Battle Brothers Pre-Release Thread

[Lurker King]

rapsdjff, you should ask Felipepepe to make a trailer for you. He is very talented with this stuff.

Edit: He made AoD trailer and this other video.

 

[Bubbles]

Wasteland 2. Funded with Kickstarter. Result: shit

Pillars of Eternity. Funded with Kickstarter. Result: utter shit

Age of Decadence. Self-funded. Result: awesome

Underrail. Self-funded. Result: awesome

Battle Brothers. Self-funded. Result: already awesome in early access

I guess this shows which model is better and where we should put our money.

You could also add The Dwarf Run and Voidspire Tactics to that list.

 

[Lurker King]

I avoided “Voidspire Tactics” like the plague because it brings me back to the Japanese games that I played when I was younger. The trailer has a song reminiscent of Mega Man and the graphics of FFVI. I read your review about “The Dwarf Run”, but wasn't impressed. The game is so cheap, though. I will buy and play both games afterwards. Right now, I’m learning how to play JA2 in my spare time.

 

[rapsdjff]

Update 0.6.1.18 – New Weapons
Time for some new weapons! This update adds two new weapon types, the Two-Handed Hammer and the Longaxe, and fills some gaps in weapon progression with the Light Crossbow, the Warbow and the Fighting Spear. Let’s dive in!

The Two-Handed Hammer
What the Two-Handed Hammer lacks in grace, it makes up for with raw destructive power as it is brought down to smite your enemies. Armor is easily crushed and deformed, and the force of impact is felt even through the thickest of it.



The first skill, ‘Smite’, does increased damage to a single target and will stagger anyone hit. Staggered is a new status effect that moves the afflicted to the end of the turn order if they haven’t acted already this round, and heavily reduces their initiative so that they act late in the turn order of the next round.

The second skill, ‘Shatter’, is an area of effect attack that can hit up to 3 targets and with the force of the blow has a chance to either stagger them, knock them back or just inflict heavy blunt trauma. While the base damage of some other weapons, like the Greatsword, is higher, the Two-Handed Hammer excels in fighting against heavily armored opponents and disrupting the enemy.

The Longaxe
The Longaxe is an axe blade on a long shaft. In Battle Brothers, it joins the Pike and the Billhook as pole weapons that can attack over a distance of two tiles, beyond the reach of most other melee weapons. Its introduction comes with a rebalancing of the existing pole weapons to more clearly give each one a role they’re best at.

The Pike now inflicts lower damage, but attacks with increased accuracy, making it a good choice for less skilled fighters, and for more constant damage output. The Billhook also has its base damage slightly reduced, but the efficiency against armor increased, making it the pole weapon of choice against heavily armored targets. The Longaxe then excels against less armored targets with the highest base damage of the three pole weapons.



The first skill, ‘Strike’, has a range of two tiles, as with all pole weapons. The second skill is actually ‘Split Shield’ – but with a range of two tiles as well. This allows you to render the enemy’s shields unusable from the second row, well outside the reach of their melee weapons.

Other New Weapons
Finally, we’ve added previously missing tiers of existing weapon types. The Light Crossbow is the earlier tier variant of the Crossbow, of course, and comparable to the Short Bow. The Warbow is the third tier variant of the Hunting Bow, and what you’ll want to give your master archers later on in the game (at least until we introduce named bows!). The Fighting Spear is the third tier variant of the Boar Spear; being more durable and having a higher base damage, it makes for more effective spearwalls later on in the game.



Changelog

Spoiler

• Added new music track for battling orcs.
• Added two new weapon types: Two-Handed Hammer and Longaxe.
• Added missing tiers of existing weapons: Light Crossbow, Warbow and Fighting Spear.
• Added message prompting the user to close the ‘Plays.tv’ application, if detected at startup, because it may cause the game to crash by hooking into the rendering process.
• Added ‘-gl30’ command parameter for forcing the game to run on OpenGL 3.0. Try this only if your GPU doesn’t support OpenGL 3.3. No guarantees that the game will work correctly with this; the game still officially requires OpenGL 3.3 to run.
• Changed status effect icons in combat to form an orderly queue and drop one after the other instead of dropping all at the same time and potentially obscure each other.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

It's... it's beautiful.

 

[Jrpgfan]

I need to get back to it.

Any release date yet?

 

[Jagged Appliance]

I've been playing a lot of this recently. What I want most atm is some way to view my guys' history, especially the dead ones. Also some way to speed up combat, it's quite slow with animations and stuff. Speeding up time when travelling would also be nice.
New weapons are a great addition, and hopefully the upcoming perk overhaul will improve that system. I'm also interested to know exactly what the temple and veterans hall will do and how far away the implementation of those buildings is.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I've been playing a lot of this recently. What I want most atm is some way to view my guys' history, especially the dead ones.

