Well, we don't really know, as you say.
But I'd prefer if they'd be "one unit".

There's a number of options, but none of them are really as clear-cut, and while "kill the rider, the horse/bear goes berserk" would be neat, I think it'd ultimately add very little and maybe even become potentially frustrating.

That's not to say that a certain kind of mount wouldn't give multiple-attacks, bonuses, and have their own armors and such. I'd very much enjoy that.

And different mounts should have widly different bonuses. Horses would obviously be faster than bears, and horses give the charge ability. But bears could have a maul attack and increased health. "Chocobos" (for lack of a better name) could be the fastest mount, but be overall frail. Giant Eagles would obviously fly, Giant Spiders and Scorpions could have poison attacks or webbing, respectively, and so on.

As a Warhammer player, that doesn't hold true at all.

The Bretonians have warhorses, they get their own attack.  The rest of the poor schmucks are just riding their horses, the Bretonians actually train theirs for combat and they kick the crap out of people.  If you just tacked it on, you'd have just another high strength attack, if you simply gave the knight two attacks, you'd have two above average attacks.  As separate entities, the horse is comparable to base infantry, the knight comparable to more elite units.  Only the knight is attacked, and when it's gone so is the horse, but they are two separate attackers with two separate strengths.  If they weren't, the use of knights would be entirely different depending on the method.

Those are just horses, the more interesting mounts in the game have their own life, can lose it before the rider, and certain ones even survive the rider.  To kill a dragon takes serious effort, to kill the wizard that's riding it is fairly simple by comparison.  Killing the rider doesn't mean the dragon goes away though.

It's more than worth the added complexity in Warhammer, and you'll have a computer handling all the details in Elemental so you don't even need to expend more effort for it.

A modularized unit creation system is ideal for doing a more realistic implementation.  Your bear is a bear, your rider is a rider. Certain weapons would be more powerful depending on what you were riding, and the difficulty in striking a person on top of a bear could increase their armor rating, but they should be separate.  What would you do with a traditional elephant mount?  Even in real life, they put archers and spearmen in nests and used them like tanks.  Surviving the rider I can do without, but they really should be separate attackers.

I also as a Warhammer player (the new Chaos book ROCKS) feel that if the mounts don't attack, then their only purpose is to speed up the character! So why bother with them?

I love the fact that my 'hard as nails' Chaos Knights have a resonable strong horse attack as well, I also love the fact that my Juggernaugt ( a sort of large metal monster) speeds up my (unbelevable cool Chaos Lord) , gives him slight magic resistance, causes fear & improves his armour save by 3! The speed makes him fast enough to "babysit" my trolls, and draw the oppenents fire at the same time.

Which is why my Chaos army is a wonder to be hold

But back to Elemental, it would makes some really cool stagetical decisios possible if the mounts could attack. For example, I have 4 bear & 4 horses resources but no iron. That means I can't have armed knights on horses (or bears), but i could put a lightly armoured man on the bear and let the bear do the figthing. Personallly if bears were to be included I think (for balance reasons) they should be slower than horses. So the cheap man army with no iron would have, horse archers, stick weilding bear riders and perhaps a few spear men.

Back to WFB, the tactic above is a classic a goblin stragey as goblins can't kill squat, but their cheap and there are lots of them. For calvary goblins normally ride Wolves or spiders. Wolves have strenght on par with a man(if not slighlty better IIRC) and thus it ends up being the wolves that do the talking, and the goblins doing the pointing.

I agree mounts should not survive on their own unless their something really cool, like a dragon or other OMG monster and even then they should perhaps go beserk (like the elephants in R:TW). 

I personally think all attacks should be directed at the rider not split between the two (unless its a said OMG monster). Making them sort of like a "glass cannon".

But attacking seperately allows said rider -Babysitter/packmaster- strageys where as otherwise said rider with stick is not that much more power dispite the fact he is riding a bear. Perhaps instead of making it an arbitary stat bonus you could say add 2 damage 2 attacks ontop of the riders damage of 1(or however strength is measured) and have them resolved at the same time?

As a weedy whimp on the back of a bear doesn't make the whimp anymore powerful, but the bear can still throw a tantrum and rip some people apart (as long as someone is pointing it in the right direction ).

Thats true, but a weedy whimp isn't going to survive on the back of a bear.  I mean, honestly...  you'd have to be pretty tough to tame and control a bear.  If you are a weedy whimp, you might as well not be on a bear at all.

yeah, and the fact that there was a crazy miss chance on them when being attacked.  Like you had to counter attack against or shoot them with arrows to do any kind of non-magical damage.   (I think most unit enchantment like trustrike, magic weapon, and the like all caused the weapon to ignore flying)

If my tiger mount (  ) loses his raider and he is alowed to continue fighting, then i shouldn't lose that mount. Yes, i would still need a rider so it would be a matter of... what? Send the tiger back home? Pick up the nearest farmer and use it as rider? We could say that if the rider is lost, the mount can fight (with penalties if you want) but is lost at the end of the battle. Which sounds lame to me even if it's easier that the previous option i mentioned. If they are still alive, they are still alive (AND "tamed").

