No mount Combat??

[raudelmil]

So... maybe this time instead of "Horse Armor DLC" they will have "Mounted Combat DLC"?

 

So, anyways, here's how I would balance mounted combat:

 

First, I would go play Mount&Blade for a while, to give me a feel for what I wanted to accomplish. Then:

 

In general, horse combat should feel awkward compared to foot combat. Some things would be easier (hit&run) but other things should be harder.

 

In particular, terrain should be a big obstacle, for mounted combat. Horses should have problems with the rugged terrain of Skyrim. Even standing still, archery should miss a lot, and when moving this should be even worse (with a limited arc of fire). Likewise, you have a limited range of weapon motion. Magical attacks would need similar limitations.

 

And I would also introduce a set of ai behaviors and animations designed to avoid damage from mounted riders. And of course, they would be trying to kill your horse out from underneath you as well.

 

Then, once you've made basic horse combat almost useless, you introduce a whole tree or three of perks to alleviate these difficulties. If someone is willing to burn a perk trees on something like this, I think they should get advantages comparable mastering any other perk tree. (And the three perk trees could be Offensive -- aimed at hitting things successfully and gaining damage bonuses from movement, Defensive -- aimed at keeping your horse alive and staying on top of it and Utility -- aimed at getting your horse to cooperate with you and retaining some of your mounted combat abilities in bad terrain.)

 

Without that? Without skills developed specifically for mounted combat, you are essentially mounted infantry...