Content Suggestions

[Sekata]

Going to list a few ideas here for ways to flesh out the world. You guys at overhype already seem to be on the ball about everything, so I assume that much of the stuff listed here is already planned.

Map Size
The map is pretty small at the moment. A larger map with more cities, and more castles would lend the game to expansion in other areas, like inter-human factional strife.

Caravan companies
Caravans associated with specific locations, like cities, regions, etc. If the game was populated with caravans that were competing with each other for business, it would make sense that one company might hire a band of mercenaries to hamstring the competition. I do understand that a change like this would cause the economy in its current state to be stretched thin as caravans have enough problems in the current build. To compensate, maybe the more successful a caravan company becomes, the better equipped caravan guards are. This would help caravans from the associated company make it through ambushes all on their own and keep far corners of the map well stocked. The companies could function similarly to the way villages are currently implemented, so if a well stocked caravan gets destroyed by a particularly nasty ambush, then the associated company loses wealth and has trouble guarding future expeditions. An event could also be coded to send a caravan from the company that hired you to the location the waylaid shipment was prevented from reaching. The system itself is not as important as the feeling that it would provide: A world of many forces fighting for a position of strength over the competition. Sellswords always needed.

Regional Factions
The idea here is pretty close to the way factions function in the Mount and Blade games. Control of a region means control of taxes, manpower, and landed resources. War between two regions would require Lords or their stewards to hire the Battle Brothers. Working examples of factional war can be taken from M&B or crusader kings to decide what the conditions of success or failure would be. Joining sides with a faction and losing the war, might have consequences like the battle brothers being treated as hostile when in the land of the prevailing faction. The BB world is already dangerous, that much is true, but since when has impending undead invasion, green skin incursion, or werewolf attacks kept human beings from trying to get over on each other? Again, the implementation here is less important than the feeling added to the world. As developers, you all are much more aware of what systems would have to be altered, changed, added to make something like this feasible, and where jeopardizing those systems simply aren’t possible.

Reputation
Currently, there are no penalties for breaking a contract or failing to protect a Caravan. Implementing a reputation system would allow penalties and rewards to be put in place for seeing a job through. Your last employer might let you in on more lucrative contracts. Caravan companies (shameless plug) might offer the company additional contracts to reach contested areas of the map, or even discounts in certain markets.

More Character
This one is a bit nebulous. At the moment Battle Brother’s strongest points are the combat and progression systems. The little bit of context writing that exists gives a fantastic bit of flavor to the game, but doesn’t allow the player to invest emotionally in the fate of anything in the world besides the soldiers he or she has hired. The story that currently exists is in the form of role play and interaction that the player imagines among the company of soldiers. The world itself could use a bit more character. This could be accomplished by implementing more quests, some of them with several phases.

More Character contd. (quests)
Remember that eccentric guy that hired the company to bring him ghoul teeth? He didn’t make a lot of sense, was funny in all the wrong ways, and smelled a little, but he paid up when he was supposed to. Turns out he was a Necromancer and you just helped him set up shop on the outskirts of the city. If you don’t mind a dubious reputation associated with the band then you can accept more of his money and keep the authorities from sniffing around his new stronghold until he finishes his schemes. Or you can clean up the mess you’ve made. As far as moral ambiguity goes, the writer could even furnish our quirky necromancer with a shockingly reasonable justification for his lifestyle choice. Maybe if you finish his quest arc, he’ll even join your band of brothers. If you can stand the smell of death – and being shunned – that is.

Werewolf furs are in style. Your old wounds bleed just from thinking about the buggers, but the tailor working for the lady of the castle will pay big money if you bring a few pelts in. You might even get the chance to meet the beauty everyone is talking about. Or you can just tell the tailor to shove it.

The paragraphs above are meant to seem a bit silly sure, but the point is just to add characters and quests that add color to the world. It’s the difference between knowing some guy that sells stuff, and knowing Engelbert, the merchant that paid you to kill his blackmailing bandit brother. Sure he was a kin-killer by proxy, but he’s good business, and your company thinks he’s hilarious. One is generic, the other is dubious, recognizable and will at least pay you before ripping you off at his stall.

