Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Development Update – Ranged Combat

TaleWorlds Entertainment brings us a new development update for their sandbox RPG Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. This particular one focuses on some recent early access improvements that include a slight overhaul of the game’s ranged combat, a new education system, horse injuries, and more. Here’s a quick video that highlights the new features:

And here’s the accompanying transcript:

Greetings warriors of Calradia, and welcome to development update #5!

By now, you should already know the format, so let’s jump straight into the video!

RANGED COMBAT UPDATE

A substantial change to ranged combat is in the works that aims to present you with a more meaningful choice when selecting a ranged weapon by making each of them more distinct from one another.

Currently, all ranged weapons share the same aiming system, with the initial crosshair and accuracy timings being the same across the board. With this update, each weapon will have its own unique aiming curve. For example, short bows will reach their maximum accuracy faster and be able to hold their aim for longer, while longbows will take more time to reach their maximum accuracy and have a shorter window for aiming, but will deal higher single-shot damage.

This change applies to all ranged weapons, including bows, crossbows and throwing weapons, giving each weapon a unique feeling in this subtle but impactful update to ranged gameplay.

EDUCATION

Education is a feature that will allow you to interact with and shape your offspring and other young clan members as they reach certain ages throughout their childhood. This will present you with a number of choices similar to your own character creation for each progression stage, giving you much more control over how your clan develops over time.

MANGONEL PROJECTILES

An update to mangonels is on its way that will bring them closer to their historical anti-infantry routes by giving you the option to fling multiple smaller projectiles towards the enemy instead of a single boulder.

LAME HORSES

A horse! A horse! my kingdom for a horse!

Horses that fall in combat can now be crippled or even killed outright, with lame horses that go on to fall in future battles being permanently downed. So be sure to look after your four-legged friend or be prepared to meet the same fate as King Richard III.

RADIAL ORDER MENU

A new radial order menu is being worked on to make the game more accessible for those of you who are playing with game controllers. This menu is still a work in progress and we are very much open to feedback on it so please make sure to let us know what you think!

PRISONER RECRUITMENT

A change to prisoner recruitment is on the horizon that aims to bring some balance to the feature and add a little depth by making recruitment slightly more difficult. With the change, recruiting prisoners will incur a morale penalty for your party. However, we do also plan to add perks that will make recruitment easier and that will reduce the morale penalty.

FOLLOW COMMAND

We recently added a new way to follow parties on the world map to make things a little less tedious when performing certain tasks. To do this, you simply need to hold down the Left Alt key and click on the party that you want to follow.

BATTANIAN CHAINMAIL

Finally, we have a new Battanian armour on its way. This armour features a decorative bronze disk and tartan shawl over a sturdy chainmail vest.

OUTRO

And that’s it for development update #5! Please make sure to leave a reply in the comment section below to let us know what you think of the changes.

Thanks for watching, and we hope to see you again next time!