Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Taricus]

Well, safe to say the new morale mechanic for being outnumbered works. A little too well in my opinion. The new Skeletons may be a little overpowered, if only due to having much higher initiative than before and packing those nasty falxes.

Have to ask though, does underdog reducing the surrounded penalty also affect the amount of enemies that need to be close in with a character to potentially reduce their morale? Might need a change if that isn't the case, or those late-game battles just become pretty much unwinnable (Say, against roughly 20 or so orc warriors for example)

[Jaysen]

We are adjusting the skeletons as we speak, will update some changes with the next patch!
The underdog does not affect moral checks but the new banner you get through the ambition system should help against the moral losses.

[Taricus]

Yep, I'm going to stay well away from an contract involving orcs for now. That's a a second strike to underdog though. (Admittedly, You'd be fairly hard pressed to get surrounded by more than four opponents unless you're having a really bad day).

Would be great if the check was able to tell how powerful the two sides are in relation to one another though. A high-level mercenary shouldn't be too worried about a horde of bandit thugs surrounding them whereas the same mercenary being surrounded by orc warriors should rightfully start running first chance he gets.

[Jaysen]

The check does indeed factor in the Experience of the combatants, an Orc will have a bigger effect than a thug

[Tack]

Does the damage-morale mechanic go off pure numbers or do injuries factor in?
My axeman getting a severed artery and then deciding to dive in seems a bit off. I'd assume that if he didn't have a bandage, he'd start bleeding morale as fast as he was bleeding... uh... blood.

The surrounding morale is an interesting factor though especially on 2h dudes. Used to be the most important stat on them was fatigue, but now having to check whether they can handle taking a wing, psychologically, adds a new element.

[Greenbane]

A rather involved suggestion came to mind when I noticed the noble houses' fine regalia and the barber shop in some towns. What if certain types of armour could be dyed, say, at a dyer's/tailor's place? Particularly those with cloth on them, like the suits with cloaks and the later chain and plate mails draped in otherwise random tabards.

The point of this would be to provide the player the ability to give their mercenary company a visual identity, perhaps to go along with their chosen flag. In Mount & Blade, once you earned your standard, its heraldry appeared on certain shields (and a couple of high-end armours) of your fellow men. It was quite a nice touch. It'd be just colour in this case, no heraldry, given that'd make mercenaries and noble troops too similar.

So this could be accomplished in one of three ways I can think of, or a combination of them:

• Automatic: Each company banner is assigned a colour(s) behind the scenes, so all applicable armour will appear dyed accordingly.
  
• Manual, Company-Wide: You can visit a dyer/tailor to pick/change the tint that'd colour all your mercs' armour.
  
• Manual, Individual: Like above, but you're allowed to change the colour of your men's armour on an individual basis.

I realize this is rather involved given the amount of items, busts, dead busts and the like that would need to be modified, but it's an important bit of customization, in my humble opinion. The game doesn't allow starting new noble houses, obviously, as it doesn't make sense in a mercenary context. That's perfectly fine, but this would be an opportunity would give players something to strive for if they want their mercs to have some semblance of uniform. Perhaps it'd be free provided you can find the right town building (like the barber is, I think), maybe it's tied to the banner ambition (or a separate one, too), or maybe it's a late game thing, if only the most advanced suits of armour can be dyed. Could be entirely optional, too, for those who'd prefer their company to keep their original ragtag look.

Food for thought! Perhaps it's not too much work, considering a bunch of late game armours have already been coloured for the noble houses. You'll be the judge of that.

[Tack]

I usually just hunt around looking for shields and hauberks with a similar-enough color

On another note, to bring up:

long and "boring" traveling.

I don't know if this is a function of difficulty (first time veteran), but I've noticed that the 'clear out the graveyard' style quests have WAY larger travel distances than before.
I've had to clear graveyards which are closer to the next two cities over than the town it belongs to.


And the record for first gamebreaker goes to TACK! (On B12 anyway. Not sure how the other guys have gone)

Spoiler: The screenshot in question (click to show/hide)

Game tried to switch play to a guy who had just died (via arrow, if it helps)

[Greenbane]

A tangential note on the subject of travelling:

There needs to be at least of couple of (optional) instances of auto-pause.

