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Battle Brothers Pre-Release Thread

Eyestabber

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Can't find anyone who sells it. Or even chainmail for that matter (all mine has been looted or came with the mercenaries upon hiring). Sitting on a cool 26,000.

Every map has a fortress or a big castle. The tooltip always says something like "a mighty fortress manned by professional soldiers". And the castle usually has patrols nearby. Such castles are way more likely to sell higher tier weapons and armor.
 

Trash

Pointing and laughing.
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Dec 12, 2002
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About 8 meters beneath sea level.
Bows are great for whittling down enemy health and armor before they reach your lines. A bit later on you'll also start appreciate them for cutting down the number of undead and for being able to 'reach out' for necromancers. Lovely weapons. For that matter, I disliked crossbows at first but have started to appreciate them for their increased chance of hitting and usually great damage. Even with the mandatory loading. Axes are great for smashing orc armor into nothing and dealing good damage. Spears are great against unarmored opponents. Swords are great against unarmored opponents. Zweihanders are great if you got a genuine tank. Place on flank to cut down whatever tries to flank you. Daggers/knifes are good as a backup weapon for archers. Speed and ability to ignore armor. Knockout ability of clubs is neat. Billhooks are a nice way to reach out from behind your main line. Not my fav weapon because their use feels limited and a bit underwhelming. Warhammers are another toy to use on the big armored orcs. It really does a number on them.

What I like so far is that everything has its use and place. Not every encounter can be solved by the same weapon/item combos and sometimes you find that a difficult battle becomes so much easier through equipping the right stuff and adapting your tactics. Hope they won't try and balance everything out. That's usually the end of fun right there.

PS: Bigger tier armor seems to arrive as the game goes on. Found chainmail variants in both keeps and cities. Perhaps they're more prevalent if the location is prospering? Am thinking they're adding items and balancing the rng and such throughout their patching. Got a massive battleaxe that I never saw before in my last game and saw my very first genuine pike for sale.
 

Lucky

Arcane
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Apr 28, 2015
Messages
672
There's pikes now? That's definitely a new addition.

Also, has anyone found a use for Nine Lives? It's never actually helped any of my mercs survive. The opponent just takes a second swing and kills them again.


I don't agree with you about the dodge perk. Compare it with the now buffed hold out perk, thats how a well designed perk should work. You get a good boost early on when you often get into negative morale due to losses and later on you get a nice boost from inspiring presence. Whereas dodge only gives you some good value early on when armor wont lower your initiative as much and fights are short and brutal, but later on when everyone is wearing heavier armor and get even more initiative penalties due to high fatigue, the perk wouldn't be that good even if it lasted the whole combat.

I agree, which is why I can get behind having Dodge last the entire fight. I'm just worried about the bonus being too high, resulting in initiative becoming too good a stat for lightweight archers. Better to start at 10% instead and see how that works out.


I like the nerf to rally the troops (+ it makes the other fatigue skills in the tree better).
I think quickhands has been nerfed too hard : it needed to be nerfed, but now, you have little reason to use it on anything else than a 2 hander so that he gets a shield one turn out of 2 : it cripples archers willing to equip a close combat weapon, but still allow 2 handers to swap for shield once every 2 rounds.
I think it would work better to have the skill only be usable before any attack is made (or at the beginning of the round, when 0 AP have been spent), and set it back to 0.

The lower tier of utility is very weak IMO :
student : as in every games with this line of perks, this one takes a slot for no good reason. Either allow the replacement of the perk at max level, or change it entirely. Maybe if the level cap was raised a lot. But a trainer skill which would help level other battle brothers would certainly help more.
shield bash : this one is not very useful : you add small damage and fatigue damage to an utility skill. I'd rather have the cost of the skill decreased (fatigue mainly, but AP could work too), or its chance to hit increase.
The added boni don't make it very worthwile.
Taunt : I have not found the skill very useful, but it is hard to measure its effect. Rotation works much better to protect your brothers in arms. Add an accuracy penalty if other characters than the last opponent having used taunt?
Deep pocket is pretty situational. Maybe for some extra quivers, but with the nerf to quick hand, you have little reason to want that many items.

Tier 2 seems good, especially with the nerf to rally the troops, but certainly not worth going through the underwhelming tier 1 (unless you want to go for the tier 3 skills of course).

Quick Hands is weird right now. Its only use seems to be to load up your ranged attacker with crossbows and then unload them in one turn. Doesn’t seem useful often enough to otherwise spent a perk on.

