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RapKeymasterThe flee mechanic is something we’re still discussing from time to time. At last count, characters should be able to flee and leave the battlefield on their own. That may still change, however.
As for your suggestion, we consider a character fleeing also as one panicking and unable to act rationally. If he’s not moving, he may be frozen or cowering. Having surrounded characters be able to fight normally would make them essentially immune to the key effect of morale and grant them a considerable benefit for being surrounded. We do have characters that will fight to the death, and the player can influence this to a large degree with a level-up strategy that focusses on bravery and perks relating to morale, but it won’t be a result of just being surrounded.
RapKeymasterRapKeymasterIt took me forever with the trailer and Greenlight going on and all, but here we go, the first blog post talking about the AI. The article is a basic introduction that only touches on the subject, but I believe that this is what most of our readers need for a start. I didn’t get down to spatial decisions, but that’s a topic for a possible followup article if there’s still enough interest.
22. September 2014 at 18:28 in reply to: Letting the community help out with contract Ideas (futher up the road) #1147RapKeymasterGreat idea, we’d love to have the community help us out with ideas for contracts. I’m sure you guys have some great concepts we won’t think off. Like you said, we’d have to draw up some rules and lore-guidelines for this first, though.
To avoid repetition as good as we can, the text part of contracts is actually modular as well. I don’t have an example from a contract yet, but here’s one from the “Adventurous Noble” background story, which works much the same way. The story is randomly put together from a series of parts so that not every adventurous noble will have the exact same story.
{A minor noble | As the third in the line of succession | A young and brash noble | A skilled swordsman}, %name%’s life at court {has grown stale for him | is not exciting enough for him with endless studying of court etiquette and history of lineage | feels like wasting the best time of his life to him}. {Wearing his family’s crest proudly | At the encouragement of his brother | To the frustration of his mother | Finally making a decision to change things}, %name% rode out to {prove himself | make a name for himself | earn glory on the battlefield | test his skills in battle} and {live life | see the world | earn his place in the world | earn the title of Knight by his valor}.
Could produce, for example:
As the third in the line of succession, Ragnar’s life at court feels like wasting the best time of his life to him. To the frustration of his mother, Ragnar rode out to make a name for himself and earn his place in the world.
or
A young and brash noble, Bjarne’s life at court is not exciting enough for him with endless studying of court etiquette and history of lineage. Wearing his family’s crest proudly, Bjarne rode out to test his skills in battle and see the world.
They’re still similar, of course, but if we have enough time those (and, of course, contracts) could be made even more varied. We’ll do a more official announcement to include you guys on this once we’re further up into development of the worldmap and are ready to implement all the contracts. I believe we could then also give out a free game key or two for the best contract concepts as a thank you for all your effort.
RapKeymasterWelcome to the forums!
As individual Battle Brothers gain more experience there are ways to specialize them to take up the role of a leader. For example, the “Captain” perk adds a percentage of the character’s own bravery to that of allies nearby. A particularly brave character with this perk can then keep his troops fighting and prevent them from panicking and fleeing in close battles. This could be especially useful against opponents such as Lost Souls who rely on fear as their main tool. A similar perk is “Inspiring Presence” which increases the combat effectiveness of nearby allies. In addition, we’ll have a few accessory items that befit a leader, such as a battle horn with which to rally fleeing troops.
We’ll probably have the player start out with a handful of Battle Brothers, one of which is a little more experienced, mostly for flavor. However, you don’t necessarily need an established leader character on the battlefield, it’s just one way to go about it. And one that, while offering clear benefits, may also leave you much more vulnerable if you happen to lose that single character that everyone else depends on. These characters could be regarded as your lieutenants; the real leader, you yourself, is leading from behind the scenes and is not represented by a character and therefore also cannot die. Though you’re free to rename any character to your own name, level him up and equip him to your liking, and generally give him the attention you would give your own character in a game, if you prefer.
RapKeymasterGlad to hear there isn’t a problem with characters being skipped afterall. With the new morale system it should be more of a gradual process until a character flees, and a change in morale status should be more visible due to a status effect icon dropping on the head. Although we didn’t change the size of the white flag at the character busts, it should be easy now to pick up the fact that someone is panicking and attempting to flee. Also, Battle Brothers will soon shout in panic as they’re fleeing.
RapKeymasterYeah, the problem is the AI waiting for the camera to focus it, while the camera can stall sometimes when you move it while it attempts to focus an enemy whose turn just started. Shouldn’t happen, of course – I’ll see to it that the camera can’t be moved manually in these situations. Like you said, getting the enemy in question inside the screen – either by clicking him in the action queue or moving the camera manually – should solve this issue for the time being if you encounter it again.
