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Battle Brothers Pre-Release Thread

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
This will probably be unpopular, but please give us a very easy way to turn off the fog of war. Make it a simple keypress or some other sort of cheat mode activation. I just remember from my days playing M&B that I really appreciated being able to turn it off. These sorts of games can be really tedious when you have to track someone down over a large area.
I agree that exploration contracts can be unnecessarily tedious. In fact, all the contracts currently in the game have some issues of their own. They are, however, intended to be placeholders, to give you an idea of where we want to go and to give players something to do with our initial Early Access release. As we go on to eventually rework the contract mechanics and add a fair selection, we'll try to strike a better balance between guidance and leaving things for the player to figure out.

Limited vision is an integral part of worldmap gameplay and we won't provide a means to just remove it. What we'd like to do is provide more interesting mechanics to work with limited vision, like you mentioned. For example, something we want to try is having parties on the worldmap leave 'tracks' you can follow, similar to how it works in Mount & Blade. This could potentially solve a bunch of issues for us; it would make it easier to find or avoid roaming parties, make it easier to find things like bandit camps by following a raiding party back home, and have the world feel a bit more lively in general by pointing you towards action and presenting evidence that there's actually other people moving about and doing their thing, even if you can't see them this instant. Another idea is to increase the view radius when on elevated ground, i.e. on hills and mountains.

I don't know at this time how exploration contracts will ultimately look like in the game, maybe they still won't be your thing or fit your playstyle. But I believe that's ok as long as there are sufficient alternative contracts available that you can enjoy.

I'd go the (kind of) realistic way with finding or buying maps that will reveal parts of the land (for example regions now that we'll have them). Ok you won't see the activity there but you'll know the land when having a map
Yeah, that's something we might do.

I hope those region names are placeholders because they are generic as fuck.
Those are placeholders. The update even says so.
 

AbounI

Colonist
Patron
Joined
Dec 2, 2012
Messages
1,050
rapsdjff about the dog, the wild and the fog:
Will a dog bring the advantage during exploration in the wild by using its own sensorial skills to easily find ennemies camps that could be hidden in the fog?It could greatly help exploration
 
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Lios

Cipher
Joined
Jun 17, 2014
Messages
425
Tried this from a friend's pc and fell in love instantly.
Everything's in place and this is a great victory when looking at what's published today even AAA stuff of course.
It's strangely stimulating and kiss your artist's forehead with love for me please, he's my second favorite man after the narrator of Darkest Dungeon.
I hope you achieve your goals and then some.
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
rapsdjff about the dog, the wild and the fog:
Will a dog bring the advantage during exploration in the wild by using its own sensorial skills to easily find ennemies camps that could be hidden in the fog?It could greatly help exploration
The advantages of using wardogs are limited to tactical combat. Generally speaking we want to keep tools for combat and worldmap gameplay separate. That's also why we'd like to add non-combat followers to the player's retinue; for example, a hired scout could increase the vision radius, which is much easier for the player to understand and keep track off than using wardogs buried in someone's inventory and potentially dying all the time.

Tried this from a friend's pc and fell in love instantly.

Everything's in place and this is a great victory when looking at what's published today even AAA stuff of course.

It's strangely stimulating and kiss your artist's forehead with love for me please, he's my second favorite man after the narrator of Darkest Dungeon.

I hope you achieve your goals and then some.
Thank you :)
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
Also, progress.

Attached-Locations-HEader.jpg

Dev Blog #56: Progress Update – Attached Locations

Previously we’ve talked about how settlements work once you’ve entered them (Dev Blog #53). This week we talk about how settlements will work on the new worldmap based on an entirely new concept: attached locations. These are special locations that belong to a nearby settlement and influence it in various ways. Let’s dig deeper!

Attached Locations
Did you know that all villages currently in the game have a wealth rating that increases as caravans reach it, and decreases as it is raided and militia units die? And did you know that this wealth rating determines the selection and prices of items in the shop, and the strength of militia it can spawn? Many players don’t, and that’s an issue.

We want the world of Battle Brothers to feel dynamic, and the player to feel that they have an impact on the world. An abstract wealth rating, unfortunately, often isn’t transparent enough to explain why a settlement is doing poorly, why certain items are or are not available, and what can be done about it. To achieve where we want to go with Battle Brothers, we’re therefore replacing the wealth rating with the concept of attached locations.



Attached locations are small specialized locations outside a settlement that influence heavily the available goods, services and recruitment options of that settlement. For example, outlying wheat fields will not only make food more readily available and cheaper in the nearby settlement, but also have more farmhands volunteer for your mercenary company. Iron mines, on the other hand, will increase the selection of metal-based weapons and armor in the settlement, and will bring a larger population of miners looking to take up the mercenary profession. A stone watch tower will have a look out for bandits and beasts, and may spawn militia to help out any caravans, while adding militia to the recruitment options. There are no less than 30 different attached locations on their way into the game, and they all have different effects.

