Battle Brothers Pre-Release Thread

[Alienman]

Damn, that looks cool.

 

[Reinhardt]

Something like this -

 

[Thonius]

I think, I'll start anew on a normal level because archery bullshit is got me. Losing experienced bros to some poachers is just to much.

 

[Reinhardt]

Achievement time.

 

[Reinhardt]

Dafug is this devilry?!

 

[Reinhardt]

Overconfidence can kill...

One of my recruits don't even got his Doggy name.

Future looks grim.

And there goes my reputation of smart and caredul captain...

 

[Alienman]

Man, 76 kills. I guess karma finally got him back.

 

[Reinhardt]

At least now i can sell loot and hire new mercs. There is 3 regiments in Wurmburg right now. They managed to gather another squad of their own men+reinforcements from noble house+mercenaries hired by village of Dornthal.

And more!

 

[rapsdjff]

Beta Update 0.9.0.21
Let's start the week off with another update to the beta branch of Battle Brothers - lots of bugfixes and some balancing changes in this one.

Please continue to report any issues in the appropriate forum following the instructions there - do not post them as comments here, they'd only get buried and lost, and may miss important information.

Changelog

Spoiler

• Changed hit chance penalty for ranged attacks against targets with a blocked line of fire to 75%, up from 50%. This way, protecting vulnerable characters with good positioning is rewarded more, and a more viable tactic against range-heavy opponents, such as goblins.
  
• Changed Bandit Poachers to no longer have the Bullseye perk.
  
• Changed wardogs to no longer come with a fatigue penalty for the handler.
  
• Changed Nachzehrers that have devoured a character to no longer be able to retreat from combat.
  
• Changed payment for 'Escort Envoy' contract to be higher.
  
• Changed some time limits for ambitions to give more leeway.
  
  
• Fixed potential crash during combat.
  
• Fixed battle sites counting towards the 'Discover Locations' ambition.
  
• Fixed dead temporary allies under the player's command showing up in the company's obituary.
  
• Fixed ships being attackable when close to the shore.
  
• Fixed issue with destroying a necropolis.
  
• Fixed rare issue with characters not rising from the dead properly.
  
• Fixed issue with locations protected by noble troops in 'Privateering' contract.
  
• Fixed settlements not updating relations properly when changing sides in 'Privateering' contract.
  
• Fixed issues with 'Named Item' and 'Named Item Set' ambitions.
  
• Fixed issues with 'Raze Location' contract.
  
• Fixed issue with 'Confront Warlord' contract.
  
• Fixes issue with 'Marauding Greenskins' contract.
  
• Fixed issue with settlement defense contracts when settlements are already close to being destroyed.
  
• Fixed issue with game not continuing properly sometimes when characters die right before their turn starts.
  
• Fixed 'Drunk' and 'Hangover' status effects sometimes staying for longer than intended.
  
• Fixed issue with introductory contract sometimes having too great a distance between towns.
  
• Fixed issue with escorted caravans sometimes being destroyed without the player getting a chance to defend them.
  
• Fixed Greenskin Catapult being subject to injuries.
  
• Fixed characters not showing up in the company's obituary when struck down without being killed, and the player retreats from battle, leaving them to die.
  
• Fixed issue with unlocking 'Walking Statue' achievement.
  
• Fixed issue with unlocking 'Bling Bling' and 'Tricked Out' achievements.
  
• Fixed character background stories missing names in rare cases.
  
• Fixed issue with AI that is neutral to the player attacking a caravan escorted by the player.
  
• Fixed three-way battles something missing the third party.
  
• Fixed retirement after successfully beating the undead scourge not working.
  
• Fixed items in bags not counting towards retirement score.
  
• Fixed some other minor issues.

 

[Reinhardt]

Join Doggy Company! Balanced diet, decent payment, shittyshiny equipment, early retirement.

And enough for now. New version.

 

[Agesilaus]

So, what's the secret to finding unique weapons? I have been wandering around the wilderness ruining places, but haven't found anything. Is the likelihood affected by the difficulty level? I play on the highest difficulty. The only semi-reliable way I know is talking in taverns until someone says "oh I heard there's a magical x at y location", and taking high level contracts.

What I'm saying is, this is GOTY 2017 but I am currently rolling around ironman high difficulty with a lvl 7 party and no uniques.

