Sekata

[Sekata]

laViper wrote:

As our wiki says – difficulty scales prices in towns, first money/tools/food and size of enemy bands, and amount bands/camps on map.

This is not what’s being asked. OP’s question is not about difficulty chosen at the beginning of the game, which your answer explains. The question is, what in-game factors cause the world and enemy armies to become more dangerous.

[Sekata]

There kind of is one now that I think about it. Avoiding fulfilling ambitions can keep renown from jumping too quickly and in theory should slow the difficulty scale of the game from ramping up.

[Sekata]

Started a new playthrough and I’m not so sure it’s all that bad. Spears are cheap and using spear guys on the edges and reinforced flail guys in the center of the formation makes human enemies pretty easy. Spear wall, and beat the guys that come in the shield zone with a weapon that ignores shield bonuses. Slap fast adaptation on one or two guys and a few stacks turn into a guaranteed headshot. Thugs and most raiders have very poor head armor. Even raiders in small numbers can be trolled to death, and failing that retreat is tedious but viable. Short of a very unfortunate direwolf ambush, things seem pretty reasonable. Granted, a bad encounter with 3+ poachers or even just a marksmen or two could wreck my terribly outfitted group atm.

[Sekata]

And again…Why can only 1 chest at a time be taken? Would make a whole lot of sense to me to take a armed courier mission at the same time as a caravan run to the same settlement. I suppose if quests interact with the army generation system, that could cause loads of problems though…

[Sekata]

Seriously? Has no one replied with this yet? What has the internet come to?

Attachments:

1. 

   Aliens.jpg
   

[Sekata]

@Namespace I’m willing to bet it was an option of the cleaver or the quest item. It’s the same design principle behind caravan quests that are carrying gems or offers of more gold for retrieved items from mysterious cloaked figures. Do you take the selfish short term boon, or fulfill the contract to maintain a good settlement relationship. I think you got out better with the cleaver. My thoughts would be different if allied relationships seemed to be worth a damn.

[Sekata]

I like a lot of these suggestions, but a few concerns:

*The more damaged armor becomes, the more hp damage characters take on hit. To me, that makes your suggestion for the indomnitable perk less than ideal. A single hit from an orc can all but destroy even good armor, so having to be hit again to get use out of the perk would be a death sentence. I could see making it last for more turns than it does on use.

*Exp gain should absolutely not be dropped. If the player is supposed to get used to losing soldiers, and ok with losing entire games, then it shouldn’t take forever to build a combat ready veteran. Your suggestion for the Veteran Hall could mitigate some of that frustration though.

*Early game is tough enough without deadlier 2h raiders/thugs.

*I strongly doubt that they will add new factions, but I do like the suggestion.

*I love your suggestions on quest generation. There absolutely need to be more on offer. I’m still not sure why I can’t take more than one quest at a time.

*It makes sense that the AI targets characters with the lowest def. I’m definitely looking for a high percentage when I’m picking a target. I certainly don’t consider it cheating. I do wish there was more variability than the predictable ranged turtling, but even that makes sense.

*I like the difficulty of obtaining named items, so I’m not too keen on the reliquary idea. If anything, the frequency of these items popping up in armories should be dropped and the player should be able to find multiple at once by raiding borderland camps.

Most of your quality of life improvements are great, but I’m a bit less excited about some of the leveling suggestions. I’m pretty sure that some of the level up rolls are capped for the sake of balance. In that vein though, the player should absolutely know if that 12,000 hedge knight has a club foot, and said knight should have a much better likelihood of being very talented in certain stats. He’s survived this long hasn’t he?

Some of your perk suggestions, like retrain, I love. Others, like Deathless not so much. It’s implied that the merc band is a human group fighting horrifying forces far larger than themselves. It’s a central feeling of the world since even the noble houses could crush you if you angered them. The band has no special relationship with undead or foul magic to justify the perk.

[Sekata]

I can see a bit of an issue with making it a quest though. Logistically that is. Who owns a burned castle if it’s been rebuilt? What’s to stop a player from letting many keeps be destroyed to rebuild them for a specific faction? If the faction that owned the castle before it was destroyed is hostile, does the quest never occur? Granted, if they’re hostile chances are the location was never used to begin with, but relations do change over the course of a game. A down castle absolutely changes patrol generation which makes roads immediately more dangerous. Castles and settlements definitely need to be restored, but whether that’s from a quest, event, or other mechanism is up in the air.

[Sekata]

@Namespace There are disclaimers saying that some contracts are not worth the gold paid for it. I just wish there was an in-game method for knowing what was going to be worthwhile and what wasn’t going to be. Would be really helpful if having an allied relationship with a town meant more disclosure about contract conditions. I love this game, and I think that the devs could write a book on early access handled properly, but I will say the absence of dev commentary in threads like this is a bit disheartening.

[Sekata]

@Namespace So that’s something that needs to be fixed as well imo. What’s the real point of taking contracts with orcs if you can get the same money elsewhere? To be fair, there is some incentive to remove the marauding green skin condition on a settlement. Not sure it’s enough though, especially if the settlement doesn’t produce something vital to the company, and few settlements do. Most items can be acquired elsewhere with no issue.

