GOD

[GOD]

With a debuff to melee and defence skill you’d get into weird situations though, like wanting to ping pong the enemy to another merc when you’re trying to make them easier to hit. Or having to chase down the enemies you hit away when you want to exploit their weakened defences. As a result, the enemy being moved away actually becomes a disadvantage, as its the debuff that you want and the movement only makes it harder to make the most of their temporary weakness.
I also personally dislike flat debuffs to stats, since they only slightly tweak an exisiting option rather than adding new ways of dealing with an enemy.

Sekata wrote:

My mistake. The skill is useful, but I wouldn’t touch the perk with a 10 foot pole.

Pretty much. It’s just not worth a perk point at the moment, since there are better perks to take if you want to reach tier 2 and it doesn’t have a niche of its own that still makes it useful.

[GOD]

In order to safely retreat from combat, your units need to reach the border of the screen. Anyone who is not on the border is left behind and dies.

You can cancel contracts/quests. There are currently no downsides to doing that, but reputation penalties are a future deterrent to repeatedly doing it.

The difficulty with giving the player cavalry is that they don’t easily slot into the combat, mechanical or art wise. Some mounted units are planned for the Goblin faction (wolfriders), but those will be nowhere near the size and power of actual cavalry.

Ships and sailing might get picked for a hypothetical expansion. So that’s a maybe, but in no way a certainty. ;)

–

It doesn’t? I’ve heard something like that before. You should check the bug section or post in it for advise. They can help you if you add some documentation on what goes wrong.

1 It’s more about them not fitting smoothly into the gameplay and art design, because there is no equivalent to compare them to. They just don’t mesh well with kind of combat that they have now.

10 That’s pretty much what I meant actually. Modding the game, by switching the properties of an AI controlled company with those of a player company from a different save file. Should be easy enough to figure out once people start fiddling around with the finished game. :)

[GOD]

A fellow demo player, I presume? ;) The Early Access has a expanded a lot on it already and it’s quite stable already.

1 War dogs are planned. Cavalry probably not.

2 Companions will probably do this.

3 They might add more animations eventually, but they take a lot of time without really enhancing the gameplay so we probably won’t see that much.

4 Javelins are already in. We might see more throwing weapons eventually, but that’s still unclear. The francesca could be appropriate, if they go for it.

5 The camping mechanics haven’t been clarified, but temporary fortifications for when you’re camping is something I could see happening.

6 I don’t think we’ll see specialisations for the company itself, though you might see a mechanical equivalent in the companions that you’ll be able to hire.

7 More complex quests will get implemented. I recall there being an example of having to escort a noble (who you’ll be able to control). Not sure whether your examples are planned, though.

8 They sort of have already, but we’ll probably see the event system expand on this as we’ll also see more named npcs.

10 No multiplayer is planned, so there’ll be no servers to handle that kind of thing. That seems like something you could do with mods, though – upload save file and switch a company with the player company.

[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.

[GOD]

The regular ability is great. The perk from the utility tree, however, is not currently worth taking. That’s the one I’m talking about. It’s a bit confusing, because we all tend to call the knock back skill shield bash as well.

[GOD]

Yup, my suggestion is to apply this change to the shield bash perk in order to make it more viable, since it’s not very useful right now. It seems strong enough of a boon to make it worth using, while weak enough not to conflict with stun or requiring the perk to become tier 2.

[GOD]

There’s still approximately 11 months of early access to go (or maybe even longer), so quite a bit of content will still get added. ;) Stuff like the actual end-game, event system, deeper quest system and legendary items all haven’t been implemented yet. There are also loads of details that will get tweaked or put in to as time passes – like the goblin faction, dungeon locations, improved AI, etc.
Early Access has so far mostly been focused on doing bug fixes, but I think that we’ll eventually see the number of updates decrease and in turn see more content get added.

