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[Rap]

Thanks!

Archers can miss by a single tile in any direction and potentially hit all tiles (and the characters on them!) that are around their target. A red shield on a character just means that this character is directly blocking the line of fire and therefore has a much higher chance of getting accidently hit instead of the target.

[dennislp3]

Is there planned to be any magic (likely answered before...didn't really see in my skimming)? I assume the undead being raised bit is magic of course but any crusader/priest type characters? Anything for battlefield healing?

[Rap]

Yes. Some enemies do employ magic (like the necromancer to raise the undead) and some enemies can be considered to be magical themselves (like the undead). There will also be items with magical properties to be found, but they'll be relatively rare and hard to get. Battle Brothers themselves won't ever be magicians or clerics, but always down-to-earth sellswords and adventurers in a world where magic is rare but not unheard of. There will likely be a magical item or two that allows for battlefield healing, but it won't be something the player can normally do; healing will usually take place on the strategic layer, between battles.

[Sharp]

Any thought on multiplayer then? I can understand the singleplayer campaign being the main focus of the game but it looks like multiplayer battles would be fun to play like UFO2000.

[Elfeater]

With the undead, I think that a character who stands on the tile of a fallen zombie or skeleton, should have the option of caving  the skull in, with whatever weapon they have, so they can keep them from re spawning.

[Neonivek]

Thanks!

Archers can miss by a single tile in any direction and potentially hit all tiles (and the characters on them!) that are around their target. A red shield on a character just means that this character is directly blocking the line of fire and therefore has a much higher chance of getting accidently hit instead of the target.

That has always been weird to me in the sense that Archers aim suddenly gets REALLY bad because the enemy they are facing is very hard to hit. Then those stray arrows are somehow especially accurate to people around it in spite of the fact that they aren't really aimed at anything.

Not a complaint, it is a gaming convention.

[Rap]

Any thought on multiplayer then? I can understand the singleplayer campaign being the main focus of the game but it looks like multiplayer battles would be fun to play like UFO2000.

Multiplayer won't make it into this game, I'm afraid. I have no doubt it could be fun, but it would mean a massive distraction from our core features and is a road we could easily get lost on if we travelled it.

With the undead, I think that a character who stands on the tile of a fallen zombie or skeleton, should have the option of caving  the skull in, with whatever weapon they have, so they can keep them from re spawning.

Yes, that has been requested by a few people now. We'll probably end up with some items that are especially effective against undead and may even have an effect like you describe, whether magical in nature or a product of our crafting system (think holy water or somesuch). As for allowing this is a normal action for all characters, I'm rather reluctant; I don't want to devalue the necromancer as the unique element he is now. I like that he forces the player to go on the offensive or be swarmed with undead in time.

By the way, without a necromancer present, only zombies have the ability to respawn at a 50% chance one single time at half health. Skeletons don't respawn by themselves and vampires can't respawn or be respawned at all.

That has always been weird to me in the sense that Archers aim suddenly gets REALLY bad because the enemy they are facing is very hard to hit. Then those stray arrows are somehow especially accurate to people around it in spite of the fact that they aren't really aimed at anything.

Our stray arrows do not somehow become especially accurate just because they miss their intended target; they still have to beat the defense of the character they're now accidently flying towards, i.e. having a shield or an otherwise high ranged defense does also protects against accidental hits. The whole mechanic can also be used to the player's advantage: Using "Quick Shot" to fire into tight formations of enemies works best as the arrows then have a good chance of hitting someone.

[Jaysen]

We did some bugfixing and also added the much requested feature to show all combatants healthbars! Here the dev blog article and changelog:

Combat Demo Updated - Changelog

Has it been a week already? We’ve updated the Pre-Alpha Combat Demo of Battle Brothers to fix the bugs you guys reported and add a bunch of features you requested. Chief among them are the new optional armor and hitpoint bars shown above all characters. You can find a full list of changes down below. If you haven’t tried the demo yet or want to give it another go, don’t wait any longer and download it here: DEMO DOWNLOAD!

As always, we depend on your feedback. Talk to us and let us know of any problems you encounter and anything you’d like to see changed or added to the game!



