Reply To: I like your game, so here's a little bit of feedback

[Teslarod]

Look at all those typos that will never be fixed….
It seems I can only edit once?

Juggernaut – Weapon: 2Hand Sword/Named 2Hand Axe, Armour: as heavy as possible while leaving >60 Fatigue open
Quantity – 1
Preferred Class – Hedge Knight, Wildman ~ your best Soldier high HP, high Fatigue, high Melee Defense
Stats – Melee Defense, HP till 100, Melee Offense, Fatigue,
Skills – Colossus, Battle Forged, Fast Adaption, Sundering Strikes, Bloody Harvest, Berserk, Full Force, Killing Frenzy, Hold Out, Fortified Mind

This guy is kind of the Problem Child. He wants to be in the front lines, yet he’s the only one there who gets hit. You definetely want Killing Frenzy so getting more defensive perks is out of the question. Only Solution is to keep him in the center of your formation and get him out of trouble with Rotation if necessary. When you’re a bit careful the reward is quite something. AoE attacks that tend to oneshot everything smaller than a Fallen Hero or Ork Warrior in its path following the first kill. Turning the numbers in your favour and finishing wounded tougher enemies is what this guy is good at. Fortified Mind is the Key skill to keep him alive late in the game. I lost more than one high level Juggernaut to the debuff from a single lost Soul while trying to fight a couple fallen Heroes. Retreatig isn’t an option for him, while every one else has on the fron’t won’t get hit by most retreat attacks even while fleeing, this guy will. Additionally Fortified Mind mentions something mentioned about Mind Control and I really don’t wan’t a big cleave in my Supports and Crossbowmen.

Support – Weapon: Billhook, Armour: Medium /Kite Shield + Noble Sword in Backpack
Quantity – 2
Preferred Class – Retired Soldier, Squire, Deserter… anyone with good Melee Skill but not good enough at anything else.
Stats – Melee Skill, Melee Defense, Hitpoints till 100, Fatigue
Skills – Colossus, Fast Adaptation, Sundering Strikes, Executioner, Full Force, Berserk, Killing Frenzy, Battle Forged, Hold Out, Rotation

These guys provide backup behind the lines to anyone in need or give you the advantage in a bottleneck. Since they have decent Melee defense they carry a Shield in their backpacks and can rotate to save fleeing or heavily wounded people from danger. They hit hard plus once they get a kill even harder and while stationary even twice. Early on Jagged Pikes are a good replacement for Billhooks. They don’t need quite as good (and expensive) armour as your frontline guys which helps until very very late in the game.

Crossbowman – Weapon: 2 Crossbows 2 Spiked Impaler + Heater Shield, Armour: Mail Hauberk
Quantity – 2
Preferred Class – Hunter
Stats – Hitpoints, Fatigue, Ranged Skill
Skills – Fast Adaption, Sundering Strikes, Executioner, Berserk, Quick Hands, Bags and Belts, Hold Out, Close Combat Archer, Killing Frenzy, Head Hunter

Since the change to armour piercing crossbows are the way to go. They always start loaded so even without Quickhands you can shoot for 2AP swap to another crossbow for 4AP and shoot again for 2 more. With Bags and Belts and 4 Crossbows you can do that for 2 turns in a row. With Berserk and Killing Frenzy you get 2 shots and if you manage to kill someone (which is very likely) you’ll get a 3rd shot with +50% damage. With a bit of luck 2 Crossbowmen can reliably kill 3 or more (5-6 has happened on occasions) weaker targets on turn 1 against Ghouls, Werewolves, Humans and Goblins. They also work pretty well against Orcs, especially Berserkers and can put some early damage on Vampires or Armour versus the Undead.
Worthy of note is that loaded crossbows can be fired in melee, quite devastating combined with Close Combat Archer and Killing Frenzy. 2 +50%/100% damage shots with very high hitchances can take care of many things that would cause serious trouble for a bow wielder.
Always keep in mind that your bolts are as dangerous for your own guys as they are for the enemy. Many of my near deaths where caused by my own crossbowmen scattering and hitting friendlies for 3/4 of their HP. The same clutch shots also saved a lot of lives, always remember that crossbows are a two edged sword.
Last but not least is the Spiked Impaler. You can get those special crossbows from goblin “chiefs”. They only get +10% to hit instead of +20% but do more damage and also get 1 tile knockback upon a hit. This can save a life but can also push a target out of range which should explain why I mix regular crossbows with Spiked Impalers.

