Incline Battle Brothers + Beasts & Exploration, Warriors of the North and Blazing Deserts DLC Thread

[Bocian]

In before: "realistically" is not "realism", hurr durr.

Context. I was answering to a quote that spoke of games and their rules in general.

 

[Parabalus]

Well, I might 'not know shit' about tactics, but I imagine that if someone uses an army 1.5 times as big as normal it will get a lot easier.

Tough terrain, like forests in the game, can easily nullify the advantage of numbers.
The monolith would pose a challenge even having 18 men, unless you managed to power level everyone and manage to get top notch gear for everyone - which I haven't, ever. Even then, you would have casualties if you face more than 50 enemies, most of which are ancient juggernauts and 5 priests with AOE spells. Playing this game for 1000 hours is an exception, not a rule, being a masochist isn't a rule as well.

You won't face more than 50 enemies unless you pull packs to a fortress.

You can clear both goblin city and black monolith with 12 bros and no casualties.

 

[Reinhardt]

You won't face more than 50 enemies unless you pull packs to a fortress.

Don't need to lure. Once i've found goblin city right when they spawned patrol and got ambushed by 70 gobboz.

 

[Eyestabber]

Sarissofoi 's points are correct, but his arguing won't be understood by anyone who hasn't spend like 200+ hours into the game (like he did, and like I did). Battle Brothers is a completely different game early-mid and Lategame. During the early game you have tons of fun with resource scarcity, scary fights and the dread that death might just find you on the next fight. Midgame is when things stabilize a bit, and now your goal is to grind for better backgrounds, better gear etc. Late game is when you have those things and...they can't be replaced. At all. So the only way to keep playing is save scumming, because otherwise you're gonna get stuck into a death spiral, sooner or later. Your elite bros simply can't be replaced in a timely manner and their gear is also insanely expensive at that point. And magicool gear is just irreplaceable, tho one might argue that this is a form of "hard" progression.

And that's the main issue: Battle Brothers doesn't really have any "Hard Progression" system to speak of. Everything you accumulate is a resource and can be lost. In Xcom, for instance, you also have a bit of a money and soldier XP grind, but you do accumulate tech aka something that can't be taken away from you. So you have a bit of a "safe harbor" into the late game, because even if your elite dudes might die, rookies can still use the same guns and you now have psi etc. But in BB that is not the case at all due to fatigue AND the monstrous difference between a lvl 1 and a maxed out bro (not a bad thing in and on itself, but bad within context). So that's the fix we kinda "hope" but don't really expect from the developers: SOME mechanism that allows us to compensate late game losses in some way. Because going around with 12 irreplaceable piggy banks just isn't fun, and inexperienced players can bark all the "git gud" they want, because they're just talking out of their own asses and we did "git gud".

 

[Barbarian]

So the solution is to cheat? Might as well use a save game editor or cheat engine if that is the case.

 

[Barbarian]

I mean, let's assume that the 18 bros thing "fixes" the "super late game", which I admit I never got to, I always played up to after the second crisis and usually got bored before the third one hit.

It still breaks the early and mid game by making it too easy, and you said it yourself that early game is the best part of the game.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Sarissofoi 's points are correct, but his arguing won't be understood by anyone who hasn't spend like 200+ hours into the game (like he did, and like I did). Battle Brothers is a completely different game early-mid and Lategame. During the early game you have tons of fun with resource scarcity, scary fights and the dread that death might just find you on the next fight. Midgame is when things stabilize a bit, and now your goal is to grind for better backgrounds, better gear etc. Late game is when you have those things and...they can't be replaced. At all. So the only way to keep playing is save scumming, because otherwise you're gonna get stuck into a death spiral, sooner or later. Your elite bros simply can't be replaced in a timely manner and their gear is also insanely expensive at that point. And magicool gear is just irreplaceable, tho one might argue that this is a form of "hard" progression.

And that's the main issue: Battle Brothers doesn't really have any "Hard Progression" system to speak of. Everything you accumulate is a resource and can be lost. In Xcom, for instance, you also have a bit of a money and soldier XP grind, but you do accumulate tech aka something that can't be taken away from you. So you have a bit of a "safe harbor" into the late game, because even if your elite dudes might die, rookies can still use the same guns and you now have psi etc. But in BB that is not the case at all due to fatigue AND the monstrous difference between a lvl 1 and a maxed out bro (not a bad thing in and on itself, but bad within context). So that's the fix we kinda "hope" but don't really expect from the developers: SOME mechanism that allows us to compensate late game losses in some way. Because going around with 12 irreplaceable piggy banks just isn't fun, and inexperienced players can bark all the "git gud" they want, because they're just talking out of their own asses and we did "git gud".

