Sekata

[Sekata]

I feel your frustration. I had a bug a while back (and still do!) That crashes combat speed after about 500 in game days. Happens on different save files with different companies. I’ve got more than 300 hours in the game, and I love the work that Overhype does. I went through the reporting process, and they couldn’t fix it. I get it. It’s a small team, they can’t fix every issue with every player with all the different pc specs out there, but it was suggested that maybe I was using a mod to affect the time functions in-game, and that was my problem. So not only was the problem not fixed, with no possible fix incoming, but it was implied that I caused the problem by cheating. Love the work that the Overhype team is doing, and it’s incredibly impressive for a team of their size, but I do kinda feel shafted on the bug side of things.

[Sekata]

*Camp that is, not encamp. I’m not using anything that isn’t a part of the game.

[Sekata]

Nope, no extra programs. Just BB. I do use encamp rather frequently, if speeding up time is the primary concern. I suppose it’s just me. That’s a rap. Thanks for checking it out.

[Sekata]

Started a different game. The speed breaks at about day 300. Movement speed of enemy orcs and attacks moved about 100% faster. Were you guys able to use anything from the e-mails I sent?

[Sekata]

In the future, a more diplomatic approach to a possible problem might be better received. If you start a conversation with assumptions, accusations and thinly veiled insults, you are likely to be met with a defensive answer even from fair-minded people. Just something to keep in mind on any forum.

[Sekata]

Huh. File type not permitted for security reasons. I’ll e-mail it to you.

[Sekata]

Certainly!

I hope this is the right file.

For me things go like this:

1. I load up the file that I sent you.
2. I get ambushed by bounty hunters outside of Birkhaven (I don’t rush to the village because I want the fight to start)
3. The fight proceeds as it’s supposed to and then falls to really slow speed between turns 5-6, like the game is struggling to calculate something.

Let me know if you need anything else.

[Sekata]

Should be in your inbox. Happy bug hunting!

[Sekata]

A note of caution, though: in my experience, you can’t shield bash orc warriors off of high ground. I’ve tried it extensively and it never seems to work. I think they’re just too darned heavy to shove around. Young orcs and I think berserkers are a different story.

Absolutely right, I didn’t clarify that at all. Thanks Meeky :D. Best you can do with warriors is use indomitable and protect your backlines.

[Sekata]

I appreciate your point of view Danubian, and i’m glad you’ve provided both screen shots and fair critique. I understand that you want the game to feel balanced, and frankly I somewhat agree with your assessment of the goblins to some degree. However, I don’t really share your hatred of the orcs, or your opinion that massive balance changes on the orcs need to occur. Granted, as a matter of full disclosure, I would not, under any circumstances run into a battle against 10 orc warriors. If I saw that coming at me, I would laugh hysterically, and “nope” right on in the opposite direction. I wouldn’t have the game any other way frankly.

The game world is one where your mercenary band of mortal human fighters are battling against incredible odds. Losing soldiers is a part of the game, which is why there is a loading tip that clearly states “expect to lose some men”, and even one that says “if the odds are against you, retreat to fight another day”. Unless you’ve got a band of fully upgraded soldiers that are specced to deal effectively with most situations, many battles rated even or above become a question of “how many soldiers will i lose”.

It’s a matter of you against insane odds, but the game does allow you to heavily swing those odds in your favor. It’s pretty easy to wait for small squads to come out of a camp, and pick them off one at a time. After a while of taking out smaller parties belonging to a single camp, the rating of the camp itself will fall, and your odds against it will improve pretty substantially. Battle Brothers as a game encourages picking battles carefully, especially early on, and that doesn’t entirely change when you’re the big bamf on the map. Frankly, I think the design is a fairly realistic approach, and I really appreciate the devs for it. Force the odds in your favor by attacking smaller squads, and if you find yourself faced with deadly, or even a fair battle, just don’t fight it. One of the most hilarious points from the Art of War says don’t fight battles you aren’t sure you can win, or “don’t fight fair battles”. It’s a waste of resources and soldiers if it can be avoided. This game forces you to keep that in mind, and i’m not sure that it’s unintentional on part of the devs.

As for fights, deny your enemies the high ground. Shield bash them away from high positions and take the ground for yourself. I kind of doubt that the orc in that screenshot had the ap to both move to his position on the high ground and then break both of your shields. It’s one orc young, but his location puts both of your brothers in that shot in a pretty awful position. I would be curious to know how he got into that position in the first place. Was it unavoidable? Did your character’s have deflect? How about heater shields?