Tactics:

General stuff:
Swords seem like the clear superior choice to me throughout the game. Only 10 fatigue per hit, +10% hitchance and decent basedamage are just too good to pass. While Later on I also use Fighting Axes and Warhammers on occasion there is nothing that beats a Falchion/orc-, goblin equivalent at this point. By the way why is the “Greenskin Falchion” superior (more durability and less fatigue to carry) to the Human one? Noble swords have carried me through the Warlords Fortress, the Black Monolith and the Raider’s Stronghold(?) haven’t had the luck to find the big goblin location yet found lots and lots of “Even” Undead locations in the Eastern Wastelands and Northern Thundra. So far the Undead take the cake for the most dangerous encounter, Souls + Vampires + Fallen Heroes + Necromances are a Pain to get under control within a sea Skeleton/-guards.

Bandits:
Bandits teach you the ropes early on, they sport very similar equipment and make painfully clear that the cow is a peasant compared to the mighty crossbow at some point. Probably the easiest faction to handle but definetely needed to get some early weapons and thus start to equip your men for tougher opponents. There are very few special tactics needed. Charging their archers/crossbowmen with someone who can take a hit to make them retreat instead of shooting and hopefully to catch them in melee early on seems a good idea if they don’t outnumber you or the ranged guys aren’t close to the main shieldwall. Something I’ve noticed is that you should get a feeling for when you are about to rout bandits and set up to catch the ones trying to retreat/release the hounds.

Goblins:
Oh how I loathed them early on… now I never sell my first bunch of Feral Shields and replace them with Kite Shields in time. Wounded or very squishy units with shitty armour tend to retreat out of range, everyone else gets a shield and slowly starts the 2 tile shieldwall advance. Nets and Poision are a real problem early on though. Once you have access to more Brothers at around lvl 5 and armour with 100+ hitpoints on everyone Goblins fall back in line and get a lot more manageable. I tend to fight goblins at day only. They don’t seem to get the limited range humans get at night and it feels as if seeing them + having Crossbowmen available + full shieldwall defenses are more valueable than potentially worse ranged hitchances for their archers. Dogs really take a beating against goblins its usually not worth to take the riskof losing a dog just to catch a few of their archers. The Shaman’s curse/roots combined with poision is an evil combination.

Orcs:
Early on their Head Splitter axes are devastating. 1 hitting basic Shields is scary and expensive. So I tend to focus those with axes first and hope the ones with Choppers don’t hit me through Shieldwall. it seems early Heater/Kite Shields are very valuable against orcs. For some reason I didn’t run in any encounters with Orc Warriors before I was ready to handle them, especially the early Swordmaster was very very helpful as he can 1vs2 the Warlord and one of his buddies without a problem. From an earlier run I can affirm you that early Orc Warriors + Warlord are a very good reason to make use of the retreat feature, I got absolutely destroyed in just a couple turns.

Undead:
They are the kind of the worst but also the best race. The Lategame encounters tend to be the most challanging, mostly because of random frontliners trying to flee thanks to Lost Souls debuffing. I don’t quite understand how they work yet. My leader with Captain perk and 94 Resolve was right next to a guy with 46 base Resolve yet all it took was one scream for him to flee.
Opened Massgrave and other similar locations that just tend to throw 30something Zombies and Ghouls at you are kinda underwhelming. There is barely any decent loot or challenge to except from those locations as they currently are. I guess the introduction of a “Zombielord” and other things are meant to adress this “problem”

Werewolves:
Scary very early on. Still scary in numbers once the game progresses. Sadly pretty much irrelevant around the magical lvl 5-6 for half of your Battle Brothers mostly because of them fleeing after a couple are killed. Could use an Alphawolf with a howl ability to boost Morale but thats a bit too similar to the Orc Warlord I guess. Very much looking forward what you’re going to add to the beasts in the future.

