Danubian

[Danubian]

Wargasm wrote:

You might still be able to have a nimble swordmaster – only this time he can be armed with a shield, and his melee defence won’t be so exaggeratedly high, but his ranged defence will be higher and he’ll even be able to form shieldwalls to bolster both. But he needn’t be a swordmaster – he could be a dagger-master or a mace-master …

I tried it with one of my melees, and i got like +3 melee defense. Not worth the perk.

It might be worth on a max level guy with +3 talent on melee defense who has taken melee def on every level up.

[Danubian]

Here is what i do:

Student> because why not; youre not wasting anything, and you get the whole package sooner.
Head Hunter> because its a flat bonus, everything else is either meh or situational or too specific.
Brawny> because wearing bigger armor for same fatigue cost is great; it gives you more punching power in prolonged battle.
Axe Mastery> because axes deal a lot of damage, and there is a military grade war axe thats very good damage wise. Once you have 60+ melee skill, who cares about weapon hitting chance, youll hit double times 80+% of the time.
Footwork> because you might find yourself in a situation where that damned orc who is about to get the turn can 1 hit kill you, and why wouldnt you get out of his melee range.
Battle Forged> because taking less damage is good?
Fearsome> because when you face 12 orc warriors its to have half of them panic and flee couple of rounds of combat later.

At this point you have 3 remaining perks to further specialize your guy. I would say that pathfinder is a must; maybe one more weapon mastery; and either something rallylike or something damagewise.

Tier 1:

Fast Adaptation> entirely useless. You should be making characters who hit every time, not those with better chance to hit once they miss. Also 7% is nothing.
Crippling Strikes> theoretically useful, but its location on the tree makes it highly unlikely pick. And later on you just have access to so much better stuff.
Colossus> i know a lot of people like this, but i dont. I dont want more HP. If youre taking HP damage in the first place, it means youre doing something wrong. Look at that guy in the screenshot, he has 50 melee, and that will go even higher depending on rolls, maybe even into 60+. This guy doesnt get hit. He doesnt need more than 60-65 hp hell have once hes top tier.
Nine Lives> ok this is definitely useful, but im too stingy on a perk point for get it.
Bags and Belts> why bother when archery is messed up? Its just way more practical to have dedicated 1 handed + shield guys and dedicated 2 handed + crossbows guys. With the buff to durabilities i dont really have a need for secondary weapons either. Its just pointless.
Pathfinder> a very useful perk, i have a hard time not picking this.
Adrenaline> i could see this being useful, but personally id rather make characters who dont get hit, and thus can survive the normal turn order.
Recover> i could see this being useful, but meh, too stingy on a perk point. Also my guys RARELY get fatigued out, the way i gear them and use them.
Student> there is literally no need not to take this. Everything else is useful, this is a no brainer.

Tier 2:

Executioner> useful, but too situational.
Head Hunter> always useful for everyone.
Bullseye> sorry but with the archery nerf youve killed the ranged battle for me, i dont even bother with it anymore, except for orc Berskers.
Dodge> if we had more perks, id probably take this. I used to take it with my nimble builds.
Fortified Mind> This was nefed right? It used to make you immune to resolve damaging stuff? Well now that its not, its useless. I dont need a 25% modifier, if my resolve is shit, it wont do anything; i need something that makes me immune to orc Warlord thingie or to those ghosts thingie.
Quick Hands> this is just not worth it; getting this and bags used to be a significant investment that turned your guys into jacks of all trades, but now i just dont see the point.
Gifted> typical noob trap. So totally not worth the perk point. Instead of boosting a single character for like 13-14? skill points, just recruit one of the more expensive types and get that for free. No.

