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[Kagus]

*Ahem*...

I'd read somewhere that you have a maximum of 9 perk points to spend over the course of a merc's career, should they defy all odds and actually survive that long.  With a level cap of 11, does this mean that level 11, like level 1, does not provide a perk point?  Does anything else happen to balance that out?

I mean, I can sorta understand why you'd want to stop at 9.  Namely, with 10 points you have just enough to pick up Perfect Focus and Battle Flow, which could potentially be even more game-breaking than PF already is.


Aaaand I've been having a bunch of lackluster starts again...  There's been a lot of running away, which sadly is a rather dull and tedious affair in the current incarnation.  Would be nice if you could at least *attempt* to get away when first attacked, rather than having to do it through the battle screen...   But I suppose that would lessen some of the tension and danger, eh?

Guh...  First part of the game can be seriously demotivating sometimes, 'specially on hard mode where you have to be really lucky to be able to afford a party that can take on the "tutorial" bandit camp.

[dennislp3]

I hate losing people in games like this...but I found that starting out with a lot of nearly naked guys tends to go smoother than a handful of actually equipped guys. Equipment gets pretty big boosts from perks and you are better off hiring 10 people and ending up with 3-6 level 2+ people than having 4 or 5 "well equipped" individuals at level 1.

I try and focus on one or two people and really try and level them as best I can early and consider most others cannon fodder for the first few engagements

[Kagus]

Problem with that, aside from getting enough cheapos like beggars and whatnot to be available for recruitment, is when you get morale cascades.  Having weakling brothers chopped up and slaughtered does mean things to the morale of everyone else, causing them to perform poorly and, in worst case scenarios, go into full-on retreat mode and give the enemy loads of free hits, potentially killing them and continuing the cycle.

Hell, it's how I managed to kill off a large hunting pack WAY earlier than I should have.  I somehow managed to stand my ground long enough to start breaking their resolve, and the resulting chain reaction turned a still very threatening pack into so many fuzzy steaks.

[dennislp3]

Letting them get chopped up is by no means the goal...if you do it right you can cycle fresh and injured units on the battle line and walk away with one, maybe two deaths max if you play your cards right.

It is a tricky thing indeed but when you can make it work it feels great

[ThtblovesDF]

'After you surive a while the game becomes somewhat easy - the "low" lvl cap and simple skill tree make the game far less intresting at this point then it could've been.

But the weapon choices are nice and change the playstyle up a little, however the "you start in the middle, enemys all around" becomes boring extremly rapidly, but you have very little choice on the mather, since its defined by terrain and many static objectives are in a forest.

I had massive success with a fair mix off weapons (2-3 ranged, 2-3 spears/shield/tanks, 2-3 Brothers with 2 range weapons (pike seems nice), 2 2h-axe brothers).

A layering off shield/tanks with the spears (spearwall!) inbetween, archers and 2-range-pikes behind can tank nearly any amount of units. 2h-axes are usually on the flank or ready to fill any hole in the lines.

Later on I tried various tactics to mix it up, a all spear/pike unit was entertaining, especially since the "high hit ratio" still works well against shield-users.

Following that was just everyone without shields and the biggest weapon they could find (2h axes/swords) - with heavy armor. Worked alright, especially since one chop off the axe breaks most shields and the easy kills make enemy moral quick to fail.

[Majestic7]

Perhaps in the future we can get deployment pre-battle dependings on your tactical abilities or the like, in ambushes you could deploy around the enemy and if ambushed they'd be around you etc.

[Kagus]

I've been meaning to do an all-dagger/Sax run some time around.  I just barely started one once, but realized I wasn't ready to dedicate myself to it quite yet.

I still don't really like the greataxe though...  Getting guaranteed hits to the head is nice, but it also means that damage is even split between the two armor sections.  Makes it nice for wearing down armor, but...  That's kinda it.  And with the big sword and axe, you don't really want to be in the business of "wearing down", you want to get in just in time to land the one killing blow.  The sword seems to have nicer abilities, especially the long chop that hits two enemies in a line...  Used that one a number of times to great effect.  Don't think I've ever seen the stunning from the overhead swipe proc though, but in theory that's also fairly nice.

One idea I was toying around with was the idea of swapping out a greataxe with just a regular combat axe wielded with dual grip.  I've never been able to use the 360 axe swipe anyways, and I'd like to see how damage compares, especially since the combat axe gets the 50% damage increase to head hits (speaking of, does anyone actually know how multiple percentages are calculated?  Like, head crits deal +50% damage, axes deal +50% damage on a hit to the head...  Does that make the end result 225% or 200% total damage?), while the greataxe just guarantees head hits.