Also, I am really liking the man-splitter axe. Is there any weapon that does more damage in a single strike? I currently have a midget wielding one, makes up for the minus whatever percent damage debuff they get.

Also, if you hate archers just attack them at night. Yes, they sometimes land a hit, but it's nowhere near as bad. Judging by the previous comments, it's also important to take that special ability that protects you from critical damage on head-hits.

 

[Reinhardt]

but I am currently rolling around ironman high difficulty with a lvl 7 party and no uniques

My only unique in 100+ days is Brave Doggy viking helmet.

 

[MediantSamuel]

Reading through this thread sold me on this game, p. excited to buy it after work today.

Is jumping straight in on Hard a bad idea?

 

[Reinhardt]

Is jumping straight in on Hard a bad idea?

Yes.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

So, what's the secret to finding unique weapons? I have been wandering around the wilderness ruining places, but haven't found anything. Is the likelihood affected by the difficulty level? I play on the highest difficulty. The only semi-reliable way I know is talking in taverns until someone says "oh I heard there's a magical x at y location", and taking high level contracts.

What I'm saying is, this is GOTY 2017 but I am currently rolling around ironman high difficulty with a lvl 7 party and no uniques.

They seem to be more rare than previously, I played to day 70-something, went into the wild, plundered some locations with berserkers, fallen heroes, geists, necromancers and didn't find a single one, didn't even see a rumor about one. Previously I got them as early as day 20-25 from random bandit camps.

 

[Andnjord]

Well, that's it my brave company has beaten to the dust and the last three survivors have retired. Day 80, undead invasion, two skulls mission noble contract double locations to destroy. The first one was my first encounter with the ancient honour guards, 11 of them! And those 11 bastards messed up my company by killing two members and costing me about 115 tools worth of repairs and they certainly scared the bejeebus out of me with their two tile swipe.
The second location though got me. 30 armoured wiedergangers, 6 fallen heroes (with two greatswords) and 6 motherfucking geist. We killed about half of them but the fallen heroes just cleaved through my flanks while the geist got my heavy hitters running around like little girls.

Overall there's a few things that costed me this game on the long run. First of all was when half of the map turned hostile on me on day 11 due to an arrest attempt on my murderer on the run thus forcing me to go north and miss out on all the nice tightly packed settlement of the south and their juicy thugs contracts. Second was me taking the ambition to get three 240+ pieces of armour which I bought at a very high mark-up in a fort wasting an incredible amount of money. When the last fight came sure I had three bros in scale armour but the rest had at best mail hauberk or chainmail and no tier three weapons, just arming swords and handaxes. Last was the dearth of decent recruits, I've lost count of the amount of one star talent in ranged offense and defense peasants I recruited and could never seem to find any better backgrounds to hire either. On the last fight I finally had a lvl 4 sellsword and a newly recruited adventurous noble but rest were just the cheaper backgrounds.

One note on geist though. I find them terribly lame and unfunny. They are on of those RNG succeed or die type of bullshit where if your resolve is high enough you can safely ignore them but if it isn't they will rape your party if you don't spend every ounce of effort killing them. At the moment if your mercenary passes his resolve test nothing happens, if he fails it he runs away regardless of his previous morale state. And with the neutered sergeant skill it's more likely you won't be able to rally them. I would have no problem with them if failing the test meant lowering your morale (going down from wavering to breaking and from confident to steady) but going to confident from fleeing while surrounded (which almost means certain death) just because you failed one single roll feels too punishing to me.
Any thoughts?

 

[Andnjord]

Also, looking at the steam discussion there is a lot of debate regarding the date the crisis comes in. What are you thoughts on this, too early? Too Late? Should it be left to the player to decide? In my case I was unprepared but I know why because of the reasons above.

 

[Skittles]

Is jumping straight in on Hard a bad idea?

Yes.

Veteran is a fine difficulty to start on. Every time I started on the lowest difficulty, I got bored and restarted on a harder setting after a month or two.

Last was the dearth of decent recruits, I've lost count of the amount of one star talent in ranged offense and defense peasants I recruited and could never seem to find any better backgrounds to hire either. On the last fight I finally had a lvl 4 sellsword and a newly recruited adventurous noble but rest were just the cheaper backgrounds.

My experience is that hiring humble backgrounds that look overpriced without any obviously pricey equipment was the optimal way to get better traits/talents, especially because you could hire and fire four+ guys for the cost of one "good" background. Starting skill levels are a range, so a good caravan hand have a chance to start with higher melee skill than just about any mid-tier background (granted I think it's impossible for a beggar to outshine a hedge knight at the outset).