Edit: Fixed for the next version.
RapKeymasterRapKeymasterRapKeymasterThank you for your feedback and support. I agree with you completely. However, be safe in the knowledge that an ingame menu simply didn’t make it into the demo. We’ll have one working as can be expected when pressing Esc in the full game, allowing for loading, saving and changing options. With only separate missions, no worldmap and no way to load or save in the demo we didn’t consider an ingame menu a necessity at the time, although in retrospect I suppose we could have added a placeholder confirmation box when pressing Esc.
The UI as a whole is still subject to change. Only recently did we redo the layout of the character and inventory screen, and it’s quite possible other things will change as well as long as we’re still tinkering with game mechanics. The UI also only has a placeholder look for now (although quite many people seem to mistake it for a final one); only after we’re sure that the UI is finalized will we go on to skin it and give it a look matching the setting and contributing to the medieval/mercenary atmosphere.
Nevertheless, if you noticed other inconsistencies, please do let us know (:
RapKeymasterShadow of the Horned Rat, yeah! Just the other day I was saying elsewhere how that game is my personal inspiration for Battle Brothers. It’s one of my all-time favorites which I still regularly play. While it has a different scope with its regiments and plays quite different in battle, of course, for me it really nailed that grim mercenary atmosphere of working contracts for coin and travelling the land in an entertaining way. It’s something I’d like to achieve with Battle Brothers as well, even though we won’t have a linear campaign like Shadow of the Horned Rat does. Playing it over the years really made me wish for it to have an open world, though; for me to be able to decide where the company goes next and what contracts to take. And that’s what Battle Brothers will allow you to do. It’ll be hard to compete with a linearly scripted campaign in terms of atmosphere and pacing, obviously, but we’ll do our best to present contracts in a non-generic way and to provide ample opportunities in an open world for those who want to explore on their own.
As I played Mount & Blade I was constantly thinking of Shadow of the Horned Rat as well, but it never really clicked atmosphere-wise for me personally. Like you said, it may not have had enough focus on the group itself. Also, while I enjoyed the battles, the world felt kind of empty and directionless, and what you did therein somewhat inconsequential. I haven’t played the Warhammer Fantasy mod for it, though, so perhaps that would take me back to the Grudgebringer days more.
Regarding the Fallen Heroes, there are no hidden mechanics going on in the background. Like all skeletons they take reduced damage from ranged attacks, but if the tooltip claims an 80% hitchance, the hitchance really is 80%. It can feel baffling to still miss several times in a row, unlikely as it is, but that’s chance for you. I’ve read that the new XCOM, at least on lower difficulty levels, secretly increases the hitchance if the player misses several times in a row to avoid these incidents, even though it is technically loaded dice in the player’s favor. We decided not to do this for now.
Thanks for your support and the encouraging words!
RapKeymasterIt’s been my experience as well that having armor upwards of mail shirts is a winning proposition in the Line Battle scenario of the combat demo. Armor definately is very important for prolonged melee engagements as characters can die from as much as a single good hit otherwise. In principle, this is working as designed. However, as I see it, four things should make just piling on heavy armor not be the straight forward winning formula for every battle in the full game;
1) Heavy armor decreases maximum fatigue and thereby how often special skills can be employed in battle (like Spearwall and Split Shield); engagements can be won without these, but they provide a lot of tactical flexibility. Ideally, their use should be more valuable in many situations than just duking it out with a lot of armor on. If that isn’t the case, it’s something we should do more balancing work on (like increasing fatigue penalties further).
2) Heavy armor won’t be as readily available in the full game as it is in the demo; it will be expensive to buy and somewhat rare to get your hands on the heaviest of armors. Heaving a full team of heavily armored Battle Brothers is more of a late game option.
3) We did a rework of how weapons work against armor (described in an earlier blogpost here) since the demo. While some weapons are even less effective against heavy armor now (e.g. wooden clubs), two-handed weapons and maces do extra damage to armor, and the warhammer is a weapon specifically designed to counter armor. With the “Crush Armor” skill it inflicts up to 400% damage to armor (though the base damage is lower than that of a sword, making it less suited against lightly armored opponents), making short work of it. This gives both the player and the AI some tools to counter heavy-armor opposition; Skeletons already make use of warhammers and try to target heavily armored Battle Brothers, and other opponents able to wield weapons will do so as well.
4) We’ll have a few opponents against which armor is entirely useless. For example, the recently introduced Lost Soul (described in a blogpost here) using its “Ghastly Touch” attack completely ignores armor and attacks hitpoints directly.