Tier 3:

Backstabber> i could see myself picking this. It would TOTALLY help with the likes of Orc Warriors whom i find myself surrounding completely quite often.
Underdog> so totally useful for first line melees, i totally want to take this between level 9 and top level.
Anticipation> so totally and utterly useless waste of a perk. Just put on a shield and youll be fine.
Shield Expert> i almost never use shield wall, as i would rather focus on killing the enemies before they get to do crazy amount of damage; the passive bonus to shields is so small that its almost negligible. For best shields youll get like +5, and for starting ones like +3. Not worth the perk. If it gave like 20 or 35% OR if it reduced the cost of shield wall by 50% or something, sure, i would use this. The shield damage reduction is also meh, as the OP enemies like orcs will smash your shields anyway.
Brawny> Yes please. Thats the shit at this tier.
Steel Brow> if max level was ever made higher, id totally take this some time after level 8.
Taunt> why bother? Just kill the enemies faster than they can get into a situation where you need to taunt them…

Tier 4:

-IMO if youre playing a different style compared to me, you could just take swords, as they are the sweet spot between extra hit chance and damage.
-If you know what youre doing you can also take maces, knock out is a wonderful skill thats only made crappy by the fact of how much it costs fatigue wise. 25% cheaper, and 100% stun chance? Hell i would use it a lot. The biggest problem with hammers however is that they just dont do enough damage. Take warhammer that everyone consider the ultimate anti armor weapon. With it Destroy Armor does 101-134 armor damage, and does 10 hp damage. Fighting axe, using normal attack, thats almost twice as cheap fatigue wise, does 45-71 damage, has a potential to ignore armor partially, can do a lot more hp damage AND has 50% damage increase on head hit. And you can do it twice for the same price as Destroy Armor.
-Axes. Man. Axes are crazy. My new favorite weapon. If you get the guy with that perk, whats it called, Iron Lungs? the one that gives +5 fatigue recovery / round, you just give that guy the orc Axe, head splitter and watch the heads roll. Its insane. Even with a bit pricey Fighting Axes, the damage output + fatigue cost decrease is just sweet. You just need people with high melee for axes, otherwise youll miss a lot.

-If you have dedicated ranged people, i would either take bow/crossbow mastery, or one of the two handed weapons type. I findmyself using polearms and stuff much more than ranged stuff due to nerfs, so i went with that.

Tier 5:

Reach Advantage> This could be useful with War Brand was it? I think thats 2 handed and can be used twice / round? If not, this is like useless. Youll get chopped to pieces before you can make any use of those stacks.
Hold Out> theoretically useful, but practically near useless. You should do everything in your power to NOT get hit, and thus this is obsolete. It needs to offer something more on top to make it worthwile.
Lone Wolf> too situational; you might have a dedicated roamer who goes around and hunts for ranged characters, and this could be useful in theory, but in practice such scenarios are very rare, as you still dont want 1 guy to run into a whole swarm of ranged characters. I cant justify to myself ever taking this, specially since there are just way more useful perks to be had.
Footwork> what is there to say, it lets you survive situations where you could likely die. Of everything on this tier, the most generally useful thing available.
Rally The Troops> i would take this between level 8 and max level on some characters.

Tier 6:

Berserk> Ability to dish out more damage, whats there not to like? Would take this between level 8 and max level.
Nimble> in my first beta playthrough, i took this, but its been nerfed/changed so much, that now its pointless for me. This is literally pointless now.
Battle Forged> This is wonderful for first line melees. There is literally nothing to not like about it (except that its near useless for people who arent built to use heaviest armors).
Rotation> good skill in theory, if it were available on previous tier, id take it instead of footwork, maybe. On this tier, nah.
Sergeant> I guess i would take 1 maybe 2 of these, but no more, and only between level 9 and max level.

Tier 7:

Fearsome> there is nothing to not like here. It can change the entire dynamic of a battle vs very tough enemies like orcs. One of my favorite picks.
Duelist> this is utterly useless. The damage bonus from having no shield does not justify not having the shield; it might be still useful for situations where you have your shield broken. Maybe a pick between 9 and max.
Killing Frenzy> again, 25% increase is just meh, considering that instead you can take stuff that greatly increase your survivability or hit chances and similar stuff.
Indominable> i dont know, ive never used this before, i have to try it. Of all listed benefits i only see the 50% damage reduction as something note worthy. Everything else is either so situational (being stunned) or can be circumvented by positioning (being pushed back).

[Danubian]

This never used to happen before.

The two battle brothers with warbows just killed a melee fighter standing in the hex mouse cursor is showing.

They both hit the guy in a row, he had 130 body armor, 80 head armor and ~60 hp.