One note on geist though. I find them terribly lame and unfunny. They are on of those RNG succeed or die type of bullshit where if your resolve is high enough you can safely ignore them but if it isn't they will rape your party if you don't spend every ounce of effort killing them. At the moment if your mercenary passes his resolve test nothing happens, if he fails it he runs away regardless of his previous morale state. And with the neutered sergeant skill it's more likely you won't be able to rally them. I would have no problem with them if failing the test meant lowering your morale (going down from wavering to breaking and from confident to steady) but going to confident from fleeing while surrounded (which almost means certain death) just because you failed one single roll feels too punishing to me.
Any thoughts?

How high do you pump resolve on your average guys and on your standard bearer/sergeant? It's not totally RNG proof, but combining a decent chance to pass with a reversion to really tight grouping (so bros on the front don't have anywhere to flee to and are rarely engaged with more than two enemies) keeps my losses to a minimum (and keeps the maximum number of bros in range of the standard + Sergeant perk guy).

 

[Andnjord]

How high do you pump resolve on your average guys and on your standard bearer/sergeant?

Everyone was between 45 to 50 (except my deserter who was far away from the geist and a couple of others who were in the low 40s) and the rally bot had 105-110 (not sure). I got them to the tavern before so quite a few were euphoric too. I didn't keep a tight formation though, maybe that would have helped. Regardless of geist I would have probably lost the encounter I think, as most of my guys were just not up to the task (but that's my fault and I acknowledge the mistakes I made throughout the playthrough). That they routed my only only zweihaider dude into the waiting arms of fallen heroes before he got a sinle hit in sure didn't help though and he had 50 resolve and was at confident morale when he failed his check.

 

[golgepapaz]

So, what's the secret to finding unique weapons? .

Found a crossbow on the second day in a backwater town for 17000 gold pieces.now it's gone probably town get raided or something
since the invetories can change.

I'm on day 40 atm never had 17000 gold though.

 

[Skittles]

How high do you pump resolve on your average guys and on your standard bearer/sergeant?

Everyone was between 45 to 50 (except my deserter who was far away from the geist and a couple of others who were in the low 40s) and the rally bot had 105-110 (not sure). I got them to the tavern before so quite a few were euphoric too. I didn't keep a tight formation though, maybe that would have helped. Regardless of geist I would have probably lost the encounter I think, as most of my guys were just not up to the task (but that's my fault and I acknowledge the mistakes I made throughout the playthrough). That they routed my only only zweihaider dude into the waiting arms of fallen heroes before he got a sinle hit in sure didn't help though and he had 50 resolve and was at confident morale when he failed his check.

That sucks. Those are prettyr respectable resolve numbers. I think the formation change would see you through another geist battle with similar stats. I do like the change of pace the geist offer.

Well, looking forward to hearing how your next run goes!

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Now that the TL;DR button is gone, here are my thoughts on the beta and the game in general, in random order:

Take a look at your equipment. Now think where it came from. Have you ever actually bought a falchion? A flail? A kite shield? A pike? A mail shirt? Maybe once or twice in the early game, a damaged one randomly appearing at a market, but from a weaponsmiths? Hardly ever happens. The point is, 90% of mid-game equipment comes from bandit raiders, because you will fight them 10 times and loot 10 nasal helmets before you’re ever able to afford them. Now, I’m not saying looting shouldn’t be a viable tactics but I think there’s an issue with mid-tier gear cost. High-tier stuff like heavy crossbows, warhammers, 150+ armor should cost a lot because it’s the end game money sink but I’m not paying 1000 for a weapon I can loot multiples of in a random battle because I have to win many of these battles to have 1000s to spare. Mid-tier gear should cost a lot less (more than low tier so you don't just buy it from day 1 like in the super early versions, obviously), it would also smoothen the economy because selling the loot would gain you less crowns.

Speaking of raiders, their armor is not only looted in dozens but it’s the best armor in the game when you look at armor points/fatigue penalty, and it’s supposedly bad worn-out gear. Take a look at Blotched Gambeson, Patched Mail Shirt or Worn Mail Shirt. Why would I ever want a Gambeson, a Leather Lamellar Armor or a Basic Mail Shirt if they’re strictly worse than some rusted bandit stuff? Not saying they shouldn’t be viable but definitely not better than the brand new stuff. Either buff/reduce fatigue penalty on the corresponding regular armor around or redesign the bandit gear.