Sure, damage is gonna be lower, but I'd like to find out just how much lower, and whether or not that is counteracted by the reduction in AP cost and the potential of using Nimble.  Damage to shields doesn't appear to be increased from dual grip (just like the "transferred" damage of hammers), but that's okay...  6 base damage is enough to get you most of what you want in shield splitting anyways.

Perhaps in the future we can get deployment pre-battle dependings on your tactical abilities or the like, in ambushes you could deploy around the enemy and if ambushed they'd be around you etc.

The devs have talked about implementing a deployment phase so you can place your brothers before the action starts.

[Jaysen]

Hey guys, sorry for the long silence!

Now we are back in the saddle and i have an update for you introducing the event system. You can read all about it in the dev blog which i will just throw in here:

Dev Blog #43: Introducing the Event System

Time sure flies by fast! It’s been a full month now since we announced that we’d go full time and needed some weeks to get everything sorted out. While we took care of business and set up our new workspaces, we were also featured on the Steam Summer Sale for a day. Yay!

We’re happy to let you know that we’re now back in the saddle again. Both Christof (the programmer) and Jan (the manager) have moved to work full time on Battle Brothers. The last of the bunch, Paul (the artist), will join us mid-July. Development pace should now pick up again.

As previously announced, the first item on our roadmap is the introduction of an event system for the game. Today’s update to the game adds just that, so let’s take a closer look...

The Event System

Managing a mercenary company is not an easy thing. Not only do you need to command your men in battle, now your leadership skills are tested outside of combat as well. It’s easy to forget at times that the little guys you control are supposed to be humans. As humans, they sometimes have their own agenda, they have strengths and weaknesses in character, they may change with time, they may quarrel or bond with each other, and they’ll come to you with requests. While traveling on the worldmap, a lot can happen, much of which we can now convey to you with events.



To kick things off, we’ve added 47 events to the game. These include things that you can just stumble upon while traveling the world, some things that require you to be at certain places, as well as things that require characters of certain backgrounds or traits in your party. Some backgrounds may not play well together, and some may have advantages or disadvantages also outside of combat. What choices you have available at events may depend on what characters you have, and the outcome of your choices may differ as well.

Those 47 events are pretty much a vertical slice of what we want to ultimately achieve with the events, showing a bit of everything. Some events are comprised of only a single scene, some are quite complex and contain a dozen different scenes. It’s not nearly enough events yet to cover everything, of course, but we intend to add a lot more as we go along to make for a varied and reactive experience. Keep in mind that as everything else in this game, the event system is in Early Access too, and not finished. Once we add additional mechanics in the future, such as player reputation in the world, we’ll also weave this into the event system to trigger different events depending on your reputation, and to allow for events to change the reputation you have.

Note that you do not have to start a new campaign to have events in your game, your old save should load just fine. However, you’ll get the most out of the events with a new campaign.

Character Moods

Together with the events we also implemented a ‘mood system’ that tracks a mercenary’s current mood on an individual level. This was necessary as many events potentially influence how your mercs feel and how motivated they are. We model this by a scale ranging from ‘euphoric’ all the way down to ‘angry’. A character in good spirits receives a bonus to his resolve while a disgruntled character will probably be more reluctant to risk his neck for you.



For example, a highborn noble gets into a fight with a lowborn servant - depending on how you, as the leader, decide to handle the situation there might be people upset or satisfied in the end. The effect on your mercenaries’ moods adds another layer of consequence to your decisions during events and makes them more meaningful and impactful. Getting all the different characters in your mercenary company to work together can be a challenge in itself.

New Weapons

While we were at it, we also added a few more weapons to the game.



From left to right: Wooden Flail and Reinforced Wooden Flail - agricultural tools turned weapon, these are lower tier variants of the Flail. Woodcutter’s Axe - a two-handed axe meant to fell trees, but will fell men just as well. Warbrand - a hybrid between a one-handed and a two-handed sword.

What’s next?

We’ll keep a close eye on the changes we’ve just introduced and will likely provide smaller but more frequent updates for a while to iron out any issues and make minor content additions. Once things are looking good, we’ll target the next item on our roadmap - the Goblin faction. This will be the largest update to date and come together with a lot of other changes, such as to AI and the leveling system. We want to do as many of these changes as we can in one go, because unfortunately that update will then have to break compatibility with save games from previous versions of the game.

