Beta 22.02.17 feedback

[Wargasm]

Another thing I forgot to add about changes to ranged fighting is that the penalties imposed at night have been reduced. It used to be -50% ranged skill; now it’s just -30% (which, with the general increase in ranged abilities, means that it’s much more viable/bothersome at night).

Oh, and I see that the bonus to max fatigue from the Strong trait is now just +10.

[LasseFin]

Nimble is NOT OP. At all. Please do some testing before you make unfounded and stupid claims, or you’re going to pressure the devs to nerf something that does not need nerfing.

Here’s a post from the Steam forums I made about it:

Armor seems to be better in general still. However, the new Nimble means that light armor builds are more reliable, but less effective than the old Nimble.

The new Nimble means that if your melee defense is quite a bit higher than their melee skill, you will very reliably dodge their attacks. For example, if their enemy hit chance is 10% or 1/10 chance, it would be turned into a mere 1% or 1/100. In the extreme case of 5% 1/20, it changes it to 0.25% or 1/400, which is practically impossible to hit.

Whereas in the old Nimble, it would would likely change a 10% to 5% and 5% stays at 5%. So no matter how good you are, you have that 1/20 chance of being hit.

But if your melee defense is lower than the enemy’s melee skill, it doesn’t really help much at all, in contrast to the old Nimble perk. If their to hit chance is 90% or 9/10 for example, it merely changes it to 81% to hit in the end or 8/10. And all this is assuming the Nimble dodger is wearing no clothing at all.

In the case of the old Nimble which gives you 50% more melee defense, you could generally get up to 30 or 40 mele defense off of the perk itself at max level, which means you can turn a 90% or 9/10 hit chance to 50% or 1/2, which is significantly better than the new Nimble.

I think the entire purpose of the new Nimble perk is to make dodge characters potentially get to a point where the “one lucky shot” is nigh impossible. In other terms to effectively remove the 5% minimum hit chance. But in turn it’s now very hard to actually get to that point.

Funnily enough, this is quite a good representation of reality, for better or for worse. It’s theoretically possible to get to a point that you are so good at dodging that you practically don’t need armor, but it requires so much experience and training that practically it’s borderline impossible. Armor on the other hand can always be practically count on by a normal person who has only a good amount of experience.

Basically, if the attacker hit chance is below 22% or sqrt(5%), the new Nimble is better, as it’s able to push the effective hit chance below the 5% hard cap. If it’s above 22%, then the old Nimble, even with its nerf to only +50% defence bonus is better.

And that’s assuming that the person is wearing NO Armor at all and wielding only a dagger. Right now, each 1 fatigue means 2% less chance for Nimble to trigger, so it’s not even as good as that in practise.

[Anonymous]

I’ve done some further testing and can now confirm that if you have one of your brothers standing in front of the intended target of a ranged attack and the shot decides to hit the blocker instead of the intended target then the ranged defense of the brother actually being hit IS COMPLETELY IGNORED.

I tested this by using cheat engine to make a brother that has 1,000 melee defense and 1,000 ranged defense and replaying a fight against an army consisting solely of archers/crossbowmen several times. When standing or fighting by himself, the super brother was not hit a single time despite standing there and allowing the enemies to shoot at him endlessly. I did the fight 5 times, went to round 10 each fight and then retreated and reloaded the save, and he wasn’t hit a single time. I then played the fight 5 times over again, 10 rounds each, with a naked brother standing behind him (to draw their fire since they love shooting at low-defense characters), and he was hit 17 times. None of these shots hit the shield, they all hit the actual brother and he died in all but one of the tests (He was wearing special named armor and helmet as well).

Seems pretty conclusive to me. If your brothers are standing next to each other you’re completely at the mercy of the enemy crossbowmen. Just pray that their AI wigs out and they just run around for the entire fight instead of actually shooting. Not a fan of this situation to be honest. Fighting a caravan with 2 crossbowmen is scarier than fighting orc warriors and warlords. At least the orcs can’t kill one of my brothers before I even start my first turn. The only way to stop this is to get my initiative high enough that I move before the crossbowmen, but that’s not really feasible without the rest of the noble army tearing me to pieces.. especially since the noble armies are allowed to be a lot larger than your company. As it stands, fighting the noble armies is ‘easy’ in that I’ll always win the battle, but it’s dangerous in that there’s a chance one of my brothers will just die in one turn. If a brother doesn’t die, I usually take 0 hp damage, just some minor armor scratches, but if the RNG gods find me unworthy, the crossbows will just insta-snipe a brother and I’m out of luck.

Side note: On the topic of shields, you only get the ‘shield hit’ if the attack would’ve hit your brother without the shield’s extra defense bonus, and it does 1 damage to the shield no matter what weapon is used, as far as I can tell.