Changelog

Fixed bug that could leave the game hanging indefinately during the AI turn when the necromancer moves outside of view towards corpses to resurrect

Fixed bug that could leave the game hanging when using the wait turn action with only a few characters left

Fixed bug that had the inventory tooltip sometimes claim a character doesn't have enough AP to switch items when in fact he does

Fixed bug that had tooltips for hidden opponents show "Click left to focus" when it wasn't in fact possible

Fixed bug that characters wouldn't immediately show the hidden status effect icon if spawned inside brush

Fixed bug that had skeletons sometimes use the Shieldwall skill when no opponent was actually in range

Fixed shader incompatibility with some low end video cards

The last few scattered opponents on a map should be a bit easier to find now

The combat log now also gives exact numbers for armor damage taken

Added optional edge of screen scrolling mode (disabled by default)

Added a slight movement threshold to drag-style scrolling in order to avoid accidentally scrolling the map when trying to click something

Added optional camera mode that always keeps the current AI character in focus (disabled by default)

Added an option to disable the hardware cursor and use a software cursor instead (use this for a visible cursor when making videos of the game!)

Added support for scrolling with ZQSD keyboard layouts

Added optional overlay to show armor and hitpoint bars at all times (toggleable with Alt key and in the options menu)

[Ant]

DL'd and played the demo today, this far quite stable (despite my aging rig) and fun. I find the graphical representation clear and descriptive, although sometimes it's hard to see terrain height behind the hexes. The current difficulty feels roughly on par with mid-game Terror From the Deep. I'm definitely going to check this thread more often, thanks for the demo!

[thepodger]

Holy hell this looks amazing already.
Please don't end up cutting down on the ambitious scope to release a perfectly polished gem.  That's what makes this so promising.  Of course, my most played games at the moment are Qvadriga, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, and Dominions 4 so I will always advocate for massive amounts of unbalanced or borderline broken content to explore and toy with.
This may be one of the only forums on the net where that taste is not niche.

[AndClayton]

I think this game will be great as long as it doesn't fail where I personally think Mount and Blade did:

Traveling around without purpose for long stretches of time, looking for something to kill that's just going to outrun you anyways, half the time having nothing to do.

Oh, and "Use [enter troop name] to win the game" or "Use a full army of cavalry to win the game" (not assuming there's going to be cavalry, but I think you get what I'm trying to say).

[Jaysen]

Thanks for the kind words and great that you like the game so far!

The second part, the strategic worldmap, is not represented in any form in the current demo. But you can be assured that we have loads of content. We will avoid making the same mistake mount and blade does by leaving you completely lost on the worldmap. You will have plenty to do and can chose freely on what action to take next so we wont force you down a certain road or force you to do something you dont wont to.
There is a detailed article on the worldmap in our blog - head over there and give it a read, that will answer a lot of your questions!

[Jaysen]

Dropping in to give you a quick update on the progress of the game. This time we got some changes to the combat mechanics, new weapons and blood and gore galore!
All the details are in the blog entry below:

While we said before that our focus is now on the strategy part of the game, we’re constantly tempted to add little things to the tactical part as well. Seeing you play the demo and provide feedback gives us a lot of inspiration, and this is why this week we went back and added some new features and reworked others.

If you haven’t played our combat demo yet, get it here DOWNLOAD and tell us what you think and what you would like to see in the game! Mind you that the changes below are not part of the demo yet!

Reworked Damage System

We want our weapons to feel different not just with with unique skills, but also in how they perform against armored and unarmored opponents. Previously, a select number of weapons gave a small damage bonus when hitting armor. That made some weapons slightly better suited against armor, but it didn’t have that much of an impact damage-wise, since basically every weapon did a good chunk of damage to armor anyway. In fact, it didn’t seem to influence player strategy much at all.

We’ve now reworked that system so that different weapons perform significantly better or worse against armor in a way that has a definite impact on gameplay and equipment selection, while at the same time presenting this in a way that should be more clear and easy to understand. This is how it works:

Each weapon has a base damage range with a minimum and maximum damage value. If a target with no armor is hit, that damage is applied in full to the target’s hitpoints.



If, however, the target is protected by armor, a second property of every weapon comes into play, called the “effectiveness against armor”. This value is a percentage number that governs how much of the weapon’s damage is applied to damage any armor on a hit instead of hitpoints, for as long as there is armor left. For example, a dagger has an effectiveness against armor of 60%, so only 60% of its damage applies to damage and reduce a target’s armor. Clearly, then, a dagger performs better against unarmored targets. On the other hand, a warhammer has an effectiveness against armor of 200%, meaning that it does double its normal damage to any armor. Other weapons, like swords, might have a higher base damage and thereby be better at killing off unarmored and lightly armored opponents, but against heavily armored opponents, a warhammer is king.

