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[Brotato]

I'm really enjoying the combat system of the game so far. Fights are tough, but fair. I've never felt like screwed over once by a poor system. When I take loses it's because I made foolish decision: either by getting into too tough a fight or poor tactics on the battlefield. However, I do feel like the overworld of the game really needs to fleshed. Out as it stands the game quickly runs into the problem of there being a big map with no way of interacting.

[Kagus]

Oh hey, cool.  Actually found this thread while lurking around over at the official forum.  Shoulda figured Bay12 would have something to say about this lil' title, heh.

I have to say, when I was first looking at it on the flash sale list on Steam, I was pretty hesitant.  I really didn't like that the battle display had everyone looking like board game pieces, and I felt a slight pang of shame at being turned off a game by its aesthetics...

But then I started watching an LP, seeing a bit more of the depth in the actual mechanics, and felt my Steam sale splurging flood out and over onto this gem, and after playing for, ah, almost 20 hours now I can fairly say that I'm happy to have supported the project.

Mind, I'm still fairly shit at it, and most of my starts at even just Normal difficulty are a bit hit-and-miss.  I still remember those times when I was given a couple hundred crowns to deliver a package to a town, only to find that it was being besieged by orcs.  At the time I didn't know that retreating needed to be done from the edge of the screen, so I automatically just lost 5 of my 7 battle brothers, and I figured it was time to start over.

I also remember the "quick and easy" caravan job I picked up late in the afternoon.  After the vampires had finished decapitating pretty much everyone and leaving the others as respectably whole corpses, I decided that I probably should not take escort jobs during nighttime ever again.


I've grown to accept the battle aesthetics, if perhaps not love them.  While I do think I'd prefer something a bit more detailed in shape, I do very much appreciate the little touches like showing the exact equipment they're wearing, not to mention the wear and tear both on armor and on the wearer.  Bloodied weapons are also something I hold near and dear to my heart (not TOO near, though...  Wouldn't want it to be MY blood on there).  Also the ease of being able to tell who's a friendly and who's an enemy by piece facing is quite handy in the larger brawls.

The sound direction is also something I'd like to point out.  The whiffs are agonizingly whiffy, which serves only to enhance the brutal satisfaction of the excellent hit sounds when you finally land that solid blow the battle relied upon...  The grunts and shrieks also are quite functional, but nothing matches the sheer visceral quality of the weapon hits.  Lovely stuff.


I'm still learning about weapon/armor/skill combinations and roles on the battlefield, but I managed to get one party reasonably far along.  Managed to duff up some wiedergangers and even managed a pyrrhic victory against an entirely-underrated hunting pack of werewolves.

...which actually brings me to some of my grievances.  That fight with the wolfies would've gone so much better if it weren't for the at times completely idiotic terrain generation and party placement.  Yes, my party was lined up in the standard defensive wall, but because we'd spawned on some kind of canyon-type-thing, this meant that three of my men were up on top of this 3-high plateau with ALL the werewolves (some 12-15 or so, I believe), while the rest of my battle brothers had to run around the side for a couple turns to try and get up there to save them.

Another minor gripe is that, apparently, if you finish a battle with an unloaded crossbow, that crossbow will REMAIN unloaded until a new battle is started and you spend the requisite 7 AP to reload it.  When you're trying to get that alpha-strike volley off, this can be a bit of a nasty setback.

There are a few other minor things regarding weapon balance and whatnot, but this is mostly just stuff that's kinda long-term fixing, and also something the devs are already working on trying to figure out.  The game also kind of loses direction after the very early stages, but I suppose this is something to be expected with such an early version.


The combat is challenging, the aesthetics are quite lovely except for the boardgame-piece thing, and the ability to rename everyone makes for great group-gaming opportunities (speaking of which, changing the name of a character doesn't change their name in the background tooltip.  Another minor grievance).

I'm gonna go back and dick around some more with my midgame party, being led by the sole surviving member of the original three (lost one fairly early, on account of his being useless, and the other was one of the unfortunately-placed souls in the werewolf attack), and seeing where I get.  Then I'll probably drop them and start a new party with different tactics, and just keep restarting the game in this fashion until I figure out what weapons and troop composition I like...  Needless to say, I'm gonna be occupied.

[Jaysen]

Thanks for the detailed feedback and really happy to hear that you like the game so far!

Let me just quickly address some of the points you mentioned:

We plan on having a battle placement phase where you can set up your troops properly before starting combat. That way situations like the one you mentioned will be remedied. Cant give you an ETA on that though as we have a lot of high prio tasks on our hands right now.