In medieval times, settlements did not just randomly pop up. There was usually a pretty good reason for them being there. This reason may have been rich soil, good hunting grounds or other valuable resources like ores, wood or gems. By adding specialized attached locations we represent this in the game; settlements both look and are very different from one another based on their specialization, and as a player you’ll have a pretty good idea on what to expect in terms of item selection, prices and the kind of recruits you’ll be able to get just from looking at it on the worldmap.



Attached locations can also be attacked, raided and burned to the ground independently of the settlements they belong to. There will even be contracts for the player to raid these or burn them down. Once an attached location is destroyed its benefits are lost for the according settlement. As a settlement has its outlying farms in ashes and the farmhands dead, there can be shortages of food and other goods, and fewer people will be available to join you. Unlike with the abstract wealth rating from before, however, this is something easy to see and understand just from looking at the worldmap; if everything around a settlement is burned to the ground, that settlement is obviously doing poorly, whereas a settlement with all kinds of farms and workshops active will be flourishing. If a city’s barracks are burned to the ground, it should be intuitively understandable that their defensive capabilities are significantly lowered. Attached locations, once burned down, are not lost forever. They can be rebuilt, and there’ll also be contracts that have the player be a part of this.
 

Lhynn

Arcane
Joined
Aug 28, 2013
Messages
9,825
You are the only developer i can confidently brofist before reading the progress update.
 

Zdzisiu

Arcane
Joined
Dec 3, 2009
Messages
3,489
You are the only developer i can confidently brofist before reading the progress update.
Yeah, its weird that every time they post an update I brofist it immediately and then when I read it I can't stop nodding with approval at every paragraph.
 

Jack Dandy

Arcane
Joined
Feb 10, 2013
Messages
3,039
Location
Israel
Divinity: Original Sin 2
There will even be contracts for the player to raid these or burn them down.

Oh? Neat- I thought you guys were planning on avoiding the option of being "evil mercs". Or, can orcs and goblins have farmsteads and mines of their own?
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
That was the original idea, to keep it simple. However, both the game and our resources have since evolved to where we feel the game would work best if we'd tilt it more towards multiple competing human factions interacting, and away from that 'greater evil' angle we took from X-Com. The new faction/contract system hasn't been implemented yet, and we'll talk about it in detail in a future update, but at this time it looks like there'll be plenty of opportunities to slaughter peasants and burn down their homes if you're so inclined.
 

Jack Dandy

Arcane
Joined
Feb 10, 2013
Messages
3,039
Location
Israel
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Hot damn, that's great news! I'm really glad to hear the game's doing well enough to allow things like that. :)
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,764
That was the original idea, to keep it simple. However, both the game and our resources have since evolved to where we feel the game would work best if we'd tilt it more towards multiple competing human factions interacting, and away from that 'greater evil' angle we took from X-Com. The new faction/contract system hasn't been implemented yet, and we'll talk about it in detail in a future update, but at this time it looks like there'll be plenty of opportunities to slaughter peasants and burn down their homes if you're so inclined.
Yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!
 

Copper

Savant
Joined
Jan 28, 2014
Messages
469
I know it's placeholder - but it does start to look messy when there's too many attached locations, as in the second screenshot - it gives me that CiV vibe if you go for trading posts. Hope you're considering a heirarchy of attachment, where in more abstract terms, manors are attached to towns, towns are attached to cities, so a city doesn't need to have too much suburban sprawl, it takes a cut of everything in its sphere of influence. Maybe urban attachments could look more integrated to the city tile, and cities have unique attachments, with a whole district around them, like a monastery with liberties, or a steel mill / wool factory surrounded by workers' shacks. Another technique might be key attachments need a certain perimeter - farms, mines, and hunting lodges might need to have one or two tiles of empty space around where resources are collected. meh, I think you know what you're doing!

EDIT - although as someone who comes from a land of bogs, I think the light shine effect on your bog lakes could do with being toned down, keep them nice and black.
 
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rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
That's not actually a screenshot, it's just a mockup collage to show you all kinds of different attached locations we're working on. I guess it's misleading with the plains in the background and all, but it'll never actually look this crowded and random in the game. It'll look more like in the first image, with a handful attached locations placed in a way that they make sense (e.g. lumber camp at a forest, mines on hills, peat pit in swamps).
 

Copper

Savant
Joined
Jan 28, 2014
Messages
469
Cool - I know how frustrating it can be presenting mockups and having clients/random walk-ins obsess over stuff that's just supposed to demo stuff. Guess I was triggered by the CiV similarity. Generally, I think the world-map stuff you've shown is looking really good, so kudos to your artist(s) - good project planning to go with placeholder stuff first, then add final art later as features get more defined.
 

rapsdjff

Overhype Studios
Developer
Joined
Jan 31, 2014
Messages
330
So, about those factions...

header-coats-of-arms.jpg

Dev Blog #57: Progress Update – Factions, Part 1
Things are progressing nicely on our end. Many mechanics of the new worldmap are already in place – albeit largely with placeholder visuals and still in need of some refinement. This week, we’ll cover an entirely new and very important aspect of the worldmap rework: Factions. Let’s find out what that’s about!