[Sekata]

Bad Blood System

This would be a subsection of reputation. IF other mercenary companies were implemented into the game, the Battle Brothers might find themselves fighting groups of the same occupation but different employers on some contracts. Some interaction with these groups could create enmity and competition between the two bands. That’s assuming that their entire band wasn’t wiped out though, which makes me think…

Surrender System

If I was a bandit on the losing end of a fight gone wrong, I might be convinced to drop my weapon and surrender. Brothers might initiate a capture by surrounding a human enemy on all hexes when said enemy is of low morale. Bandits might be given over to jailors in town for a price or a rep boost. When fighting other human groups that aren’t on the bad side of the law, perhaps the survivors could ask for peace. Peace terms could include certain terms (The right to strip the dead on the field, gold, etc). If a group of brothers is fighting guards, or another band of mercenaries, then granting lenient terms could be beneficial for reputation, while demanding a lot would create some enmity. Mercenary companies let off with a slap on the wrist could be friendly towards the Brothers in the future, while those who are denied certain dignities in a truce may turn hostile if they rebuild and see the player on the map. Of course, it wouldn’t apply to orcs, bandits and things that bump in the night. They just want to eat your gibblets come hell or high water.

[thenewromance]

Surrendering and taking prisoners should definitely implemented. I could see this even for enemy factions, e.g. bandits taking high-ranking opponents for ransom, a necromancer needing live strong specimen for experiments or maybe even the odd orc wanting to gather a little intelligence. Gives a lot of room for emerging gameplay and quests.

Also, it’s way more realistic. Surrendering and POW is rarely featured in strategy games. Most of the time, you can be happy if they even implement a morale system and a possibility for retreating without automatically losing the game. In videogames, it’s basically always fighting to the death, which is neither fun nor realistic nor very rich in variety. Actual combat, in medieval times or modern, has never been like that. You can of course abstract somewhat, think Unity of Command, but in Battle Brothers I would really like to see alternatives to mortal combat done on a small scale. It just lends itself very well to that kind of features. I would love to have bandits surrender or take a necromancer prisoner and drag him back into the village he threatened in chains, for raising morale among the peasants. Extra pay, anyone? :) Tactical retreats, both on the strategic and tactical map, enemies not even engaging you when you’re clearly stronger, and the possibility of different outcomes than just “win” or “dead” for both sides are what I want to see as well.

I’d actually love to see a feature of “knocking out” combattants in the game. It would work for both sides, but take for example a Battle Brother being hit in the head with a mace by an orc. Maybe his helmet holds, he isn’t dead, but he’s out cold for the rest of the combat. If his side wins, they’ll just wake him back up and give his helmet to the blacksmith, but if not there’s still more than just “dead”: a Brother could be coup-de-grace’d by the opposition after the combat when they notice him still being alive, he could be taken prisoner, be simply declared “missing” after both sides quit the field of battle (new possibilities arise from that unclear state!), or even be mistaken for a corpse by the enemy and be able to flee after the battle and possibly re-join you two days later on. I think that would really make the combat in Battle Brothers three-dimensional, so to say. A mechanism where combattants are too wounded to carry on fighting, but are not dead (and not exactly unconscious), could probably be subsumed under this umbrella, so basically an enhanced “casualty mechanic”, where casualty doesn’t equal dead (just as it doesn’t in real life).

[SlyFox]

Hello, everyone!

I joined the Battle Brotherhod quite recently. But here are my suggestions =/

No plot

There’s no plot or objective in a game. I played the hardest difficulty level. At a certain point the game becomes boring. When you can beat everyone on the map and there’s no other ambition for you. You can’t establish your own city/caste/estate or conquer your own kingdom or county.

Turn-based world map

The Fighting system is one of the best I’ve ever seen. The World map is not. Let’s be honest. Your target audience is not those who choose “Whitcher” or “Dota”. You make game for those try-hards who play chess, df, Banner Saga, HoMM and table-top party games. Give them an opportunity to control several different squads of battle brothers, build villages and strongholds. World map as it is can not provide such opportunity.