The unloaded crossbow issue missed us completely until now - thanks for letting us know- we will fix it!
EDIT: It should be fixed with the next update.

Next big content-thing we are working on is the event system by the way. These events will pop up on the worldmap and give a lot more context to your company and the world and will also make you feel way more like the actual leader of a mercenary company. Also, the handling of difficult characters will play quite a role here

[Kagus]

Word to the wise: Vampires.  Not even once.

Seriously.  I walked into an undead base rated "even", and for a bounty of 1800 crowns (a bit high, sure, but I'd stomped higher-reward targets before).

My archers were, of course, useless.  Really doubting whether or not I'll bother at all with them next run...  Orcs have too much armor, and undead are, well...  Pretty much the hard counter any sort of ranged-attack endeavor.

The rest of my troops were outmaneuvered and could barely land a single hit on the damn vamps because of their obscene innate defenses.  I walked in there with 12 men, 2 of which had only been with us for a few fights, the rest being well-equipped veterans of several gnarly battles.

Nobody walked back out.  A few rounds in, I watched as 4 of my strongest and best-trained men were decapitated one after another in a single turn as the vampires flitted about the battlefield.  My nimble-build swordmaster was the last to survive, and he managed to get a couple good hits in before succumbing to the onslaught.

Not a single vampire was killed.


Weeeell...  Looks like it's time to start a new group.  All I can hope for is that I've learned something from all this, which I suppose I have...  Namely, that anyone telling me to go out and hunt vampires can choke on it.

[Robosaur]

Are there battle-sisters yet? Still waiting on that before I give this game a try.

[debvon]

My archers were, of course, useless.  Really doubting whether or not I'll bother at all with them next run...  Orcs have too much armor, and undead are, well...  Pretty much the hard counter any sort of ranged-attack endeavor.

Ranged users are actually really great once they have some experience under their belts. At first I only ever used one and he seemed awful. Eventually I had two bow-users and one crossbow-user in my company and they carried me in most situations, especially against orcs. Even against skeletal encounters they were useful. The trick with skeletons is to use your ranged brothers as armor breakers. If you've chosen the "proper" offensive talents they'll be able to shred a fallen heroes armor in one or two turns, provided they have a clean shot.

Keep in mind that bow-users should have slightly different offensive talents than crossbow-users. Since bows can fire repeatedly without taking AP to reload I like to take perfect focus with them. At the start of battle I can use up all of the fatigue to cripple a threatening, charging enemy (like a warrior or warlord), then use the rally utility talent to restore it before my shield wall is even up. Since crossbows tend to do a lot more damage per shot I take killing frenzy. Pretty self explanatory. Using perfect focus on a crossbow user just wears him out too quickly.

My most successful company had that ranged setup; two bows and one crossbow. The damage they dealt before people engaged in melee combat saved some brothers from certain death. You can't be afraid to take risky shots either, just make sure the brothers you're shooting over have a shield up and don't have shredded armor or low health. Should they take the arrow or bolt in the back, you don't want it to be the killing blow. That company went on to destroy multiple orc warlords, a vampire coven, countless hunting packs and bandits, innumerable undead. I actually got bored with how easy the game was getting and put it down.

Anyway yeah fuck vampires. The coven I wiped out killed three and severely wounded the rest. But fuck wraiths even harder.

[Kagus]

I think I'd just as soon take another pike/billman into battle rather than an archer.  Sure, getting perfect focus and a rallybrother can lead to some ridiculous death showers, but I don't really know if it's worth it.  Having an archer was a huge help in the early game, but after that they really kinda started trailing off.  And yeah, I was taking plenty of "risky" shots, and came out ahead most of the time.

...and then the best ranged brother one-shot one of the founding three when we were cleaning up some orc warriors.  And yes, he had a shield.  And armor.


Speaking of orcs, sure, nuking a couple of orc young from long range is great fun, but then warriors show up and 1) you're not doing enough damage to their armor, and 2) they'll be more than happy to just walk straight through your lines and pick apart the lightly-armored archers.  Vampires also looove flying right past any defensive setup you have and buggering the ranged bros with their lackluster melee abilities.

As an aside, before I used to put wooden sticks on archers as their secondary, but now I've found bucklers to be an interesting pick.  Less fatigue, higher hit chance, and not only lets the archer get away but also gives them a teensy bit more survivability should they fluff the hit.


Sure, a crossbow with sundering strikes, killing frenzy and close-combat archer can deal a decent amount of damage to orcish armor...  If percentages are calculated in a lump sum rather than procedurally, that should put it at around 112-168 damage to armor.  84-126 without killing frenzy, and thus having had to kill someone before.

