Battle Brothers Pre-Release Thread

[Zdzisiu]

Are all the town names German? "Dornheim" in the steppes is kind of weird. Of course, maybe the fantasy setting happens to be entirely Teutonic.

Will you be doing anything to ensure that all note-worthy characters wear helmets? It seems a little ridiculous when you notice a person in good metal armour, wielding an expensive weapon, but no head protection at all. At least give them a chain coif.

Isn't it up to the player to equip his mercenaries? Or is that only for weapons?

He meant the noteworthy npc like faction leaders and stuff.

 

[Agesilaus]

Are all the town names German? "Dornheim" in the steppes is kind of weird. Of course, maybe the fantasy setting happens to be entirely Teutonic.

Will you be doing anything to ensure that all note-worthy characters wear helmets? It seems a little ridiculous when you notice a person in good metal armour, wielding an expensive weapon, but no head protection at all. At least give them a chain coif.

Isn't it up to the player to equip his mercenaries? Or is that only for weapons?

He meant the noteworthy npc like faction leaders and stuff.

Yup, that's what I meant. In the current version, you see the odd raider leader or high-level landsknecht soldier wandering around with top-level gear but no helmet.

 

[you know what time it is]

This and Underrail are the only games that make EA bearable.

 

[Smashing Axe]

Will there be any fortress defense/assault in Battle Brothers? That could be quite fun.

 

[sser]

Will there be any fortress defense/assault in Battle Brothers? That could be quite fun.

Spoiler

Yes.

 

[oscar]

I can imagine some cool Seven Samurai -esque scenarios

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Will there a change on how garrison respond to threat? I remember playing sometime ago and something like 30 - 40 orcs attack a village and there is basically no response from garrisons. There is a patrol group nearby, but seeing 30 orcs made them chicken out and they just stood near the burning village.

 

[Trash]

Which is pretty logical when you think of it. Last builds where playing around with balance. Which meant that in a few builds the humans where slowly but surely being crushed. Meaning that garrisons dwindled quickly. Made for a fun game for me at the time, trying to stem the tide and such. They fixed it later.

Awesome to hear about the fortress defense/assault. I remember from ages ago that there where screenshots/mock ups of fights in a village and town, at a bridge and in a dungeon. Glad to hear that some of that is getting into the game.

 

[oscar]

I doubt the militia would sally forth to make suicide attacks on much stronger orc parties. It seems sort of map dependent, you can get nice prosperous safe maps where things are quite ordered while other times humans get overrun and villages are constantly sacked and no caravans ever make it.

I've had some cool mixed ones: one of my favorites saw the map fairly peaceful except one quarter which had about 70 bandits roaming around in different groups who I had a lot of fun gradually dispersing.

Bandits are quite fun foes actually. I wouldn't mind having more human foes if ways to vary them from likely compositions of your own party can be found (e.g all pike formations, deadly heavy knight groups who could cunningly be manipulated into exhaustion etc).

 

[rapsdjff]

Dev Blog #70: Progress Update – Customizing Appearances, Nighttime Vista
Work continues on balancing, bugfixing and adding more content to the game for the update on February 29th. We’re also adding some more minor features, one of which we’ll take a closer look at today: the ability to customize the appearance of your Battle Brothers.

The Barber
The barber offers his services in a building you’ll be able to find at the larger cities around the world. Whether you’re looking for someone to cut hair, trim beards or sell you dubious potions to lose weight, the barber has you covered for a modest fee.



With the barber we’re adding the ability to customize the appearance of any characters in your roster to your liking. Getting to know your Battle Brothers and bonding with them as they accomplish heroic feats or flee like cowards is part of the fun, and now you’re able to grow that axe guy who saved everyone a suitably majestic beard, or shave clean the head of the coward who runs at every battle. Some players have expressed that they’d like to mold characters to their likeness, or to that of characters from their favorite book or movie, and that’s possible now as well. And like all buildings in the game, the barber, too, helps settlements feel more distinct in the services that they offer.



Nighttime Vista
As the sun sets and the moon rises, as your men drag through the snow in the dark, settlements are now visible as beacons of civilization from afar, for they light torch and candle.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Yup, time to make most of the Black Company in-game. Excluding One-Eye and Goblin, those mage bastards.

 

[vonAchdorf]

I hope that visiting the barber isn't too expensive, because many brothers don't live long enough to justify the cost

 

[Modron]

I hope that visiting the barber isn't too expensive, because many brothers don't live long enough to justify the cost

Eh even if it's a bit on the spendy side at least they got the basics in place for in-town healing should they decide to let the barbers do some surgery/dentistry/bloodletting.

 

[orcinator]

There's minor things about the prevalence of magic that will change. For instance, it will play a role in the backstory of the reworked skeleton part of the undead faction. They're about to receive more of a cultural identity of their own as a sort of long-dead civilization and will no longer be just generic skeletons. But then, magic was always implicitly involved with the undead anyway. Here's a preview of the direction we'll go with skeletons in a later update to the game.

So it's less likely there will be greenskin skeletons? Skeletons of the other races are always absent in fantasy games, you could make some greenskin zombies at least.

