Eisbrecher

[Eisbrecher]

I understand perfectly well that not every enemy is beatable, at every stage of the game; it’s even one of the tips during the loading screens. That’s not what I’m saying.

What I’m saying is that there should be some way to moderate how many “kill the direwolves” or “storm the greensking fort” missions a player gets at any given time. Regardless of level. Skipping a couple of such missions is fine (and survivable, even at the early stages of the game). Having to skip seven such missions in a row can cause problems, particularly during the early game.

Another issue is the map generation, which can aggravate the problems arising from an unfortunate choice of missions: starting in a town surrounded by a vast forest and getting ambushed on day 2 by 7 direwolbes is not, in my opinion, fun in any way. Getting players killed through no fault of their own is something that should be avoided.

Let’s not forget that Battle Brothers will have to reach out to a broader audience once it leaves early acces; it’s not just veterans who’ll play this game: starting in a vast expanse of swamps and having to face 3 groups of goblins coming from 3 different directions, is something that should be avoided, as a design choice, regardless of whether you’ve clocked in hundreds of hours in early access or you’re spending your first minutes in the game.

In terms of “in-game realism”, I have to say that getting called by the local lord because my ragtag team got “noticed” after delivering a couple of packages is not very believable. It’s not a priority, of course, but I think access to the noble houses should come after a team has done something noteworthy (perhaps raze a bandit stockade or even a fort with raiders/leader).

By the way, goblins seem overpowered to me; I got involved in a battle where two local militias and my company fought 6 goblins (3 melee, 3 archers). The little blighters did not miss once. Not once. And it’s not the first time I’ve noticed such uncanny prowess on their part. Even when they were losing morale (very, very late in the skirmish, most died at full morale), they were landing each and every blow, each arrow. Goblins should pose a threat in numbers (like in Lord of the Rings), not sniping from far away, poisoning everyone that approaches and overall acting like some elite fighting unit. I know that nighttime is a good way to negate their ranged advantage, but still, they feel way too strong; in daytime, I’d rather fight orcs than goblins. Those six goblins killed 8 militia and injured 4 of my guys before they fell; give me 10 young orcs over this.

Orcs, on the other hand, fight exactly like I would imagine they’d approach a battle: brute strength, charging the line. Good stuff (and I’ve lost many a good man to these brutes), I think the devs have the orcs spot on.

Raiders are also nicely done, they attack and defend well. The undead are rare, in my v. 0.6.xx experience, outside the cemeteries and a couple of necromancer lairs.

Overall, good stuff, but I think some tweaking is needed.

[Eisbrecher]

I’m playing on challenging level and I am not trying to kill everything on the map. Just trying to survive. There’s only so many missions you can turn down before you run out of money and/or food.

Also, with the swamps swamping the map, it’s not always possible to run away from the tac map. Just before saving to come and post this message, I had to run away from 3 bandit companies (6/7/9) early on week 2. I wasn’t looking for trouble, just walking between neutral settlements.

I was sent on a mission for 400 gp (after haggling) against 9 raiders. End of week 1.

Also, a small glitch introduced post v. 6.0.12 (I think): when asked to deliver a package, instead of the character’s name, the text reads “false” (in the main body of the text).

[Eisbrecher]

Spoke too soon, I guess :)

I got a mission to chase off some bandits near a town (week 1) and it turned out to be a group of 9 heavily armored bandit raiders (4 with pikes…)

I managed to defeat them, keeping all 3 starting companions and 1 of my recruits, but my company will take some serious rebuilding. I got two decent armors (1 from a slain enemy, 1 from one of my fallen companions) and 2 of the 4 pikes, but it will be tough.

I mean, battles like this can be won, but it shouldn’t be something that frequent in the early stages of the game.

By the way, where do I find my savegames, so that I could send them, should I encounter another killer group early on?

[Eisbrecher]

Rap wrote:

We’re working on balance and progression this week to smoothen things out a bit. Consider sending us your savegame to contact@overhypestudios.com so we can use it as a testing point.

Thank you for the reply; please don’t misunderstand me, I love Battle Brothers (wouldn’t have logged almost 400 hours otherwise) but at times the game does some odd things (especially in terms of what sort of teams roam the map early on and what sort of quests are handed out).

Started a new game after the latest patch, got a reasonable raid against bandits (7 thugs plus 3 marksmen with bows, attacked at night, effectively crippling the bowmen) and a cemetery mission (got the zombies, 11 in total, 6/5 armored-regular) which was doable as I had the high ground. A much smoother start, not too many swamps, reasonably generated mountain ranges: in all, a promising map.

Whatever happens this time round, I’ll keep the savegame to send it, I prefer to play “ironman”, so once I’ve lost, I delete the savegames so as not to be tempted to reload and retry the battle, but I realize this is not particularly helpful for testing purposes.

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