A rant

[Delerak]

Im going to say a few short things on mounts.  Since I just died because of it.  Why can't you flee atop your mount when someone attacks it?  Kind of makes it pointless to even be a ranger.  I could ride with both weapons out and had a pretty good roleplay with my mounts and low and behold, all soemone has to do is attack my mount and I'm a worthless sitting duck.  I can't mount and then flee if my mount is fighting.  I'm wondering why this is?  Is there any true realistic reason? Or is it just the code?  If it is just the code I'd like it to be changed.

[Angela Christine]

I have fled while riding a mount that was under attack a few times, and it worked just fine.  It's been a while so I don't remember if I had to do anything fancy like "flee self" but fighting mounts can flee, or at least they used to be able to.  Maybe your mount just failed his "flee" roll?  If you think something hinky happened you might want to write the mud account and have them look into it, because I don't know of a reason why your mount shouldn't have been able to flee from combat.


AC

[Delerak]

You might be thinking of when YOU are in combat.  You cannot flee when your mount is in combat.  Bottom line, it was happened to me over and over.  I try everything and nothing works, I spam flee and it says this:
You cannot break a yellow kank away from combat!
That is all you get, there are no rolls, I did it around 15 times before I died, oh well, you'd think the PCs would give me the benefit of the doubt and let me get away.  Guess not.

[Rindan]

Personally, I don't think there is much wrong with it.  I think it is too damned easy for people to get away.  If you attack the PC on a mount and they fall, alls they have to do is stand up, type mount, type flee, and spam a direction.  If you attack the mount, in my mind, that is specifying that you are going out of your way to make damned sure that the beast can not get away with you on it.  It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if you dismount someone, you can get between them and the mount and hack them down if they try and get back on to flee atop it.

If you think your mount is lost, just be smart, get off the beast, and run like hell.  It might mean that your escape involves more then just spaming a direction knowing that your attackers have no chance of catching up.

[Delirium]

Why didn't you just

dismount

run

n/e/w/s/whatever direction was good?



(Rindak said it much better. Hey, I'm tired.)

[Delerak]

This is about riding.  Not about what I should have done or whatever.  My character could ride without using the reins, that means he was a near master rider, he could control the mount.  The point is he should've been able to pull the kank back with whistles, with his feet, or the reins if he had to.  How can THAT not be reasonable?  The only reason I'm pissed is because desert-elves have it way too easy and riders get fucked every which way.  It is far too easy to kill riders nowadays.  Whatever happened to pull reins?  Why are all these good things taken out.  Cavalry was one of the strongest powers in wars according to our history, why is it crap on Zalanthas?  Whatever happened to armored kanks, and a guy with a lance?  I was always confused why riding sucked.  I think if your mounted you should have a significant advantage over your enemy.  However it is exactly the opposite, you get hit twice as hard, twice as much, and you can't hit your enemy for shit.  That's about all I have to say for now.

[Delirium]

You're also a very easy target perched up atop a kank. That's why you have to practice mounted combat. It -is- possible to get better at (AFAIK), just harder and takes a while. Really, you're a good several feet above the others that are attacking you. Sitting duckie. Quack quack.  

Plus, you have to worry about controlling the kank *as well as* fighting. It's not a significant advangage, it's significantly harder.

[Delerak]

Didn't I say I was a master rider?  I could fight in combat on my kank forever.  One of the reasons I'm pissy about how I died.

[Savak]

YOU still CAN flee, but you might well have to do it without your mount. You will generally have to "dismount" in order to succeed, however.  But you're not just a stuck sitting duck... remember they're fighting your mount, not you.

I do not know whether there is a valid check in place to make it POSSIBLE for you to convince your mount to flee while you're still riding it.  This may have been disabled because of a bug with a ridden mount fleeing and the rider being left in the room, but still set as mounted (so the mount & rider are in different physical rooms, but still think they are a mounted pair), or it may be that it was never instituted.  Either way I would think it suitable that it be possible with the right skill, experience, &/or mount.

However, it is intentional that a mount which is directly involved in combat is much more difficult to convince to do what you want it to...such as "flee."  The main point is, there -are- alternatives.  Getting off the mount being one.