They both have ~60 ranged skill, and they both had ~60% hit chance on that enemy, but instead they both hit their ally.

[Danubian]

RusBear wrote:

It seems that the remove perk sundering strike makes even 1-2 Orc Warrior content for a very late game. OK. But it is unclear what they are doing in a raid party on 6 th game day and in the quest for 500 coins …

What difficulty are you playing on?

If youre on middle/high the common orc contract will spawn orc warriors very soon.

But regardless i think there are war parties that go around and burn down stuff even early on (spawned by orc settlements).

[Danubian]

mekaerwin wrote:

Not saying your wrong about how you play, but I don’t go after orcs until I’ve got two-handers farther along than the woodcutter ax. I’m definitely not an expert though.

Nah man. You can kill Young Orcs and Orc Berserkers with 6-8 crossbowmen EASILY. Just pick off the ones with worst weapons (berserkers first), then the young orcs with no shield/armor. and by the time they reach you, your melees just mop them up. You do however need shields, id say once your party is like level 3 or 4 you can handle youngs no problem, and you can do berskers unless the group is too large.

Now Orc Warriors, are tough sobs, they require a lot more work, thats pretty much end game content.

[Danubian]

mekaerwin wrote:

Don’t care if they give it as an option, but I do prefer the way it is. On a side note, what game doesn’t reward save scumming. Some try to stop it more than others, but all will reward you by getting to change your mistakes. Save scumming is always rewarding, that’s why you have to discipline yourself to not use it. If the devs change to suit you, good for you, but your post did come across as a bit demanding. Especially since no one could be truly said to be “forcing” you to waste your time. Also, what is “dumb” is very speculative and since I’ll wager the devs allowed it by design instead of accidentally, the comment probably isn’t very helpful to your case.

I did specifically address demanding in one of my replies not sure if you saw that. So i refute this claim about demanding as simply ad hominem.

If people want hardcore experience, they can play ironman, some of us dont – or rather at least i dont. If you have a feature that frustrates someone, and you can easily circumvent this feature, then this feature is poorly designed. Either change the feature or create an option to turn it off. You prefer the way it is, i dont. It frustrates me, needlessly. Im asking for something that removes frustration for me, and does nothing for you. To be quite honest i dont see what it is you lose here. Also note that i specified in another reply that im no pushing for any time table, or anything, just asking them to consider doing this.

gepardowaty wrote:

I like the fact that I don’t know stats of people who I’m hiring and there is that “random” factor.
If you’d show the stats of battle brothers, their professions become basicly a fluff noone would even care about, hiring the best guys out there.

If you want to min-max, savescum. This game is loosely inspired by UFO games, and even the nu-xcom ain’t showing soldier stats. That’s actually very good design choice for such game.

BUT, they could add some kind of option to evalute “talents” of some brothers. Maybe as tips from the Innkeeper? Lets say that there is Ulfric The Beast on your potential recruit list. You should have an option to ask the Innkeeper about him for a few gold coins, so he tells you what he might know “yadda yadda yadda, Ulfric is pretty strong and he mastered the sword, I tell ya!”
Or just more potential gossip about guys in a recruit list, so you might get an idea who’s a goldfish.

Sure why not, that sounds ok (in fact this could work pretty well specially after the new game start now that i think about it, pretty good idea).

[Danubian]

This is not a good thing, and i suspect more people will be extremely unhappy with it when they play some more and realize whats going on.

Ranged weapons are crucial for my strategy for example, and im really feeling the lack of their usability right now :(

[Danubian]

This is good question, can someone explain this to me as well.

If your target has a lot of armor, there are only 3 ways to kill them:

1.) use weapons that bypass armor
2.) kill the armor and then kill the hp
3.) score a head hit which causes a critical which harms hp if i understand it correctly?

Because i have always been unable to do much with crossbows on orc warriors. Like every 10th bolt would do something other than remove 1/20th of the armor.

[Danubian]

OldGreyBeard wrote:

RusBear wrote:

No, there is not the perks and how they have changed and there’s the fact that your “shooters” out of 6 gex to “miss” gets it in the back of team friend. this is not the perks – this is probably the new mechanics… I had guessed?

