Battle Brothers Pre-Release Thread

[GuiltyofBeingTrite]

Will this be on GOG, sorry if I've missed it, but googling didn't help?

 

[rapsdjff]

Not sure yet, but we've contacted them.

 

[Infinitron]

JudasIscariot Do it faggot

 

[Teut Busnet]

Hm, I think the changes to ranged combat make carrying a polearm for my archers obsolete.

The 'Recover' perk is more tempting now for them, so they can keep shooting and always have enough stamina to use 'Footwork'.

Don't know on what I'll spend the saved 'Melee Attack' points yet.

 

[Kayerts]

I had a pretty cool culmination to a greenskin invasion:

Warriors, warboss, overseer and shaman in one fight? Where was that during my invasion? I guess for my company it was an easy job before retirement, making tens of thousands on killing some poor goblins with pointy sticks but I wanted an epic fight goddammit.

Playing on expert solves the problem of overly easy fights with insufficient numbers of high-level enemies. :D



Patch thoughts:

Cool patch.

The new Dodge seems quite strong, though it was way too weak before. Heavy armor frontliners who treat initiative as a dump stat still end up with 50 or so of it, so even they get the equivalent of +14 stat points for a perk, and the nature of the game is that points in defensive skills are worth more than points in other skills. Then again, the passive component to shield mastery is in a similar range, so it's probably not that ridiculous. Dodging enemies are generally not what players are complaining about nowadays, with the exception of necrosavants.

New Nimble looked really weak at first; after some thought, it's probably okay, but only on specific builds. My rudimentary analysis is that the incremental gains to tankiness from wearing heavier armor are greater than the buff from nimble, for armors in the relevant range. (I think this remains true to up to direwolf mail+padded flat top helmets, which with a polearm put you at around 35 fatigue from armor. You thus get a 30% chance to proc, or 15% increase to effective tankiness.) So Nimble isn't a reason to stay light, in itself, but maybe it becomes a way to keep low armor Dodge builds viable in the late game, pumping initiative over fatigue.

 

[Latro]

-Changed combat against caravans to no longer require killing the donkeys at the end.


Decline. Killing Donkeys made raiding a moral decision, now it's just slaughtering dirty peasants.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Playing on expert solves the problem of overly easy fights with insufficient numbers of high-level enemies. :D

I might as well play on expert but I always thought it just changed initial funds, prices and contract rewards, now I see it has "more challenging contracts and opponents", was that changed at some point? Still, 3 skull contract on veteran during the endgame crisis where you fight goblin skirmishers and young orcs at day 100+ is laughable.

The new Dodge seems quite strong, though it was way too weak before. Heavy armor frontliners who treat initiative as a dump stat still end up with 50 or so of it, so even they get the equivalent of +14 stat points for a perk, and the nature of the game is that points in defensive skills are worth more than points in other skills. Then again, the passive component to shield mastery is in a similar range, so it's probably not that ridiculous. Dodging enemies are generally not what players are complaining about nowadays, with the exception of necrosavants.

I haven't tested it yet but I don't think it's that ridiculous, you eventually run low on initiative by running low on fatigue, so I don't think relying on dodge it's a viable strategy for most frontliners but seems really good for archers and billmen, it will also reduce the chance of situations where your archer starts in a bad spot, gets target fired by 3 enemy archers and dies before taking a turn. Also the way the initiative stat gets a higher priority is by tying it to 2 better stats (melee/ranged def) which is not ideal but it's a lot better than it being a dump stat.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Quite some changes shortly before release. They must have gathered lots of data since they released the final beta.

 

[jungl]

ranged fighters still need some love you can spend a whole campaign fighting nothing but skeletons. There should be kettlebells your guys can throw or iron balls. Make a silly twirl animation when throwing one. Be funny dropping one on someones head for a critical hit.

 

[Andnjord]

ranged fighters still need some love you can spend a whole campaign fighting nothing but skeletons. There should be kettlebells your guys can throw or iron balls. Make a silly twirl animation when throwing one. Be funny dropping one on someones head for a critical hit.

I've never tried them but goblins have bolas... I guess they could be somewhat effective vs skeletons.

 

[jungl]

Looking at the stats of the bola on google nah I doubt it. That kind of boring thing about this game endgame content revolves around melee dudes with 300 armor suits. While ranged fighters and light armor less options and viablity.

 

[RK47]

Decline. Killing Donkeys made raiding a moral decision, now it's just slaughtering dirty peasants.

It always weird when you could easily capture the donkey and use it as a food source or sell it to other traders. They should really put that donkey as a commodity as a 'minimum reward' for raiding a caravan. Maybe make it worth 500 gp.