I also would like to see a bit more done with mounts & combat, including things like bucking you off or fleeing of their own accord and dragging you around (possibly causing you to fall as they bolt) if you are in combat, they are in combat, or there's simply combat going on in the room.  This has been discussed, and while parts are easy to do, there are issues with saving skills/experience to individual mounts over time (much as there have been issues with saving strength & similar stats).

-Savak

[Delerak]

I would love to see things done with ride, not just negative things though! I mean come on.  I'd love to see cavalry units in zalanthas too.  Nothing, not even a bunhc of half-giants would be a match for a few hundred armored inix and a strong man atop wielding a lance and shield, they would plow through just about anything, which makes me wonder why skills such as Charge, or Impale were never put in for mounted combat. oh well, guess I gotta stick to dying.

[Angela Christine]

You might be thinking of when YOU are in combat.  You cannot flee when your mount is in combat.  Bottom line, it was happened to me over and over.  I try everything and nothing works, I spam flee and it says this:
You cannot break a yellow kank away from combat!
That is all you get, there are no rolls, I did it around 15 times before I died, oh well, you'd think the PCs would give me the benefit of the doubt and let me get away.  Guess not.

Nope, that's not what I'm thinking of.  A few months ago an elf attacked my mount, which I was riding, for no apparent reason -- I guess he was a raider or something but my half-elf's Allundean wasn't good enough to understand what he said.  Anyway, I was a little bewildered for a moment and the first thing I thought of  to do was to unpack my bag from the mount (lame, I know) because I thought the mount would be dead pretty quick.  Then I woke up and tryed to flee, and sure enough my kank did flee, despite the fact that it was being beaten up by an experienced elven raider.  We hightailed it back to town and lived happily ever after.   This was maybe 5 months ago.

True story.  Well, except for the living happily ever after bit, I think my character died a week later but the kank may still be alive.  

AC

[Delerak]

How did you flee?

[Rindan]

Mounted riders were great in history because we rode horses and other beast that did well in combat.  I doubt that a mule would have been worth while in combat.  I always passed off riding as being poor in combat simply because Zalanthas creatures make terrible combat mounts.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that Zalanthas creatures might simply suck in combat.  Perhaps they are hard to control, or they spook easily, or whatever it is that makes them poor.  Maybe a kank simply refuses to run down another living creature and so whenever one tried to charge into battle with one, it goes berserk and tried to throw its rider off.  I can think of plenty explanations as to why mounted beasts might simply suck in combat.  If anything, I think it gives Zalanthas style.  The first thing two people do when they are contemplating fighting is jump off their mounts and draw a weapon.

As to your situation, I if you go back to the theory that Zalanthas mounts are horrible combat creatures, then what happened makes perfect sense.  The desert elf in question directly assaulted your kank.  In other words, he went out of his way to simply spook/kill your mount.  You are trying to control the beast, the desert elf is ignoring you and just keeping your kank from running off.  The only way to deal with that situation realistically is to get off and rescue (IE, use the rescue command) the mount, kill the elf before it kills your mount, or give up on the mount and run like hell.

Further, in the situation you describe, it is perfectly logical that you had no chance for escape.  A desert elf is faster then your kank.  Realistically, when you tried to run away, the desert elf easily kept up base and continued to beat on your poor kank.  If anything, it would have seemed unrealistic to me if you managed to easily escape and outdistance the elf.

I like that mounts get the shaft.  I hope they don't change it.  If anything, I would like to see more NPCs attack mounts then we currently have, simply to make it clear that being on foot in the desert is a shitty thing for a human.  It would give people more respect of the distances and time it takes to travel from one place to another.

[the halfling]

You could always just rescue the mount then flee.

[Delerak]

Of course you're going to root for riding to suck, you're playing a d-elf.  I have played a desert elf, they are cheap and have far too many coding advantages, and they are way too low on the karma list IMHO.  Which is why I prefer not to play them.  And since you were there, of course you're going to go against what I have to say.  You got the better of my char and killed him because of the code, simple as that.  And there is no reason why a kank would be a poor combat mount, they are huge insects, beasts of burden, not very much unlike a horse, and no where in the documentation does it state that they are poor mounts for combat.  If I had a horse or sunback it would've been the same.  Only reason I'm posting here is because it was a fault with the code, I don't want a res or anything, I already have my next char planned out, I just want to bring it to everyones attention that riding simply sucks ...and let's not forget the fact that a d-elf can run from tuluk to allanak in 5 minutes is moot?  Whatever..

