a couple questions

[obsoletion]

Hi Guys,

I just wanted to say that I read about your game on indierpgs.com and I am very excited about it!

I’ve been waiting for a game like this for a long time. I feel like all games these days are just too easy.

Will Battle Brothers have any sort of restrictions in place to keep players from save scumming? Something like autosaving progress (like Dark Souls), or an ironman mode (like XCOM)? Or maybe some new innovative way to keep players from saving/reloading?

I’m hoping for a deep challenge that doesn’t offer me any ways to take back any poor decisions I make :)

Also – Is there a way to get on some sort of email list for when the open pre-alpha begins?

Thanks!

[Jaysen]

Hi Obsoletion and welcome to the forums!

Glad you like the game so far. We felt like there should be a game like this but nobody was making it. Ultimately we decided to take matter into our own hands and here we are ; )

Regarding save scumming, i recently read quite a long discussion on this on rpgcodex.net but i am not really sure what to make of it. Generally we want players to play the game in the way they want to do it. Its a bit like cheating in the old days. If you want to do it there is no developer stopping you but i think cheating ruins a game for you.
We are not decided but i think we will allow free saving during any stage of the game in normal mode. To prevent save scumming we could keep the seeds for the saves so that the results of a role will be the same no matter how often you reload.
On top of that, an ironman mode would be cool where you only have one save and no saving during combat for the “hardcore” crowd.

Anyways, we can assure you that the game will be challenging as the possibility of failure and making the best out of your mistakes is an integral part of our game design. Failing writes the best stories ;) (of course as long as the game is not unfair in any way but just hard).

Regarding your other question, we have no e-mail list set up but we will dish out updates every week so if you want to get the latest news just subscribe to our RSS or follow us on any of our social channels and your good! The pre-alpha will probably be open, so no worries about not getting in.

Cheers!

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[obsoletion]

Thanks for the reply Jaysen!

I am now reading through the dev blogs and realizing that some of my questions have already been answered, I apologize about that!

The combat mechanics are very similar to a game design I’ve been working on in my spare time, which coincidentally, I have been working on because I felt like nobody would make a game like this :)

I hope this game turns out to be what I’m looking for so I don’t need to spend any more time dreaming about it!

I will definitely be following this game very closely! Can’t wait for open alpha!

[PsenBattle]

Welcome Obsoletion!
It´s actually pretty strange, that no one made a game like this yet. I think a lot of people (including me) have been waiting for such a game for a long time. I felt all games that tried to go in this direction lacked the important depth of gameplay and freedom of choice. We´ll try to make it better :)

Perhaps I can alreay post a mockup of the strategic worldmap as early as next week.

Cheers!

Overhype Studios - Let´s roll!

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[Gotanmarf]

Greetings.

First of all, it is fantastic to know that some people create game in good style: “We are devoted to making excellent games that we want to play ourselves”. This should be obvious for everyone, but many developers don’t know about this approach, and we see over 99.99% one-time (non replayable) games.
In my opinion there is much more to discover using rogue-like replayability in strategy games, even with simple 2-d graphics, without animations.

I’ve played Battle for Wesnoth, which has similar climate to Battle Brothers, and I must say that BfW is good game, but lacks one essential thing – campaigns which can be played in permadeath style. In almost every scenario there are rigid events (non random). When player know about this constant elements then campaign is going to be easy or boring.
It looks like Battle Brothers will be different in this matter.

Regarding save scumming. When game is made in good style then player don’t have to use save scumming. He/she explores and learns the game, and makes private decision about speed of gradual progress, based on experience of playing. Every information, how to accomplish specific campaign (or all game) is contained in game’s world. Not in author’s “secret garden”.

[Rap]

It’s awesome to see we aren’t the only ones who’d love to play a game like this.

You make a good point about the rogue-esque replayability of Battle Brothers. As much as I enjoy playing games with well done hand-crafted stories and levels, they have the distinct disadvantage of being based on very finite attractions. When developing a game like this, it wouldn’t be long until I’d have seen it all. With procedural content like in Battle Brothers, even after developing it for half a year now, I experience new situations all the time. It still feels fresh to me in many ways and I look forward to play the next build every week. That greatly contributes to my personal motivation.

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[dehimos]

I have also questions:

-Broken weapons? For example: sword (slashing) versus heavy armor or random. Could be interesting to have a character with various type of weapons.

-Formations? If for example we fight against other mercenaries.

The undead attack “randomly” and only support with archers, but for example could go into several groups: one breaks the shield, other attacks and one defends.

-Can we get necromancer powers?

[Rap]

dehimos wrote:

Broken weapons? For example: sword (slashing) versus heavy armor or random. Could be interesting to have a character with various type of weapons.

Having different types of weapons on a character should (hopefully) already give an advantage due to their different skills being suited for different purposes (e.g. axes against shields, clubs for stunning powerful enemies, etc.). This should increase further as we add more weapons that didn’t make it into the demo (like throwing weapons, two-handed axes and warhammers) and their corresponding skills. We then want to make, for example, warhammers better suited against heavily armored opponents by offering an interesting skill that works best against those heavily armored targets, and have swords perform only mediocre or so against them instead of outright break.

dehimos wrote:

Formations? If for example we fight against other mercenaries.

