Spurious Logic

Mount and Blade pt2

So I haven't played any more red faction as I've been obsessed by Mount and Blade.

Most of the time I was playing multiplayer which is loads of fun but I've found that it's basically unplayable when your ping goes over 75~100. It's fine most of the time when you're not up close to any other players (I imagine the game doesn't need to update their states very often and the "guesswork" it uses to position them is relatively accurate) but as soon as you get into mêlée you're pretty much screwed.

Clicking and releasing the attack key does nothing as your character just holds the attack but doesn't actually swing, Arrows fire but then a second later they're back in your bow, you're teleporting back, forward and sideways and you can't change weapons.

It is possible to play, if you don't mind skulking around and sniping as an archer (which is fun too) but it is very very frustrating. It seems is if the game (when it doesn't know better) takes a guess at what the other players are going to do (i.e. horse was running this way, I've had no info as to if that's changed so I'll extrapolate from the last known position) and then when the actual info comes in it snaps them to the correct position (which results in you thinking you've hit them when really they're behind you already).

Where this seems strange is where it seems that servers extrapolation of your position/actions means that you can't do shit. Hence the teleportation and lockups. Not much fun at all.

So with this in mind I resurrected "Conan", the level 30 cheat monster and set to taking over the kingdom of the Rhodoks in singleplayer. Here's a hint, if you have high tactics and an army of 70 odd Swadian knights, you're gonna beat just about anything you come up against. The tactics mean you're limiting the size of the enemy army in any given conflict while the knights just ride anything over. I'm thinking I'll have a dedicated siege army of 70 or so Nord Huscarls...