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[Yolan]

Finally got to buy this recently once I got a new computer which could handle it (open GL issue).

Really nice. Lovely polish to the graphics. Nice variety of creatures to fight and people to hire. Combat really feels polished too. Once I started to learn how to properly use the strengths and weaknesses of my men and the terrain I could expect to win a lot of fights without any losses.

...and then I picked a fight with some orc beserkes because it said "even" and they absolutely slaughtered me. I really had got attached to a few of my guys as well. ;-( Good old Baldur the bloodthirsty with his trusty war ax. He must have killed a couple of dozen before he met his end.

So... I can see that the big area to develop next is the world itself. Giving it more variety and political complexity. Which is exactly what I can see is being done. Exciting! I'm going to hold off on playing any more for a while as I don't want to burn myself out too early. Looking forward to trying it again after a few more updates though.

[Jaysen]

Happy to hear that you like the game so far.

The balancing of the difficulty is really tricky in an open world game where players can pretty much go where they want. With the worldmap rework we will have much more mechanics to make sure people do not easily get into unwinable fights. Especially the renown that we will introduce will directly affect the difficulty of contracts that are offered to the player.

[Greenbane]

From all these great things you've been working on, what can we expect in the next update?

[Jaysen]

uhm, thats the tricky one. I assume you wont accept "when it`s done" as an answer? Swore to never say that anyways

It will take quite a while though. Extremely unlikey to have something this year.

[Greenbane]

uhm, thats the tricky one. I assume you wont accept "when it`s done" as an answer? Swore to never say that anyways

It will take quite a while though. Extremely unlikey to have something this year.

Oh, I know better than to ask when. I asked what.

As in how many of all these features you're working on are you planning to add in the next update? All of them or just a portion?

[Jaysen]

Oh, my bad, i just expected that question

Everything we are writing about until the next update will be in the next update. So that is basically the new worldmap, new villages, new factions, new contract system so far.

And here is some more info on the contracts system in this weeks dev blog:

Dev Blog #61: Progress Update - Contracts, Part 1


This week we’re talking mercenary contracts. They are a core feature for a game about managing a mercenary company, so we’re redesigning how they work in order to have them be more interesting, varied and reactive to your choices. Let’s get into it!

Introduction

Battle Brothers is a game about managing a mercenary company in a medieval fantasy world. That’s pretty much the core premise, and something to keep in mind with every feature we consider. Mercenaries, by definition, are free agents that offer their services for a fee, that take on mercenary contracts offered to them by different parties. And that’s something we really want to emphasize and make a core gameplay element of with our new contract mechanics.

There’s a couple of issues we have with how contracts work in the game right now. They’re too few, too simple, too repetitive, too static. Because they also are agnostic to the player’s progress, they can be impossible to complete or be completely outscaled in their reward by selling loot of enemies the player just randomly engages on his own, demoting them to merely a means of additional income rather than the guiding light they’re supposed to be. Finally, with loot being the major source of income, certain enemy types are vastly preferable to others that drop few or no loot due to their nature.

With these problems identified, we took contracts back to the drawing board. Let’s check out what we came up with.

Contract Negotiations

Contracts are offered to you in settlements all across the land. Some are concerned with local problems, issued by single settlements that require your services, and some are of more of a global nature and offered in all of the settlements that belong to a particular noble house. The number of contracts on offer in a single settlement is no longer limited to just 3, and you’ll also be able to see if there are other contracts on offer even if you have an active one. Because contracts may now have a time limit or contradict each other (like both attacking and defending the same caravan), you’re limited to fulfilling one at a time.



The contracts offered to you also depend on your relation to your potential employers and your renown. Renown is a new statistic that is basically your ‘business reputation’ and measures how reliable and competent you’re perceived to be across the lands. Successfully completing contracts will increase your renown, as will winning hard battles, but failing or cancelling contracts, not to mention betraying your employers, will lower it.

Contract negotiations are now handled in dialogs much like events on the worldmap are. Potential employers will introduce themselves, explain the task that they need you to perform and make an initial offer of what they’re willing to pay. This is where you’ll now be able to actively negotiate the terms of your payment. You may at any time accept their offer or ask for different terms, such as payment in advance, more payment on completion or other clauses depending on the type of contract. This also allows you to customize payment to your current needs - just lost half of your men in battle and are low on crowns? Then ask for a lot of payment in advance to be able to recruit new men and stock up on supplies before going into battle, even if it means less payment overall. Don’t test the patience of your potential employer too much, though, as eventually they may decide to break up negotiations. Once negotiations have been completed, you’ll see a final overview of what you’re to do and what payment you’ll receive. At this point, you can agree to take up the contract or take a look at other contracts available and return at a later time to sign it.

