About this mod
A small mod that makes horsemanship affect horse stats less
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This also gives you more of a reason to buy better horses. At Horsemanship lvl 18, I see absolutely no reason to trade up Pebbles. In vanilla, this is a high enough Horsemanship stat for him to never shy in combat and be able to gallop halfway to Ledetchko from the south gate of Rattay.
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Changes made:
- Decreased enemy attack delay when you're mounted to a negligible level (0.0001). Because why wouldn't they be rushing to get you off that thing
- Increased the horse morale hit of each enemy from 0.5 to 5.
- Minimum horse morale to throw off rider increased from 0.2 to 0.3
- Effect of horsemanship on horse courage reduced to 0.005. At Horsemanship 18, my Pebbles' courage stat is 9
- Effect of horsemanship on horse stamina reduced to 0.008. At Horsemanship 18, my Pebbles can make it from Uzhitz square to the stretch of road leading to Talmberg, just beyond the horizon, before he starts to complain.
But why?
It's too easy to cheese combat by being mounted. I like mounted combat as a concept, but in this game horses trivialize combat. A large group of enemies with polearms should make you think twice about rushing straight at them. And when you do decide to charge them it should be a lot of fun trying to dodge all the spears and arrows they fling at you while trying to line up an attack that won't kill your momentum and get you surrounded. Instead, in vanilla, you essentially have to self-impose a rule where you have to get off your horse every time there's enemies.
This mod by itself won't achieve all that, but I've found it does help. Now I can't just charge right into the center of a mass of enemies; instead I have to pick them apart carefully. Arrows also hurt horse morale a lot more, making you have to prioritize archers. Easier said than done when they manage to position themselves amidst their allies.
I'll add more as soon as I figure out what to add. I feel like I've exhausted all the rpg params available. The next edits might have to be direct stat edits on the individual horses or lua stuff, and likely better packaged into a separate mod.
I like how Ghost of Tsushima does it, where being mounted makes you a powerhouse, but you can still easily get knocked off your horse if you're not careful. In KCD I can punch right through a crowd and none of them have the good sense to brace their polearms and at least try to unhorse me, unless you approach them really slow, like at a canter. Then their unhorsing animation can trigger.