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[Jaysen]

This week, while beta testing the perk system, we talk about all the minor things we implemented on the side:

Dev Blog #81: Progress Update - Other Improvements

Progress is going well with redoing the perk system of Battle Brothers. While it’s not quite ready to go yet, we have improved the game in other aspects as well. That’s what we’re going to talk about this week, so let’s start!

Talents & Backgrounds

Certain backgrounds, like sellswords, could vastly exceed other backgrounds in effectiveness if you could afford them. That makes sense, of course, in a game that is about sellswords, but what if some farmhand or former militiaman were talented enough to eventually catch up or even surpass them?

All characters now have three attributes in which they’re especially talented - how talented is determined by a star rating of between one to three stars. The way that attribute increases on levelup used to work, you couldn’t predict exactly how character attributes would develop, and if your men would always manage to take away the right lessons away from what they experienced. Being talented in a particular attribute now means that this variance and randomness is lowered or even removed; characters will consistently roll higher on attributes in which they’re talented. Of course, the more talented, the more rare. Can you find that prodigy that has full stars with all their attributes?



In addition, we’ll be introducing two new backgrounds to the game with the coming update. We’ll also add a whole bunch of new events that take into account your party composition. Depending on the characters in your employ, you’ll have different options with events and may gain access to rewards that you otherwise couldn’t. For example, that historian you hired might just be able to make sense of the old map that appeared useless at first glance. We’re currently at 18 new events, but that number is likely to grow further before the update launches.

Shields

Attacks missing in combat happens all the time, but it can still feel frustrating as veteran mercenaries make themselves look incompetent by seemingly swinging at nothing but air. In reality, they’d miss because the opponent does their best to avoid getting hit, of course, as they dodge, block and parry the attacks. When it comes to shields, that’s something we’ll emphasize more from now on.

Any attack that misses because of the defense bonus granted by shields, or in other words because the opponent uses their shield to actively block the attack, now actually does hit the shield. This is shown visually, accompanied by different sound effects depending on the material the shield is made of, and actually damages the shield by one point. The durability of shields has been increased, so one point doesn’t mean that much, but it can slowly whittle down shields in prolonged engagements. To effectively get rid of shields, the best way is still to use the “Split Shield” skill of axes and some two-handed weapons, just like it used to be.



These changes should help to make combat feel more authentic, and misses less frustrating, as you’ll have a better idea of why you didn’t hit, and even if you didn’t hit, you may have still caused some damage to your opponents.

Overwhelming and Surrounding

Time to do some cleaning-up. The Overwhelming mechanic has been in the game since the very beginning - way back in the public combat demo that was released in 2014, a full year before the game became available on Steam Early Access. And yet, it’s remained one of the more nebulous things for players. It’s not that intuitive to understand, and even if you do understand how it works, it leads to awkward use of the wait-function in combat to make the best use of it.

Come next update, Overwhelming will be replaced by Surrounding. The new mechanic is quite easy to understand; every ally beyond the first that is adjacent to an enemy counts towards the Surrounded bonus, which increases the hit chance of anyone attacking that target in melee. It goes for you just as well as for your opponents, and there’ll be new perks interacting with this mechanic in interesting ways. And if you think that’s how Overwhelming already worked, that’s just one more reason for why this changed was needed.

Banners

The next update will also include a rework of the banners that you can choose from when creating your mercenary company. We did the current ones way back when we scrambled to get the game ready for Early Access, and we’ve now taken the time to create actual unique mercenary banners that are distinct from those of noble houses and much more detailed.

[Jaysen]

Finally it is here, the update has been released to the public beta branch! Now you can try out all the new features like the reworked perk system and the injury system:

Update released to Beta Branch!

Here we go - the new update is now live for the beta branch of Battle Brothers!

What’s new?

This update started out with two major goals: reworking the perk system and introducing more complex injury mechanics. Both are included in this update, and while were were at it, we’ve also included lots of other changes and additions. Here’s the shortlist of features.

- A new contract
- 25 new illustrated events
- 18 new and detailed mercenary banners to pick from for your company
- 3 new character traits
- 2 new character backgrounds
- An ironman mode
- A reworked perk system, less constricted and with more perks to choose from
- New injury mechanics with different types of injuries and usable temple buildings
- A talent system whereby more talented characters regardless of their background can reliably reach high skill
- More powerful but also more rare named weapons, armor, helmets and shields of every type hidden across the world
- More tools to use in combat, like bandages and poison
- Changed shield mechanics in combat
- Changes to weapon progression and balance
- New sounds for humans; every character uses one of six different voices now to shout and scream. More sounds for all voices incoming.
- Various bugfixes and smaller improvements, such as to AI

Note that this update is not compatible with older savegames. You will have to start a new campaign!