As for lightly armored combatants engaging in melee, making good use of Shieldwall is vital. As will be increasing the melee defense stat on levelup and choosing some defensive perks, such as Shield Expert, which increases the effectiveness of shields and Shieldwall further.
If you have any more thoughts on this or other balancing issues, we’d love to hear them!
RapKeymasterThank you both!
We do already show a kind-of-animated white swing effect for most of the skills – perhaps they’re not visible enough? I guess we could also wiggle the weapons a bit on the characters, Prison Architect style, if you think that’d help – although some enemies don’t carry weapons (e.g. werewolves, ghouls). I can play around a bit with that over the weekend and see how it feels.
Regarding decals sticking around, though, I’m not sure what you mean. What decals we have (blood on ground and weapons, bones on the ground) do stick around forever.
RapKeymasterThank you for the encouragement! I really enjoy reading those stories about how you guys are playing the game. Reminds me why I work on it ;)
The combat log could maybe use a bit more detail. I once had a Brother get insta-gibbed when I was fairly sure he had almost full hp/armor but all the log said was that Widerich had been killed.
The combat log in the demo feels a bit halfhearted I suppose, but we’ve since added more information and will continue to do so. We may also introduce some filtering options so that the spam doesn’t get out of control. Very important for us, though, is that reading the combat log should never be required for playing the game. All essential information should be accessible from reading the action itself and the log is merely an optional way for people to read up on more detail if they are so inclined – hence also its non-prominent position in the top left corner.
In the final mission one of the Vampire’s graphic was replaced by a black vampire-shaped outline for the duration of combat. I didn’t think to take a screenie at the time.
Yikes. I’ll look into it. Seems to be a rare bug.
I really liked the Billhook. The pull ability was quite situational and difficult to set up but I did manage to setup a sweet triple-hit for my two-hander guy with it as well as save an archer’s life once. I think it would be neat if a pulled enemy was slightly easier to hit for a turn by being disoriented after stumbling forward.
Being pulled (or for that matter, knocked back) is already quite powerful because it also cancels skill effects like shieldwall, spearwall and riposte. Riposte isn’t used by enemies currently, but that’s only because I felt it didn’t really fit skeletons lore-wise and didn’t synergize with vampire tactics at all. Other enemy types will make use of it when surrounded.
Status effects like the stun. I’m sure you have more to come. I think they add some nice depth to your tactical options and give prolonged use to weapons that have less base damage.
We’ll definately have more status effects later on. For example, being blinded or rooted. Some of those will be exclusive to enemies and some can be employed by Battle Brothers as well, if only via rare magical items.
Was it just my imagination or do club weapons do more damage on the Skellingtons?
Just your imagination, I’m afraid. Skeletons are more resistant to ranged weapons but take the same damage from all melee weapons. Not in the combat demo you’ve played, but in the current build, skeletons of the armored variety (like skeleton guards and fallen heroes) are easier to beat with club weapons, though, because those are more effective against armor and do increased damage to it (but not to their hitpoints).
I’m hoping you are thinking of allowing certain Brothers to dual-wield things like small axes. Unrealistic perhaps but loads of fun!
We had quite a long debate about this but ultimately decided against dual-wielding. First, like you said, it’s not a realistic fighting style on the battlefield – though admittedly that may seem kind of an arbitrary reason in a world where undead roam. More importantly, though, we also didn’t find a way to integrate this in a satisfying way with our skill based system. What we’ll have instead will be a few offhand items that provide utility. From the obvious one, shields, to things like throwing nets that goblins like to use (and that apply a rooted status effect).
I read somewhere that you were planning on adding some more info in the tool-tips for enemies such as the abilties they have. In a way I kind of like the fact that exact enemy hp numbers are not displayed. It’s refreshing since most games will give exact numbers but sometimes it’s nice to have to use memory and logic to know how hardy an enemy is.
Yeah, we want to have a small popup window with a paragraph describing the enemy and listing their status effects and passive skills. Currently, you see status effect icons dropping on enemies (e.g. enrage on zombies) and have no idea what they actually mean. And this is only going to get worse as we intoduce more enemy types, status effects and passive skills. We feel that the player is left in the dark here a bit too much.
That said, we won’t give out actual numbers for things like hitpoints and will continue to only show relative values as is. We decided early on that fighting enemies shouldn’t be about numbers and min-maxing, and that enemies would feel less like a bunch of stats but more of an opponent you can never really be sure about by hiding the numbers. It already worked well for the original X-Com and gave more mystery to the aliens, in my opinion.
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