Three major suggestions and a couple minor ones

[Ned Stark]

I previously made a suggestion thread when I was new to the game, and now that I’ve put a bit more than 100 hours into BB, and have read up on the dev blogs, over half of those old suggestions are fulfilled. The remaining ones, as well as a few new ones that I’ve thought necessary over my experience, are included in this post:

1) No Tutorial Seems Planned or Implemented
I realize that the Scenarios exist, but I do not believe they’d help a new player past exposing them to the different enemies of the game. The scenarios would do little to help a new player grasp the tactics and techniques important to being successful in a Battle Brothers campaign. I also realize that there is an official YouTube series of Jaysen playing the game, and demonstrating these tactics, but I didn’t know this nor was aware of it when first playing the Battle Brothers. Perhaps place a “Check out our YouTube tutorials!” box on the title screen or somewhere else that beginners of the game will see. Another useful addition might be a box that directs the player to the Unofficial Battle Brother Wiki.

I’m slowly coming to the realization that a real tutorial may not be added to the game, but I believe that additional beginner dialogue, like the “Along The Way” dialogue at the beginning of the game (that tells you “big cities are expensive, you can find cheaper goods at a marketplace than at a Weaponsmith shop, and Oh hey, we should visit a tavern!, etc…) should be added to the game.

The following is my proposed additional dialogue that should be added for less frustration for new players (If you don’t want to read, skip to the bottom of the italicized words to the three arrows):

Sometime after the first battle -> Something along the lines of, “If you don’t tear the scoundrel’s armor to shreds during the fight, you can take it from his corpse after the battle ends and use it yourself….”

After accepting the first caravan job -> “You know captain, that escorting a caravan ain’t all that bad. Though some of the men we’re escortin’ can’t fight their way out of a burlap sack, they’ll accompany us in battle, and better yet, they’ll feed us for the duration of the trip!”

After arriving at the first city that provides tradable goods, after looting the first tradable good, or better yet, create the permanent drop of one Signet Ring at the aftermath of Hoggart the Weasel -> “Captain, you know that piece of loot we just… acquired from Hoggart? We can sell goods like these at a market for a profit. Heck, if we do it correctly, we could even make a profit by buying and selling merchandise between settlements. Anything to get our hands on some more gold, eh?”

After encountering a raider that uses the ‘Rotation skill’ -> “Hate to bother you again captain, but did you see some of those tactics the raiders used back there? As soon as we can, we should start training our men to use skills like these in battle. Perhaps it could be the difference between winning the day and… well, you’ve seen enough fighting to know…”

On the first difficult fight, perhaps one where on the map, an enemy faction attacked you. -> “Captain, this will be a tough fight. If you believe that this one might not go well… don’t be too proud to retreat and live another day.”

Running out of food for the first time. -> “We’re out of food captain. We should resupply at the first major city that we come across… Aw heck, now I don’t normally do things like this, but… *letting out a long sigh* Here, I’ve got my personal rations that the company can have. It should be enough to last til we can reach another city. [+25 rations]

-> -> -> Now, on the other hand, when creating a new game, there should be a tickbox that enable/disables such dialogue. X-COM called this box “Reduce Beginner Voiceover”. With said tickbox, I don’t have to listen to every game how so-and-so wants to go to the tavern in the first major city, etc…

1) Conclusion
I do not believe that this suggestion is very difficult, and I believe that it is much needed and should be completed prior to the official release of Battle Brothers. Heck, this is something that I’d help to write myself, if any help and ideas are needed.

2) Stationary Battlefields Should Be Persistent Battlefields
I once was returning to the SAME battlefield that I was just at a couple hours ago (1/12th a game day ago), as things took a turn for the worse, and I had more than half of my squad nearly wiped before I realized I could not win this fight. After leaving and returning to the battlefield, I was greeted with the sight of just a few enemy skeletons. That was all I saw. No corpses, no armor, no weapons, everything missing. I cursed the magical faeries that took all my things, and from then on, I NEVER left and returned to a battle that I wanted the loot and equipment from.

2) Conclusion
I’m not sure how difficult it might be, but I’d highly recommend that this suggestion be considered before the final development of Battle Brothers is finished.

3) Combat Tweaks
In options, under Gameplay, I turned on “Always Focus AI Movement”. I did this because I don’t much like it when, for example, during a caravan battle… a Raider moves on the opposite corner of the battle from where a Bandit Thug moved. The Raider kills someone, then steps on their corpse. Since the camera didn’t move much to show what happened, I am very confused as to who just crumpled into the mud.

