Sekata

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@Djxput

Glad to have you on the Forum!

Most of the things in-game are reasonable. I expect to take losses against 4+ Orc Warriors when I take a mission to kill them, but I’m with you on necrosavant generation. The rewards for killing them are never proportional to the damage taken by your band either.

I play my games for the fun and challenge, but I’m a bit torn about Iron Man in BB. At the moment it feels balanced for overwhelming punishment rather than gameplay that rewards tactical world map decisions. Half of the good choices are drowned in bad rng quest twists and bad combat rolls.

For example, I really wish the enemy weapon generation was a bit more tweaked. Fighting a group of bandit raiders with full chainmails/shields and 2-3 pikemen is not the same as fighting some with leather armor and weapons only. A marksman with a crossbow is way more dangerous than a marksman with a bow. I’m under the impression that the game takes the designation “Bandit raider” and randomly generates equipment with no restriction placed on the number of more dangerous weapons or effective armor generated.

There are meaningful designations. Hedge knights always have heavy armor, Fallen heroes pose a predictable amount of danger. There’s no question about what weapon a swordmaster or necrosavant will be using. Even undead legionares are predictably a mix of pikemen and shieldbearers. Just way too much variation in bandit raiders/marksmen and that can be a death sentence in early game quests. On the spectrum of gambling vs gaming, BB leans a bit too far towards the former to be save scum immune imo.

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1. The first crisis seems to begin around day 100 if it’s the war, and 75 if it’s the greenskin crisis or undead invasion. In my playthroughs, the next crisis seems to begin the same amount of days after the first since the beginning of the previous crisis. Could be wrong about that one.

2. I do believe there was a stat tweaking a while back, but I can’t swear on it. You might want to check the blog history. I want to say high stats were reigned in, but sometimes I can still hire a good militiaman with high melee or ranged skill.

3. Only good way to fight these bastards is to have a very high level sergeant with “Rally The Troops”, or a soldier with the anti-fear undead trinket. You can get that item by completing the Destroy Undead Locations ambition, but it makes the brother wearing it immune to fear effects. While your front line engages and distracts, you send him to destroy the geists. Ideally, it’s a brother built to fight solo, since there’s the chance that he’ll be intercepted by other enemies. I’ve seen people mention range as an alternative, but geists have unreal defensive stats against ranged attacks.

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Did not end well. I spent all my money at the temple and didn’t have the extra coin to recruit or pay brothers. I think you have a greater tolerance than me. Even when I do play Iron Man, I tend to avoid conflicts that I’m not sure I can trounce. I prefer to hold all of the cards, which isn’t entirely realistic, especially in a game as rng heavy as bb. By the time I usually opt to take on orcs in large numbers, at least 4/6 front line brothers are levels 8-11.

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mrbunnyban wrote:

Just another reason why I do not play iron man. :P

I wish I could disagree with you. BB has a high level of polish, but I don’t think it’s tuned well enough that being save scummy isn’t justified. Playing BB could quickly become an exercise in absolute frustration otherwise. I’m still going to goof around with Iron Man playthroughs, but I feel 0 guilt reloading a save in a normal playthrough. Iron Man with the current tuning of enemy army spawns and the end-game crisis is really just for players who have the tolerance for the worst of the worst punishment.

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Svaala wrote:

1. Mercenaries are indeed good at killing, but they do it for a reason (yes, coins :p). I mean, it’d be nice to have different combat scenarios available.

3. Don’t get me wrong, I love the combat system – otherwise I wouldn’t be playing this game! I just think the available tactics could be a bit more varied. For example, I was mentioning a ranged combat group: I feel this is very hard to do right now, at least in early-mid game (I don’t have max level guys so I don’t know what kind of perks lie ahead). I wish wearing light armor would make me faster and more agile than someone in a heavy armor, so I could actually stay at a distance and land some shots. At the moment, a heavy armor doesn’t make you slower, it only reduces your max fatigue, so it’s easy to catch up with a ranged fighter that’s wasting APs on shooting at you instead of moving.