[GOD]

You’re right, that would still make it too good if you could effectively stun an opponent by keeping them drained of AP. I think a solution to that would be to lower the AP damage, like having it do 2 AP or 1 AP damage rather than 4. With 2 AP damage, it’s like you knock the unit back an extra step, without the positional advantage of actually knocking someone back by two steps. A stagger, rather than stun. With 1 AP damage, it’s more like you throw them off-balance and keep them from going all-out. I don’t have the numbers ready, but I imagine that 1 AP would mostly kick in to keep enemies from swinging big weapons or using multiple abilities, which would translate to the enemy their edge being slightly dulled without losing their lethality. By comparison, a full stun guarantees that the enemy won’t be able to do anything and under certain circumstances can slow them down in their next turn. With differences like that, the AP damage of the shield bash perk would serve a very different purpose compared to that the stun of a bludgeoning weapon.

Could that I’m still overlooking something, though. Thoughts?

[GOD]

This actually made me think of an earlier discussion we had regarding the shield bash perk and how it is currently rather weak. A buff to it that would be both thematic and useful would be have the perk add stun to the shield bash. However, the issue was that this might infringe on the niche of stun weapons. So, supposing that this idea gets implemented, how about if the shield bash perk made it so that shield bash did a partial stun? So, rather than the full 9 AP, it could do 3, 4 or 5 AP damage. A kind of mini-stun, if you will. It’s weaker than a regular stun, but still useful even when it doesn’t succeed in ending the target its turn since it does slow them down.

guidon101 wrote:

No worries, GOD! To err is human :)

Blasphemy!

[GOD]

Woopsie. Yeah, that’s what I actually meant. I probably mistook the ‘spend’ for the actual AP pool in my head. All-nighters takin’ their toll. ;)

Rap wrote:

Not a bad idea at all.

Good to hear. I’ve been trying to think of anything obvious that I was missing that this would break, but it seems like a fairly decent solution.

[GOD]

Just a thought, but you could work around this exploit by essentially having stun do 9 AP of transferable stun damage to the target. For this to work, ending your turn has to count as the unit having full AP again. This would mean that a stun against a unit with full AP works exactly as it does now – they skip their next turn. Similarly, a unit that decided to wait but still has full AP, would just skip that turn like they do now. However, if the unit has decided to wait but spent AP, then the amount of AP damage that remains after being deducted from their AP pool would transfer to the next turn. As a result, you can’t casually use the wait command as a buffer against stuns, because you’ll be hindering yourself in the turn that follows.

For example. A units spends 4 AP and waits. That unit then gets stunned. The turn they were about to receive is skipped and 4 AP is deducted from the AP pool of their next turn.

EDIT: Sleep deprived math error. Embarrassing.

[GOD]

Every miss serves a greater purpose in my design for you. So it is that a miss makes you value what you have, while a hit makes you value what you gain. ;)

Oh, I was agreeing with you about the wildly different experiences. I just feel like wildly different experiences and opinions are a good thing, since it means that the game allows for many different valid approaches. In contrast, chess has a lot of certain outcomes that you can study, hence the joke. Don’t get me wrong. I like chess, but it has a different kind of appeal.

As for the sacrifices, I agree on that being more of a strategy game tactic, but that’s precisely why I mentioned it. It’s just as valid as tactic here as in an those games, but each individual brother represents a sizeable investment on the part of player. As a result, whether you employ tactics like that depends on the circumstances and your playstyle. If you do, you’ll have to deal with the consequences. If you don’t you’ll have to alter your approach. I like how the game allows for differences in playstyle in such an organic manner, as result of using strategy game tactics (pinning) in an RPG setting.

Yeah, the AI trying to save its own troops a bit more is the kind of thing that I was talking about. Stuff like using their abilities more to stop you from ganging up on a single enemy – when relevant to the faction, of course.

Rap wrote:

If you’re interested, I’d really like to know what you have in mind here in terms of situations the AI should make better use of their skills. Perhaps in another thread?

No problem, I’ll make a thread about it for discussion. I’d like to note though that I’ve been really pleased so far with all the AI tweaks you’ve done (like the recent spearwall change), so my first suggestion is just keep going in that direction.