Introduction
Battle Brothers has evolved a lot during development, and it has evolved even more so during the Early Access period since its release in late April of this year. One constant for the game is that it will always be fundamentally about managing a group of human mercenaries in a low power fantasy world. What’s changing is how we’re wrapping it in a game that best serves the theme and is the most fun, while at the same time keeping it at a level that is ambitious yet achievable.

As you may be aware, the current strategic open world gameplay was considered to be a milestone along the way to an ultimately more structured game experience. One aligned more along bits of story and one single emerging threat – the greater evil. The concept of a more or less united human world against a single big threat was inherited from the game’s X-Com roots, and was to provide a mid and late game challenge and goal. It’s a sound and achievable concept, and we’re at this point now where we’d implement those greater evil mechanics. So what’s happening?

We’ve been taking a step back to look at how we can best serve the theme of a quasi-medieval mercenary simulation given how the game has evolved, and also in light of our move to work full-time on the game some months ago and the resources now available to us. As it turns out, the game worked out quite well as an open world experience, even as barebones as it still is in some aspects.

Our conclusion is that it’d make for the best game in the long run if we really focused on improving the open world gameplay and make this one of the strengths of Battle Brothers, instead of constricting the gameplay that is already there by forcing the player to ultimately fight against a single threat each game along a much more narrow story path.

It’s for this reason that we’re now introducing multiple human factions to the game. No longer will there be just one implicit human faction – instead, there will be multiple ones each with their own goals and competing with others by means of diplomacy, intrigue and warfare. And it’s you, the player, navigating their sea of schemes trying to make a living as hired swords. As we’re tilting the focus of the game more towards interacting with these factions, you’ll also be fighting more and different human enemies, and we’ll convey more story via completely reworked contract mechanics. But for now, let’s learn about the first kind of factions: human noble houses.

Noble Houses
Historically, bigger realms have always been a very diverse mixture of a lot of smaller realms and fiefdoms ruled by competing and collaborating noble houses. Although these small parts were usually devoted to a king or supreme ruler, they often changed allegiance and fought and schemed against each other in their struggle for power. The feuds between these noble houses create a perfect place for a mercenary company that is not bound to a lord and that can take on whatever contract pays best.

Like most things in Battle Brothers, noble houses are procedurally generated for each new campaign. To give them as much personality as possible we want them to look and feel very distinct from one another. Each noble house comes with a set of different traits that determine their ‘corporate culture’; their goals and their actions in achieving them – which ultimately also means the kind of contracts they’ll offer to the player. While a ‘Warmonger’ may hire mercenaries to aid in open warfare, a ‘Schemer’ may hire the player for some false-flag operation to gain influence over a neutral city.

Noble houses also come with their very own coat of arms. We dove deep into medieval heraldry to make the coats of arms realistic and believable, but we also took a bit of artistic licence to make them easier to read and more catchy. You can see some concept art pieces of how they may look in the finished game below.



Besides their coat of arms, each noble house will also have a motto. A motto is a short phrase, proverb or word of wisdom that the house identifies with. The motto will usually mirror the character of a noble house, and we’ve based these mottos on historical references as well. A very aggressive house that is bound on acquiring new settlements through war and intimidation might have a motto like “Through arrows and enemies!”. A noble house that is rather peaceful and cares about the wellbeing of its subordinates may have a motto like “Firmly in act and gently in manner”.

With the combination of all the above aspects we’re confident that there’ll be a great variety of noble houses that not only look differently but also feel different on the worldmap, offer different contracts and create new and unique situations in every game. The world of Battle Brothers starts out for now with three different noble houses that are in a kind of cold war state – they do not openly fight each other but are still working against each other in most cases in an attempt to increase their influence based on their specific goals. Mercenaries, of course, are ideal for any operations that must not be tracked back to the noble houses, and not all of them necessarily chivalrous in nature.

But wait, there’s more!
Noble houses aren’t the only factions in the world of Battle Brothers. There’s also a new ‘relations’ mechanic, and we haven’t touched on the role of individual settlements for factions yet. And is there still a greater evil around? All this and more in next week’s progress update!
 

Jack Dandy

Arcane
Joined
Feb 10, 2013
Messages
3,039
Location
Israel
Divinity: Original Sin 2
So now we got a bit of Game of Thrones mixed in. :D

This is all fantastic to hear, and I'm really intersted in seeing how the next update addresses the "greater evil" part.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
This game Sounds more and more like the perfect game for my taste. And I hate myself for not wanting to play Early Access. It's hard man.
 

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