I think one thing that would add a lot of diversity would be to add active skills on chest armors. For example, a very light armor could give you a skill that allows you to move 1 tile for 0 AP and a bit of fatigue, or a skill that allows you to walk out of a control zone with a slight dodge bonus. Medium armors could be meant for high damage melee fighters without a shield, giving a dodge stance skill or a charge skill. Heavy armors could give various tanking skills.

Adding an extra skill on the chest armor pieces would allow for quite a bit of specialization and add plenty of options in combat – new ways to spend your APs, i.e. new tactics.

Sorry if it’s a terrible idea, I’m just making it up as I go :)

I wouldn’t call it a bad idea. Most of the more complex tactics are just about impossible at lower levels. That much I’ll admit. Higher level brothers could be made into competent skirmishers with a combination of pathfinder and footwork. Specing in dagger proficiency and getting nimble can make a light armored brother extremely deadly to a knight. But again, most of those more complicated builds are gated behind levels. The veterans hall is nice, but I don’t find it sufficient for quick training. Maybe we’ll see more in the future, but a lot is up in the air. The devs will be taking a break shortly based on the blog, and may or may not be able to continue development.

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Hello!

1. There are not a great deal of combat variations in the game at the moment, but there actually are protection missions in the way of caravan quests, but for the most part that’s a reasonable critique. You are managing a band of mercenaries though, mercenaries are awfully good at killing.

2. There are region specific events in game. You do consume more food and move slower while in difficult terrain (swamp, forest, mountains) and there are events for each of these land types.

3. I have no comment on this one. I’m fairly satisfied with the combat myself. What exactly would you be looking for in-game to address this?

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Guis, we’re all friends here.

But sure, forests are dangerous. I usually try to avoid them, but the terrain generation made that incredibly difficult. I usually expect to be jumped by a pack of werewolves, an army of bandits or ghouls. I take exception when the game thinks it’s appropriate to spawn an end-game enemy in a relatively large group for the enemy type on day 39.

The devs have a passionate community of free beta testers. If they wanted they could aggregate saves from the forum during certain days to get a good feel for typical progress and balance accordingly. I’m absolutely not the best BB player. I’m probably not even good. But 5 necrosavants on day 39 just seems bad outside of any sort of quest/reward loop.

Admittedly, I do also favor gameplay over realism. Realistically no one recovers well from a broken knee cap, or a deep abdominal cut in a similar time period and the whole company has died of dysentery and infection. Also, no mention of water or clean supply. These are gameplay design decisions, and are made to prevent the management part of gameplay from becoming tedious.

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hruza wrote:

Btw.: where did it happen, in what part of the map? Further you venture away from roads and settlements, the more dangerous “wildlife” you can meet.

Map generated a few settlements on the coast in a heavily wooded northern area, just shy of snow. It was on the road in between settlements.

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@hruza

Fair enough. I think a lot of it boils down to opinions of game design. The “Sometimes you’re just screwed” philosophy is definitely true to life, but I don’t particularly like it in my video games. If I want to gamble, I’ll play the slots or back an early access title from a less capable developer. If I’m feeling really adventurous, I’ll eat a sandwich from a truck stop vending machine. I’m all for games heavily punishing the player for making bad mistakes or not understanding the mechanics. I’ve got more of an issue with a many hours investment in a title turning sour because of fickle RNG gods. To your point, no. It was a one time only occurrence.

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You might enjoy The Black Company, which is a series of books by Glenn Cook. If I’m not mistaken he was mentioned as a source of inspiration by the devs (citation needed). I know there’s a black company reference in game in the form of a competing band called the black company.

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Though if I’m being fair, for every thing driving me nuts in this game there are 3 others I absolutely love.

IF I had been told several patches ago that ghoul type enemies could actually be made threatening, I would have laughed. Great mechanic/visual redesign.

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I would be fine if comments showed that the posts being responded to were actually read. It should be somewhat obvious that I’m not new to the game or the forum. I’ve been playing since before armor was more than just a second health bar, and haunting the forums for just as long. Pretty sure you’ve been here for about the same time Namespace.

