the French knights lumbers across the mud, they faces sleet of arrows and pretty soon every night would look like pin cushion with three-foot/one-meter yew dowel sticking off in every direction. Since the knights were marching shoulder to shoulder, in mud, the entangling and tripping effect of all those rods must have been enormous.

In this scenario, the arrows served more to velcro the knights into one hapless mass in which individuals could not move forward, backward or regain their footing. The French lines made it to the English stake line and I do imagine those on the front got shot through or speared. Then the rest would tangled by tangling arrows, mud and the odd dead guy. None of the rest of their force could come to their aid in the face of the longbows.

Then the English just darted out in the big tangled pile of French and gave them the old boot-dagger-under-plate coup de grace. Certainly, IIRC period sources don't seem to explicitly state the French were killed by the arrows. The did record many cases French smothered in mud although whether they recorded those deaths because the smothering was major cause of loss or because of the horror such a death provoked at the time, we can't say.

Poitiers and Agincourt, like all battles of annihilation, were so lopsided because one side did almost everything right and the other side did everything wrong.

Clearly, the longbows were just one element in a highly integrated battle plan that had deep roots in English doctrine and tradition at the time. English rule of law, firm protection for private property and relatively larger and broader middle-class or lower nobility, allowed the longbow to become a major battlefield weapon and to be available for Henry to anchor his strategy on it.

Conversely, the French's aristocracies sneering contempt for their lessors, their impoverishment of the people and their weak rule of law meant they had no substantial, effective and trustworthy talent pool to draw on. Instead they had, armored knights, hired mercenaries and peasants for road bumps. The French could not have replicated the English tactics with radical long term change to their social order.

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/9424/how-effective-were-longbow-archers-against-plate-armored-infantry