Weapon carrying capacity

[jimcrowley]

Each brother has four bags which can be used to hold accessible weapons during combat.

This allows carrying, for instance, a great sword, a billhook, a long sword and a spear, in addition to what is already equipped.

This seems rather excessive.

Perhaps two-handed weapons should take up two slots and each weapon carried should have an effect on mobility. In that way a brother who chooses to load up on weapons will have a lower initiative and may move slower.

Also would weapon specialisation be a viable possibility?

Cheers
Jim

[Jago]

It’s 4 slots in the combat-demo. In the EA-version each brother has only 2 slots, that can be upgraded to 4 slots with a perk. But I do agree that even then you could, theoretically carry 4 billhooks or greatswords, which is absurd.
Having big weapons taking up two slots sounds like a good idea. However I’d detain from a mobility penalty for items that are not wielded, because that would make things more complex then necessary.

Maybe there could be a few more perks that raises the melee skill if a certain type of weapon is equipped. For example, if a brother has been through countless battles, and only ever used his mace, a random event might pop-up one day and give him a “Mace-Expert”-perk.

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[Rap]

What Jago said. We also want to look into that whole bag issue again at some point and decide if and how we can improve it further. Having some items take up more than one slot would require a complete rework of the whole item/inventory system – not sure if that’s worth it. Having items in the bags instead have a fatigue penalty might be an easy solution to dissuade players from carrying around 4 super heavy somethings.

Jago, your idea of granting weapon specializations as traits to characters that used certain weapons exclusively for a long time is great. That’s roughly the direction we were thinking about going as well, while keeping the perks that can be selected upon levelup a bit more general in nature.

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[Sarissofoi]

Just make items in backpacks lower your maximum fatigue like equipped weapons.
Then taking four billhooks or greatswords isn’t that attractive any more.
Unless I am wrong and they lower max fatigue already.
Also adding visible slots with items inside backpacks so people know what soldier carry and for fast switch without switching view to inventory will be great.
Like that:

BTW Any chance for consumables?
Like bottle of vodka to boost morale(with some penalty) or bandages to stop bleeding?

[Mashed Zombie]

Could Battle Brothers start with one bag slot? The perk that doubles your bag slots isn’t that tempting at the moment, because two slots are enough, and having four is overkill.

[Sarissofoi]

BTW Can you carry spare quivers with bolts/arrows?

[Rap]

Sarissofoi wrote:

Also adding visible slots with items inside backpacks so people know what soldier carry and for fast switch without switching view to inventory will be great.

Makes sense to me. That particular placement wouldn’t quite work out because the character names are too long, though. We’ll have to focus on bugfixing and tweaking the game for the next two weeks or so, as I’m quite sure a bunch of problems will now appear that our fairly limited group of testers has never experienced before. Once the dust from the release has settled a bit, we can look into it.

Sarissofoi wrote:

BTW Any chance for consumables?
Like bottle of vodka to boost morale(with some penalty) or bandages to stop bleeding?

Well, we won’t have common consumables like vodka or bandages. Bandaging wounds in the middle of a medieval battle feels quite a bit off and would break the feeling of fast and deadly combat for us. Healing, or even just stopping the bleeding, is something to do outside of combat on the worldmap. That said, we may add some less common consumables in time. If there’s ever a magical ‘healing potion’ in the game, it won’t be one bought in a shop, but a very rare item gotten via some quest or so that you’ll have to think very carefully about when to use.

Mashed Zombie wrote:

Could Battle Brothers start with one bag slot? The perk that doubles your bag slots isn’t that tempting at the moment, because two slots are enough, and having four is overkill.

I’m inclined to agree. As with the suggestion by Sarissofoi, it’ll have to wait a bit until we can get around to handling this.

Sarissofoi wrote:

BTW Can you carry spare quivers with bolts/arrows?

Yes.

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[Sarissofoi]

I watched all of Lets Play videos that i can get and plenty of YT guys complain about leave and loot buttons after end of the battle.
I find this really reasonable. It will be really frustrating taking leave before loot by mistake.
So little suggestion.
1)make Leave button Leave and take all loot button, so if you live straight away you still take all the stuff with you.
2)remove leave button from the first(statistic after battle) screen, so player after checking stats go straight to loot and can’t leave by mistake

[Jaysen]

Yes, thats an issue that we already have on our list! Missing loot is not making for a great experience.

