[VC] Balance Mod 2.0 Release, Looting Rework and Deleveled Spawns for Bandits

2.0 just released and available for download here: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandbladevikingconquest/mods/5

The big 3 changes:

• High level unit loot is no longer crowded out of the lootbox by peasant gear, as looting low level units is capped. Kill enemies in any order you like, even if peasants die first you will still get the good loot.

• "First claim on all loot" option now actually does that, you see all the loot exactly as if you fought solo. Before it just gave 4x standard loot, which made no sense and alternated between magically creating more loot than would have existed solo and giving far less than it should.

• Bandit party spawns no longer depend on player army strength. This means that Ireland won't have tiny 3 member bands just because 4 weeks ago you left your army in a troop camp in Norway for awhile. The old system rivals Oblivion as a nonsensical leveled world, except at least in Oblivion the leveling generally happened when you met the spawn, and didn't jump backwards and forwards constantly. Bandit spawn settings from camp options and campaign AI setting still influence their size (if providing feedback on bandit strength, please report your settings for those options). Thanks to u/LordIronToe for discussing the leveled world issues with me a week or so back.

And the rest:

• Ship Captains now count as sailors for the sailing speed bonus. (companions with sailing skills will be added in later version)

• Tournament rewards are more consistent and reasonable (smaller town relationship boost, but now can increase relationship past 30, more lasting small renown boosts rather than going to +0 by mid game, culture-generic mail armor rather than every town giving Norse armor)

• Train peasants quest temporarily set to 1 hour per training cycle, balancing with small rewards, lower training cap of 5 in VC, and need to kill bandits yourself. Dialogue statements not updated (so will still report 10 hours or so, but it will only take 1), as this is temporary until the quest can be properly updated to involve training shielded militia units that might actually help against bandits.

• Some minor loot changes (no more 1/3 loot penalty when party is below 40 men, too binary, and companion loot shares change from 3 to 1, since player has to equip them out of his loot anyway. Together these also counteract the slight tendency in the very early game for the loot caps on peasant units to reduce loot.)

• Bandit spawn frequency increases by 50% to adjust for a VC system where spawns are capped earlier when large, and so adapt to the new random spawn sizes from the deleveled world

Given the complexity of this round of changes, tweaks are now incorporated into the mod full install. If you would like to use your own tweaks, look for the optional Module installation download in the nexus files page, and you will find instructions within.

The included tweaks from the tweaks tool are: keep morrigan in party, battle continuation after KO, can modify lord gear from dialogue option (only use this to correct odd gear of a favorite lord, not for theft), 0 relation loss if you refuse most quests from lord, no troops stealing from you (ie, ale, jewelry), no marshall levying your troops, bandit lairs visible from twice as far away as normal, 99% ship capture in battle (no more perfectly fine ships magically disappearing in a puff of smoke at battle conclusion), random captured ship HP, prisoner hire waiting period of 6 hours, disable stat loss from long games, use horse in town scenes. Thank you to all contributors of past tweaks to VC, and in particular Kalarhan and Kraggrim for their work on the tweaks tool!

Some personal tweaks of my own are also included: edit lady dress/hat from dialogue option, keep horse in docinga defense and farmland scene, keep your normal equipment when sneaking into towns and castles (instead of pilgrim robes and staff, which seems so much more suspicious than just wearing armor, especially in a Norse town).

Note that that you will now have dialogue options to change the gear of lords and ladies--I use them to improve gear on lords in my kingdom and remove silly hats from some ladies. Using them to steal equipment from lords would be using it as a cheat option--consider it the same as accessing cheat menu.

If you prefer the much lower default VC ship capture chance, an optional file is included to restore it on the nexus files page. Just download and copy it into your VC folder after installing the main install. Thanks to u/BunnyPoopCereal for conferring on this and other release issues.

If anyone modding warband is curious about the capping peasant loot to avoid overcrowding lootbox solution, or the fix for the brytenwalda/viking conquest "all loot option", I included the code I wrote in the spoiler tag at the bottom of the post here, and anyone is free to use or adapt without the need for credit: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,373658.msg8911666.html#msg8911666

As always, fully save compatible, including with vanilla VC campaigns. Please report any feedback!

Submitted January 20, 2018 at 09:31PM by VoicesAncientChina http://ift.tt/2rspJIq