[Jew man Jones]

I don’t think this is supposed to be a thing, but the guy holding the battle standard was slaughtered and came back as an undead. Didn’t really care because he wasn’t very good until I realized that I didn’t get the battle standard back. Is there just a random chance to lose it, or is it because he became an undead and its just a bug. Kind of unfortunate because now I don’t have a standard and that was one of my good two range melee weapons.

[RusBear]

Anonymous wrote:

I’ve done some further testing and can now confirm that if you have one of your brothers standing in front of the intended target of a ranged attack and the shot decides to hit the blocker instead of the intended target then the ranged defense of the brother actually being hit IS COMPLETELY IGNORED…

*
I think you need send this to personal dev’s email. If it can be confirm, better for them to change it.

* More about this beta :

we are still waiting post/dev blog/ video from developers with an explanation how it works morality test mechanic. Or link from good players if i miss it. With numbers, formulas, examples. Feedback ( course, if they need it) must based on facts, not of subjective sensations: “wow patch. I like” or “all is bad – no horses”

[Shadow]

Anonymous wrote:

I’ve done some further testing and can now confirm that if you have one of your brothers standing in front of the intended target of a ranged attack and the shot decides to hit the blocker instead of the intended target then the ranged defense of the brother actually being hit IS COMPLETELY IGNORED.

There must be some quirk with that test (perhaps 1000 is too much for a stat), because I clearly remember purposefully firing on clusters of enemies in the current beta (not necessarily the latest build) and having the arrow/bolt hit the shield of someone in front. Perhaps a very recent change broke something?

[Jew man Jones]

There’s also a bug where the settlement screen doesn’t show up, but you’re not on the world map and you have to use escape to leave. After that, you have restart the game or you just can’t interact with settlements anymore.

[RusBear]

I can’t agree with up on 12 level. Talent stars must work too or let me put all + 3 in 1 stat.

[RusBear]

Tested : 15 stack by Overwhelm from wolves on 1 brother. Anyone still think that RA in 0.7 was too strong?

[Yolan]

Some more feedback, now that I’ve survived with a party up to day 90+.

I’ve noticed something which concerns me about how the world responds to party growth.

Others have pointed out that having the end of game crisis occur regardless of if the player is ready or not can lead to big problems. Actually, I’ve got this problem right now! Although I’ve survived this long, my party sucks. Basically I’ve struggled a lot, and only just managed to recover a few times from pretty catastrophic losses. As a result, I can handle fighting a few brigand raiders, but I can’t really handle legionnaires etc.

Thing is, this is not actually what has caused me a lot of grief. For the last 30-40 days of the campaign, I’ve struggled more because the world appears to be acting as something like a treadmill. As my team has gotten stronger, it’s not just that more difficult and better paying jobs have become available, but that all the quests have been “upgraded”. The world has gone and become more difficult alongside my party (and in my case, getting stronger has, paradoxically, made me much weaker in the face of what I have to try and do). This is entirely aside from the end of game crisis, which is just what happens to be wiping me out now.

So a one-skull quest, I’ve found later on, is much harder than a one-skull quest initially. In other words, it’s only -relatively- a one-skull quest, based on the game guessing my strength and what would be easy/hard. It’s not absolutely a one-skull quest. That in itself I find annoying, but the real issue is that although quests get harder, the payment doesn’t keep up. I might get 700 crowns for killing a bunch of thugs early on, and then later have to take on a bunch of raiders for the same amount of money. What gives??

To be honest, I really, really dislike the world scaling itself to my level. Obviously, the problem it seeks to address is real. Players need challenges which are suitable. Too hard, and they can’t survive. Too easy, and things get boring. In my opinion having the world adjust itself to you is not a good way to deal with this issue however. It’s not just that the game can get things wrong (for example, as I have gotten stronger, I’ve actually become weaker, relative to the quests I have to do at the moment). This is a technical issue, and some tweaking can help a lot with it. It’s that scaling works to help destroy the illusion that I’m living in this real, fantasy world. This is a shame, because the Battle Brothers world is really cool. All kinds of nice things are simulated that work to make it believable. Having things scale like this though goes in the opposite direction.

In my opinion, the integrity of the world requires that it doesn’t care a jot how strong or weak I am, -unless it makes sense for it to do so-. It makes sense that getting stronger would unlock higher level quests, in that it simply makes them more accessible. Currently I have yet to be able to unlock the noble house quests. Obviously my party are just to weak. And it makes sense. But it doesn’t make sense that getting stronger would turn what are effectively the same quests into “harder versions” of the same quest. When a guy gets his stupid idol stolen I’d like it to be something that is legitimately happening in the world, regardless of how strong I happen to be. The strength of the parties involved should have nothing to do with me. It is up to me to get involved or not.

