As always, buff marksmanship. (and fix animal AI)

[Amberlight99]

it seems to me like the system is currently trying to stave off the (unfortunately uninteresting and frustrating) reality that ranged combat without extremely complex and active combat systems will always be better, or, be completely useless.

The difficulty of balancing in a (mostly) nomagical setting to allow for both meaningful and useful ranged attacks and meaningful and useful melee combat, is that if you are being realistic, ranged is always better.

A spear will always be better than a sword (on average) a javelin will always be better than a spear, a bow will always be better than a javelin, a gun will always be better than a bow ect.

The nature of ranged combat excludes melee combat. in a realistic setting, ranged isn't just a combat style or a preference in weapon choice. Ranged combat in reality is a decision made to directly counter melee combat. To begin the arms race of "I will win if you can never hit me" via the everlasting chase for better armor and better reach. To use a bow or a sling or even if there were a such thing as thrown weapons, is a decision to try and engage in a one sided fight, where only you can make attacks on your enemy, and they cannot attack you.

yea. that is unless you factor in that armour is an thing,
especially steel plate armour, plate was an incredible gamechanger in warfare, too expensive too mass produce at first, but an plated soldier was laughably save from everything an peasant with an bow or an spear could do.

things get so far, that even with crossbows,2handed swords or staffweapons like helbards or pikes, you can only hope too annoy or overwhelm an full plated knight with numbers,
hell, even swords at some point where turnd into blunt metal bats, since blunt trauma was an more likely way of incompassitating an opposing knight than trying too wiggle and pry your blade through some weakpoints if they are ever accessible.

in general, you are right, ranged combat will always shoot down any clothed person charging you with an stick,
but slings and bows could historically only penetrate so much armour, and at somepoint , your foes discovered shields and full plate, and you where better off shoting at peasants and horses,

and the discovery of gunpowder didn´t even emmidiately change that dinamic, sure, cannons are a blast(pun intended) but before guns where cheap enough too equip your peasanty frontline with them, you where still pretty "save" on an battlefield in plate,

you want an nongunpower powered rangedweapon that can reliably penetrate steelplate? try ballistas, or catapults, plated infantry at some point was nier untouchable by anything less

You're right, I did not go into it much but when I mentioned a race for better armor and better range, I was, although only offhandedly, trying to acknowledge the role of good well made armor in the 'meta' so to speak.

But the presence of such good armor in history can support my main argument which is that balancing ranged and melee combat is walking on a tight rope, ranged is either too strong, or useless. The proliferation of well made plate armors is an example of being in a game meta sense 'useless'. I think if a dynamic like that were present in H&H, where Plate armor does exist and can defend you pretty thoroughly against anything that isn't a high level of blunt force trauma, like it does in real life, we would suffer from an issue that is unique to games and not real life which is where we care about the experience being good for everyone.

In a system where ranged weapons are better than melee weapons except for in cases where armor is strong enough to defend against it, a situation is not created where there is a well balanced counterplay between players, instead, a matter of wealth and economic superiority will not only, as always, determine who wins, but more particularly, determine who gets to enjoy one of the game's core mechanics. We don't want a system where an archer can destroy anyone until a chosen warrior from a rich village shows up with that villages only set of plate armor and just takes what they want because to everyone else they might as well be impervious to damage.

That might be fun for the chosen warrior, or even the rich village, but to people who want to be that warrior but weren't favored in their community? to people who don't have a big enough community to get a chosen warrior before their neighbors do and get ransacked? to hermits or new players who came in too late? There is no competition. There is no chance and there is no enjoyment.

I understand if your point was entirely about historical accuracy, and in that case you are right completely. I am generally focused on trying to find a direction to go for an enjoyable meta in the game itself. The point in the end is to have fun, more than to be perfectly accurate.