Looking at the stats of the bola on google nah I doubt it. That kind of boring thing about this game endgame content revolves around melee dudes with 300 armor suits. While ranged fighters and light armor less options and viablity.

I always found it weird when hitting the head is entirely by chance, not through intention.
As if your dude is just flailing around, no matter what kind of weapon you use, melee or ranged. They never target anything, just swinging it or firing a projectile at an enemy.

Can we get selective targeting to toggle attacks to the head/body?

 

[pakoito]

I've been following the game for years, just saw the launch trailer today and went straight to buy it full price. Well done, guys, and see you soon.

 

[Agesilaus]

Trying the game on veteran iron man so I can survive the end game, and it's so so much easier. I'm being reintroduced to bandit thugs, chain armour is cheap as can be, etc. A little too easy, actually.

I'd like a difficulty where the contract difficulty is where it is now on hardest, but the economy is a bit closer to veteran. I like not having a hand-to-mouth existence, but I also feel bad beating down little thug armies and tiny groups of direwolves.

Also, I found a unique. I guess it's easier on veteran, perhaps because the random sites are nowhere near as dangerous.

I really hate the pike skeletons. Hate hate hate.

 

[lili]

You're ignoring the fact that there's only one other good perk you can take at level 2 and it's one that is less useful in the early levels than in the later levels, at low levels you're usually advancing only slowly, if at all, across the battlefield. The benefit of being ahead of the level curve by only a handful of battles isn't huge, but 1) every little bit helps when you're training raw recruits up, 2) there's not a lot of competition for decent perks; do you actually feel behind a perk?

Recent events tm have made me actually realize that I somehow forgot that a levelup lead with the Student perk not only gives the meager stat updates but also grants access to higher level perks earlier. What a blunder. A "Student" does trail in perks but only in the total number of them, so his real loss is only 1 first level perk... I am actually reversing my opinion on Student... With it you can grab Zerking or that high level ArmorPerk like 12 battles earlier! Still, Pathfinder is such a convenience and Colossus a bit of insurance and... But, as mentioned, Weapon Mastery is very in the middle and could be delayed, hmm.

What Perk level/row has only shit perks? So that one could skip it till Level10 and grab Pathfinder or Colossus instead?

 

[Skittles]

You're ignoring the fact that there's only one other good perk you can take at level 2 and it's one that is less useful in the early levels than in the later levels, at low levels you're usually advancing only slowly, if at all, across the battlefield. The benefit of being ahead of the level curve by only a handful of battles isn't huge, but 1) every little bit helps when you're training raw recruits up, 2) there's not a lot of competition for decent perks; do you actually feel behind a perk?

Recent events tm have made me actually realize that I somehow forgot that a levelup lead with the Student perk not only gives the meager stat updates but also grants access to higher level perks earlier. What a blunder. A "Student" does trail in perks but only in the total number of them, so his real loss is only 1 first level perk... I am actually reversing my opinion on Student... With it you can grab Zerking or that high level ArmorPerk like 12 battles earlier! Still, Pathfinder is such a convenience and Colossus a bit of insurance and... But, as mentioned, Weapon Mastery is very in the middle and could be delayed, hmm.

What Perk level/row has only shit perks? So that one could skip it till Level10 and grab Pathfinder or Colossus instead?

Yeah, that's what I was driving at. I honestly delay weapon mastery perks on most melee guys. They're nice, but my dedication to building fatigue means that their primary bonus is just okay for most of my guys. I guess end game undead battles are the exception. I often take PF at that time, since it's only a level or two until they really come online as 2H troopers who benefit from the mobility boost.

EDIT: P.S., I haven't played around with it since the perk tree reshuffle, so take this with a grain of salt, obviously.

 

[LizardWizard]

Still, not a big fan of these last minute changes in the perk tree, they tend to fuck up more things than they improve.

Rotation moving to a lower tier is a huge boon, especially for early game survival. It always triggered me to no end when bandit thugs had access to rotation on like day 1-2.

 

[RK47]

Encountered a weird bug when defending a settlement.
Was encamped near the village when waiting for the raiders to come.
Usually there'd be a pop-up saying raiders are coming and that's when I stop camping.
This time, nothing came up.
And I realized I can't move.
The game is stuck on PAUSED when I want to move.
Reloading does nothing.
Only by cancelling the contract can I resume playing as per normal.