 

[rapsdjff]

Dev Blog #71: Progress Update – Taverns & Tracking
Two more features join the list for the update on February 29th this week. Taverns are a hub for information and mood management of your men, and tracking allows you to follow or avoid other parties on the worldmap more easily. That leaves us with only one more feature left following these that we really want to include in the update, and that’s a better tutorial as you start a new campaign. But for now, let’s take a look at taverns and tracking!

Taverns
Taverns with the capacity to serve a mercenary company can be found in larger settlements, cities and castles, and the odd small village along trade routes. Laughter can be heard coming from it pretty much around the clock, as it’s one of the few buildings that can be entered both day and night. It’s also the first instance that we’re using small atmospheric images in the UI, as you’ll see below, and the idea is to have a whole bunch of them complement the events in the game as we skin the UI later down the road.

http://battlebrothersgame.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/night.jpg

Although taverns aren’t the most critical of buildings, they nevertheless fill with the services they offer what was previously a vacant spot in the world of Battle Brothers. These services revolve heavily around beverages, and they’re talking to the patrons for news and rumors while sharing a beer, and paying a round for your own men in order to get their spirits up. We’ll look at each of them in detail.

As you enter the tavern, you’ll immediately pick up some talk amongst the patrons. What they talk about comes in different categories, and we may add additional useful ones as the game progresses in development.



Patrons can talk about potential work for you that they’ve heard about – as the world has become a bit larger now, it’s quite useful to get directions to people that are looking to hire sellswords so that you have a better idea of where to head next.

Patrons can also talk about nearby hidden locations. If you’ve played previous versions of Battle Brothers, you may remember contracts that have you find locations based on vague directions. Those type of contracts aren’t in the game anymore, but that same mechanic is now used for entirely optional locations, potentially full of treasure, you may head out to plunder on your own. The level of directions that individual people can give will differ, so it’s sometimes useful to get directions from several people in order to better pin down where a location might be. You can pay a round for everyone in order to loosen their tongues and have them share more news and rumors with you.

Finally, patrons will also give you flavor responses that tell you more about their situation, the lore of the world and the settlement you’re in, and news about what’s happening in the realm. They may also share light gameplay tips, such as soldiers explaining the advantage of high ground or talking about their experience of fighting goblins and how best to approach it. These types of responses depend heavily on where you are, so you’ll more likely be talking with soldiers at castles, and fishermen at fishing villages. We want the world to feel more lively, more lived in, and this is another step towards that goal.



The other service available at taverns is paying a round for your own men. This will generally lift everyone’s spirits and make them forget the horrors of battle for a while, but it comes with its own risk and reward.

Every time you pay a round and the men cheer to different things, there’s a chance that the mood of people improves, but also of them getting drunk. Mood is more important now as we attached additional benefits and penalties to it, and it should become more interesting in general as we do a minor rework of how the mood system works in the future. Being drunk, on the other hand, is a new status effect quite detrimental to combat effectiveness, although it does make people more brave. It doesn’t persist for long, but is succeeded by a hangover, which is a more mild debuff. Whether people get drunk or not heavily depends on their traits. For example, strong and tough characters don’t get drunk easily, whereas tiny and fragile characters do. All this then comes down to the decision of how many rounds you want to spend for your men in order to increase the mood of the company vs. the increasing risk of them getting drunk and being severely handicapped the following day.

Tracking
All parties now leave tracks for you to follow that look like footprints on the map. Different factions use their own footprints so that you can see at a glance whether it’s humans, orcs or beasts who moved though. Footprints also scale with the size of the party, so you’ll have a rough idea on how many individuals it is that you’re tracking. Note that we’re still experimenting with the visuals right now, so it may end up looking slightly different in the game.



We’re adding the tracking mechanic in order to give you a better idea on what’s happening around the limited radius of vision you have on the worldmap, and to introduce new gameplay opportunities. Even if you lose sight of a party now, you’ll still be able to follow their tracks. You can also potentially follow the tracks of the bandit raiders you just bested back to their camp, and you have more options to both find and avoid parties on the worldmap. Don’t follow large orc or goblin tracks if you aren’t prepared for what lies ahead!

 

[Jimmious]

Hey wait a moment... The first guy talked about another mercenary band. There are other AI controlled mercenary bans roaming the world? :O

 

[rapsdjff]

I guess you'll have to travel to Hirschbach to find out.

 

[oscar]

Awesome, rival mercenaries. Any plans from making them different to fight than bandits?

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

Battles could also leave some kind of (temporary) mark on the world map. Would go well with that tracking mechanic.

Maybe with short descriptions when you come across them: "It looks like some orcs were butchered here."

 

[SmartCheetah]

I'd love to have a button to toggle tracking on and off (or eg. hold TAB to see tracks) instead of having it visible all the time. You know, Infinity Engine games style where you could highlight clickable objects.

 

[Modron]

29th can't come soon enough, just finished underrail so I am stuck working on adventure game backlog until the content updates start rolling out.

 

[Ninjerk]

There's a critical tavern function not included.

 

[Alienman]

Hide the sausage function?

 

[Zdzisiu]

There's a critical tavern function not included.

Like resting to recuperate? I agree!

 

[Ninjerk]

Hide the sausage function?

A proper sword needs a proper sheath.