Maybe we go with a kind of warning message when leaving loot behind. Changing the UI is very risky with the Launch 1 day away and we are very cautios of creating new bugs.

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[jimcrowley]

Some great ideas evolving here.

I think having only a single bag slot, with a chance to increase to two as the character improves, is spot on.

I would go further, and not allow the larger weapons to be carried in bags at all since, in reality they couldn’t be.

Nothing to do with weight, as they weren’t particularly heavy anyway, just the size. Try fixing a weapon, that is almost as tall as you if not taller, to your body in any way that would be reasonably accessible in combat or even practical while travelling.

So brothers who want to wield the larger weapons, great-sword, billhook, spear would need to have them equipped from the outset. If they then wish to switch to something smaller in combat, then, abstractly they would stick those weapons in the ground or drop them, use the smaller item and then pick up the larger weapon afterwards.

[GOD]

jimcrowley wrote:

Some great ideas evolving here.

I think having only a single bag slot, with a chance to increase to two as the character improves, is spot on.

I would go further, and not allow the larger weapons to be carried in bags at all since, in reality they couldn’t be.

Nothing to do with weight, as they weren’t particularly heavy anyway, just the size. Try fixing a weapon, that is almost as tall as you if not taller, to your body in any way that would be reasonably accessible in combat or even practical while travelling.

So brothers who want to wield the larger weapons, great-sword, billhook, spear would need to have them equipped from the outset. If they then wish to switch to something smaller in combat, then, abstractly they would stick those weapons in the ground or drop them, use the smaller item and then pick up the larger weapon afterwards.

Having large weapons in the backpack might not be entirely realistic, but it does add interesting choices to the tactical combat. Like keeping a guy with a billhook behind your front line, before having him switch to a sword and shield after the initial charge wears off. Or starting a mercenary with a spear and shield to withstand the first wave of orcs and then switching to a greatsword once the lines have been established.
Having to drop the weapon, arm the mercenary and then go back for it if you want to use it again also bogs down gameplay and just makes it a hassle to use. Making it a hassle to use makes the player less likely to utilise it, which shouldn’t be necessary as it’s not a heavily unbalanced tactic. Items conveying a fatigue penalty is probably enough to dissuade players from hauling around unneccesary items. I kind of like the idea mentioned earlier of making those slots more valuable by giving them less, which also makes the extra slots perk more interesting, though you’d keep the problem of switching between a two-handed and one-handed + shield set.

[Rap]

I’m of the same opinion. This is a point where gameplay and usability are more important than realism, and even then, the realism point is debatable if we’re talking two-handed weapons in general. It’d be confusing to have some weapons be placeable in the bag but not others for reasons not necessarily transparent to the player, and as GOD pointed out, we’d kill off some interesting tactical options that are just now evolving. I don’t really get the fascination with carrying around 3 Billhooks to begin with, but I don’t see it as unbalanced in any case, which would be my primary concern. If we were to implement that fatigue penalty described above it would mean that while some guy could in theory carry 3 Billhooks at the same time he could hardly fight anymore, which works for me.

I’d personally go with reducing the slots to 1/3 at this time and possibly introducing the fatigue penalty unless you guys have an even better idea.

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[Sarissofoi]

Rap wrote:

I’d personally go with reducing the slots to 1/3 at this time and possibly introducing the fatigue penalty unless you guys have an even better idea.

That sounds like the best choice so far.
BTW Maybe the perk increasing number of bag slots also make owner ignore max fatigue penalty from hidden in bags weapons?
It will increase worth of this perk(who isn’t that great in my opinion).

[GOD]

I’d keep an eye on how Early Access goes to see if any balancing is necessary. If so, fewer slots and/or a fatigue penalty could serve as an easy fix. Otherwise, maybe just give everyone 4 bags and replace that perk with something else – or give everyone 4 bags, implement the fatigue penalty and then have the perk take away said fatigue penalty as in Sarrisofoi’s suggestion.

[Trig]

Of all the ideas tossed around in this brainstorming, I like the fatigue penalty one most.
Having a sword and dagger on your belt wouldn’t slow you down much. Having an orc axe and a crossbow tied to your back probably would…

[Author]

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