Battle Brothers has come a long way since it entered Early Access over a year ago, in April of 2015. Every update has brought it a step closer towards being a finished game – and there’s still a few more steps to take. Read on to learn what changes and additions are yet to come!
What’s still to come?
With the perk & injury update live and stable, we’ll now start working on the last big update to the game before it leaves Early Access. This is going to be the second-biggest update after the big worldmap update earlier this year and will take us several months to complete.
Here’s the list of major points we’ll be working on:
- Three different ‘Greater Evil’ end game crises for you to get involved in – a war between noble houses, a greenskin invasion and an undead invasion. Each will come with its own set of contracts, events and changes to the world.
- An overarching goal to work towards throughout your campaign, and the ability to retire at any point to receive an illustrated ending screen telling of your accomplishments.
- A more lively and dynamic world, with more opportunities for you to shape it, and more relation between what is going on in the world and contracts on offer.
- A memorial wall screen where your fallen Battle Brothers are listed with their deeds.
- An overhaul of the mood and desertion mechanics on the worldmap.
- An overhaul of the undead faction with new visuals and lore, unique lootable weapons and armor, and the introduction of new enemy types with their own fighting style.
- An overhaul of ghouls as independent beasts that are more interesting and challenging to fight.
- More contracts and events to change things up.
- Various improvements to usability in both combat and on the worldmap.
- Steam achievements.
Not included in that list are the countless smaller additions and improvements we’ll be doing along the way. As usual, all the major points and most of the minor ones will be explained in detail in future dev blogs as we go along, so you’ll always know what we’re working on and why.
This big update, once published, will then be followed by a couple of smaller updates for balancing, bug fixing and further improvements based on your feedback until the game is ready to be released.
So does that mean…?
It means that Battle Brothers will not be released in 2016. We’re looking at a release in early 2017 and you’ll be the first to know once we have a set date – most likely to happen when the last big update is live. It’s important to us that the finished game feels complete, polished and well worth its price, so we’ll take the time necessary to ensure just that and won’t rush anything.
It also means that some features that were considered at one point in development or another have been cut and will not make it into the game for now. While some concepts simply won’t fit anymore with how the game has evolved, others would still be cool to have but also require a lot of time to do right. Time that we then couldn’t spend working on other things. Game development is often about hard choices and setting priorities – what feature best to spend our limited time on? What feature will benefit the game the most? Our choices on what’s most important are reflected in the list above. If ever there is an expansion to Battle Brothers, we may revisit some of the concepts that didn’t make it into the game at first.
Also, the game has been updated
That’s right. The game has just been updated to version 0.7.0.10 with a new contract, balancing changes, a multitude of AI improvements and a couple of bug fixes. Find the changelog below.
- Added new ‘Defend Settlement’ contract type.
- Added ‘-nosound’ command line parameter to start the game without any sound or music.
- Changed loot in lootscreen to be sorted by type.
- Changed amount of ammunition and medicinal supplies dropped by enemies as loot to be lower.
- Changed ‘Spear Mastery’ perk to have spearwalls inflict full thrusting damage on a hit, and no longer give a bonus to hitchance.
- Changed mechanics and cost of ‘Rally the Troops’ skill to better synergize with everyone’s resolve, as well as the ‘Sergeant’ perk.
- Changed ‘First Aid’ and ‘Drink Antidote’ skills to be usable only when bleeding or poisoned, respectively.
- Changed AI to make more intelligent use of the ‘Puncture’, ‘Lash’ and ‘Decapitate’ skills.
- Changed AI to better handle engaging into enemy spearwalls when equipped with a shield or throwing weapons.
- Changed AI of more intelligent opponents to be less prone to gift the player free attacks by charging without any action points left on arrival.
- Changed AI to better handle range advantages and disadvantages when deciding whether to engage or hold a defensive position.
- Changed AI to make use of the wait function in more situations as to waste less action points.
- Fixed wardogs not being affected by night time.
- Fixed issue with dead wardogs that could result in other things not working properly down the line.
- Fixed ‘Sprained Ankle’ injury not lowering initiative like it is supposed to.
- Fixed ‘Shoot Stake’ skill being able to knock back rooted targets.
- Fixed issue with contract-related footprints not appearing if accepting a contract immediately after traveling by ship.
- Fixed contract-related worldmap parties sometimes not being attackable by other factions even when they should.
- Fixed behavior of worldmap parties not being properly saved and restored in some cases.
- Fixed various minor things.
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Good luck developing these last features!