Student with high level cap would be a standard pick. Weakest tier 1 perk right now, though. I’m starting to lean towards just replacing it. Having a perk that eventually becomes useless just takes up a slot for a more interesting perk.

Shield bash is great. The Shield Bash perk is not. It doesn’t improve what shield bash is meant for - forcing enemies to move – and adds a minor amount of damage that does not make a difference. Needs a buff or a replacement perk.

I’ve played around with Taunt a few times, but I can’t get it to work reliably. For a move like that to be useful to my defence it needs to be somewhat consistent. There’s lots of potential combinations that it should be good in, but all I’m doing is spending lots of fatigue and barely anyone is attacking me.
 

Eyestabber

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Plate armor?

Wont happen without mods or some kind of update/DLC, AFAIK. They said they want to stick to the early and middle stages of Medieval period. Not exactly their words, but I think that was what they meant.

There are no full plate armors, but I did find a leather armour reinforced with metal plates. That's what I meant by "plate armor". If you look at my screenshot posted earlier you will see that Kori is wearing said armor. It gives a LOT of armor HP. Coupled with the "pull weight" perk it results on almost OP amounts of damage and survivability. Only weakness is running out of tools...
 

SmartCheetah

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May 7, 2013
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1,076
Oh, yeah. I think it's some sort of brigandine with outside plates (Plated armor?) - don't really know the term for it in English, lol. It might as well be called "Plate armor".
Thought you were reffering to Platemail as Breastplate and stuff. Would make an awesome mod as late game items. Simple cuirass, cuirass with gambeson, cuirass with plate pauldrons. <3
 

Dr Skeleton

Arcane
Joined
Nov 9, 2014
Messages
811
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I’ve played around with Taunt a few times, but I can’t get it to work reliably. For a move like that to be useful to my defence it needs to be somewhat consistent. There’s lots of potential combinations that it should be good in, but all I’m doing is spending lots of fatigue and barely anyone is attacking me.
Does it give any indication when it works? Because I've tried many times and I've never noticed it doing anything, even when my guy had high bravery and stood right next to the enemies taunting for multiple turns, they still attacked my other guys. Like it had the exact opposite effect almost.
 

Lucky

Arcane
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Apr 28, 2015
Messages
672
Not that I noticed. The perk could use some sort of visual indicator that lets us know whether anyone is taunted and if so, who. It's gotten a buff with the latest patch, so it should work more often now, though I can't really tell from the changelog how much more effective it is.
Quick Hands has also gotten a slight buff and is rather useful again. The first switch you make in a round is now free. All subsequent switching costs 4 AP.

A pretty important bug got fixed:
Fixed allied locations not recovering their resources correctly which could lead to no caravans or patrols being spawned later in the game. Note that it may take a while for your world to recover and that locations still need caravans to reach them in order to flourish.
You can now also turn off the game auto-adjusting the height levels of hills.

Another good patch. They're really throwing these out there at a crazy pace.
 

Agesilaus

Antiquity Studio
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Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Can't find anyone who sells it. Or even chainmail for that matter (all mine has been looted or came with the mercenaries upon hiring). Sitting on a cool 26,000.

I'm in the same situation. I have a castle, and it's perfectly safe, but it's down a road by itself and caravans don't seem to travel there. No patrols come out, either.

Time to start a new game, or perhaps take a break until the next big-content patch.


EDIT: Looks like the latest patch might have fixed this issue!
 

ColCol

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Jul 12, 2012
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Can't find anyone who sells it. Or even chainmail for that matter (all mine has been looted or came with the mercenaries upon hiring). Sitting on a cool 26,000.

You should be able to buy some anti-undead/werewolf/orc spray.
 

Modron

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May 5, 2012
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Plate armor?

Wont happen without mods or some kind of update/DLC, AFAIK. They said they want to stick to the early and middle stages of Medieval period. Not exactly their words, but I think that was what they meant.

Don't the orc warlords wear plate armor? Are you sure they won't add human versions later on, they did say they were going to add more armor some time earlier. Besides given the high fatigue costs of the top tier armors anyways it's not like a guy who can attack only 2-3 times before having to take a rest would be game breaking.
 

oscar

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NZ
The lore says orc armour is just primitively welded together layers of thick scrap metal.
 