[GOD]

I haven’t played Pillars of Eternity yet (waiting for the expansions ;) ) but from what I know the game is not comparable to Battle Brothers. Part of this is because it has real time with pause and lacks a grid system like Battle Brothers, meaning that you have much more mobility and speed. As a result of this, factors that limit this mobility stand out more, since they contrast with the expectations that the previous freedom created. Battle Brothers does not have this problem, since it is clearly turn-based and there is a distinct divide between the strategic map and the tactical map. Another important difference is that Pillars of Eternity is heroic fantasy with long term party members. This means that you are not supposed to let your party members die, so you’ll never be inclined to sacrifice troops for tactical purposes. A party member getting ganked is therefore a big deal. This is not the case in Battle Brothers, where you can send a mercenary to his intended death in order to gain a tactical advantage (like tying down the enemy flank on his own, so that you can roll up the other flank more easily).

Furthermore, even without perks you have plenty of ways of disengaging in the early game. In fact, the most used item in the game comes specifically with two disengagement abilities. That being shield bash and shieldwall, which offer different odds and different ways of disengaging. You can also stun, pull or just kill, to name a few others. It has never been unreasonably difficult at any point in the game to disengage. There is therefore no real need to make it even easier and doing so would mean sacrificing more than just memorable moments. You also remove tactical depth, like I have outlined above, and diminish the flavour of the game in return for something that you can already do.

I also think people are overstating the lack of realism in multiple retaliations. A quick slash or stab when someone tries to get away is almost a reflex and barely takes effort. It’s a reasonable abstraction of how fights go, seeing as it is something that people instinctively do. An attack like that is also much easier to do than to attack a readied opponent and it’s really effective at keeping someone from getting away, so you could even argue for buffing them up. However, that would make death almost a certainty when retreating, even with a single disengagement attack, so I’d rather not see that. On the other hand, it seems strange to me to at first accept that everyone’s waiting their turn as people move around and attack, but think it is unrealistic when several units get slashed as they try to flee – because now the mental image shifts to them fleeing at the same time, rather than actions happening in sequence.
Granted, I would like to see the AI make better use of the different perks and abilities in order to reposition themselves. They already do to some degree, but I think this is an area where improvement can still be made.

As for the bandit, an outmatched enemy picking a fight with your bros isn’t related to the zone of control system and actually has to do with how the enemy cannot currently flee the battle. As a result of that, the choice is to either have him continuously run a way until you catch him (assuming he has no ranged weapons), or have him engage and finish the fight already.

Guidon – the randomness really adds a lot to the replayability. If I wanted to know the outcome of a match beforehand, I’d go back to memorising chess moves. :P

Sal – situations like that are why I like the disengagement system. There’s also the tense choice you have there of hoping the Orc misses and waiting for help, trying to hit the Orc and killing him, or gambling on the disengaging and the Orc missing. None of the factors at play are a certainty, which makes your choice there much more meaningful as there isn’t always an ideal solution.

[GOD]

Haha, it was actually mostly just really cool, since my playstyle involves frequent casualties anyway. :P I play with a dedicated group of berserkers, acquired through seeing which recruits survive charging straight into enemy lines with two-handers.

These kind of unit divergences are some of the best details in the game. An enemy that is powerful, but only powerful under certain circumstances really keeps you on your toes. It’s why I’m happy that a part of how they balance things is through tweaking AI behaviour. I’m hoping we see some slight tweaks with the berserker AI though, so that players get to see that aspect of their design more often. If I’m remembering correctly, they get increased damage, resolve, initiative and damage resistance for every kill. The amount depends on the number of kills and each turn they lose some of it. They also have the berserker perk, so they regain AP, too. They’d be pretty fearsome if they made the most of that.

[GOD]

Like you say, a lot of what seems random is because you have to get used to the mechanics.It’s not that the game is random, but that it requires a different kind of playstyle compared to most other games. That is what it makes it special, though, so rather than make the beginning easier it would be better to have the start menu point starting players more clearly towards the scenarios. Those are actually closer to tutorials, rather than side-missions, as they help you get used to the combat under controlled circumstances. I noticed that this really helped me get into the game easier, as it made it obvious what I was doing wrong and how to improve on it. That’s harder to do when you keep getting thrown into different situations, while you don’t understand the basic mechanics yet. If you’re still having trouble, I’d recommend giving them a spin and seeing how you like them.

It might be helpful to know though that a deployment phase is planned, so that you can rearrange the position of your mercenaries at the start of combat, unless you get ambushed of course.

This thread and this thread also contain a lot of helpful tips that might help you get used to some of the more difficult aspects of the game. :)

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