[Angela Christine]

How did you flee?

I think I just typed flee.  It might have been flee self, but I don't think so.  

I always assumed the "You cannot break a yellow kank away from combat!" was the flee failure message, just like when you are sparring and get a flee failure message, and not a message that it would indicate that it is impossible for a mount to ever flee.  I've gotten that message and then successfully fled on a later attempt.  Yellow kanks are cheap, maybe they are cheap because their flee skill is like 2% or something?  I don't know, maybe I'm just delusional.

AC

[Rindan]

If you took from my post that I was there, or that I am even playing a desert elf, you are very much mistaken.  I have not played a desert elf in years, and never as a raider.  Further, I have absolutely no desire to play a desert elf.  I find them painfully boring for the most part.  I tend to find them even more restrictive in terms of interaction then even magikers.  At least a magiker can pretend not to be a magiker.

As far as mounts in combat, it seems pretty damned clear to me that the code is screaming that they flat out suck.  There is no documentation on kanks in general other then a short blurb that says they are pack beasts.  So, in that case, I think what the code screams about them should be considered the official word.  Mounted combat could very easily give bonuses.  It doesn't.  It never has.  The code flat out states that Zalanthas beasts are very poor combat creatures.  At best, the most you can hope for is to control one just enough so that it is not a disadvantage.

A kank, or any other Zalanthas beast, is not a horse by any stretch of the imagination.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that you could not pick creatures more different from a horse.  They are not even mammals.  So perhaps it is time to drop the Earth idea that mounted combat is supreme and accept that on Zalanthas the animals they use are horrible combat creatures that spook very easily, as the code practically screams.  It is completely reasonable to think that Zalanthas creatures simply spook much easier then a horse.  Duel wielding seems to be the combat style of choice, despite everything that Earth military history will tell you.  I see no reason why if running around with two large weapons makes sense that it also makes sense that completely alien creatures used as mounts are horrible in combat.

If you really wish to nit pick, I doubt that even the most skilled rider could keep a normal horse from panicking if an 8 foot tall elf with a sharp pointed object started to poking it, skilled rider or not.  A highly trained horse could deal the chaos of combat, but once you start sticking it with a weapon, your riding abilities will not mean anything as the horse tried like hell to get away from danger.  A human with his supreme control over his instincts can't help but react to being jabbed at, a horse has it much worse.  The average Earth horse could get nowhere near a battle before it spooked.  The average earth horse can be spooked by a squirrel.  A highly trained war horse is the only thing that can deal with the chaos of battle.  Who is to say that Zalanthas creatures can be trained well enough to be able to deal with battle without reverting to their instinctual fight or flight response?

Finally, as I stated before, a kank back rider is going to have a fun time getting away from an elf.  Not only can an elf out distance a kank, but an elf is faster.  I would say that it would be painfully unrealistic if the code had let you just tell your kank to flee, then hit a direction a bunch of times while the elf is unable to close again to attack.

[Angela Christine]

Further, in the situation you describe, it is perfectly logical that you had no chance for escape.  A desert elf is faster then your kank.  Realistically, when you tried to run away, the desert elf easily kept up base and continued to beat on your poor kank.  If anything, it would have seemed unrealistic to me if you managed to easily escape and outdistance the elf.

I think it depends on how many elves are involved.  If a single elf attacks a single mounted kank, I don't think the elf can realistically keep the beast from fleeing.  A kank weighs what, 140 ten-stones?  And an elf weighs 7-9 ten-stones?  And a kank is stronger, a kank can carry much more weight than an elf.  The kank doesn't have to turn and run, he can just run over the elf.    Certainly escaping combat isn't out of the question.  

Then there is the question of outdistancing the elf.  Can a kank out-run an elf?  Not usually.  But even an elf can not fight while running, so he has to wait for the kank to stop moving due to exhaustion or use a distance attack (just like with the many auto-flee creatures).  So sometimes the kank will make it back to safe territory, and sometimes it won't.