How Contracts Work

To put it simply, contracts can now be quite a bit more complex. Just take a look at the flow chart for the new ‘Raid Caravan’ contract to get an idea. Contracts now can branch differently based on 3 different ways;



They can branch randomly. Because you’re likely to do quite a few ‘Escort Caravan’ contracts in your time, we want to make sure that they play out differently and offer a surprise every now and then. Perhaps what the caravan carries this time isn’t quite what you expected. Or perhaps it isn’t bandits that stop the caravan, but soldiers of a noble house that claim that the goods the caravan caries are stolen. By changing contracts up we want to keep them feeling fresh and less predictable.

They can also branch based on your actions. Contracts can now trigger dialogs with player decisions at any time, the same way events work. For example, some contracts (and random branches) may offer you an opportunity to betray your employer for a fat bribe. Depending on your decision, the contract will play out differently. Other branches are the result of your actions in combat, and not of dialog. For example, contracts now come with more granular victory conditions; it’s no longer just a matter of getting a single survivor of a caravan to their destination - the less carts make it, the less happy your employer will be, and the less he’ll be inclined to pay you or hire you again in the future.

Finally, they can branch based on actions in previous contracts. Your decisions may carry over from one contract to another. Take the previous example of you betraying your employer. The next contract they offer to you may seem like any other you’ve done before, chasing away some bandits. But it’s a setup - heavily armed troops await you. Your employer isn’t of the forgiving kind and now seeks vengeance for your betrayal.

By introducing different branches, we want to have contracts feel much more varied, reactive and give you more choices of how you conduct yourself in the world, but also introduce consequences for your actions. Always keep in mind that helping one faction is likely to anger another, and you can’t afford to make enemies of the whole world if you expect someone to keep paying you.

[Majestic7]

Those ideas sound very nice, hope they work well in the game as well. One interesting thing would be to have internal warband loaylty/morale thingy that would sometimes conflict with the renown. So, for example, you could get a mission/event where it turns out your warriors had done something horrible. If you give him up for hanging, you gain renown but take a heavy hit to loyalty/morale, if you refuse you get the opposite result and/or relationship hit with a powerful faction.

In general choices only matter when every option has an interesting consequence. If one choice has a large effect and two have slight to none, there aren't really three choices available after all.

[Anvilfolk]

Thank you so much for these progress reports. This is dev done right! I love seeing the reasoning behind each change, what you hope to get out of each of your choices, etc. I'm enjoying this about as much as I enjoy playing the game (a lot!).

[debvon]

To make contract mechanics even more complex I think that flowchart should only be one possible branch in an even larger flowchart, and that larger flowchart is only one possible branch in an even larger flowchart. Where do the flowcharts begin and end? Figuring that out will get you one step closer to successfully negotiating a contract. In fact I don't understand why your flowchart ends at all. "The fun begins when the flowchart extends." - Stephen Hawking 2015

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Are you glad you've been so receptive to community suggestions now? You better take my suggestions seriously or I'll get really sore about it not being possibly implemented in your game.

[Crazy Horse]

Data flow diagrams are the true method. All flowcharts are heresy.


Interesting post. Looking forward to trying these new mechanics out. Haven't actually touched the Goblin update yet because game backlog so I'm holding out for the next major update. Looks promising. 

[Jaysen]

@Majestic7:
We have also a moral reputation planned besides the renown. This moral reputation will go up and down depending on your good/evil actions like killing innocent and so on. The exact effects of the moral reputation are not set in stone yet.

@debvon:
I sense some sort of irony/sarcasm here The chart in our post is just one contract so if you combine this with your other worldmap activities and contracts you will basically end up with an ever-branching tree of gameplay choices. There you go But seriously, we want to have as many contracts as possible so we have to take care not to overcomplicat them. We want to have more than 5 in the next update. More like 20 or so.

[Greenbane]

In line with what you have mentioned, it'd be nifty to add plenty of small variations to every contract. Unexpected things which can happen throughout the missions. Within reason, of course.

I also believe negotiations could be an option even at the end of a contract. I mean, imagine you agree to defend a simple caravan against potential brigands, but instead an armed party of a noble house shows up to seize the goods. Very hard odds, so if your party wins, you should have the right to ask for a bonus for the additional hazard. If you and your men flee, the renown penalty for instance would be lesser for failing the mission.

And things like that, when there's a significant variance between the contract you signed up for and what you ended up dealing with.

[Knave]

Will the structure and content of contracts and their... wrinkles be moddable? I imagine having the structure open to the community will lead to a boon of extra content.

[Jaysen]

Will the structure and content of contracts and their... wrinkles be moddable? I imagine having the structure open to the community will lead to a boon of extra content.

Having a dedicated mod support would be really awesome but since we have a "homegrown" engine it is really complicated to mod the whole thing. We will see if we have time before the full release for making the files more accessible to modders.

[gimli]

uhm, thats the tricky one. I assume you wont accept "when it`s done" as an answer? Swore to never say that anyways

It will take quite a while though. Extremely unlikey to have something this year.

Jaysen turned into Carmack. 
Anyway...damn, I had hoped that it will be released for Christmas at least. Oh well!