Now, with “Always Focus AI Movement” turned on, it feels like there is a vice grip on the camera movement, violently jiggling the screen up and down to follow that confused Bandit Marksman who keeps hopping back and forth between two tiles.
At the very least, I wish the “Always Focus AI Movement” didn’t follow the ‘hopping’ movement, as eventually such jiggling gives me more of a headache than when I rode in my cousin’s straw wagon down a gravel road.

That being said, when a mercenary or allied unit dies in combat, if it’s name was posted at the top of the screen, saying that, “So-and-so has fallen”, then I would not have a need for “Always Focus AI Movement”.

3) Conclusion
I strongly believe that “Always Focus AI Movement” should be revisited before the official release of Battle Brothers.

A Couple Miscellaneous Suggestions:
4) Resolve influences the roll of whether a Battle Brother lives once falling.
Seeing that Resolve somewhat represents “willpower”, and also giving Resolve an additional purpose beyond resisting negative moral checks, Lost Souls, and the upcoming “Ancient Priest”, I believe that unless a Battle Brother has the “Survivor” trait, Resolve should also be a factor as to if he lives past the random number generator’s behind the scene post-battle ‘live or stay dead’ check. Hypothetically, if this post-battle ‘live or stay dead’ check requires rolling higher than a 70 out of 100 to live, then perhaps taking the current Resolve of a Battle Brother, dividing it by 2, and adding it to the original roll would be a sufficient bonus, rather than making these post battle results more or less random.

4) Conclusion
Resolve influencing a Brother’s will to survive, is something I’d very much enjoy seeing in the game.

5) Company captain should matter more.
I previously recommended that the captain be a playable character (maybe customizable from the start), and would act like a King does in chess (i.e., if he dies, your game is over, as YOU are the company captain in this story). Some others have said that the company captain should just give one selectable bonus to the company from the start of the game. I sometimes wonder why, even though he’s suffered an injury like a few of his fellow mercenaries, that during combat the company captain just sits out each battle and gives orders, but no help, to his ‘Brothers’.

5) Conclusion
Seeing some sort of addition, inclusion, or explanation as to why the company captain doesn’t wish to join in the fight would be nice. This suggestion isn’t very important though.

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live." ~Marcus Aurelius

Game: "Characters with a height advantage against their opponents are harder to hit"
Me: "That's not true, and my short axeman is living proof!"

[Rahziel]

1) Tutorial is needed, but should be implemented either as a Scenario(s), or as an optional thing in the beginning of the game with narrative not involving any characters, maybe even as a link to some kind of User Guide included in gamefiles as PDF or online version, but not as a video (spare me that). Tutorial should be laconic explaining things precisely and concisely, pointing out the things which might not be obvious to the new players, as an unbiased teacher giving a lesson about every aspect of the game, not as a passionate storyteller’s tale.
And it shouldn’t be mandatory – the player should have an option to disable tutorial completely before starting a new game.

2) That would be hard to implement since there is no such feature as saving of battle scene. There is no such mechanism so it would need to be created from scratch.
To amend your objurgation with the current implementation of system in a different way, maybe the enemy party should ‘pick up’ all things dropped by your mercs and have it with themselves, until the time when you engage them again and get everything back, if you win that is.

3) I agree, “Always Focus AI Movement” camera’s behavior should be polished. Though, the only thing I can blame it for is focusing on the tile where the enemy wants to go , but fails to do so because of being interrupted by opportunity attacks (most common with direwolves).

4) I don’t know the inner workings of revival mechanics for characters being downed in a fight, so I can’t even speculate on chances and probabilities here, much less on how resolve should affect it.
But let’s suppose it’s working by your assumption.. What would you do then if my character have 120 resolve (46 base, fearless, 3star resolve and fortified mind)? Should he be near-immortal having exorbitant values giving him almost no chance to stay dead unless his head is chopped off?

5) I’m against it. That Game is about a Mercenary Company, not about a company Captain himself and his adventures with a merry band of henchmen. So it shouldn’t matter if he died. So what? A new Captaion will be appointed (as it portrayed in Hogart the Weasel scenario), that’s all there is to it.
The Company’s Captain as an outside character living behind the scenes shouldn’t exist too – it’s odd that he kind of exists, but when the last man under his command dies the company is finished and it’s game over. As if he’s saying: “oh, f*ck it, I’m done with it!” – and disappears with all gold and swag.
The ‘Captain’ as he is portrayed right now can’t die – he never takes part in the battles, he should be able to return to town in current setting and recruit new mercs to do his biddings then, ain’t he!? These kind of incogruities are bad for creating immersion and Player’s own stories about their companies.
To avoid rewriting tons of text in contracts and events after getting rid of The ‘behind the scenes Captain‘ we could assume the acting leader of company is someone among the ranks, but his name is never mentioned in interactions, being always called the Captain, the Leader or something..

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