Well, re-balance was part of the update, so I expected a decrease in the punch of ranged weapons.

I’ve noticed that beginner ranged brothers are worse. Once I got the perk for reducing the effect of obstacles, my hit percentage jumped immensely, along with a marked decrease in “friendly fire”. I’ve been a “crossbow scummer” for a while, now. While I never did any studies of hit percentages, overall I haven’t noticed any huge difference once I get guys a little experienced. It’s not as nice as the “one-shot-drops-all” crossbowmen I had before the update, but they’re not bad.

I have a level 7 party with 2-4 crossbowmen (depending on situation) and 2 archers – all of whom are 60+ ranged now. And i have noticed a drop in hit rates at distance (before a 60+ ranged brother would hit vast majority of times at distance). But worst of all even when there are no other obstacles, but your brothers between you and your target, the game now seems to basically hit your bro’s backs waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more often than enemies. Which makes your crossbowmen effectively only usable first 2 rounds of the battle, as when the enemies make contact with your brothers, youll be hitting their backs more than enemies.

Now someone said “learn to move”.

Lets move the ranged characters, and waste damage per round, to get to a different position, only to still shoot at enemies who are locked in melee combat, and still hit your brothers like all the time. So no, thats not a viable thing.

Once all enemies have made contact with your bros, the usuability of ranged weapons drop to almost zero, and you might as well simply switch to a 2 tiles 2 handed support weapon.

So if you have a “dedicated” ranged brother, that is in practical sense, a waste of a character as you will be forced to switch to secondary.

This is a problem as this wasnt the case before.

[Danubian]

Bananenbaum wrote:

Your choice, but you cant “demand” something from the devs if you like to play the game in a way its not meant to be.
“I cheat in GTA for unlimited ammo, its more fun, so make it standard in the game so I dont waste time typing in the cheat code”
Ehhhh nope?

I dont feel like im entitled to anything – so im not demanding anything – but i do however, as a paying customer, feel im well within my rights to ask for something.

And specially if i make a case with arguments for that which im asking for.

And i feel i did that.

So im not asking them to change anything about how they want the game to be played, im asking for more options for people who like the game itself, but just dont like some aspects.

[Danubian]

OldGreyBeard wrote:

I hope you can get around the drawbacks, or that it fits in the game design to have the enable/disable option put in.

Exactly, i have no aspiration to change anything about the way you play the game. If you enjoy the RNG lottery, go for it. I would however like option to avoid being forced to waste time save scumming. And im pretty sure its not THAT hard to do it. Also im not pushing for this to be done right away, im ok with it whenever they can fit it in their development schedule.

[Danubian]

Bananenbaum wrote:

Prefer the way it is, you cant see stats before recruiting.
And dont save scam, its cheating

I can potentially spend 100+ hours with a single brother, its only rational to want to optimize their quality. As long as game rewards save scumming i will continue to do it. Thats the way this game is fun for me.

Also i dont understand some people who play this game.

What is this obsession with making everyone else play the same way you play? Like if you enjoy something miserable, like recruiting a shit brother with 17 resolve due to bad perks, then play the game that way. I dont enjoy that, and i wish to spend my time in a better way.

[Danubian]

OldGreyBeard wrote:

Funny, isn’t it. I’d whine loudly if they changed it to show stats at hiring!

Help me understand your position.

Im asking for an option to do something im already doing, only without wasting my time (generally not a good thing in game design).

Youre saying you dont like it.

So dont use it?

Whats your problem exactly?

Play ironman mode, or disable this in options. Problem solved.

[Danubian]

RusBear wrote:

and yes, by the way – I know the game is not for the casual gamers and so on… but i think chance of hitting by bow and crossbow in the back of team- brother should be at least lower than the enemy… it supposed, in theory, that the mercenary aims at all-still the enemy. .. I hope

Do you notice that ranged weapons hit your people way more often than before? Or is this just me? Its like with 60%+ hit with crossbow, 3 out 4 times ill hit my brother instead of enemy…

[Danubian]

Im not a big fan of injuries system to be quite honest. It adds very little. You debuff my brothers, and simple force me to go to a temple and waste money, or to keep reserve brothers on rotation. Meh.

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