AC

[creeper386]

Well, first of all, I'd say a kank is REALLY a beast of burden and not a creature of war, they are basically a big ant, they don't bend good, wouldn't be greatly quick and if something got underneath it the thing would be as good as dead. A kank is something for someone to ride, I wouldn't want to see them being war animals.

If you got on just any horse and tried to run into combat, you'd have little control over the animal, even if you were a ranger and had a close connection with the animal.

Now, I WOULD like to see combat on other animals alot easier, with alot less penalties. Things like inixes they are big lizards, lizards can twist and bend pretty easier to bite and swat with their tail, more likely to be trained as a battle mount. Erdlus quick little buggers, probably have a mean peck too, although I'd like to see the weight the can be carried increased a bit so that if your a light human wearing sand cloth or leathers you could ride it but not if your were wearing heavy chitin or bone. Ratlons... Beleive one of the main reasons these were made was for combat. Be wonderful for them to be alittle easier to get and see a Byn unit mounted on Ratlons or a section of the militia or something.

Other animals that are mountable and would make good war animals... I don't know, but I'm sure there are more, although a kank might survive alright when it's on it's own(Avoiding creatures that might kill it) or in a herd(Attacking in numbers) it doesn't much strike me as an animal that you'd ride into combat with much success.

Guess thats all I got. Sure things need to be fixed some, alot of time mounted combat gives BIG benefits, but thats mostly when you have a mean mount that works with you or you have room to move about. In history it's been shown many times that if a mounted person has no room to manuever they are quickly pulled off there horse, or forced to dismount because they can't stop attacks as easiely, and the lower half of their body is pretty open.


Creeper

[crymerci]

This is just a random guess on my part, but you said you'd been able to ride without reins for some time...so the kank was not hitched to you? Perhaps your chances of success would have been better if it was?

[Angela Christine]

Another thing I thought of, I think your encumberance affects your ability to flee.  If you are heavily encumbered it is harder to flee, which makes sense.  If this affects mounts as well, which it should, the mount may have been unable to flee because he was too heavily weighed down.  

When I have successfully gotten a mount to flee I think that both times I was playing a fairly young female half-elf.  In that case my character probably weighed around 7 ten-stone, and likely didn't have fantastic strength (for some reason almost all of my characters have sucky strength) so they would have worn light armor and gear since I wouldn't be able to carry heavy stuff around when I wasn't mounted.  A heavier and stronger character might be carrying more junk around, making his kank more encumbered, and preventing the kank from being able to flee.  I'm just speculating though.

AC

[Synthesis]

Speaking from a purely code perspective, it might be possible to get your mount to flee while it's engaged in combat thusly:

The evil elf attacks your kank.
You tell the evil elf "Damn ye, ye krath-damned longneck!"
You attack the evil elf.
You mount your kank.
You flee.

Since -you're- the one fleeing the combat, and your mount is hitched to you and you're on top of the damn thing, the code might bypass the mount's 'stubborn' code and just cause it to flee.

I do know for certain that it is possible to flee a mount that is engaged in combat, because I've both done it and had it done to me before.  So I suppose the trick is just to find the way to do it.

[Myrdryn]

It is possible to flee with a mount.  If you aren't in combat but are mounted the command you are looking for is 'flee self'.

[Delerak]

Now I looked back at the log and noticed I didn't try flee self, I really feel bad now, considering I could've gotten away.  Thanks Myrdryn this is something I will NOT forget!

[Quirk]

I've said this before, and will probably say this again: without stirrups, effective cavalry is almost impossible. Cavalry was simply not a factor in Roman times, with the honourable exception of horse archers. Alexander used cunning cavalry tactics which involved highly trained riders releasing their lances at the moment of impact, but that's the only time I've heard of effective cavalry in history before the stirrup. I have not seen one stirrup object in Zalanthas, and I don't think it's any more likely to be invented than the mekillot-bone blunderbuss. So, in short: riding should suck, it sucks in RL if you don't have stirrups, and I don't see any problem with Zalanthas echoing this.

What you should be asking: can I have a chariot with scythe blades on the wheels? Before cavalry was effective, chariots were all the rage.

Quirk