I agree, that a veteran Brother is incredibly hard to replace late game, nevermind multiple. The solution to that would be the ability to train Bros and instantly get them to lvl 8 or 10 - for a lot of money. Losing a veteran hurts - as it should - but a successful, rich company should also have ways to cushion the blow. I often proposed that to be another option in the 'Veteran Hall'.

A stash, where you can keep some gear for 'Bad Times' would also be nice, so you won't have to sell high end gear for a fifth of the shop price.

I'm still very skeptical about the 18 Bro mod. (And I played way more than 200 hours and a couple of campaigns for more than a thousand days.)

 

[Serus]

Sarissofoi 's points are correct, but his arguing won't be understood by anyone who hasn't spend like 200+ hours into the game (like he did, and like I did). Battle Brothers is a completely different game early-mid and Lategame. During the early game you have tons of fun with resource scarcity, scary fights and the dread that death might just find you on the next fight. Midgame is when things stabilize a bit, and now your goal is to grind for better backgrounds, better gear etc. Late game is when you have those things and...they can't be replaced. At all. So the only way to keep playing is save scumming, because otherwise you're gonna get stuck into a death spiral, sooner or later. Your elite bros simply can't be replaced in a timely manner and their gear is also insanely expensive at that point. And magicool gear is just irreplaceable, tho one might argue that this is a form of "hard" progression.

And that's the main issue: Battle Brothers doesn't really have any "Hard Progression" system to speak of. Everything you accumulate is a resource and can be lost. In Xcom, for instance, you also have a bit of a money and soldier XP grind, but you do accumulate tech aka something that can't be taken away from you. So you have a bit of a "safe harbor" into the late game, because even if your elite dudes might die, rookies can still use the same guns and you now have psi etc. But in BB that is not the case at all due to fatigue AND the monstrous difference between a lvl 1 and a maxed out bro (not a bad thing in and on itself, but bad within context). So that's the fix we kinda "hope" but don't really expect from the developers: SOME mechanism that allows us to compensate late game losses in some way. Because going around with 12 irreplaceable piggy banks just isn't fun, and inexperienced players can bark all the "git gud" they want, because they're just talking out of their own asses and we did "git gud".

I like how You assumed that everyone who disagrees with you simply didn't play the game. How convenient. How classy.
Ignoring the above, You have a good point about late game. However You failed to explain how introducing 18 bros on the battlefield at once is the optimal solution to that problem. Especially since it does make the game easier and at the same time slower. There is no way around it, regardless of what some people say. Basically you corrected one problem but at a cost. And I'm not saying you are not supposed to play it the way you like it but it would be nice if the developers actually introduced a proper solution instead of this half-measure. Wouldn't you agree?
As to your comparison with XCom. That's interesting because both old X-Com and nuXCOM were often criticized for the exact same thing. I vividly remember people complaining that if you lose your A-team late game (on a difficulty level high enough) it's... well, really bad and you risk entering a death spiral as well. "Safe harbor" or no.
Still I think we can agree that adding more of "something that can't be taken away from you" as you put it, is a good idea. It should probably be the company itself as opposite to the individual bros and their equipment that can be easily lost. There are already some company-based stats but the game should have more of it. Not just reputation or size of inventory but perhaps additional more substantial abilities. It would play similar role to the base infrastructure and tech progress in X-com games, providing the "safe harbor" you mentioned. Hell, perhaps the solution could even include the ability to field more than 12 bros at once as a company feature, something that gets better over-time. Not from the start but gradually and it would only get near the number of 18 very late game? Just a thought.
Also what the bro above me said - ability to hire properly high level mercs would be nice and simple solution as gold is relatively easier to replace than exp.

 

[Vilain Joueur]

Interesting discussion here! I read you all regularly...

The mod that allows fielding 18 mercenaries will most certainly still work with the next update. It's only a few edits in one of the files we can access (a .jss if I remember well). So unless the system/files change it should be exactly the same. I see no reason for the developers to change that.

About difficulty. I also have approximately played for 1k hours. I'm not particularly proud of that but it shows that BB is quite a deep game and that it takes time to truly master.
Now on the matter of difficulty, it's actually inverted (reversed?) in BB. Meaning that it's harder at the start and becomes easier and easier provided you keep steadily progressing (armor, archers, etc.). The chance to get screwed by bad rolls is extremely high in the beginning. A slow start with a lack of Raiders to loot can also be disastrous.

