I am one of those old players. I'VE SEEN THINGS.

Dress those archers up in Yamatai footsoldier armor with Zamorian thief hoods all colored black. I think you can see where this is going.

archers T-4 with katana i have found out do really good, i set them with a katana and bow then set there attack to far. when a target gets close they draw there two handed katana and are able to do all the attacks. everyone says archers suck, and compared to obsidian weapons with bleed, then yes i can see where fighters are just hand down better.
with that said archers for me seem to live longer and kill stuff faster.
anyone can spit out stats and buff's and numbers. but having fun playing the game is what counts, stressing over numbers is just "stupid"
So if the mod maker makes the thralls do more, and the game becomes more "cool" then i say, hell yea man! and thank you for putting the effort into it.
as a old player,
yes i remember when they had the broken cross bow (not a mod) but in the game. so yes there are players from the old days still playing.

I checked the age of heroes chapter 1 tab, as that was the most recent one. Either way, it doesn't seem to make a difference in game. None of my testing is showing any kind of damage buff, either in the dev kit or in the live game.

I'll go ahead and keep the non archers the way they were, then. It does make more sense that way.

Yes, I do have the extended thralls mod and it shows 2.8. And no the google sheets does not show them as 1.7, it shows them as 2.7. Maybe you checked an old tab or something. Though I will admit I never tested the damage myself so I do not know if these numbers are valid.

Regarding the combos. I think just archers having them makes sense. Currently archers are pointless because fighters are just better archers most of the time. Just T3 and T4 archers getting the new combos makes sense and is a necessary buff to archers.

If I just say screw it and give all archers the same combos, then that means anyone using GoC will be unable to effectively use archer posts, since any thrall attached to one will just dodge-hop his way away from where he's supposed to be standing. I'd prefer that not be the case.

So, the question is how to arrange this. Should non archers get the same combos? How do low-tier archers fit in a way that makes sense?

@Aphyxia I found the reason why it wasn't applying to non-archers. There are two combo tables used for NPCs: one of them (the one I had been working with) had individual combo rows for each tier of archer, allowing me to set T3s and T4s to use the more advanced combos I was working with. The other one is called the default combo table and has only one row for bows. It appears the first combo table only applies to archers and the second applies to everyone else.

It may seem like this is an easy fix, but while I could just slap all the fancy combos into the second table and give you the crackshot dancers and artisans of your dreams, that leaves us a problem: that table applies to literally every non-archer NPC. I don't know how to force it to separate out low-tier artisans, fighters, bearers, and dancers from high tiers, meaning low tier non-archers will wind up somehow being more skilled than low tier actual archers. Make that make sense.

Gonna be honest, I'm not sure that it's actually implemented in game. I just did a test pitting some T3 Black Hand archers against the game's dev practice dummy. One was Shemite, one was Hyrkanian, and one was Kushite. They all did the same damage. It's possible that the damage bonus you saw was a relic of a past attempt to add specialized racial bonuses to thralls and players, but practically, I'm not detecting any evidence of a supersized 150% damage bonus for all the Shemites and Hyrkanians.

And if there is a phantom damage bonus like that, it's hidden so well that the wiki doesn't have any info on it and no vanilla or mod functions are capable of detecting it in game, and it's not because they can't account for edits to base multipliers. Stick a thrall on an archer post, and Extended Thrall Stats will correctly show its doubled ranged damage multiplier on its stats page.

Which would be a bit ridiculous.

If it isn't accounted for, then his base multiplier of 2.88 is in addition to that racial bonus.

It is accounted for. Amurath the Swift has the single highest ranged damage multiplier in the game.

I'm not sure if it's already been accounted for, but in working on Heritage I found that NPCs (and possibly players) internally-marked as Shemites or Hyrkanians receive an extra 1.5x damage multiplier for ranged weapons (1.8 x 1.5 = 2.7). It would help explain the strong performance from characters like Du'neman the Dragoon or Amurath the Swift.

You can check a follower's base damage multipliers by having them follow you while you input the console command GetFollowerStat and then use either damagemodifiermelee or damagemodifierranged. In all cases you showed, they list as 1.8 for both multipliers.

This is fairly consistent with the Wiki's descriptions of T4 thrall stats, with T4 dancers also having a max of 1.8 for both stats.

In addition, there is a fantastic mod called Extended Follower Stats which displays this information on the thrall's stats page so you don't have to use console commands. Again, it shows 1.8 for all three of your presented cases.

And your Google doc agrees. I just looked. They all have multipliers of 1.8.

Shemite blacksmith, performer and tanner III from the volcano have a 2.7 ranged multiplier and it seems to increase by 0.1 when fully leveled. All thralls are listed here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZFwOkOq_cFQ7_-tzvcXlDxiZ8XWL5RD9zMSyPZN6Or0/

And if you want an ungodly high ranged damage multiplier, go check out Amurath the Swift.

What mod added that multiplier? Last I checked, dancers top out at 1.8 for ranged and melee damage.

Damn, I'm using the Volcano Shemite dancer III with its 2.8 ranged multiplier. Hope you'll find a way.

I've noticed that the mod doesn't appear to affect non-archers. I've given bows to other NPCs and the only ones that use the light shots are archer thralls. I'll need to do some investigating to figure out why.

I'd recommend putting the mod after GoC on principle. Larger edits should go before smaller ones; if not, the smaller edits can get overwritten. While I am not aware of GoC editing the combo tables for bows, it's possible they were, and therefore this mod needs to go lower in the list to give it higher priority.

Lastly, the mod in its current state works fine with GoC. I've been using both mods together without issue. What doesn't work with GoC are my future intentions, specifically double and triple light shots (firing two to three light shots in succession instead of just one). That feature isn't implemented yet purely because I'm working on making it compatible with GoC.

Set this up in the mod load order before Glory of Combat but I'm not seeing it work. T3 performer with a bow kept doing charged shots. What is the ratio between light and heavy bow attacks? Does the mod currently not work with GoC at all?

@Old Coot Gamer I figured it was oddly appropriate.

@Dread Swoop Thanks!

I'm subscribing to this just for the meme image. The utility is just icing on the cake.

Good work!

It's the little things.

huh, nice