About they having their own attacks, that would make sense. After all, it's my tiger who can pounce on the enemy, not the raider. And if you were to have an Hydra, it would be quite natural for the beast to have multiple attacks. Although in this case, i doubt very much we will ever have Hydras as mounts but it was an easy example of multi attack creatures.

For simplicity, i would prefer mounts to have only one attack (if it's the case, even if it's because of training, because it shouldn't be the same to raide normal horses than warhorses) and only more than one if it really fits the creature; the mount should affect things like movement, defense and little more in that case (i.e. magic resistance if you ride a Unicorn); the mount and the rider are one, kill one and you kill the other (lets not get things too complex... add this, add that and in the end the game is just too complex to be done). I know this last point hurts magical animals like Unicorns (and doesn't make me happy) but i don't want a trail of mounts without raider riding to the nearest ally city after a battle.

When you just add bonuses, you lose a huge amount of creativity.

Elephant mounts with multiple archers in the nest.  You can't have distinctly different attacks coming from distinctly different opponents.  Armor wont help against an elephant, the toughest breastplate ever made is just a trash compactor when an elephant runs your ass over, it will stop arrow fire though.  You can fake it in some horribly lame manner, but it's never the same.

Realistically that's definitely the case. But I think following realism would result in overcomplex gameplay. All of your scenarios you've been coming up with have been a lot of fun to read, and would be cool to see in a game - but would be an absolute nightmare to control. Elemental's combat system should not be a realistic combat simulator down to such fine details. It should have depth and even complexity, but only where it adds significantly to the gameplay and doesn't confuse or frustrate the player.

Alright, you've convinced me. Mounts should have their own attacks. It allows for more creativity and a lot of neat features. But I think in addition, it should also strengthen the rider's attack (extra momentum, or better vantage point, etc).

When I was at PAX I saw someone playing Demigod. The big fortress guy has 3 towers on his back. I remember one of them getting upgraded to an archer tower and whenever enemies were near these big showers of arrows would shoot forth.

Its a bit like that, only the archers can get on and off. They would be a seperate entity from what they are riding, even if the two act in combat together.

After some point it would have to be abstracted unless we get to play Elemental on a supercomputer.

Luckmann and Smokie make much more sense if Luckmann is the Channeler of your army. They are two seperate units composed of one member each. Its not a far stretch to order Luckmann to dismount so that Smokie can fight at his side and go nuts without worrying about Luckmann falling off his back.

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Now if you scale that up to apply to a unit of 40 bear cavalry you have to handle it differently. Lets say in this example Luckmann and Smokie are part of the unit, but Luckmann is only the standard bearer. Hefting a big flag is a good way to get shot, so its no suprise when an arrow knocks him off his seat. We now have 39 units of bear cavalry, one war bear and a dismounted rider. When you seperate the rider from the mount they cease to be an effective unit of cavalry. So in essense Luckmann is now a casualty unless he gets back on Smokie.

Again, what happens now depends on the context. Is Luckmann winded, wounded or dead?

• If Luckmann is saved by his armour and the arrow knocks him off his ass then all he has to do is get back on his seat, that is if Smokie stops charging and comes back for him.
• If Luckmann is only wounded then he would still be a casualty once he gets back on Smokie, the two of them could catch up to the rest of the unit and continue fighting or they could retreat off the field and Luckmann would be listed as wounded in the after action report. 
• Now if Luckmann is dead we have a lone bear on the field. What Smokie does in this situations depends on how smart and or angry Smokie is at the time. A sad bear would drag Luckmann off the field. An angry bear would charge the nearest enemy. A smart bear would stick with the rest of the cavalry and come back for him later.

Now what if Smokie was the injured one?

• I can't imagine what could knock down a charging bear but if it did happen then Luckmann would be stranded unless Smokie can get moving again.
  
• If Smokie is wounded to the point where he must slow down then Luckmann would have to direct him off the field.
• If Smokie was dead then Luckmann would be stuck alone on the field. Now personally I would run like hell OR double up on another mount, but since Luckmann is suppost to be human, just imagine what you would do in the same situation.

It takes a "Knight" + a "WarHorse" = "Mounted Calvary"

The horse by itself is nothing more than a highly trained, to not freak out under fire basically, unguided animal.

The Knight, without his Mount, is nothing more than an un-weildy, slow, but heavily armored Chess Piece, on the Battlefeild. He isn't running around much at all and certainly isn't running anywhere's in any kinda of hurry.

But, when you combine the two, you get the very serious battle ready "Mounted Calvary" unit. And in number wreak absolute havoc to the enemy foot soldiers they find.

Sadly, if at any point during the battle, the pair once again become re-seperated, you are back to the same ole solo units.

The knight may be able to defend himself, but he won't be getting back on to his mount alone, nor will the mount begin to start stomping on those aound him in the frey. How does he know friend from foe, other than his own rider when the stuff hits the fan.

Each compliments the other to such an extent that when alone, they are basically useless, per say, under the type of conditions in which we a likely to find both in the game proper.

Clearly, we also need Firetrucks.
"A solitary hunter, the firetruck stalks its prey..."