For one, it'd be nice if the game automatically paused when you're not moving on the world map but not camping either, perhaps a "half-pause" which goes away as soon as you click somewhere to go, or explicitly press Space to break pause and let time go by while you stand still. As it stands, the game takes an ambiguous posture on this, given some events end in a pause, while others leave you static on the world map with time running. In the latter case, you often need to manually pause to consider the map and your next destination.

There's also a user-friendliness issue with travelling speeds and the appearance of hostile parties. The fact enemies can pop seemingly out of nowhere and run to intercept you discourages the use of the faster travel setting to some extent. I've personally had an instance in which I was fast-travelling to a city and some tough bandits rapidly came out of the woods and attacked me. I would've avoided them but I just couldn't react in time. I suppose it teaches me to be more careful when treading forest roads, but the travelling speeds are presumably quality of life settings, not tactical stances (i.e. marching fast but reducing awareness).

So the option would be to auto-pause upon first spotting hostile groups (perhaps within a certain distance, when immediate action would be required), or at least slow down to normal speed. Could be a two-step setting, if activated. There's a horn that sounds whenever enemies are sighted, but it's not enough on its own sometimes.

[Anvilfolk]

A small Quality of Life improvement would be to have a number in parenthesis next to your resources saying how many days they'll last. Even the official LP has the player mousing over the resources to see how many days are left all the time

[Greenbane]

A small Quality of Life improvement would be to have a number in parenthesis next to your resources saying how many days they'll last. Even the official LP has the player mousing over the resources to see how many days are left all the time

I think the quantity changes colour as the food item approaches expiration. But I suppose it could be more explicit, perhaps.

On another note, something I found slightly jarring was coming across a bandit fort, reputedly housing Some Bandit Raiders and Some Bandit Marksmen (quite a tough composition). I walked past, obviously, and a nearby village had a one-skull contract for wiping out some outlaws. The target was the same fort, and I would've been too scared to sign up but I believed the contract's difficulty rating. So I moved in and it turns out the fort now had Many Bandit Thugs and a Bandit Poacher. Coherent with the contract, but not with the previous occupants. I wouldn't have wanted to face "Some Marksmen", but it felt a bit... gamey.

Anyway, I've had a great time so far. Hit a rough spot over the past few game days (I'm about 18 days in), with difficult encounters and an unexpected run in with a Necromancer. A guy went down to a Bandit-become-Wiederganger, and I later lost my lead crossbowman (level 3, which feels like a lot at this point) one time I had to bring down a mix of Thugs and Raiders with a backline of three Poachers. I've come to dread ranged units.

A total of three guys fell over the course of two battles, and something that caught me by surprise (and further hit my company's morale) was failing my ambition to get the company up to 12 men. I didn't even know there was a time limit to that! I'm not sure the game told me: it should be quite evident. If I knew I had to rush it, I would've hired a bunch of 100-200 crown rabble instead of slowly expanding as my finances allowed it.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

... Any plans for Mac support?

[Tack]

Re: Spawn distances:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Said it on steam and I'll say it here... that's too dang far.

Any chance this is coming to mac?

Well, it turns out game development is really complicated and everything takes longer than expected. We originally planned the full release for Feb 2016, so now we are basically one year late already
Adding Linux and Mac support would push this even further. We will evaluate that again post release. Sorry for the bad news :/

[ThtblovesDF]

I quite like things that make you travel, imo. It makes you take supplies, food, stuff with you, gives rando-encounters a chance and gives time for those camp-events to happen, too.

[Majestic7]

As long as the mission makes sense regarding traveling to a distant location. Having a village being threatened by undead from a cemetary hundred miles away and next to a fortress is a bit senseless.

[ThtblovesDF]

Ha, I wish the terrain would play more into it

"Undead have been washing into our village over this river, sooo err... follow it?"

"Our lumberjacks are moving out, cover em"-time to fight wolves in the forest with some axe-dudes

etc.