I assume that the way the Battle Brothers world worked in earlier versions was more like this. As I recall, you were more likely to run into all kinds of nasty creatures that were spawning around and marching about. Is this something that has now been actively moved away from for some reason? I understand that the devs want to have the player enjoy a somewhat more balanced experience, but I hope more of a objective simulation approach to the game can be taken, with player strength only having a minimum influence on overall world difficulty. There are other ways of keeping the player from getting hammered by far superior forces than is reasonable. For example, using geography (few goblins/orcs or undead in human lands).

Here is a quote from the game webpage.

On the procedurally generated worldmap different factions exist with their own agenda and resources, struggling for survival and dominance. A strategic AI leads each faction towards its goal by making use of its resources while staying true to the lore of that faction. Factions own locations on the worldmap – villages, camps, crypts or similar – and send out parties from there with objectives such as patrolling the area, hunting for food or raiding an unsuspecting village.

The player jumps into this living world and affects its balance by his actions – but the simulation works even without the player intervening. This way, the game does not have to rely on pre-scripted or linear events but provides new opportunities of adventure every time based on the dynamic interplay of its inhabitants. Furthermore, the player’s actions make a real difference. Preventing that orc raid on a village has that village able to offer you more in trade, and even just killing a single orc leaves the orc tribe with one less warrior for future encounters.

This all sounds great to me. But I’m not sure I’m seeing that much of it right now. The late game crisis are kind of nice, but it’s the idea of having a real impact on a living, dynamic world that excites me. It seems thought that things have moved more towards using scripts to provide a narrative and challenge to the game at the expense of the simulation.

[Wargasm]

RusBear wrote:

Tested : 15 stack by Overwhelm from wolves on 1 brother. Anyone still think that RA in 0.7 was too strong?

I’ve fought direwolves but I’ve not seem them use Overwhelm once, even though they all almost always attack first every turn …

I’ve only seen Overwhelm used once, by a Brigand Leader, which was pretty silly because he only got to use it once and was then surrounded and afterwards was always last in the turn order …

[RusBear]

Wargasm wrote:

RusBear wrote:

Tested : 15 stack by Overwhelm from wolves on 1 brother. Anyone still think that RA in 0.7 was too strong?

I’ve fought direwolves but I’ve not seem them use Overwhelm once, even though they all almost always attack first every turn …

I’ve only seen Overwhelm used once, by a Brigand Leader, which was pretty silly because he only got to use it once and was then surrounded and afterwards was always last in the turn order …

My rule – if i send something in feedback – i answer for my words.
Not my video. day 31 expert ironman first wolves with this perk

then more ingame day, then more wolves have this perk. Day 50+ – almost all wolves have it.

[Wargasm]

Ah. I’m only just approaching day 50 on my most enduring campaign, so that’ll be something to look forward to.

[RusBear]

Changed ‘Rally’ skill to make it easier to rally fleeing allies, but no longer boost the morale of men beyond steady.

…

[le_souriceau]

I mostly agree with points above.

My feel after may be 40-50 hours of play in this pre-relise state:

Serious problems in balance!

1) Ranged enemies gone absolutly OVERBOAD. Every battle I just struggle to survive against enemy archers and gods forbid heavy crossbows. Problem I think has 2 dimensions:

а) how ranged combat works by itself (modifiers)
b) enemy shooters have too hight stats (every one of them is farking wilhelm tell or robin hood, WHY?) – actually, they miss VERY rarely and mercislly hunt down any weak or wounded brothers. Every time they know who is weakest targed and bombarding him to certain death.

Return night time malus to accuracy! Now even a night battles it is impossible to be safe from enemy snipers terror. They just hit you anyway.

2) Overhelm is not right. It breaks things. My greatest concern that in all fights after some point your company is outnumbered 1 to 2 even 1 to 3 and when tonns of enemies (not just werewofles, but elite mercs) spam it… they just tear apart even very defensive brothers with shield and all def perks. They NEVER MISS in result (same story as with enemy shooters). This must be battle brother exclusive skill (like adrenalin) or something.

It must be adressed. One of the critical issues.

3) Overall balance of campaign progression still very punishing (vet), enemies become hard faster, then company gains adequate force. There is simply no “easy contracts” at some point to gain some money and farm exp for newbies. Still many completly unbeatable things with normal (naturaly formed) party (whiout very extensive farming and min-maxing, hundreads of save-loads) – tonns of elite undead, 20-30 orc encounters and other things like this.

Overall conclusions — brothers too weak (low on instuments) most times to win agains very hard-hitting brick-like enemies that game send on you every battle after some point.

Battle 25 elite mercs.
Battle 20 orcs with warboss.
Battle 25 brigands with tonns of snipers.
Battle 35 undeads with ghosts, 2 necromancers.
Battle 20 roman undeads with priest.

How ordinary naturaly build and played party can even survive this battle after battle? In crisisis, to make things worse, that sort of battles just stucked in 2-3-4 series and time limit.

[Author]

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