Sounds like 2 things need to be incentivized:
*Orc combat- not worth the risk currently
*Borderland location sites- not work the risk currently

Usually when I destroy one of those sites I might, maybe, perhaps get a gold coin or an ancient tome. That’s hardly worth having to replace a level 7 brother that got his head cut off, and again, named weapons/armor can be purchased from armories. They’re even more common after a caravan run.

Also, it makes sense that traveling in difficult terrain should cost more food. Camping on a mountainside for a better view during the night should not.

On an unrelated note, are fallen heroes supposed to get back up after having their heads removed? I thought it was meant to be that way for a second, but then a headless fallen hero used bite…

[Sekata]

I take back the solution for the tonal inconsistency. Battle Brothers feels like it’s not entirely sure what it wants to be. I think you guys have a strong game that stands on it’s own merits. Combat is already deep and rewarding, and I don’t think you can go wrong by expanding on the mercenary-specific elements that make the game fun.

If the player is meant to play through many loses, it shouldn’t take 5+ hours to get a brother up to level 11. Much easier to let go like you would in a rogue-like if wiping the board clean doesn’t come with such a high investment. I want to play the game in Iron-Mode if that’s how it’s meant to be played. At this point, the obituary screen in my current campaign is longer than a movie credits reel, so I’m not suggesting this because I can’t take a loss. I just think that save scumming is perfectly justifiable where the player has not been given a fair shake. Fair does not mean avoiding every loss. Conflicting design philosophies (leveling speed vs lethality/”losing is fun”) and incomplete systems (ambushes) make being save scummy justifiable.

Failing that, balance the game to where it’s impossible to justify save scumming, the game would need to feel like the player is given a fair shake to anticipate and outplay possible pitfalls (I’m looking at you ambushes). Maybe there should be flavor text to tell you when a contract is not worth the associated price. If i’m allied with a city, then the guildmaster’s aide should take me aside and tell me flat out that I’m about to escort goods that were stolen from a noble house. Where relations are cold, or the town doesn’t know my company, they probably would try to screw me on crowns or not give me all the information that I need. Hell, it would be great if a noble giving me a quest for greenskins could give me a “scout report” on enemy unit size and composition if we’re allied. Accuracy shouldn’t be perfect, but the player is screwed far too often with no means of counter-play. One of the first feedback threads I wrote here panned the game (unfairly) for being an rng heavy gambling sim. It was an unfair critique in the context then, but I don’t at all think it’s unfair when leveled at the current contract system. I believe contracts, negotiations, and town relationships could do with a more detailed overhaul.

Or make roster space much larger. Maybe after a while of campaigning and a significant investment of gold the band can set up a permanent base in an allied city. Brothers left at the home base might get paid a much smaller fee to account for the larger roster and payroll. It could even come with its own benefits, like brothers appreciating the paid time off, and the city offering a different set of contracts or paying better.

@Namespace: One thing I do love about the game is how much debate there is about perks being viable or not. I would like the game less if there was a very clear optimal path. There’s a surprising amount of allowance for play-style development and experimentation. It’s interesting that you don’t use Indomitable. I’ve always loved it because it helps my front line troll/tank orc warriors. What’s your strategy for dealing with the giant bastards in larger groups?

[Sekata]

I’m not sure why this is a huge issue. Soldiers with military picks can usually be targeted by archers before they even close the distance. Failing that, focus aggression from pole-arms takes out what health they have left. In other cases, a good brother with a shield can avoid/block most hits no problem. Either that or using a character that doesn’t rely on heavy armor reduces the risk that your armor dependent soldiers will be taken out of combat-ready form.

Even if a 300+ piece of armor gets destroyed in a fight, good management makes the problem null. Is your heavy’s armor gone after a nasty fight with a military pick wielding raider? That’s ok, you have replacement armor in your inventory. Pop it on and start repairing the old one before the next fight.

[Sekata]

I don’t think the early game is so bad. You’re a veteran, so I won’t condescend by saying that things are easy once you know the game. I think the early game has just become much more of a meat grinder. Turnover is much higher as you hire replacements and fire soldiers with permanent injuries. I think the difference is priorities of using on-hand cash. Early game I think expendable income should be used on two things.

1. Setting up the emerging core of soldiers level 3-5 with gear that will see them through to higher levels. I try to give them good chainmail/shields once I can afford to.

2. Making sure there are always 12 brothers on hand to go into battle. The reasoning here is pretty simple. Even if one of the bodies is a peddler with a club, he increases the likelihood that a veteran will survive just by attracting arrow fire and aggro. In that way even money spent hiring a new brother is an investment in a better soldier.

I think the early game can be beaten pretty reliably, just depends on what your tolerance level is.

Skeletons aren’t all that bad. Auxiliaries are pretty simple as long as you’ve got reliable damage output from melee fighters, but I decline 2 skull artifact retrieval quests that I know will put me up against legionaries. The polearm users in that army are just…. Terrifying. That’s without even considering that they all have fearsome.

I’m definitely not “good” at the game, and there are much better players here on the forums. Just my 2 cents. I think I was super flustered in the early game for the last campaign I started.

[Sekata]

RusBear wrote:

I would like to add this.
If sales will be successful, please do not rush to make new content, horses, sisters and legs… The battle morale mechanics and crises are still extremely weak. I’m sure you can much better.

I second this. I bought the game on early access and would gladly pay another $20+ to support further refinement of the bare bones over bells and whistles in dlc.

[Sekata]

+1

[Author]

Posts