Veteran’s Hall. Has 3 functions that all do the same thing with slight variations. Meh. I’ve used it in the late game but it really could be so much more. Off the top of my head:
- temporary bonus that increases roll on the next level-up. Or maybe allows one re-roll of the entire level-up.
- discover a hidden talent: adds one star to a random existing 1-2 star talent or get 1-3 stars to a new stat.
- respecing. Take a look, this is Karl Ironjaw:

Shield mastery and spear mastery. Broken knee. Putting this guy into a shieldwall is really pushing it. Now let’s say I want to give him a pike and delegate to the second line, the perks are useless. That’s still nothing compared to a missing eye on an archer. Choices and consequences, bad RNG, yeah, I know, but I think if the price was high enough we should be to do limited respecs, I’m talking about making a useless guy into a slightly less useless guy in this case. Let’s say x crowns for the first respec (250? 500?), 2x for the second, 4x for the third, etc. (discounts for disabled veterans? :D). Or maybe you’ve found a unique weapon that no one specializes in. Or maybe you’ve simply screwed up or misclicked and need to change. Student and gifted should probably not be viable for respecing.

All of these should of course cost enough so you can only use them sparingly.

The new ghouls. The little ones are far too weak, the middle ones are in a good place, the big ones would be fine if not for the devour ability. There’s no defense against it other than spear wall (and let’s face it you can’t keep the wall against 20+ ghouls even if you carried 12 spare spears at all times), they can move and use it, they have insanely high hp, can heal to full hp in one go and even when you kill them your guy comes back at wavering morale. IMO one or many of these are in order:
- remove it from the regular 3-tier progression ghouls have some sort of ghoul overlord with that ability that you can’t face more than 2-3 at the same time. I’ve faced 7 of these from the start and had a few more grow during the battle. (that’s more than half of a company, if the AI decided to just come up to me and start the fight by eating 7 guys I would have stood no chance). That’s way too much.
- have the eaten merc take their turn and attack. Probably at reduced AP or stats but have them stab the ghoul from the inside or spend the turn struggling for a chance to get out.
- IMO the best solution: put restrictions on the ability. Make it have a full turn setup so you can use shield push, pike push, stun (another underutilized mechanic), footwork or rotation to counter it. Make it be like the orc stun charge that it can fail and fails more often vs shieldwall or riposte. Make it impossible to devour a fresh merc in full armor. Let’s say (off the top of my head) it can only be used vs guys that have combined armor and hp 150 or less, so they first have to damage you.

I’m still not sure how Geists work. Sometimes they scare two confident 50 bravery mercs into fleeing in one go, sometimes they sit in a bush and screech and nothing’s happening. They’ve been like this since the early access started and I think they were never fixed only because they’re rare and a lot of people just avoids them after fighting them once. The point is, they’re too random and swingy (also in the way you deal with them, kill them in one hit or waste a turn). Maybe they should only be able to reduce morale by 2 levels, so from confident to -1, from regular to -2 and only be able to force retreat on those that already are at least at -1?

Is the Wiederganger noble coming back?

Direwolves. Giving them some reach in the late game via the overwhelm ability is a good change but it gets ridiculous in the early game. Direwolves need a smoother progression, if it's not too late maybe have young ones (slightly less scary than what we have now, two attacks, no overwhelm), regular ones (what we have now) and alphas (tons of hp, multiple attacks, crazy abilities) and have mixed packs, so early game would be a mix of youngs and regulars then later young ones would be more and more rare while leaders would appear.

Enemies should surrender during battle or at the very least flee more often. I’m at day 50, I encounter 10 thugs on patrol, they’re fleeing (on the world map, they charge in battle) but I have to kill them to get paid and get the meager loot and XP. I should be able to if I wanted, sure. But what if we could take prisoners? Some enemies should fetch even more money alive than dead. What if I can catch a named bandit leader in a net and get him to broken morale? He should surrender, give up his gear and be delivered to a castle for extra crowns. That’s not even touching on the possibility of taking a noble prisoner. Or a contract to kidnap someone or rescue a prisoner. Or events where you're attacked because someone wants your prisoner freed or for themselves. I realize this is potentially a huge change and probably can’t make it to the release version it would be an amazing thing to have in a future expansion.