And Thanks for the Battle Brothers, guys. I really enjoy your Game! =)

[SlyFox]

Obtaining characteristics.

Imagine, one battle brother survives through a bloody battle. He’ve seen some shit. Now he is “Cold blooded” “+15 Resolve. Never panics”.
Mechanics: store in hash table all possible characteristics and obtaining events:
characteristic| description | trigger | probability
“Orc slayer” | “+10 whatever in battle against greenskins” | “kill 3 greenskins during one battle” | “30%”
“Sure hand” | “+7 whatever” | “kill 3 whoever during one battle” | “15%”
“blade dancer”| “+4 whatever” | “dodge 12 attacks during one battle” | “15%”
“Cold blooded”| “+15 resolve” | “Be the only survivor” | “15%”

so after battle if a battle brother acuired a trigger criteria, he gets a characteristic according to its probability (can get one per battle maximum, can also get nothing)

[Malthus]

SlyFox wrote:

Hello, everyone!

I joined the Battle Brotherhod quite recently. But here are my suggestions =/

No plot

There’s no plot or objective in a game. I played the hardest difficulty level. At a certain point the game becomes boring. When you can beat everyone on the map and there’s no other ambition for you. You can’t establish your own city/caste/estate or conquer your own kingdom or county.

Turn-based world map

The Fighting system is one of the best I’ve ever seen. The World map is not. Let’s be honest. Your target audience is not those who choose “Whitcher” or “Dota”. You make game for those try-hards who play chess, df, Banner Saga, HoMM and table-top party games. Give them an opportunity to control several different squads of battle brothers, build villages and strongholds. World map as it is can not provide such opportunity.

And Thanks for the Battle Brothers, guys. I really enjoy your Game! =)

Hello and welcome in the Brotherhood withou… erhm I mean in the Battle Brothers Community.
Please don´t get me wrong but it hurts a bit to see people writing suggestions that are thought through but at the same time you realise that they did not even read the store page infos. There will be a plot. What you are playing right now is the scaffolding of the game to come.

Coming features

Worldmap story and progression mechanic.
Non-combat characters for your mercenary company.
Scavenger-hunts for legendary artifacts.
A dynamic event system with atmospheric encounters and tough decisions outside of combat.
Indoor tactical combat environments, such as dungeons.
A fully skinned UI.
More content: More enemies, terrain types, items, contracts, character backgrounds and at least one additional major enemy faction acting in the world.

This is what is stated there and if you also take a look here http://battlebrothersgame.com/strategic-worldmap/ you will notice that right at the bottom of the list there is the BIG plot this game will be about. An invasion by one of the enemie factions which can be orcs, undead, beasts…

Also this game is definitely not about building castles and founding cities or even forging kingdomes. You are playing as a wandering mercenary band. You go where the jobs are. You are not leading a crusader chapter with an Ordensburg (interesting there is no english word for this)

"I am a Paladin!"
>OMG, Malthus, there are no damn paladins in Battle Brothers...<
"OK, OK! Then I´m a wrecked down minstrel drunkard pretending to be a paladin, singing so wrong in the midst of battle that even the undead run in fear... Better?!"

[GOD]

Some comments on the above suggestions:

Map size
Map size is kept limited because the player is meant to be able to reach everywhere on the map despite their mobility. We might see it get bigger, but it’s not a certainty.

Caravan companies
I know that competing mercenary companies will get implemented, so we might see some aspects of this.

Regional Factions
Interfactional conflict isn’t currently planned, last I heard, as that could get in the way of the theme of humanity defending itself against forces of destruction. However, we might see some elements of this with the event system.

Reputation
A reputation system with two different values is currently planned, those being something akin to how professional and moral you behave.

More character.
More in-depth quests are planned as is an event system that allows for different choices.

Bad Blood System
Mercenary companies are planned, though it’s still unclear exactly how.

Surrender System.
The AI being capable of retreating from combat is planned. I haven’t seen them say anything about surrendering. I personally have my doubts about how you’d add something like that in this kind of game, while having it be both mechanically meaninful and elegant.