I think they said that they'll implement some sort of company history / ledger / graveyard.

 

[Jagged Appliance]

I've been playing a lot of this recently. What I want most atm is some way to view my guys' history, especially the dead ones.

I think they said that they'll implement some sort of company history / ledger / graveyard.

Yeah I'm sure it's planned, just wanted to voice how badly I want it.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Another thing - what are your current plans for perk overhaul? Can you spill some info to the lovely Codex? :3 You're going to balance the stats, or change the system altogether? Personally, I'd love to see more randomized trees (or maybe a few random branches, 3 for every guy?) and less "go down that branch if you want to survive more or go down the other to deal more damage" - eventually leading to 3-4 "Tier 1" builds.
Also, It would be awesome if our brothers could (eg. because of random event or because we paid gold for his training) get additional perk points despite his level. Also a good gold sink.

Agreed on partially randomized perks. I would get rid of trees altogether and give everyone a number (3 or 4) of random perks to choose from on each level, based on their background, stats and maybe playstyle, maybe with some ability to respec or re-roll for money. For example pathfinder would appear in random polls from 1 level one for everyone, more likely for backgrounds like vagabond, wildman, hunter or messenger but rarely for monks or nobles. Something like nimble would appear from level 3-4 onward, more likely for thieves, swordmasters but also anyone who puts points into initiative. Right now everyone has builds planned and optimized out from level 1, it's boring and makes many perks just not worth taking.

 

[AMG]

I would get rid of trees altogether and give everyone a number (3 or 4) of random perks to choose from on each level

That's a terrible idea, because you wouldn't be able to plan builds at all. Some randomiziation in available perks for a given mercenery would be good, since it would somewhat fix the issue of only picking sellswords and hedge knights later on. But all of them should be viewable before you recruit a guy.
Current perk balance is quite bad indeed, but that's no reason to go full RNG. They just need to consult Josh Sawyer.
All in all I'd like to see a lot more perks, just to be able to experiment more, even if they are niche. For example, the game has few perks that increase the chance to hit the head, and there is killer on the run background, but it's a tad too little to make a working headsman build.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

It wouldn't be full RNG, you'd choose from a semi-randomly chosen selection from all perks available at that level, still very much possible to do builds, just not the way it's done now. You wouldn't get stuff like archery perks on people with low ranged skills or captain on low bravery mercs. I'd rather have a combination of "optimal" perks and some from another category or more outlandish ones than the current system where you pick the 3 best t1 perks in a tree > pick the 2 best t2 perks in a tree > pick that t3 perk you want. I don't think you should you be able to plan builds down to every perk, you can't in any other aspects of the game, it's all random to some degree.
I don't advocate scenarios where you get only shitty perks to choose from or having a character ruined because you didn't get that must have perk, that would just incentivize savescumming. The game needs more perks and reworking of many existing ones but that's another matter.

 

[oscar]

Slight direct damage nerfs to billhooks seems wise, I'd started making 1/3 of my company them (focused on the offensive tree as they use bugger all fatigue so you can load them up with heavy armour without impairing their offensive capabilities anyway) and they always come first on my "kill this immediately" priority list of foes.

 

[Ulminati]

Best feature of the new beta build -- When enemy is down to having only fleeing units, you get an option to end the fight rather than wasting 4-5 turns chasing them to the edge of the map.


rapsdjff
I think I've managed to reproduce the camera bug. If you tab in and out of the game a bunch the camera keeps "centering" in your party. It doesn't get the "noone's holding down shift" command. It seems to be catching stray shift keypresses outside the window.

Also, got told to report to town that was hidden in the fog of war off to the west after first mission

 

[rapsdjff]

I think I've managed to reproduce the camera bug. If you tab in and out of the game a bunch the camera keeps "centering" in your party. It doesn't get the "noone's holding down shift" command. It seems to be catching stray shift keypresses outside the window.

Also, got told to report to town that was hidden in the fog of war off to the west after first mission

Nice. Both are fixed now.

 

[Agesilaus]

I love the new longaxe. I use the shield splitting ability in every relevant battle, and have actually given the skill to a couple of dedicated longaxe guys.

 

[Elim]

This game gets better and better. Now we only need some sort of "press shift to speed up travelling" function...

 

[Rabbid]

A town in Ulminati's screenshot is called Seedorf.

Spoiler

 

[rapsdjff]

The Music of Battle Brothers
We’ve entered full production now on the excitingly gruesome new injury mechanics and will be revealing them to you next week in a detailed blog post. For now, we give the word to our talented musicians to listen to and hear their thoughts on the most recent additions to the soundtrack of Battle Brothers.

The Might of Obrokk
Hi everybody, Patrick from Breakdown Epiphanies here. Over the course of the last weeks we added some new tracks to the Battle Brothers soundtrack, a few of which we would like to showcase in this week’s devblog.