I didnt see any mention so just to clarify… are the unique tactical battlefield maps still planned? (bandit camp, village, cemetery etc)? and will the beast faction be expanded upon? The former, to me, is one of the most important features. tactical maps lack alot of variety at the moment.
Anyway, keep up the amazing work :)
i’d like to know about it too.
yes I truely hope tactical maps will be added…
good gods!: there is so much that could be added… a lot more than we could think of just yet.
…but I should not thonk of it, if not I will get sad because it might not be added in the end :(((
but then again you never know what future becomes.
I hope more people recognize Battle Brothers!
What about modding support and steam workshop ????
Yes, please don’t forget us :)
Much work to do…Good luck :)
Will the Veterans hall building sill be put to use?
Sounds great; I’m really pleased to hear that the “Greater Evil” crisis endings are still on the cards!
Are you still planning on adding in female recruits? I haven’t seen much on them outside of the one piece of concept art, so wondering if you still plan on doing that.
This is a dealbreaker for me.
I’m sorry if it seems small, but for me it isn’t; I will not buy the game if there is no plan to implement Battle Sisters.
sounds very good.. big compliment on the work you guys do and the good communication
Good luck with the big updated, I’m loving the game.
Btw, I have some questions. Of the smaller aditions that you haven’t listed are being able to choose the formation of your band at the beggining of the battle instead of random and battlefield objects (tends, crates, houses with interior, etc.) part of them?
females? :(
what would life be without females :(
… sigh…
Onward! Great job so far gang. I’m already excited for your next project – Battle Sisters!
So camp followers are not being implemented anymore?
It’s a shame that even German precision isn’t immune to game development cost overrun. BB currently is a good tactical simulator but not quite a fleshed out merc simulator I feel. Hope the last major update will make the world more interesting, dynamic and interactive.
I know promotion is the last thing programmers think about during crunch time but please start thinking about marketing. Get your demo/beta out to youtubers for some pre-release advertising/hype – don’t wait till the game is ‘finished’ because you’ll never get TWO post-release coverage. There are videos of random people squeezing pimples with more hits than the combine views of all BB vids. On steam release day, BB will stay on the top page for less than 10hrs before it’s buried under a hundred other indie/dlc releases.
I dont think that female warriors are good idea. All that modern equal representation thing is bullshit in my opinion. Females can have their own roles as healers, herbalists and followers but not as warriors.
It’s not about equal ops. It’s about creating a believable world. Some of the men characters I’ve hired weren’t fit to be mercenaries and neither will some of the women. But some of them will be and so long as we get women characters whose motivations for signing up with a merc company are believable, then we’re all the better for it.
I often forget that this game is not “finished”. I have sunk many hours into it, and often feel like it’s a complete game. It’s fantastic that you are still going strong with updates and improvements.
I’m looking forward to women warriors!
+horseman(horse+brather(like goblins riders))
+armor for horse
+texture in battle(citadell(stone,wood),ruins,cave,camp and others(+rivers on locations))
+arrows(toxic,armor-piercing and others)
when is going to be the next update? keep up the hard work :)
Id like to suggest a feature where the more mercs fight together the more they build better synchronization, so you are less likely to hit a team mate that is used to fighting with you, these are for aoe swings in particular. Mood and events can reduce or increase this synchronization. Like giving a bonus Dodge chance to your mercs depending on the sync level up to a max.
I really like this idea. I often thought my men who I put in the shieldwall together at the centre of my line would build up an understanding and this would be important to how they function over time.
What about the trading mechanics? Would there be events or perks related to tradings?
BTW, I think it would be better to have a different perk system for players. We need some perks for management issues of the band(or company).
What a great job!:) I really love that game! REEEEALY LOVE IT!
My question is that do you plan to creat a multiplayer game from battle brothers? But really guys, you could make that awesome game as a (free) online multiplayer, with a good marketing (not pay to win) you could make a lot of money. That would be a great feature…
Common raidings, boss fights, real time without saving game, faction games, siege, pvp, that could be awesome.. :D Just think about that please!:D
Thank you guys! You are fantastic! :)
Hey, I recently tried out the game and really liked it.I’m looking forward to the full release since i have no money to spend for now on it. One thing I would like to see added is statistics for each mercenary, ie. stuff like hit and miss %, blocks/dodges, enemies killed and what type of enemy for example. Would be nice to keep track of how they’ve done in fights. Thanks for the demo, rarely get to try games nowadays and good luck with finishing the development of the game.