The late game however is very accommodating because heavy armored mercenaries with Battle Forged and possibly Indomitable are extremely resistant and can take a lot of punishment before going down. Then the very late game is quite imbalanced because Veteran levels further strengthen party members while enemies only scale in number and what's more to a limit of about 30. The number of opponents isn't even a problem. With Recover you can keep fighting until your weapons break. Just watch Imz Frozen videos. He defeats armies with just 12 brothers, but leveled almost to the maximum. I myself recorded a video of a battle against 93 soldiers. Veteran levels just trivialize even the most absurd fights.

So, Eyestabber, I don't really agree with your opinions on the late game. Even then mercenaries can be replaced. In fact, in my longest campaign (about 1.9k days) I kept recruiting until very late (something like 1.3k days) and dismissing Veteran mercenaries of level 30 or more. Gear should also stay with you most of the time if a brother dies unless it has been destroyed. Named equipment is very hard to replace, it's true. But normal equipment is not very expensive in the late game. A full set of very heavy armor costs about 15k. It's very easy to make that kind of money in the late game by completing a few 3 skulls contracts and selling repaired loot from battles. One player posted a picture of his campaign on Reddit. He had accumulated 150k Crowns by day 80 or so.

On another note, it's not right to say that one needs to spend a long time leveling to win the most difficult challenges. Malros, an American streamer defeated the Black Monolith before day 100. MxTOXAsh, a Russian, regularly beats it by day 150 or sooner. The Goblin City can also be taken down early. 千仞万渊, a Chinese player who's active on the Steam forums did it before day 100 as well. Admittedly, these are extreme examples but it shows that skill matters a lot in this game. And there's absolutely no need to save and reload multiple times to achieve something.
At the same time, not everyone enjoys these kind of challenges or they yearn for something different. And so there are ways to tune the game and its difficulty, from the game settings, to the save editor and the few mods we have. I see no harm in using them. In fact I think it opens up new possibilities and ways to experience the game. The save editor for example, as well as the save and reload method helped me a lot to get better and come up with new strategies.

 

[RNGsus]

I think if we could apprentice new bros to veteran bros for faster xp that'd be great. Or the noobs should learn faster from just being in the field, watching the pros work, maybe get a stabby-stabby in with a pick. A squire system: like from the guild, but no time limit. They just have to be in x battles together, and maybe trait or weapon compatible.

I have won my first battle alone with a rival House. It was 12 against 27 plus shitty dogs. Taunt doesn't seem to work as well anymore, so I'm putting away most of my spear line for axes and a greatsword.

 

[Kalarion]

Big mobs of enemies in BB are manageable thanks to morale, you have to do the same thing as in total war, find a weak spot and push through it. Enemies that have no morale like undead are balanced by having weapons that do fuckall against armour or in case of zombies are just shitty combatants. But I guess we get to another mandatory must have perk - recover.

What the fuck? If it turns out I'm this bad at the game after all this time I'm going to consider suicide. Ancient Dead are my most avoided fight specifically because their Legionaries and Honor Guards absolutely wreck my armored bros in 2-3 turns (and cripple the shit out of them because of how much of their damage can armor pierce). How are yall dealing with this, aside from just gritting your teeth and hoping you can smash through enough pikers with your hammerbros before they drop everyone?

So, Eyestabber, I don't really agree with your opinions on the late game. Even then mercenaries can be replaced. In fact, in my longest campaign (about 1.9k days) I kept recruiting until very late (something like 1.3k days) and dismissing Veteran mercenaries of level 30 or more. Gear should also stay with you most of the time if a brother dies unless it has been destroyed.

I'm torn on this. It's not necessarily about encounter difficulty per se (I can absolutely still complete good-paying missions even after losing 3-5 veterans) as it is... momentum difficulty? When I'm at 150+ days and I lose a good amount of bros in a bad fight, the thought of bringing another set all the way up to vet levels is just soul killing to me. It is one of the few things that can pull me back into a full-on popamole-retard reloading cycle (I had to train myself quite harshly to get out of this specific habit in the first place, so it's particularly depressing to me). So for Eyestabber 's point.

OTOH I recently started heavily hiring the elite recruit tiers (hedge knight, ret swordmaster/soldier, adv noble etc) and I've noticed that not only do they start out with fantastically improved stats (I "knew" this simply from reading the thread, but I hadn't experienced it before), they also seem to have better level up stat bonuses, even with low star counts. This may ease my (admittedly pathetic) angst over time (when I say recently started I mean that quite literally. Over 400 hours played, just started heavily recruiting high-tiers a couple days ago :D). So for VJ's point.