 

[Kayerts]

I like the weird narrative scenes this game emergently produces. For example: the honorable Sir Lambert is leading a sadly undersized company in the noble war, which his count has sadly declared on house Winterhall, who have dishonorably (and sadly) employed common mercenaries to fight their wars. He is fighting such a battle with one of them now. Sad! His footmen are breaking; once you prick them, their common blood shows. A lunatic with an improbably sized sword butchered some of the finest arbalesters of House Krieger. The day is not theirs. Sir Lambert is about to sound the retreat, so that he can gather up a larger company and smite these blackguards, when an old man with a dishonorably long axe smashes his shield, tearing his horn off his belt in the same swing. Sir Lambert frowns. He calls for his men to withdraw, praying the ones who can't hear him find their own way off the field.

Then the largest man he's ever seen leaps in front of him. He raises his warhammer, squints at Lambert's plate appraisingly, and then drops it. He grabs a dagger from his belt and gestures at Sir Lambert with it. Five of his nearby companions begin drawing their daggers, too.

"What?" Sir Lambert thinks. Surely if they meant to slay him, they would come forward bearing swords and hammers, like men. What does he hope to accomplish with that knife?

"Sic semper tyrannis!" the huge man shouts, stabbing. A miss.

"Sic semper tyrannis!" another shouts. Not a miss.

"For the Watch!" shouts a third.

And that was how the Battle of the Plate Armor was won. Also I think there was a war or something nearby, wasn't really paying attention.

 

[RK47]

Netted wolfrider gets killed by an arrow.
Wolf without rider gets freed from the net - huh?

Wolfrider fleeing from combat - one bro killed the rider from an attack of opportunity.
The wolf without rider regain morale - bites him twice.
RIP.

3 Ambusher.
3 Skirmisher.
Camping at the corner of the map after we wiped out 8 brigand in a 3 way encounter that somehow doesn't reflect the state when we enter the battle map.
We waited for 5 rounds before sending a lone scout northward - he then got pegged by 3 poisoned arrow next turn n died. The goblins maintain their position.
Guess we retreat - and eat the morale loss + forgo the loot.

Yeah. Fuck this faction at low level.

 

[Reinhardt]

Wolfrider fleeing from combat - one bro killed the rider from an attack of opportunity.
The wolf without rider regain morale - bites him twice.
RIP.

Actually it makes sense. Wolfrider was the one who tried to ride wolf outside of combat, wolf himself wanted to continue fighting and now he's free. If it's rider who survived - "'fucking umies, you killed my wolf! it's not easy to find mount in BB universe!"

 

[Mr. Pink]

I wish there was an extremely hard endgame quest where you fight hordes of skeletons just to get a potion that cures bad knees and elbows. Bros don't leave bros behind just because they got maimed (24 gold a day is really expensive though).


misc thoughts:

Spoiler

I find it strange that a guy with brain damage, missing ear, missing finger and missing nose is still way better than a bad knee or elbow. Brain damage in particular is actually beneficial if it happens to a shield line bro. The resolve bonus is great, -25% xp isn't that bad since all the important skills are tier 1-3 anyways, and initiative isn't going to be high anyways in heavy armor. Ideally I'd have an entire frontline of tards in heavy armor and big shields.

Missing finger ought to be -20% instead of -5%. Missing a finger is usually a pretty big deal.

Skeletons are just dumber versions of people that run into spear walls. The only ones that I have to respect are the ones holding two handers. The morale penalty for being surrounded by spooky skeletons should be slightly higher than normal.

I really wish that there was an option to display important stats during combat without having to go into your inventory. melee & ranged defense is extremely important and its hard to keep track of all the modifiers to it.

Throwables seem really useless. The only one I use is nets which are mandatory during necrosavant encounters.

Mace mastery is underwhelming. going from 75% to 100% stun chance isn't worth the skill point. Bow mastery is useless as well.

Does the seargeants sash do anything other than add 10+ resolve?

What other misc items exist that you can equip? So far I've only seen bandages, antidotes, the sash.

There is no reason to ever use a greataxe because it's totally outclassed by the cheaper longaxe. It costs 2400 compared to a longaxes 1000, roundswing is extremely situational, it only does 5 more max damage than the longaxe and 10 more min damage, but the longaxes range makes it superior in almost every situation.

The fighting spear is weak compared to every other weapon of that tier.

Fuck island settlements. Quest markers are always on the mainland and it's a pain to travel without any roads.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Bow mastery is useless as well.

1 more range for killing enemy shooters, necromancers and goblin shamans is a pretty big deal. Fatigue reduction (especially if you use double quick shot each turn) also lets the archer go a lot longer before resting. IMO bow mastery is one of the better ones.

 

[Reinhardt]

What other misc items exist that you can equip? So far I've only seen bandages, antidotes, the sash.

Try to do some ambitions.

 

[Grimgravy]

The great axe hit BOTH the head and the body when it hits, not one or the others.