No plot
The actual end-game hasn’t been implemented yet, with consists of a Great Enemy for you to fight that builds up according to how the different factions interact. This will get expanded on as development continues. The focus is also on a company on the move, so no establishing lands of your own.

Turn-based world map
I don’t think they’ll move away from controlling a single company, as your group is the centre of that narrative and forms a natural limit against battle overload. The map will get more involved as time goes on, though (like tracks to follow).

Obtaining characteristics
If something like this gets implemented, it’ll be a lot rarer and not reliably achievable. Gets mentioned here.

[Sekata]

SlyFox wrote:

Turn-based world map

The Fighting system is one of the best I’ve ever seen. The World map is not. Let’s be honest. Your target audience is not those who choose “Whitcher” or “Dota”. You make game for those try-hards who play chess, df, Banner Saga, HoMM and table-top party games. Give them an opportunity to control several different squads of battle brothers, build villages and strongholds. World map as it is can not provide such opportunity.

And Thanks for the Battle Brothers, guys. I really enjoy your Game! =)

Not too sure that this is accurate. Firstly it assumes a bit much about their target audience. As a player of games like mount and blade, I love the map system, and the intimacy that’s fostered by the current map and band management system. I think that turning the map into a turn based system and making several different bands of brothers would take away that intimacy and the artistic identity that BB currently has.

[Sekata]

GOD wrote:

Some comments on the above suggestions:

Map size
Map size is kept limited because the player is meant to be able to reach everywhere on the map despite their mobility. We might see it get bigger, but it’s not a certainty.

Caravan companies
I know that competing mercenary companies will get implemented, so we might see some aspects of this.

Regional Factions
Interfactional conflict isn’t currently planned, last I heard, as that could get in the way of the theme of humanity defending itself against forces of destruction. However, we might see some elements of this with the event system.

Reputation
A reputation system with two different values is currently planned, those being something akin to how professional and moral you behave.

More character.
More in-depth quests are planned as is an event system that allows for different choices.

Bad Blood System
Mercenary companies are planned, though it’s still unclear exactly how.

Surrender System.
The AI being capable of retreating from combat is planned. I haven’t seen them say anything about surrendering. I personally have my doubts about how you’d add something like that in this kind of game, while having it be both mechanically meaninful and elegant.

No plot
The actual end-game hasn’t been implemented yet, with consists of a Great Enemy for you to fight that builds up according to how the different factions interact. This will get expanded on as development continues. The focus is also on a company on the move, so no establishing lands of your own.

Turn-based world map
I don’t think they’ll move away from controlling a single company, as your group is the centre of that narrative and forms a natural limit against battle overload. The map will get more involved as time goes on, though (like tracks to follow).

Obtaining characteristics
If something like this gets implemented, it’ll be a lot rarer and not reliably achievable. Gets mentioned here.

Thanks for keying in on the suggestions :D. As for the surrender system, i imagine that it could be handled by making prisoner slots similar to the slots that will be filled by non-combatant members of the company. This might allow for collecting bounties on some of the named bandits, or even turning over captured scouts to jailors for interrogation to find out where their base of operations is.

[GOD]

No problem. :) It seems there’s been a change in plans though, as the latest dev blog suggests that they are now planning to add conflict between human factions.

It’s more the capturing mechanics themselves that I have my doubts about. I could see prisoners working as part of the event system, but reliably taking prisoners seems out place in the high lethality combat that the game has.

[Sky]

Well the prisoner system is not a big of a problem imo, can be made similar as in M&B having two death state. While in first the enemy can be captured at the end of combat and if not they die (the surgeon can resurrect your soldiers up from this state) and the other one is a fully permament death appears.

Not sure if there should be any, since the prisoners have to be constantly healed fed watched, in middle ages it was rare to take prisoners. Much faster and easier to blade em down.

Tipps for new players
BB Wiki

[GOD]

Two death states would be weird in this game, as that would mean that potential prisoners have more survivability than your own mercs have in battle. Currently a death is a death, adding another death state would create strange situations where your own mercs are dead if you win, but might survive if they were captured.