So without further ado we’ll start with the latest piece in our musical arsenal, the third theme for battles against the notorious orcs that are haunting every late-game mercenary company’s dreams. We’ve started naming the tracks for the soundtrack inspired by names and places from the game now, so instead of the rather bland “Battle Track III”, we give you “The Might of Obrokk”.



At the start, our goal was to have two fairly long and varied themes for battles with each faction in the game. This third Orc track we did mostly for fun, although you can say that the Orcs pose a prevalent threat in the late game so more music that carries the weight of fighting these armored behemoths will be a welcome addition.

We’ve been listening to Howard Shore’s beautiful and brilliant soundtrack to the LOTR-movies a lot lately and we always loved Shore’s take on Tolkien’s world. So we had to have a go at an orchestration in his style while trying out some awesome new instruments we got our hands on. Like with all of the Orc music for Battle Brothers, we’re relying mostly on brass in our arrangement, accompanied by odd rhythm patterns that feature somber and tuned percussion, as well as hammering on all kinds of metal surfaces. All of this culminates in a more harmonic but still menacing ending with a big choir build-up. If at that point Obrokk has not wiped the floor with your puny mercenaries, and somehow you managed to survive, feel free to loot some juicy man-splitters off of those greenskin corpses, as the approaching reinforcements sound their war horns in the distance.

Traversing the Northern Clanlands
A few weeks earlier the guys from Overhype asked us for another track that could be played when travelling on the world map. Although we already wrote a bunch of music for this part of the game, some more variety was needed, given how much time players spend getting from town to town and looking for work for their company. Overhype have a lot of stuff planned that will incentivise exploring even further to make this part of gameplay stronger for the final release, so providing more music for the world map is also setting up for these improvements.



“Traversing the Northern Clanlands” starts out with a very mellow and soothing string arrangement that won’t get in the way when quickly hopping on to the world map screen and e.g. back to a city. After the first part though it transitions to a wide and epic theme that evokes (so we hope) a feeling of wandering and exploration (I’d say riding across the countryside but you all know that we are not very keen on horses around here ^^).

Rise and Fall of House Kaltenborn
Lastly we would like to present a piece that has been in the game for quite some time now but that many of you might not have encountered up until now because battling the forces of the various noble houses still needs a rather complicated setup at the moment. This will change when faction warfare becomes a thing, but until then, feel free to have a listen to the first Noble Houses Battle Track here.



All of the tracks related to the human faction in the game (bandit themes, town- and stronghold themes) feature acoustic guitars in some way and so does the music for battling the noble houses. Other than that, given the tone of Battle Brothers we could not help ourselves but think about Ramin Djawadi’s main theme for GOT and came up with a waltz in 6/8 (much like our “Stronghold Theme”) that uses a similar call-and-answer structure between a solo cello and the rest of the string section. Later, there are more strings, lots of brass and choir. We basically pulled out all the stops on this one, and its project in our audio workstation is a good contester for “most-notes-played per minute” in the soundtrack.

What’s next?
So what’s on the horizon? Next up is a second track for the beast faction that is already in the works. It will feature almost exclusively drums and percussion (those direwolves still having problems to play melody instruments with their clumsy paws) and will be a bit more up-tempo and dramatic than the first theme that was more about setting a dark and threatening atmosphere. After that we’ll tackle the second noble houses theme so we’ll have that ready for when faction warfare is being introduced. There might be some more new content that will need some musical accompaniment until the final release (like locations or events).

Anyhow, we will probably sit down and write a few more tracks in the meantime just because it’s a lot of fun, like we did with the latest orc song. Boy, are we lucky to work on this game

 

[Rahdulan]

I'm seriously amazed how much better you're making the game. You got a really good foundation early and you're still polishing it with great production values. Can't help but wonder if it's maybe time to get the word out there because I've barely heard anyone talk about Battle Brothers, certainly not any bigger sites. Are you willingly keeping it under wraps until prior to launch?

 

[Dr Skeleton]

I am become the king of peat.

I also hired this guy. Weird.

Longaxes are great. Somewhat related, I'm more and more convinced that shields are too easy to destroy. One hit from a young orc and it's gone. It's offset by the bags and belts allowing you spare shields and billhooks in your pockets but that's another thing that needs some rebalancing IMO.

It's just me or the starting location is almost always in the far south, with the map having 3-4 peninsulas there? I only remember one time I got a somewhat differently shaped map and started more to the north.

 

[rapsdjff]

I'm seriously amazed how much better you're making the game. You got a really good foundation early and you're still polishing it with great production values. Can't help but wonder if it's maybe time to get the word out there because I've barely heard anyone talk about Battle Brothers, certainly not any bigger sites. Are you willingly keeping it under wraps until prior to launch?