Why put this in a beta branch first?

This update makes changes to many of the game’s mechanics with a rework of the perk system, the introduction of temporary and permanent injuries, and lots of smaller things all over. Extensive changes like these will inevitably upset the game’s balance and introduce new  issues. Participating in the beta is optional for everyone that wants to experience the new content now and doesn’t mind a few hiccups - we’re thankful for your feedback and bug reports! Everyone else may want to wait a few weeks until the game is more balanced and any issues that popped up have been ironed out.

Please report any issues you encounter in the forums here. Do not leave them as comments to this dev blog, they’d only get buried and lost.

How do I access the beta branch?

In order to access the beta branch of Battle Brothers you need to do as follows:

Go to your Steam library.
Right-click on ‘Battle Brothers’ and select ‘Properties’.
Go to the tab labeled ‘BETAS’.
Select ‘beta’ from the drop down menu.


Steam should now download the beta branch and once it is finished you can normally run it via your Steam library.

[Jaysen]

Here is this weeks dev blog on what we are doing with enemy factions and subfactions:

Dev Blog #83: Enemy Factions

With work on the last big update now on the way, let’s take a look at what we’re going to do with enemy factions on the worldmap in order to make the world more interesting and dynamic, and how it’ll affect you as the player.

Enemy Factions

Enhancing the presence of factions for a more dynamic world is one of the goals of the upcoming update, and this includes enemy factions. Previously, enemy locations, like bandit camps, just got different banners assigned randomly, which then were also used by any parties created by that location, and that was it. Now, we’re going to introduce actual independent sub-factions, like orc clans and goblin states, which occupy territories on the worldmap and seek to expand them.

Orcs, goblins, bandits and undead each received half a dozen or more new banners on par in quality with the new mercenary banners introduced not long ago. You’ll be able to see by those banners on the worldmap where a faction holds power much like you currently do with noble houses. Take a look below to see a very strong orc faction fond of grates in the southern part, smaller goblin and orc factions bordering them, and a strong goblin faction to the north.



Factions are most active near their territory - sending out patrols, hunting or raiding parties, and actively defending their territory against intruders. While this was somewhat the case before already, it now also applies to contracts. In previous versions we often had to spawn locations and enemies all around the world artificially as part of contracts, just to give you enough to do. With a steadily increasing number of different contracts, however, we can now go back to having contracts appear when there is actually a specific threat in the vicinity, safe in the knowledge that there’ll always be some kind of work to be found.

For example, settlements bordering orc territory are now much more likely to require your help in fighting off orcs, and conversely, destroying that single orc camp near a town will erase that threat, and thereby the need for contracts against orcs, for good. Or at least until other orcs make their way into this part of the world. If you prefer to stay clear of orcs for now, you’re advised to just travel to a different part of the land where orcs have less of a foothold. Of course, those orcs may then expand their territory and grow stronger while you’re not there to keep them in check.



To underline further that you’ll be fighting not just randomly spawned parties, but parties actually belonging to factions and doing their part in helping theirs to expand, the combat engage screen now shows banners of all enemy factions involved in a battle in full detail on the right, and your own banner, as well as the banners of all allies taking part in the battle, to the left.

[Jaysen]

In this weeks dev blog i can show you a completely new mechanic: Ambitions. We hope they will help people find short- and midterm goals and motivation. As always here are the details:

Dev Blog #89: Ambitions
This week we’re talking ‘ambitions’, a new feature and part of the overarching campaign goals as announced on our roadmap to the finish line. What are ambitions and how do they work? Read on!

Introduction

Battle Brothers is a game about leading a mercenary company. It’s also an open world game that relies heavily on replayability. When it comes to introducing overarching goals to the game, then, a linear story would quickly conflict with replayability, and any story straying from the mercenary narrative would quickly feel artificial and conflict with what the game is supposed to be about. Maybe you care about saving the world or the fate of some princess, maybe you don’t, but it’s for you alone to make that call, and we don’t want to force you into a story that may not align at all with how you want to play a game that should be about your mercenary company. Indeed, the one constant in every campaign, and the one constant for everyone enjoying the game, is building up your own mercenary company, and that’s why this is and will be the overarching goal of the game.