Eyestabber

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Okay, the game seriously need to allow the player to CHOOSE his battles. Right now when you spot an enemy party it just chases you to the ends of the earth. You can't outrun it and running towards a city doesn't do anything. There is no way to avoid an undesired encounter, which essentially means that if the game decides to throw you a massive orc encounter when you are not strong enough to face it -> GAME OVER. Kindda reminds me of FTL a bit...
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Running to a city should help, since they will be sending militia to help you out. And you can escape battles. Start the battle and flee to the end of the map and take retreat. You will get a couple of seconds on the strategic map after that to make your escape
 

Modron

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May 5, 2012
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9,933
Okay, the game seriously need to allow the player to CHOOSE his battles. Right now when you spot an enemy party it just chases you to the ends of the earth. You can't outrun it and running towards a city doesn't do anything. There is no way to avoid an undesired encounter, which essentially means that if the game decides to throw you a massive orc encounter when you are not strong enough to face it -> GAME OVER. Kindda reminds me of FTL a bit...

Eh I've managed to escape a few fights through use of terrain by cutting corners and running them through rough terrain to introduce some distance then keeping pace until they lose visibility at nightfall but yeah your point is a valid one. They have talked about wanting to add upgrades to your company outside of combat so perhaps they'll add world skills like pathfinding along the lines of mount and blade.
 
Self-Ejected

Ulminati

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It seems like running onto a forest might work. Break line of sight to the pursuers
 

Eyestabber

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Two notes on my last playtrough:

- My guy's sword broke last fight. Punching werewolves in the face is FUN! I loled a lot.
- Running towards a city results on the city militia retreating from the fight and using YOUR guys as meat shields, not the other way around. Clever and annoying at the same time.
 

Dr Skeleton

Arcane
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Nov 9, 2014
Messages
811
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
lbxy7YQ.jpg

ECm6cbE.jpg

Only the ghoul survived until the next turn, and it proceeded to kill all 7 of my guys, 3 of them from the low ground. Wtf :negative:
 

Dr Skeleton

Arcane
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Nov 9, 2014
Messages
811
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Don't know, but a lot (3+). I missed a bunch of 50-70% attacks in a row and it killed the 3 guys you see on the edge over 2 turns, not missing once. Then it took the hill and you can guess the rest.
 

Eyestabber

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Yeah, the RNG gods can REALLY fuck up an otherwise perfect run quite easily. Is this WAD? I kindda dislike extreme randomness, tbh.

One other thing: head blows sometime work to the defender's advantage. When you destroy the guy's chest armor and the next blow hits the head, destroying a helmet instead of killing him...isn't the "critical hit" helping him, instead of harming? Dunno, maybe I'm missing something, but perhaps it would be best if crits were ALWAYS a good thing for the attacker, no?
 

Alienman

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Yeah, the RNG gods can REALLY fuck up an otherwise perfect run quite easily. Is this WAD? I kindda dislike extreme randomness, tbh.

One other thing: head blows sometime work to the defender's advantage. When you destroy the guy's chest armor and the next blow hits the head, destroying a helmet instead of killing him...isn't the "critical hit" helping him, instead of harming? Dunno, maybe I'm missing something, but perhaps it would be best if crits were ALWAYS a good thing for the attacker, no?

Yeah, I have experienced that myself several times. One more hit to the body would have killed the enemy, but for some reason I get unlucky with a lucky hit to the head, and the enemy is kept alive for another round. I'm thinking they might have to change the critical system somehow, most of the crits don't do anything for you if you don't kill in one hit outright.

Works the other way around too sometimes. Mercs that would be dead survived because the enemy got lucky/unlucky :)
 

Lucky

Arcane
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Apr 28, 2015
Messages
672
Ghouls are great, they help make you wary of half-naked enemies that can power up, like the berserker you meet later. They're also a good execution of the idea of a cowardly scavenger. Actual scavengers avoid fighting if possible, but will definitely try to kill you if they think they can get away with it.

I wonder if the bonus for eating persists in case you manage to escape. That would could suddenly turn any ghoul packs that manage to devour a militia patrol into a real nasty piece of work.

Eh I've managed to escape a few fights through use of terrain by cutting corners and running them through rough terrain to introduce some distance then keeping pace until they lose visibility at nightfall but yeah your point is a valid one. They have talked about wanting to add upgrades to your company outside of combat so perhaps they'll add world skills like pathfinding along the lines of mount and blade.

They're also discussing different movement speeds, with corresponding downsides to using them.
 

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