Game News Battle Brothers Alpha released

[Whisky]

Tags: Battle Brothers; Overhype Studios



Overhype Studios, a German indy company, have released an alpha demo for their strategy RPG, Battle Brothers.

The game features procedural generation prominently, not only for the world map and characters, but the invasion that is the focal point of the game. You can read more about the features here.

 

[rapsdjff]

Thanks for posting about this. There is also a somewhat lengthy thread about the game to be found on the Codex Workshop here.

 

[Whisky]

Thanks for posting about this. There is also a somewhat lengthy thread on the Codex Workshop about the game to be found here.

Thanks. Sorry about taking so long to post it since the email.

 

[SuicideBunny]

nice, gonna try it out once i'm done derping around in divinity.

 

[sser]

Huh, never even heard of this. It looks quite good for being in such an early state. I really like the idea of a medieval-Jagged Alliance overland map.


Edit: tried the demo! I played the "Early Game" scenario that pits your group of men against a group of zombies. The game's mechanics are deeper than I assumed. Your troops have fatigue and long bouts of combat wear them out. This really plays into the "we're being overwhelmed!" trope of the zombie genre, where the zombie ranks are so deep that it just feels like a lost cause fighting their hordes. I was able to set up a defensive spear wall, a group of able men more or less holding their spears out to prevent zombies from closing rank. If any of them broke into melee combat, I had billhooks behind the spearmen that could stab over the shoulders of their comrades. This formation worked effectively - for a time. My troops eventually wore down physically and started getting overwhelmed. Also, zombies had a nasty habit of getting back up. Unbeknownst to me, there was a Necromancer in their midst. I don't know if he was responsible for the zombies rising once more, or if that was just zombie fortitude, but I'm pretty certain he kept molding my fallen comrades into his own zombie soldiers. Fucker. So yeah, lost that battle (not before sending a rogue soldier to take that necromancer down.)

I imagine with a strategy screen you'd have a better idea of what you're getting into. Also, with some of the mechanics it definitely felt like you would want to forge a strong central contingent of reliable soldiers. Dudes die easy - especially without armor. My main wonder right now is what kind of enemies you might face beyond the normal zombies and necromancers. Hell hounds? Gargoyles? Ghouls? Not sure how far they'll be going with the concept.


Edit 2: I'd be interested to see someone beat that "Advanced Battle" scenario. You have a handful of men vs. an army of werewolves, vampires, and skeletons. It wouldn't be nearly so bad if vampires couldn't just warp in behind your archers and attack on the same turn.

 

[rapsdjff]

My main wonder right now is what kind of enemies you might face beyond the normal zombies and necromancers. Hell hounds? Gargoyles? Ghouls? Not sure how far they'll be going with the concept.

We do in fact have a concept for ghouls, as well as for a few other undead opponents more interesting than zombies and skeletons. That said, the undead are only one of several different types of enemies the player will end up fighting. We aim for a wide variety of different enemies in the final game, including the always popular greenskins, opponents of the human variety and some original ones not seen in every other game. We want to have all of them feel unique to fight against in terms of mechanics and AI, and unlike most of the enemies present in the demo, most enemies in the final game will also be affected by morale and fatigue, just as the player is.

The concept piece below shows what some of the orcs and goblins will look like (although their exact appearance is still subject to change at this point).

 

[sser]

Nice. I noticed that werewolves were susceptible to fleeing. Not sure if the undead were, though.

Also, I couldn't figure out what made my archers accurate or inaccurate. Sometimes a close shot would be a very low probability, or a shot from high ground to low, but then if I shot as far as possible across a valley it was the highest percentage. And hitting skeletons with arrows was easier than I imagined possible. They were usually the highest percentage to get hit, surprisingly enough.

I would say that the two-hand user guy is pretty much worthless. He does the most damage, not to mention his lethal AOE capabilities, but because enemy attacks wear on his fatigue he essentially gets stuck in a fatigue-loop, unable to really mount an offense. I usually get a strike or two with him and then he's out of the game if the enemy decides to focus on him. His corollary seems to be the man-at-arms decked out in armor, a huge shield, and a mace. I had him tanking an insane amount of damage while at the same time being able to fight back. Spearmen and swordsmen provide effective area control, particularly the spearman's ability to poke people backward. It seems like every soldier has a purpose, and they typically have a number of tactical routes to go down on every turn. Very nice stuff.

I got the "Advanced Battle" down to 8 beaten up enemies, but over time my men just ran out of fatigue to fight effectively. The fatigue resource seems to be the most important.

Multiplayer could be pretty awesome for a game like this.

 

[rapsdjff]

Thanks for the feedback. The undead are unaffected by morale and fatigue, though the necromancer isn't considered to be undead and may flee if his minions are cut down fast enough.

Didn't the list of factors influencing the hitchance shown in the tooltip when aiming at an enemy help? Or wasn't it specific enough? Enemies wearing shields, especially if they use the shieldwall skill, are much harder to hit. This usually outweights distance. Shields aside, skeletons aren't any harder to hit than other enemies but will take drastically reduced damage from ranged attacks.

Overall, we're quite satisfied with how the fatigue system works now. However, we did a change today that has characters always have just enough fatigue to spare to mount a single basic attack per turn (the single-target overhead strike in the case of guys armed with greatswords) and never be completely useless and just taking punches. A fatigued character would still be unable to use any of the more special skills, though, like AOE attacks. The idea is to never have the player end a turn with nothing to do, which obviously isn't very engaging, and to give highly fatiguing weapons like the two-handed greatsword that extra bit of feasibility.

I'm afraid multiplayer won't make it into the game. It would mean a massive detour from our core game and might be a road we could easily get lost on given our tight resources.

Also, I can say from experience that the Advanced Combat scenario can be beat

 

[sser]

Alright, finally noticed the hit chance on the archers!

I did beat the Advanced Combat scenario. I lost one man in the process and won on turn 45 after hunting down a lone skeleton mucking about. Totally interested to see other enemies presenting even newer challenges.