You also have the problem of reliably getting prisoners, since the battle system has fatalities and you can’t exactly patch up someone who’s lacking a head or guts. You’d mainly want prisoners for the purpose of more quests and events, so if you can’t take the guy prisoners who you need for the quest then the system just becomes a source of frustration and save scumming.

[Sky]

True, but you could limit it to the enemy only, since there are no surgeons or similar in BB (yet) where a fatality would automaticaly do a type 2 death while a simple beat down a type 1. If you wish to deepen this kind of system you can always have the blunt weapons have a higher chance to do type 1 since you are more able to take enemy out without killing than with a blade.

If the whole prisoner thing is purely for the purpose of events and you won’t be able to interact with them (like in M&B selling letting go or even recruiting) then there is simply no need for a deep system. Just a random chance to get prisoners after a battle so they can start an event later on. Just a prompt of acquiring x prisoners of y type. There will be no need of detailed representation of prisoners either this way, just as much as be informative.

If the prisoner system is supposed to be deep and interactive well then first of all there should be a list of actions with the prisoners and depending of the end aims on this list should be a system made so it can satisfy every aspect.

Tipps for new players
BB Wiki

[GOD]

Limiting it to the enemy makes it stand out even more that the enemies are arbitrarily made to be harder to kill than the mercs. That’s a bad thing, since it undermines the equality between units regardless of what side they are on (a bandit is not fundamentally different from a merc).

I could only see prisoners work with the current system if the healer-companion gives you a chance of keeping some enemies alive. That way you side-step the issue of death states, since the point of the healer (last I checked) is to give you a random chance of saving a merc who gets killed (but with an intact body) in battle. You’d just be applying the same mechanic to the enemy as well for the purpose of taking prisoners. You also avoid the problem of wanting to target certain units and save scumming, because you simply wouldn’t be capable of doing that. A deeper system would otherwise require creating a lot of new mechanics to make it work.

[Sekata]

GOD wrote:

Limiting it to the enemy makes it stand out even more that the enemies are arbitrarily made to be harder to kill than the mercs. That’s a bad thing, since it undermines the equality between units regardless of what side they are on (a bandit is not fundamentally different from a merc).

I could only see prisoners work with the current system if the healer-companion gives you a chance of keeping some enemies alive. That way you side-step the issue of death states, since the point of the healer (last I checked) is to give you a random chance of saving a merc who gets killed (but with an intact body) in battle. You’d just be applying the same mechanic to the enemy as well for the purpose of taking prisoners. You also avoid the problem of wanting to target certain units and save scumming, because you simply wouldn’t be capable of doing that. A deeper system would otherwise require creating a lot of new mechanics to make it work.

I think our difference in opinion might come down to one of perspective. It doesn’t seem like an incredibly difficult thing to do from my point of view. It’s already well known that all of the items that are going to be in the game aren’t in yet. On the feature listing about the goblins, nets have been listed, which is just one item of many more that could potentially be added to the game. I don’t see why it would be impossible to have an item specifically for incapacitating a target, both usable to players and enemies. % Chance of capture could be extremely low at the outset and could go up based on fatigue, hp, resolve state, etc. If one of your own people gets captured on the field, its implied that they were taken prisoner whether you lose or flee. Prisoners would be represented on the UI in slots similar to non-combat personnel that are with the company. There wouldn’t have to be a feeling of inequality, since both sides have access to the same tools.

Even ignoring potential items in the game that could facilitate a prisoner system, there are items currently in game that already lend to the possibility. As has been mentioned elsewhere, a blow to the head with the mace does not have to be fatal to incapacitate a target. The same goes for many other crippling injuries. I like the lethal feel that the game has. I wouldn’t want to sacrifice or undermine it, but the fact that every battle can only end in death when the human urge is self preservation makes things unrealistically one dimensional. Not to mention the potential for game play expansion that a prisoner system would allow. If people want to play their games the wrong way then they will. File tampering, save-scumming, etc. Its going to happen. People who want an iron man experience will do just that. No reason to gimp potential game play in fear of what players that don’t want the real experience are going to do.

[Author]

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