Double Grip

If you’ve played the demo, you might have noticed that shields are seriously important. In fact, other than not having a shield to spare in the first place, there wasn’t ever a good reason not to wear a shield and just have one hand free.

That’s somewhat authentic, of course, since shields apparently were essential on medieval battlefields. On the other hand, we want to give you, the player, choices. We don’t want every single Battle Brother to be equipped the same. Not wearing a shield doesn’t need to be equally as viable as wearing a shield all the time, but there definitely should be situations where it makes sense and where you have to make a choice that isn’t a no-brainer.

We’ve now introduced the concept of “Double Grip”. When equipped with a one-handed weapon and having the off-hand free, Battle Brothers (and for that matter, many enemies) will use both hands to swing their weapon and enjoy a significant damage increase. From now on, in situations where you favor increased damage over increased defense, whether in your spearwall or when fighting a single powerful enemy, you can just order your men to put their shields on their backs and swing away with full force. As it happens, this is also a small piece of additional historical accuracy added, as a lot of weapons were actually long enough to be used both with one or with two hands. We’ll see how it works out in the game as time goes on, but already we’re quite satisfied with the added gameplay options and authenticity.

New Weapons

In the wake of the new damage system we also implemented two new weapons into the game. Of course, like all weapons, they come with their unique skills that should give them a tactical niche of their own.

The Warhammer

This weapon is designed to be as effective as possible against armor and thus will be more important in the later stages of the game when armor will be more common. The base damage is moderate but it does a lot of damage against armor. The warhammer’s skills support this design even further.



The first skill, “Hammer Strike”, is an attack with the sharp side of the hammer. On top of any armor damage done, it always also inflicts a small amount of damage to hitpoints, no matter the armor protecting the target, by the mere force of impact.

The second skill, “Crush Armor”, does exactly what it sounds like. The hammer is used to batter, deform, rip and otherwise render the target's armor unusable. It does no damage to hitpoints other than a small amount with every hit by the force of impact, just like “Batter” does. However, it inflicts double the warhammer’s damage to armor. This skill excels against heavily armored targets and is best employed to destroy armor before engaging with other weapons.

The Military Cleaver

The military cleaver is a version of a regular cleaver used by a butcher but designed for warfare. It is not well suited against armored opponents but it can rip terrifying wounds on unarmored targets.


The first skill, “Cleave”, causes bleeding wounds that inflict additional bleeding damage over the next two turns if the attack does any hitpoint damage at all (i.e. isn’t completely absorbed by armor).

The second skill is called “Decapitate”, an attack aimed right at a target’s neck. It does more damage to hitpoints the more the target is already injured, and therefore is an excellent finisher for already wounded opponents, especially those that have a lot of hitpoints. If the attack kills the target, it is decapitated and you can see it’s head flying through the air! Yeah, we just added that feature, but see the next point for details.



Fatalities

Dealing the killing blow to an enemy now has a chance of causing a so-called fatality effect. Fatalities differ for each weapon type. For example, bladed weapons can decapitate and gut a target, and blunt weapons can crush the head. Different skills also have a different likelihood of causing these; the “Decapitate” skill will always decapitate, and the “Swing” skill of Greatswords has a higher chance to do so than the “Slash” skill of one-handed swords.

Fatalities serve two purposes. First, they portray the fatalism of our pseudo-medieval engagements, especially in light of our perma-death mechanic. If your favorite veteran Battle Brother dies now by getting his head chopped off, it should hurt even more. A medieval battlefield really is no picknick. Second, there are actual gameplay effects, at least when fighting the undead. Necromancers are unable to raise the bodies of characters that have been decapitated or their head smashed in. Grabbing those cleavers could be a good option when fighting an army of zombies!

[Lukeinator]

PTW

[Rap]

If any of you guys have an account on indiedb or moddb, we'd appreciate you expressing your anticipation for the full game by giving the combat demo a rating here:



I'd like to tell you that this would help us out alot but I actually have no idea what having a rating is good for, yet. As a token of my appreciation, here is a preview of some awful medieval hairstyles.