However, if you take a billhook instead, you're looking at 108-155 damage with JUST sundering strikes.  And if we are counting CCA, it fires from the same range.  If we're not, then crossbow damage drops down even further to 56-84.

The billhook also cannot strike a fellow brother, allows for one strike and then one step in the same turn (as opposed to fire+reload with an xbow), and can be used without penalty at night (unless, like me, you put a superheavy helmet on a pikeman and he suddenly lost the ability to see the requisite 2 squares away...  Whoopsie).  Billhook can also get a second shot off if berserk procs and there's another enemy in range.  You can also pad the max damage a bit with, uh, whatsit...  the perk that gives 10% of armor value to your damage range.  Personally I find that a bit too unpredictable to make a strong point here, but it's still there.

Sure, billhooks still suffer the piercing weapon penalty against skeletons, but they also do a hell of a lot more damage on average, and again with the added bonus of not at all being able to hit your own dudes (and suffers no accuracy malus from attacking over another brother's shoulder, perk or no perk), and base melee skill values for brothers generally being higher (although this may and probably should be subject to change)...  Also, wanna talk perfect focus?  Impale with a polearm costs 15 fatigue, same as for a fast shot with a bow, considerably less than for a shot+reload with an xbow.  Also can't run out of ammo (although it does weigh slightly more heavily on your all-too-precious tool supplies...)


Yeah, being able to pick people off before they get to you is great.  Only problem is that it's VERY situational thanks to all the times that can seriously mess it up like forests and nighttime, not to mention enemies that ignore your advantageous positioning like orc warriors and vampires...  I'm not saying I haven't had good experiences with ranged weapons, a few lucky shots have saved my life numerous times, and there's something hugely satisfying about pincushioning someone...  I'm just saying I don't really think it balances out the downsides.


I think I'll try and use javelins a little more this next run, never really gave them a proper chance...  Who knows, maybe experience will prove my cursory examinations to be incorrect.

[Sharp]

I think I'd just as soon take another pike/billman into battle rather than an archer.

Why compromise when you can have bill-archers!

You can just get the perk to swap weapons to cost no AP and that makes it very useful to have billhooks in close combat and archers at range. And makes archers useful during cleanup without risking hitting friendlies.

[Kagus]

Eh, I like my billmen to actually be able to hit stuff.  Which generally means different backgrounds/builds from the archers who hit stuff.


EDIT: Y'know what might be nice, actually?  Well, we all know the early game can be pretty damn nasty at times, especially on hard difficulty where you might wind up with just enough resources to barely equip 4 mediocre dudes before going up against the first bandit lair and getting slaughtered.

Since the game clearly allows for merchants to disappear during the night, it might be interesting to have a nighttime-specific "vendor" in cities and whatnot, in the form of scouring the streets and fighting nocturnal hoodlums.

It could be a nice early stopgap to give you the experience needed to make the most out of your puny few, while also providing some low-level equipment to at least make sure everyone has a weapon besides their fists, maybe even a hood if they're lucky.  The main concern is that this would quickly become uninteresting or pointless once you've built up some strength, but the argument could be made that when you lose a man or two and need fresh recruits that you could send them in to do some low-level cleanup work and get up to speed.

EDIT2: Also, it'd be even more reminiscient of Darklands, which is always a good thing.

[Jaysen]

Are there battle-sisters yet? Still waiting on that before I give this game a try.

Hey, sorry to disappoint you but they are not in the game yet. We want to make them really unique: They will not share character backgrounds with the male mercs so we have to write a completely new set of backgrounds, on top are all the visuals with enough variety and the soundeffects. Not a small task all in all. Can not really tell you when we will get to putting them in the game.

[Anvilfolk]

Makes me a little sad Battle Sisters aren't exactly like Battle Brothers with just, you know, a different body. I certainly hope the backgrounds won't all by like "nurse", "typist", "nurturing" and skills like "only gets payed 78% of what battle brothers get payed"...

[Kagus]

Mm, yes, quite...  Heavens forbid that women actually be, y'know, different.  Especially not in as enlightened and equal a society as dark ages Germany.

[PrimusRibbus]

Can we not do the female mercs conversation again? I'm genuinely surprised that it didn't end in a flame war the last two times it was discussed in this thread (and it got real close on page 2 & 3).

[Elfeater]

The problem is that if they were implemented just like regular battle brothers, someone would be whining that they weren't different, and not enough effort was being put into the female characters.

[dennislp3]

I don't understand why being different is so bad...

I find it silly when people take the equality BS too far...

But in this politically correct world it's pointless to care...someone will always fervently disagree with you over something