I’m not sure I understand your question correctly; are you asking if the AI will use formations? If so, yes. It already does to a limited extent and will do so more as we add more intelligent enemies, especially of the human variety.

dehimos wrote:

The undead attack “randomly” and only support with archers, but for example could go into several groups: one breaks the shield, other attacks and one defends.

Currently it is only zombies that attack randomly (which I think is pretty in-character given that they’re mindless walking dead), not all the undead. Skeletons, although by no means tactical masterminds, possess more of a cold intelligence and can prioritize targets, split shields if they have a low chance of otherwise hitting their targets, retreat to a defensible position if outnumbered, and such. I suppose the AI should see some improvement in terms of teamwork and specialist roles, though.

dehimos wrote:

Can we get necromancer powers?

No, we want to keep the player side relatively down-to-earth powerwise. There will be some items with magical properties down the road, but they’ll be rare and hard to get. None of them will bestow the power of necromancy because we want to have a certain asymmetry in power between the player and the AI; necromancers (and all non-human enemies, really) should feel special and alien in a way for their unique skills that the player doesn’t have access to.

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[dehimos]

Yes, you understood me.

Having different types of weapons on a character should (hopefully) already give an advantage due to their different skills being suited for different purposes (e.g. axes against shields, clubs for stunning powerful enemies, etc.). This should increase further as we add more weapons that didn’t make it into the demo (like throwing weapons, two-handed axes and warhammers) and their corresponding skills. We then want to make, for example, warhammers better suited against heavily armored opponents by offering an interesting skill that works best against those heavily armored targets, and have swords perform only mediocre or so against them instead of outright break.

That sounds fantastic.

[Lynchden]

A few more questions.

What happens to my character’s gear if they die? Will I be able to loot my dead brothers corpses to retrieve those rare magical items they were wearing?

Will there be bosses?

Thanks

[Rap]

Yes, you’ll be able to retrieve any equipment after the battle if you win (or in other words, if you don’t flee and leave everything behind). Equipment that isn’t armor can also be looted while the battle still rages so that you can quickly grab that magical sword from your fallen guy before turning tail.

There will indeed be bosses! Like all enemies, they’ll come with unique mechanics and won’t just be a bunch of really high numbers. As the game can be deadly already fighting just regular opponents, you can imagine that it will take the combined effort of all your men to take one of those down. We have a concept for two undead bosses so far which we’ll show once they’ve made it into the game.

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[BobHound]

Hello!

I too have a couple of questions for you!

When starting a new game, will we be creating any characters? Like for instance, do we get to make a couple of tailored brothers?

How do armies move on the overworld? Is the overworld turn-based?

Do armies have abilities on the overworld? For example, being able to set up ambushes via some form of “stealth” mechanic

Regarding bosses, will there be bosses that take up more than one hex?

My apologies if I’ve missed something you have covered in a devblog!

[Rap]

Welcome to the forum!

The player won’t be creating any characters from scratch at the start of the game. You’re given a few low level characters at the beginning which you can tailor to your tactics as they gain experience and levels. However, every character comes with a background and character traits which you can’t change, and which sometimes makes characters more or less qualified for certain roles. You’re free to replace your starting retinue with men you hire yourself if you feel that they’d be a better fit.

The worldmap plays in pausable realtime, somewhat similar to Mount & Blade.

Yes, different factions have different strategies and abilities also on the worldmap. The undead, for example, will recruit a portion of all enemies slain in battle as zombies to add to their ranks. Unlike with other factions, undead armies can therefore actually grow from battles, assuming their army wins the engagement.

All armies can in theory set up ambushes and this doesn’t require a special ability. The type of terrain an army is on determines from how far it can be seen – while an army on open plains can be seen from afar, an army in a forest will be spotted only when relatively close. Also, the type of army and faction determines how far it can see – for example, human armies have reduced sight range at night, while undead armies will see just as well. Hiding in a forest, especially at night, then, allows an army to ambush another simply by engaging it without giving the other army enough time to react. The ambush condition will probably determine the starting position of any troops in combat, with the ambushed party starting in a disadvantageous position (i.e. not in battle formation), but we haven’t finalized the details on this yet.

Currently, we don’t have a design for a boss that takes up more than one hex, although we might end up with one later. That said, even bosses that take up only one hex will be clearly recognizable as such, and we already have a boss that, while only taking up one hex, is visually quite a bit larger than common opponents to reflect its physical prowess.

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[BobHound]

Cool! Another question!

How will upkeep work? Will it be abstracted in the sense that food consumption is included in a brothers’ upkeep cost, or will we manage a separate food supply that can run out?

[PsenBattle]

There’s no final decision on this yet, but the upkeep will probably work twofold. One is a normal gold upkeep for each soldier (according to his level and background) the other is the food he consumes. Food can only be bought in villages. So before venturing out on a long exploration you have to stock up on food. On top of that you have to protect the villages, because when they get pillaged and destroyed you won’t be able to buy your food there anymore.

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