Understanding that I comprehend the basic aspects of the game are as easy as reading the complaints or even clicking my name and checking forum history if there is any doubt. The game is great. That doesn’t mean that it’s perfect and couldn’t stand for some further tweaking. Maybe I’m mis-remembering, but i’m about 80% sure that I was escaping over plains when caught the first time, and the second time they were chasing was on forested road. Again though, it’s not even just the necrosavants that have rustled my jimmies so thoroughly.

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@hruza Not entirely sure how to get the point across that I’m aware of all of this.

I’m familiar with formation, it’s one of the most basic aspects of the game. Being ambushed (engaged by a bandit/hostile party) in the swamp or forest completely overrides any pre-configured formation you have. Instead the map generates brothers and attackers in a random scatter around the donkey carts.

I love the fact that the game does not hold you by the hand. Yes, you have to choose your battles. I’ve pointed out as much in other threads. Retreating is an option and i’m fully aware of how to do it properly. So tell me, when necrosavants are faster than my party on the worldmap, and they have the highest mobility in-combat of any mob in the game, how exactly do I retreat without taking some form of loss? I saw the party and did not choose to engage. I immediately moved in the opposite direction and was overtaken. My question is why is a party of necrosavants with such high world map speed randomly generated at all in the mid-game? There are very few enemies that can outrun you sure. But there’s not a damn thing that can outrun a necrosavant, let alone 5.

Losses are inevitable. I can live with that. I’m just not convinced that certain aspects of the game are fine tuned well enough that all loses are adequately earned. There have been plenty of times where I haven’t paid attention and forgot to replace a broken shield, or made a bad positioning move on the map. High level brothers died and I earned them. That’s not my issue. My issue is the aspects of the game that punish you for nothing in the name of challenging experience. Combat is difficult enough without the extra help in the way of events and insufficient information from quest givers.

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laViper wrote:

Sekata, it is “Open World” and Game doesn’t have any borders – sometimes you can jump into hole :)
This problem is lack of information, you didn’t know how Necrosavants strong are. You should explore game on beginner difficulty level, and after that game gives you interesting part of playing – estimation power of your and emenys troop.

Now I play Expert-Ironman, I had a lot trys ended before 10th day came, but it’s very unbelieveable when you have to run from strong enemy for allies, escape from battle and think twice before attack.

@laViper Thank you for that. I guess I just don’t understand anything. I only have 500+ hours in the game at this point.

I’ve played through several setbacks like this one, but it’s only so many times I can pretend like it’s a perfectly fine feature of the game.

This critique does not come from the place of a new player being frustrated that they don’t understand the mechanics. I’ve done veteran Iron Man play-throughs that went up to day 400 (end game crisis off admittedly). I’ve done non-iron man play-throuhgs and gone through the end-game crisis events repeatedly. I’ve tried just about every conceivable build combination with the perk system, and experimented with different aspects of the game. I’m playing through now to figure out the most effective starting game strategy to be ready to handle the end-game crisis consistently.

I did not attack the necrosavants. I knew that it was a fight I wanted to avoid, and they caught me on the worldmap as I ran in the opposite direction. Almost twice. I mention that in the original post.

I want to be able to defend this game for some design choices, and I’ve done just that on different threads. The difficulty scaling is far from perfect, or at the very least, information on difficulty calculation is lacking. The game needs an official guide. I appreciate your reply, but I could do without the condescension.

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Rap wrote:

Difficulty of contracts, non-contract locations and roaming parties scales differently. Contract difficulty scales with time, the strength of your roster, the difficulty rating (skulls), the type of contract, and some factors specific to the type of contract – for example, escort contracts are generally more difficult the longer you travel, as it increases the chance to run into enemies. Contract reward also scales with the difficulty rating (skulls) of contracts, which is why it offers some indication as to the contract difficulty.

Artificially stunting your renown growth will only have you earn less money for contracts, but it won’t make them any easier.

Thanks for the clear answer.

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