General problems:
AI units with Swords tends to use Shieldwall/Riposte instead hitting twice, which makes things very manageable. If lets say Orcs and Fallen Heroes would prefer to just go for face more often instead of using Shieldwall or Riposte they would be more of a threat. On the other hand its the opposite for AI units with axes, they are trying to get through my shields which is the most effective thing they could do. Probelm is that this kind of behaviour also applies for Orc Youngs with Handaxes and for units with trowing weapons (apart from goblins) that barely put a dent into a good shield. I’d suggest either to get rid of the shield damage for throwing weapons or increasing it, same goes for the smaller axes.

As fun as “unhittable” Swordmasters and Swoard and Board fighters with 60 defense+ are, they kinda break the game. I also dislike the idea that a Shieldless guy can be better protected against blows than one with shield, even taking the Shieldwall skill into account. Nimble also gets rid of the dangers of a broken Shield. I’d suggest revisiting the min/max hitchances. Maybe cap it at 25% minimum hit chance instead of 5% and change shieldwall to half the hitchance instead of a flat bonus to defense.

Crossbow swapping is something I’d like to keep (well maybe not 4 of them… but oh well I’d take it as it is). It takes a considerable amount of time to reload and just swapping to a loaded one is in fact quite a bit faster. Thanks to how it currently is Crossbowmen can keep up with the melee fighers and support them perfectly in the crucial first 2 turns.

Ranged units should keep their range at night, it doesn’t make any sense. Obviously there should be massive debuffs or ranged units should be unable to shoot beyond their own visual range at night. Anyway it would be nice to have flaming arrows/bolts and carryable torches to get dayvision at night. A Nightvision trait for Undead and Goblins to ignore most or all of the negative effects for ranged units would be perfectly fine (and maybe as a random trait for Battle Brothers).

Here some questions:
What exactly does Taunt actually do?
Are goblins and skeletons supposed to have “nightvision” for their ranged weapons? They clearly fire at full range at night, no clue if the accuracy debuff affects them though.

And a Bug:
I noticed the Jagged Pike doesn’t get 2 tiles range at night, could be a problem with vision range as the guy was wearing a Full Helmet with -3 vison, It probably counted as “couldn’t see” even though other squadmembers had eyes on the target.

Things I would really like to see in the final game:

Earning Acces to some locations, just marching into a Fortress and buying the best gear around could be unlocked by difficult tasks to make it more rewarding to get the best gear.

Some way to save a “destroyed armour”, every Undead basically is already equipped with “destroyed armour”, its just something that feels a bit off.

Maps, I don’t have any problem with them being expensive, vague and them not revealing the exact location. I just want to be able to find the real lategame stuff somehow. There should be someone who has seen the friggin goblin capital from afar somewhere.

Some more variety in Quests, 1vs1 “Knight” Tournaments (like the tjosting event just as an actual fight) and Bounty hunting come to mind

Siege events/maps for attacked villages and towns, maybe even including siege weapons and destroyable gates.

Fog of war on the worldmap to be aware of current vision range.

As well as some “caravan indicator” because lets face it Caravan quests are good as they are but we all try to explore a bit along the way and accidentially went a bit to far a few times.

Visual highlighing for locations, important names, rewards and cardinal directions in quests.

Cavalry, really, limit them but please make it possible, Wolfriders are in the game after all.

Please consider 2 assigned Leaders. One real Leader that levels Leadership skills along levels and one 2nd in Command with a more…. direct approach to keep moral up.

More Levels and classes already starting at certain levels. Thus a Caravanhand can be as good as a Hedge Knight but will need considerably longer because the Hedge Knights already starts at lvl 15 while the Caravan Hand is a lvl 5.

Oh and as a note I’m German too. Gute Arbeit Jungs *clapclapclap*