Changelog

Added new event mechanic on the worldmap with 47 different events to start with. We'll continually add new events from now on.
Added two new combat music tracks exclusive to fighting bandits and beasts, respectively.
Added a limit to the amount of food, ammo, tools and medicine that can be carried at once. Previously, the player could haul giant stockpiles of everything around the countryside, essentially removing these resources as a consideration and additional means to pay upkeep. This change should make them stay relevant.
Added Warbrand as a two-handed sword variant.
Added Woodcutter's Axe as a lower tier two-handed axe.
Added Wooden Flail and Reinforced Wooden Flail as lower tier flails.
Added Masterwork Bow.
Added ability to pause the game on the worldmap also using the 'Pause' key. Makes sense.
Changed Skeleton Guards to have 8 AP (up from 6) to bring them in line with other skeletons and enable them to stick to the bulk of the fighting force.
Changed fatigue costs for movement to be double across the board. Movement hardly factored into fatigue before and this should provide another drawback for using heavy armor, especially when fighting more skirmish-oriented opponents, such as the upcoming Goblins.
Changed Athletic and Clubfooted traits to have double the effect on fatigue costs for movement.
Changed Taunt skill to be more effective.
Changed crossbows to be reloaded automatically after combat ends.
Changed amount of crowns the player receives from selling loot to be lower.
Fixed flipping the map during an AI turn potentially preventing the game from proceeding.
Fixed game refusing to continue during an AI turn under specific conditions.
Fixed laggy UI after changing character name and confirming with return key.
Fixed Gravedigger background incorrectly using text of the Graverobber background.
Fixed incorrect icon for Impale skill of the pitchfork.
Fixed Berserk perk sometimes not working correctly.
Fixed inaccurate sell prices shown on items in the shop interface.

[PanH]

The new update sounds good. Skeletons are gonna come crashing on the wall harder with the guards in the frontline, but hey.
Also, masterwork bow ! And Goblins incoming !

As for the event/mood, I'm gonna see if it plays well. I hope it's somewhat manageable with drawbacks and benefits possible.

Also, could it be possible to see the skills a weapon grant in the shop ? Currently, apart from knowing them, you have to equip them on a brother to see what a weapon allows you to do. I kinda know most weapons by now, but I realize I've never really used flails. Though, I dont know where it would fit on the UI.

[Rap]

Also, could it be possible to see the skills a weapon grant in the shop ?

Yes, it's been on our todo for a while now. Will make it in eventually.

[rumpel]

Huzzah! :>

[Majestic7]

Unfortunately this new update broke the game for me, getting "critical hardware error" when trying to launch the game. Added my rig details in the tech support thread about this issue.

[EagleV]

With regards to crossbows automatically reloading after a fight, I have a related question: when I switch my archers to their billhooks, they still have them equipped after the fight. Are there plans for automatically re-equipping the start-of-battle equipment at the end?

[PanH]

Nice !

I've had a few events (mostly about rotten food and raiding, finding the rest of a burnt caravan, etc), which seems nice, but they don't have much effect yet. I'm waiting on the mood system, I think there can be some nice mechanics.

Fatigue is felt much more, which can make it harder in some situation. The only complaint I have is that it's even more annoying to hunt down the survivors of the enemy group, since your troops are slowed, can rarely hit more than once, etc. A group of undead can effectively wear you down, but I wish there was something once there's only one or 2 enemies (and you're still 10), and everyone's exhausted. Though, that happened before too.

I've tested the javelins, and well it's ok. It's not a very good weapon, but it's main selling point is that it's 1-handed. Equip it to your shieldwalls, and they can throw a javelin before switching to their main weapon, all the while holding their shield. Though their low ranged skill means it's at best a few hits.

I tested the flails and the warbrand too (though didn't find any masterwork bow). Flails seems nice a weapon, but I didn't manage to land 1 hit with a guy in 4 battles. With the warbrand, it's nice to be able to do 2 basic attacks with a 2 handed weapons, but I think I prefer to go either full 2h, either 1h + shield. Could work well though.

[Jaysen]

With regards to crossbows automatically reloading after a fight, I have a related question: when I switch my archers to their billhooks, they still have them equipped after the fight. Are there plans for automatically re-equipping the start-of-battle equipment at the end?

It would make sense to save different loadouts and then just swich back with a button but unfortunately i have to admit that improvements like this will not make it to the top of our list soonish.