As to the 18 man mod, I've seriously considered using it myself a couple times, simply because I find it so infuriating that I'm constantly outnumbered 3 to 1 in "balanced" fights. I don't find that this spurs me on to coming up with new tactics (though I freely admit that's my fault, not the game's). Rather, I make sure that I don't fight at all unless certain options are available to me before I engage- lots of nets, or an easily defended piece of the map for example. If they're not present, I simply don't bother. This is actually something I'm trying to train myself on, and one of the main reasons I started recruiting elites so heavily... I was forcing myself into fights I wouldn't normally touch with a 10 foot pole and I was losing a lot of bros as I learned the ropes of those types of encounters.

Honestly to me the main problems with the game are (1) turn speed, (2) dealing with retreating and (3) some of the fudging that goes on to give the AI a leg up.

Retreating drives me absolutely batshit right now, I basically stopped playing Ironman because of it. My choices on a nasty fight were (1) retreat immediately to save time and deal with 30+ med supplies worth of injuries or (2) manually retreat, taking a good 5+ mins each time. That shit adds up fast. I'd rather just reload, which incidentally is something I don't want to get used to again. My fingers are crossed that the proposed fixes work out as envisioned.

The fudging that happens, on the other hand... FFS Overhype. You want to give me a flat penalty for stopping on the edge of the map, even when I have zero intention of retreating? Fine. But make it happen to enemies too! You want to make terrain an integral part of fights? I love it! But when the enemy snipers can see and fire on my archers at 50%+ accuracy through a thicket of trees/boulders, and my archers can't even return fire, let alone with anything more than 30% accuracy? Go fuck yourselves :D I really enjoy going into concealment and getting instantly pounced on by three enemies the next round even though I took no actions other than moving, btw. No really. It's fucking awesome, nothing suspicious going on there at all. The only way I've found to (sometimes) make concealment actually, y'know, CONCEAL ME, is to move into it completely out of sight range of all enemies. And oh, if you're moving from concealment to concealment in sight range I hope you crossed your fingers, because there's an even chance the enemy will start swarming the location next round.

Overall I'd have to say this is my most-played non-MMO game ever, I fucking love it. I can't wait for the expansion.

 

[Parabalus]

I'm torn on this. It's not necessarily about encounter difficulty per se (I can absolutely still complete good-paying missions even after losing 3-5 veterans) as it is... momentum difficulty? When I'm at 150+ days and I lose a good amount of bros in a bad fight, the thought of bringing another set all the way up to vet levels is just soul killing to me.

You can always reload if you lose a high level bro and it bothers you/don't have enough time.

If you're at the point where you defeated 1 or more crises already, meaning you won the game but wanna milk fun, there's really nothing wrong with it.

 

[Tigranes]

What a strange discussion.

There doesn't have to be some speshul reason for it to be 12, as long as the game is designed to be fun with 12. That's all there is to it.

And there's no problem with some other guy using 18 or 24 or 36. I personally wouldn't, seems like way too cumbersome, but some other fuck can do whatever the fuck they want.

 

[Sarissofoi]

http://battlebrothersgame.com/lets-play-beasts-exploration-dlc/

LET’S PLAY ‘BEASTS & EXPLORATION’ DLC

The ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC for Battle Brothers is set to release on the 29th of this month. Let’s take a first look at gameplay footage today!

Sit back and enjoy as developer Jaysen will talk you through changes and additions while trying not to die horribly. Just keep in mind that this is a preview and not the final DLC, as we’re still busy working on balance and polish.

In the first episode we talk about crafting, new traits and new settlement situations while making use of one of the newly added weapons!



In the second episode of our ‘Beasts & Exploration’ Let’s Play series, developer Jaysen and his Battle Brothers encounter one of the new beasts and craft a first item at the taxidermist!



We’ll be releasing new episodes every few days and will let you know on Twitter and Facebook!

NEW BLOG.

Spoiler

Kind of disappointing.

 

[Elhoim]

Spoiler

Kind of disappointing.

Yep.

 

[LESS T_T]

GOG page: https://af.gog.com/game/battle_brothers_beasts_exploration?as=1649904300

 

[Barbarian]

Spoiler

Kind of disappointing.

Yep.

More dev diaries would be much better but I guess they ran out of things they can show/spoil.

 

[rapsdjff]

Here's a couple of random minor things not covered by blog posts, and also not covered in the Let's Play - partly because they only made it into the game after the first episodes were recorded.