Train up your archers before fighting tougher bands of orcs. A single archer with focus can very easily waste an incoming berserker, or at the least, nerf his damage if you happen to have the debilitate perk. As for the crossbows, damage can be strongly hit or miss. Some crossbow shots will yield a disappointing amount of damage. On the other side of the same coin, I’ve seen armored orcs take a sizeable chunk of health damage from a single crossbow shot. I’ve also seen crossbow headshots outright kill orc warriors that had most of their health left. You aren’t going to see the full range of the crossbow’s capability in a single battle waged to get a single screenshot. For that matter, what level was your archer in that shot? To be fair, a low damage shot can even happen to level 11 brothers, but i would still like to know.

In a battle where there are no berserkers, then you should prioritize by weapon type. The orc that destroyed your shields had an axe, and he should be one of the first enemies that you take out of the fight for exactly that reason.

Between the weapon, shield, and perk variations, there is a pretty nice variety of ways to plan for battles with orcs. In a very serious way, single battles are won in bb before the fight even starts. I’ll concede your goblin issue. It’s absolutely 0 fun chasing enemies around the map, especially since dogs aren’t all that intelligent, and don’t run for the archer units if there are melee units nearby. Other than that though, I very much like the game as it is. It’s not that I’ve come to accept broken design as you’ve implied. That statement assumes quite a bit about willingness on my part to put up with bullshi*t and that’s just not the case. We don’t know each other, so don’t assume that i’m prone to rolling over for bad design choices just because I disagree with you about something. There are plenty of things that I would very much like changed in BB, but orc balance is not one of them. I just think that the difficulty of the orcs, and the necessity of using every single advantage that the player has to come out on top is an intended part of the game’s fabric. I could be wrong, and I’ll concede that immediately if the devs decide to correct me.

I do think that the fatigue of orc warriors can be toned down a bit. Pushing aside your units while wearing all of that heavy armor should be a bit more costly than it is for them at the moment, but that’s about it. To be fair, I may well have tunnel vision. I’ve put more than 120 hours into the game and perhaps (JUST MAYBE) i’ve grown tolerant of some questionable things. I’ll admit that much. The fact that I’m perfectly willing to call BS on pretty much all of the spawning system, location diversity, and the frequency of bandidt marksmen spawning with crossbows, tells me that i might not have complete olfactory fatigue on bullsh*t. The orcs are the only remaining challenge after you get decent equipment and five brothers to level 11. I’d like them to remain that way.

[Sekata]

The thing battle brothers lacks is transparency more than anything else. An even band of orcs will be a lot worse than an even band of bandits. At most the label is wrong, but the balance is fine.

1. Orcs are supposed to be physically stronger than humans. Orc young will hit harder than a normal battle brother, and an orc berserker can pretty easily kill all but the most prepared of your brothers. As a trade off, berserkers don’t wear armor, and are pretty easily to riddle with arrows before they close distance. Learn the strengths of your targets.

2. As for goblins, the solution has already been mentioned in this post. If you go after the little buggers at night time with one or two war dogs in tow, the fights can be ridiculously easy, especially with kite shields.

If anything battle brothers needs a manual filled with tips about enemies and strategies. For the most part, there is a strategy for dealing with most enemies in the game pretty easily if you know their strengths and weaknesses. The part that I find most brutal is the ambush system, where the game spawns an insane amount of enemy bands around your company to keep you from getting to an objective. Other than that, the game is pretty balanced. The superior physical nature of the orcs and the skirmish tactics of the goblins is what makes the factions distinct. Changing the composition too much would water down the experience and make certain encounters far too easy. Take some time to learn more about the game. I had the same complaints you did before I learned how to play.

As for the skeletons and the orc warriors, weapons have different stats that make them better or worse against certain enemy types. Skeletons don’t have vitals, and so arrows don’t do a whole lot of damage. Use smashing weapons. As for the orc warriors, use crossbows (which have a higher armor penetration stat) and weapons that crush armor. Most of your complaints come from a gap in knowledge. There’s a lot to learn in BB, and no way to learn it but trial and error.

[Sekata]

Not sure I agree with this. If anything, the only implication of the PC character’s presence is that there is a fourth founding member (incapacitated perhaps) who calls the shots. If I’m not mistaken, the flavor text for founding members never says that only the three founded the band, in fact the text explicitly mentions “you”, the PC. The PC presence solves the problem of continuity as well in the event that all founding members die and the band goes through a complete rotation, and gives a lens through which the entire event system stands. Would you prefer that they spend developing hours re-writing the rather newly developed event system to write out a character that is not even excluded by the logic of the game?

