More Brothers

[Meeky]

So, I’m certain this has been brought up before, and I’m also very incredibly certain that this is planned, but I’d like to discuss the possibility of having more Battle Brothers in your troop and how I’d love to see it handled.

Some of the ideas below mix together well. Some of them contradict previous suggestions. I’m not saying “Implement all of these suggestions,” but rather “Here are some ideas I have.”

1) Typically, only 12 Brothers should be deployed in a battle.

–I’m sure there might be special battles / events that might allow you to field your whole cadre of Battle Brothers, but I think 12 is a good number. Present number of units in a fight = good.

2) 18-24 Brothers should be the maximum in your army.

–Personally, I think 18 is the best. You get 1/2 your deployable numbers to swap out for different situations, or to replace guys that are too wounded to fight without dying. 24 could work as well, but I think that would be too many Brothers, personally.

3) You should be able to choose who gets deployed before most fights, but not ambushes.

–This should make sense. You’ll typically choose who fights because, well, as a commander, you would. But in an ambush, your only real choice is “Who’s on watch?” and “Who’s nearby?” and “Who happens to be able to get their equipment on fast enough?” That’s something that should be randomly determined, perhaps influenced by decisions that could come in later iterations of the game (like choosing who your scouts / watchmen are, etc).

4) Training XP should be implemented to train Battle Brothers that don’t participate in battles.

–So, if I’ve got 18 guys, maybe I can have a few of my more experienced Battle Brothers to train the green recruits, at least up to a certain level. After all, my recruits shouldn’t get XP for battles they don’t participate in.

5) We also shouldn’t be forced to bring all our Battle Brothers into a fight.

–I’ve had battles where I had a man survive with 5 HP only to be caught in an upcoming battle (where he WAS NOT needed) and die in the first round to a bandit’s arrow. Not cool. If my pal is THAT wounded, he’s not marching beside me into the fight. He’s staying where he’ll be safe until us healthy dudes can mop up the bad guys. Let me designate who is not supposed to join me in any fights until I designate them as allowed to fight again. So, at the very least, even if we only ever have 12 guys in our army, I want to be able to tell my guys “No! You are NOT fighting in this battle!”

6) Perhaps just having soldiers “on leave” could be a better solution.

–Maybe it breaks realism too much to have 18 dudes but only field 12. I’ve considered that, certainly. Perhaps, then, we can have a certain numbers of troops “On leave” at times, effectively giving them a paid absence where they can take a break from all the fighting and meet me somewhere later? At an inn or mercenary’s guild, perhaps? This wouldn’t be a private base or anything, note; this would just be letting a few of your men take a break to improve morale or because you know you’re going to be fighting battles where their skillsets won’t be very useful (archers when you’re fighting skeleton armies, for instance).

[Herezy]

Very interesting ideas.
I hope the devs will read what you have posted here. :)

Having all these features in this awesome game would be great.

[Anonymous]

interesting ideas but I feel like part of the charm of Battle Brothers is the theme of perishable troops. Having more than what we’d use in battle would lessen the sting of losing a brother and thus the tension in battle. The other thing that gives Battle Brothers its character would be the characters themselves. How you develop your brothers and how they work together is all sorts of fun. It also means that when you lose 2 or 4 or more brothers you can redesign your company. Having more brothers than we can use also means we could substitute men in depending upon enemy type. This would do 2 things. Makes enemies weaker/game less fun because the player could always have the optimal team for all enemies. Secondly, with so many up-gradable brothers our choices while upgrading troops matter less. If we can have 18-24 brothers then we can have everything we want and creating your company becomes less about personal customization and more about simply building up the standard group capable of doing anything.

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