Hah, no. We've been contacting press and youtubers pretty much since the beginning, and again with every major update, but ultimately Battle Brothers is still a niche game by an unknown developer, which may not make for great headlines. I expect things to pick up a bit once the game is fully released. And I'm not complaining, since afterall we're still in the lucky position of being able to create full time the game that we want to play ourselves.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Your unknown group is a very talented and focussed bunch.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Hah, no. We've been contacting press and youtubers pretty much since the beginning, and again with every major update, but ultimately Battle Brothers is still a niche game by an unknown developer, which may not make for great headlines. I expect things to pick up a bit once the game is fully released. And I'm not complaining, since afterall we're still in the lucky position of being able to create full time the game that we want to play ourselves.

You need to continue your LP then yourselves Unfortunately I can't stand the German go-to Youtuber for such games (WB). But there are still quite a few LPs / first impressions by the usual suspects.

 

[rapsdjff]

We'll start a new Let's Play series ourselves once the next big update is ready.

Dev Blog #79: Progress Update – Injury Mechanics
Battle Brothers, as you know, is a game about managing a mercenary company. This week we’re talking about a new aspect to manage both on the battlefield and when travelling the world: the upcoming injury mechanics. There’s two types of injuries – temporary and permanent ones – and they both serve a different purpose in enriching the game. Let’s delve in!

Temporary Injuries
Temporary injuries add complexity to both combat and worldmap gameplay. They are effectively status effects that represent serious injury that diminish a character’s ability to fight effectively, different from lighter wounds by loss of hitpoints only. Depending on where a character is injured, they may suffer from various disabilities; for example, an injured leg may impede movement, whereas an injured arm may lower offensive capabilities, and a swollen eye may lower vision.



In combat, injuries are inflicted if an attack surpasses a certain threshold of hitpoint damage relative to the maximum hitpoints of the character hit. The higher the maximum hitpoints of a character, the more difficult it is to inflict injury upon them, and the more damage inflicted, the more serious the potential injury may be. This applies to both your Battle Brothers and your enemies – it’s easier to inflict serious injury to fragile Goblins than sturdy Orcs, or to those of your men that have a lot of hitpoints. A select few enemies may also be immune to some or all types of injuries. The type of injury inflicted depends on the weapon used, with blunt weapons inflicting different injuries from cutting or piercing ones. With the new injury mechanics, combatants will no longer be able to fight to their fullest at even just a single hitpoint left, but will now progressively get weaker as you beat on them.

Outside of combat, temporary injuries take a certain amount of time to heal – how long exactly depends on the specific injury, with a broken leg taking quite a bit longer to recover from than a light concussion. While you can send your injured right back into combat, it’s a good idea to make use of the reserve roster so that they can recover and don’t have to limp onto the battlefield. Injured characters have icons shown right next to them in the roster view, allowing you to see at a glance who’s fit and who may need to sit out a contract. In order to make the best out of the men available to you at any given time, you’ll now have to shuffle your roster every now and then, which should help to shake up what could previously become too static a gameplay element once you had assembled a good team.



If you’ve played Battle Brothers before, you’ll be aware of certain events that may end in fists flying amongst your men, particularly with certain party compositions, or combat drills ending in accidents. Consequences were previously limited to a loss of hitpoints very quickly healed by passing time. Now, events can also come with injury as a consequence, like a broken nose as your men beat on each other, which should make for a more serious concern as you weigh your options.



Finally, the upcoming update will also have the temple building serve a function. In temples across the land, devout followers of the gods will pray for and treat the wounds of the pantheon’s children as mandated by their faith. Your men will recover faster from injuries expertly treated here, and you don’t run the risk of developing gangrene like you do in the field. The bandages shown on your characters are even visibly replaced by clean ones.

Permanent Injuries
Life expectancy can be short for mercenaries. But while permadeath is and will remain an important part of Battle Brothers, not every downed character has to be quite dead. Assuming a character isn’t decapitated, has their skull bashed in or suffered a similarly gruesome fate, there’s now a chance for them to survive with a permanent injury that will accompany them the rest of their lives.



A character may get lucky and suffer an injury that has only a minor impact on their abilities, such as missing an ear, or they may suffer a more crippling disability, such as missing a whole hand. Permanent injuries all have negative effects, but some may also include positive ones. Brain damage, for example, doesn’t make a character any more competent, but it may make them just dumb enough not to realize when it’s time to run, effectively lowering their chance to break and flee.

Depending on the injury sustained and the role of the character in your company, a permanent injury may be anything from a small reminder to be more careful next time, to a crippling disability. From a design perspective it is a tool to cushion the impact that losing important characters can have on your campaign. Whether you choose to ultimately replace that character or not, they’ll be around for a while longer to help you succeed – especially useful with the optional Ironman mode we’ll be introducing next update. Also, of course, missing noses make for distinct characters and contribute to the emergent story of your very own mercenary company.