Personally, the PC presence made me feel more immersed in the game when band members and elements of the world reacted to “My” decision. I get to be the old general in the chair that the gambler comes and plays dice with, or the guy the wildman convinces to do shrooms in the forest. Its the closest thing to a connection between me and the world. It also reinforces the idea that all of the lives of all of the brothers are on the shoulder of the single shot-caller, and every lost brother is the failing of a single person’s command. At any rate, the devs open these forums for feedback, but if the PC is important to design, its not going anywhere. If it’s not, then I’m sure they’ll put something more favorable for immersion and a degree of realism as both seem to be important to them. It seems that they’ve got a pretty coherent design document that they’re working on and its produced a damn good game so far.

What would me a more effective alternative? Maybe a system that allows the player to designate a leader? I suppose it would avoid the need for a re-write on the event system, but it would also cause quite a few continuity issues. Do they make it so that only a founding member can be chosen as the first “pc”? How would that affect the chosen character’s flavor text? What if he dies and the player wants to choose a new commander that is not a founding member, but a founding member is still alive? Do you limit choices until all founding members are dead? If you choose the founding member, how does his flavor text change? If you can choose a non-founding member, how does the flavor text of the founding member change, since any new addition to the band couldn’t have possibly met the founding member before being recruited to the band?

Re-writing for a “chosen” leader system adds a further complication just purely in the way the game is played. In the very beginning, all characters are pretty green and just as likely to get killed on day one as anyone else. Do you give a buff to the chosen brother to improve his survivability? Doing that runs the risk of making a single character feel “special” and i very much like the current feeling of a bunch of average mortals against a viscous world. What if you just take the plunge and make a special character class. Let assume you leave him like everyone else. Do we as players just keep transferring the game identity of “self” when we have a nasty series of battles and our chosen characters die repeatedly?

I think my alternative might cause more problems than it would be worth dealing with. Then again, I’m biased and quite ok with the PC presence as it stands. What do you guys propose? Keep in mind that the devs are finite human beings working on a relatively small team and they also have to consider time, currently implemented systems, and things that have yet to be implemented when deciding where to spend development time. Some systems will be modular and rather easily changed, but others might require considerable time and resources.

Consider the cost of a given suggestion.

[Sekata]

RusBear wrote:

I, for example, have generally 2 different companies. first special for the experience of playing and testing of patches, there I try different tactics, different line-up the team of mercenaries and possibly looking for errors and check the feedback of the game on the possible actions of the player. in the end – it’s early access – you need as much information to give to developers. In this company I was with a clear conscience Loading sometimes especially one fight a few times – even if it won without loss – especially for the test. The second even called “Real men with steel balls” – no saves, the maximum complexity. so to speak for the Challenge and receive a different experience from the game witch you never get better if the losing fighter will always loaded and run, or replay.

Lol. I love that company name. Seems like a good way to go about playing too. A test file, and a hardcore file.

[Sekata]

I will add, it also helps to have a well stocked armory. X amount of shields on hand at any given point, X amount of chain mail suits, helmets, etc. You essentially want to be able to fully equip any new hires without having to come out of pocket to do so. In deadly, where resources are scarce, it’s even more important that early game cash goes to stocking up on relatively cheap items from the castle. Of course, gold too is scarce, so building up will take a long time and even longer if you find yourself on the business end of an orc cleaver. Essentially I suggest both cash insurance and equipment insurance. It may well be one of those things that you were already doing, but it would be lazy of me to omit the idea, so I’ll post it just in case.

[Sekata]

Zinistar wrote:

Sekata, I feel we are kindred spirits, bc I often make the same mistakes, then I “justify” the save scrumming.

Lol. I won’t make any bones about it. I don’t even think it’s something that requires justification. There’s no council that tells you what you can and can’t do with a game that you’ve purchased. It’s your game to do with as you please if there’s no online component that negatively affects someone else’s experience. If you want to play iron man mode, it should be because you personally want to overcome a challenge, and should have nothing to do with the opinions of people online. When people call you out for save scumming, its usually in the form of self-aggrandizement or bragging like “I pulled X off, I’m great and you aren’t”. These critiques are meant only to make the poster feel good about him/herself at your expense. That shouldn’t be the reason for playing a game through on iron man mode.

In the current implementation of BB, the only thing keeping you straight on an iron man play through is your own honor not to load up a save. If you make it a personal goal to “succeed” in such a play through, you are accountable only to yourself, and should be punished with that nagging lack of overall satisfaction for loading up a save. It all comes back to what you want to accomplish.

At the moment I want to test out silly builds, and see what is most effective against different enemy unit types. That doesn’t mean that I load up whenever I lose a unit, I’ve lost quite a few guys i’m sad about. What it does mean is that I don’t care how bad a community wants me to feel about playing my game. I am the scummiest, and offer apologies to no one.

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