The settlement defense contracts sometimes take waaay too long to spawn the attackers. Once I almost run out of food because I took a contract to defend a village that sold none and I waited for an entire day for the raiders to show up.

The obituary is very bare bones, same goes for the info about alive brothers and I’ll be really sad if it stays like this. Instead of just the obituary, let's have a screen with the company roster (separate from the equip/perk screen), fulfilled ambitions and achievements with pictures, dates and stuff. Or even a complete log of battles and contracts. For the dead there should be a lot more detail. “stabbed by a bandit thug” should be “stabbed by a bandit thug at the battle of sunken tomb/defending Krakenland/in the Misty Woods”, there should be a snapshot with looks, stats and gear of the dead brother before their last battle.

Underutilized stats:
Bravery: a lot more important now that there are morale check on being surrounded. Still not top priority for most but actually matters now. The new mechanic with morale checks when being surrounded is brilliant. Not only does it make an underutilized stat more important (so that 15 bravery on a deserter with 3 stars in melee and melee defense actually does hurt) but it helps dealing with some enemies (no more brave little goblins with knives surrounded by 3 mercs) and just makes a lot of sense. Great change.

HP: the injury system made it somewhat more important but let’s face it, in order of priority HP is still behind melee/ranged skill, melee (and usually ranged) defense and fatigue and now it competes with bravery so it’s typically raised only on bad rolls from the rest. Possible fixes:
Higher rolls. Probably a lot higher, at least +1/2 across the board, maybe more. If I have 5 melee defense and 50 hp and I can increase defense by 2 or HP by 3 I think I know which I’m going to choose. It’s not only about how much %-wise the increase from initial stats is but also just how bad getting hit is compared to raising your chance to not get hit. If you got hit and stay at 3 hp, you're still probably screwed, if you didn't get hit by 2% you've lost nothing. Another thing: having very high max HP should increase the chance of getting a permanent injury instead of dying. Let’s say every point after 50 gives 1% better chance of surviving from whatever the original chance is (so a hypothetical 150 hp character is twice as likely to survive). Maybe even make hp skew the table a little and make it less likely to get the most debilitating injuries.

Initiative: the overwhelm perk mechanic is very interesting but I haven’t tested it enough to decide if raising initiative is worth it yet. My initial feeling is still no. You need armor, you use up stamina very quickly, only if you have good initial initiative and the right gear (archer or very specific melee build) you can utilize it, if you don’t raising it won’t help.

With that all said, the game is already very, very good and will probably be one of the best things to come out this year, even if it ships with all the issues listed above.

 

[Biscotti]

How do you guys usually compose your parties when it comes to ranged bros? I usually just have one bowman and one crossbowman, a sergeant and two pikemen on the backrow, but I feel fights really tip toe between either my crossbowman being almost entirely useless or vice versa when there's a lot of armored opponents. Glancing over some screenshots, I've seen people go all out with 3 bowmen, but even around midgame they seem mostly useless as soon as armored opponents come into play. Sure, you can just switch out their gear before a fight, but that's only really an option if you know exactly what you'll be facing.

P.S. Are throwing weapons affected by the ranged skill or are they in a category of their own?

 

[Dr Skeleton]

How do you guys usually compose your parties when it comes to ranged bros? I usually just have one bowman and one crossbowman, a sergeant and two pikemen on the backrow, but I feel fights really tip toe between either my crossbowman being almost entirely useless or vice versa when there's a lot of armored opponents. Glancing over some screenshots, I've seen people go all out with 3 bowmen, but even around midgame they seem mostly useless as soon as armored opponents come into play. Sure, you can just switch out their gear before a fight, but that's only really an option if you know exactly what you'll be facing.

P.S. Are throwing weapons affected by the ranged skill or are they in a category of their own?

Throwing weapons use ranged skill. I have anywhere between 2 and 6 archers/crossbowmen depending on recruits and their talents. You have heavy crossbows now, they work decently vs armored knights and orc warriors, war bows are very useful to take out enemy archers and necromancers. Also shooters should generally have quick hands and a pike/longaxe/billhook. Bow > switch to sword+shield can work too but you're limited by the helmet.

 

[Elim]

Four ranged brothers. The good ones with 2+ stars or great stats get bows, the sausage-fingers get crossbows. When they can no longer shoot at enemies because of engagement or something other they switch to polearms and help out.