• Characters have a new 'Free Ally' skill with which to free adjacent allies from nets, webs, vines and tentacles wrapped around them. It works the same as the 'Break Free' skill does for a character freeing himself, and it has the same cost.
• You can now give consumables like potions and antidote from one character to another in combat if they have a free bag slot.
• The Escort Caravan contract has been reworked to give you the approximate time it would take the caravan to travel to the destination (e.g. 2 days), to have the number of skulls indicate the number of days it takes, to also allow payment per head of any attacker you slay, and to only go between settlements connected by road. Also, time goes faster than before.
• Goblin Shamans have a new 'Grant Night Vision' spell. It can still be advantageous to attack Goblins at night, but less so than before if there's a Goblin Shaman involved. You can get night vision yourself with a craftable 'Night Owl Elixir', but getting the ingredients can be challenging.

 

[Reinhardt]

Spoiler

Kind of disappointing.

Yep.

More dev diaries would be much better but I guess they ran out of things they can show/spoil.

Actually i'd prefer to find new locations and bosses myself.

 

[Parabalus]

Goblins with night vision?



Though lategame you wanted to attack during the day either way.

 

[Aemar]

Spoiler

Kind of disappointing.

Yep.

More dev diaries would be much better but I guess they ran out of things they can show/spoil.

That's true I guess. And they procedeed the same way before releasing the 1.0 version of the game, LP vids instead of the usual blog entries.

 

[The Wall]

rapsdjff I volunteer to be that guy who asks that question that you can't answer but can tease our hopes with a hint:

If this DLC pays off to Overhype more then best payed contract in BB, bunch of people pay it, play it, love it and crave moar will there be moar?

Asking for my two broes, Codexa and Steamian. Based on so far pre-orders you should already have a clue how lucrative this contract will be for your band...

 

[Serious_Business]

And that's the main issue: Battle Brothers doesn't really have any "Hard Progression" system to speak of. [...] So that's the fix we kinda "hope" but don't really expect from the developers: SOME mechanism that allows us to compensate late game losses in some way.

Not sure who is "we" here. This precarious system is exactly what distinguishes BB from X-Com. Hard progression would remove the tension from the late game. In fact, it can potentially remove all sense of tension - see Darkest Dungeon for example. The fact that you can loose the campaign is the point. And the fact that players have went through it on ironman, without save scumming, does say something about "getting gud". I can't see your critique as being very valid - taken to its conclusions, it could come off as ridiculous as the Codex review, where the guy just indeed complained about the game being too hard and not seeing the point of playing on iroman or expert. Difficulty should never be something that is the object of the critique. You can say that the game is too grindy and doesn't offer enough variety of challenges. But, what allows the grind to be interesting, is the inherent tension in each encounter - the fact that you can loose something important. If you remove that, well, it would indeed be a pointless grind. Every damn computer game can be a pointless grind, though - but I digress.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

The Escort Caravan contract has been reworked... to only go between settlements connected by road.

Does this mean that normal AI generated caravans will only use roads too?

 

[Eyestabber]

I like how You assumed that everyone who disagrees with you simply didn't play the game. How convenient. How classy.

Not playing the game =\= not playing for over 200+ hours.

However You failed to explain how introducing 18 bros on the battlefield at once is the optimal solution to that problem. Especially since it does make the game easier and at the same time slower. There is no way around it, regardless of what some people say. Basically you corrected one problem but at a cost. And I'm not saying you are not supposed to play it the way you like it but it would be nice if the developers actually introduced a proper solution instead of this half-measure. Wouldn't you agree?
As to your comparison with XCom. That's interesting because both old X-Com and nuXCOM were often criticized for the exact same thing. I vividly remember people complaining that if you lose your A-team late game (on a difficulty level high enough) it's... well, really bad and you risk entering a death spiral as well. "Safe harbor" or no.

You're confusing posters. I said nothing about this 18 soldiers mod. I never used it and thus I have no opinion on it.

Still I think we can agree that adding more of "something that can't be taken away from you" as you put it, is a good idea. It should probably be the company itself as opposite to the individual bros and their equipment that can be easily lost. There are already some company-based stats but the game should have more of it. Not just reputation or size of inventory but perhaps additional more substantial abilities. It would play similar role to the base infrastructure and tech progress in X-com games, providing the "safe harbor" you mentioned.

Good thing we're on the same page on the point I did make. I remember suggesting some form of using the reputation system for events in the line of "Legendary Hero heard your company's reputation for heroic deeds and wants to join for a shitload of gold", which would provide some hope of keeping the company running after late game losses.

When I'm at 150+ days and I lose a good amount of bros in a bad fight, the thought of bringing another set all the way up to vet levels is just soul killing to me.

150 days is not really the "super late game" I was arguing about.

Replacing guys like these is a massive pain in the ass. 100+ days of grinding just to get back to what you were before, assuming no further losses are taken.


One or two epic deaths at the Black Monolith are understandable, but the uber late game is a constant game of Russian roulette against your piggy banks.