We’ll be introducing 3 different aspects to support this further and give you more sense of purpose, progression and challenge; ambitions, the ability to finish your campaign by retiring from your company, and late game crises. Each of these will be covered in detail in the weeks to come with their very own dev blogs, and we’re starting things off by taking a look at the first of these aspects today: ambitions.

Ambitions

Not surprisingly, players approach the game quite differently. While some easily motivate themselves to build up their company and pick up challenges on their own for dozens of hours, if not more, others crave for being provided with more direction and structure. We’re introducing ambitions as mid-term milestones for you to work towards on the path of forging a legendary company in a way that fits the game’s narrative and lets you earn unique rewards.



After the first few days of a new campaign, you’ll now be prompted to choose the first ambition out of many to come. This is framed as you gathering the men and giving an inspirational speech on what to do next, because the men care about the company succeeding as much as you do. As their commander, however, it falls onto you to choose the path that the company is to take, and we always want to give you multiple options to choose from. The ambitions you can choose from vary with the state of your company, the world, and the ambitions you’ve already fulfilled. The current ambition is then always shown to you on the worldmap, and the tooltip will offer additional information on how to fulfill it and what reward to expect.



In the beginning, ambitions are more small-scale and somewhat tutorial-esque, like getting the company to a strength of a dozen men, or gathering crowns to have a battle standard made. As the game progresses, ambitions transition to more mid-term goals, and eventually things like stopping a greenskin invasion to leave a mark in history. Fulfilling an ambition will raise the mood of the men, raise your renown (which works differently now - more on that in a future dev blog!), and often comes with unique rewards you can’t otherwise attain. For example, the ambition to have a battle standard made will reward you with a unique item based on your company’s banner to take into combat, while another may change your look on the worldmap.



If you fail to fulfill an ambition for a prolonged time, however, the men may lose confidence in your leadership, and their mood will suffer. Being a good mercenary commander also means making good on what you promise to the men.

[Jaysen]

Before we really get to the meat of things next week we have assorted smaller improvements added over last weeks:

Dev Blog #91: Miscellaneous Improvements

Work has shifted to the upcoming late game crises, the ‘Greater Evil’. It’s not quite ready yet to present it to you this week, so instead we’re taking you on a tour throughout the numerous smaller improvements we’ve made to the game for the next update - many of them based on your feedback. Let’s go!

Miscellaneous Improvements

Playing Battle Brothers at a high resolution and finding the UI to be too tiny? The next update is about to solve things, with two additional sliders in the game’s video options, allowing you both to scale the size of the UI and the size of the scene (i.e. everything that isn’t the UI) independently.



The worldmap has received a lot of minor improvements over the last couple of weeks. Ever wondered how it is that your company can apparently swim across the water, or what straits can be crossed and what straits can’t? With the next update, any crossings across water now have additional visuals to clearly identify them as such, so that you’ll always know where you can go and where you’ll have to find another way across the water.



Regions controlled by noble houses are now much more coherent, and also often larger than before, which makes patrolling between settlements less of a hassle. What’s also less of a hassle now is pursuing enemy parties - clicking them outside the radius to immediately engage in combat now results in your company automatically following them and trying to get in range, no matter what turns they make to shake you, for as long as they remain in sight. No more frantic clicking all over them in an attempt to catch up!

A common request is for the introduction of a ‘camera lock’ feature - having the map always show your mercenary company at the center of the screen and scroll the map as the company moves. The next update introduces just that as an option you can enable or disable at any time via a button in the top bar or hotkey.



Different settlements offer different services, which is a good thing, because it makes them more unique. Currently, it also means that you, as the player, are required to either memorize or write down what services are on offer in what settlement, however. The next update makes things easier by showing in a settlement’s tooltip every specialized building present in that settlement - all that’s required is that you visit the settlement at least once. Speaking of buildings, every newly generated map is now guaranteed to have at least one of every type of building present.



The tactical combat also has seen some improvements, of course. Of note is that allied units - militia, noble house troops or even wardogs - no longer block movement for your men, and you can hop over them just as you can with your own men, which makes maneuvering in larger battles quite a bit easier.



And finally, hovering over a brother in the roster view will reveal a few combat-related statistics once the next update hits - how many battles the man has seen, how many kills he’s made and the most fearsome opponent he’s slain. If there’s more stats you’d like to see, let us know in the comments below!

[ANtY]

how's the game doing?

[Vaxx]

I think they forgot to post the devlog here.

http://battlebrothersgame.com/dev-blog-95-contract-changes/