Battle Brothers: We're on a Mission for Gold

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Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

I dunno, I haven't seen anything in the game so far that really strikes me as edgy. If anything it feels pretty constrained since we're presumably, roleplaying a captain of a bunch of sellswords in a grimy low-fantasy world. There's an uncountable amount of incredibly dumb edgelord poo poo you could have in the game that would 100% fit the setting they refrained from, which is probably for the best.

All the events I've seen or I've seen happen to friends/streamers have been pretty well written. Many of them are pretty funny. The event you can get where you can have someone 'dumb' in your company agree to race a horse on foot on a bet and win is pretty funny, the golden statue event was pretty cool, the tower event is cool, the event where the fortune teller witch gives you a dagger when you both embarrass yourselves because you accidentally lean on her table and smash it is funny, the event where you can get trolled by the boy crying wolf like 3-4 times in a row is funny, the event where a 'dumb' company member can make a monk unit happy by pretending to understand education is funny. I also like the event where you find someone trying to make a sideshow out of an alp trapped in a pit, when you have a beast hunter in your company.

The only stuff I've found kinda eh was most of the events where it's just a "do you wanna be a dick and rob someone" check.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2020 16:25

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 04:12

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

dogstile posted:

It's mostly the edgy stuff. The aforementioned farm one is pretty lovely, the robbing someone checks are always pretty bad and then you've got the "as if you give a poo poo what the man thinks" when you escort someone which makes me roll my eyes.

But yeah, there is a lot of good to go with the bad. I still laugh every time my company gets pelted by kids with rocks.

The way robbing people is presented is generally insanely corny as far as what I've seen. It's always presented like

"A sickly old man walks up to you and looks at you with his gigantic puppy dog eyes and asks you if you can point him in the direction of the city his grandkids live in. You notice he has a gigantic emerald ring."

[Tell him where to go]
["GIVE ME THE RING OLD MAN"]
["I don't have time for this poo poo"]

# ¿ Jul 2, 2020 20:13

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Just for fun I wish there was an "AI Battle" mode where you could pit groups of AI against eachother just to see what happens.

I've been watching videos of people training big groups of orcs into undead and letting them fight it out. Orcs just get utterly shithoused by even middling undead groups.

# ¿ Jul 8, 2020 17:29

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

vyelkin posted:

I once kited a group of like 8 unholds into an ancient dead army in a forest, and by the time I made my slow way through the forest to find the fight all the skeletons were dead and there were a bunch of really confident and basically unharmed unholds waiting to murder me.

I'd be interested to see high level barbarians vs high level greenskins. I feel like the greenskins would walk over an equivalent or possibly greater Noble House group because the berserkers would likely stack up rage mauling the poor footmen and then just run over everything. Barbarians would be interesting because the Chosen do that horseshit rotation spam with their 2-handers.

Undead vs Greenskins is just 100% always to the favor of the undead. Even without geists, I watched a group of Berserkers/Warriors+ a Warlord get completely decimated by just a group of armored weidergangers and a few fallen heroes. I've watched Geist/Weidergangers/Fallen Heroes walk over a full greenskin war party that included every unit type they could bring to the field- so Orc Young/Warriors/Berserkers/Warlords + Goblin Skirmishers/Shaman/wolfriders/overseers. The Geists scream at their frontlines until they break and then the undead just march straight over them like they're nothing.

I think any AI group would have trouble with stuff like Unholds or Shrats because the AI (mercifully) doesn't choose to focus-fire down anyone that isn't already wounded or in a bad position- which it can tell by numbers. With Unholds you have to be able to basically pick which ones you want to focus down from the word go- if the AI had the ability to actually just pick one of your guys and be like "yeah gently caress that guy" from the start before anyone got out of position or wounded, you'd lose someone every single encounter.

Fabricated fucked around with this message at 17:51 on Jul 8, 2020

# ¿ Jul 8, 2020 17:48

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Future DLC should be another humanoid fantasy race with the silliest death sounds possible

# ¿ Jul 9, 2020 15:34

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

WarpedLichen posted:

I want to see lindwurms vs black monolith.

Krakens vs gobbo city might also be fun.

Lindwurms I think would completely shithouse any group of undead just because of the incredible amounts of damage they can crank out unless their resolve can't resist geists. Orcs get destroyed by the undead even without geists because the undead don't make morale checks and don't fatigue out- so the orcs generally gas out and die if they don't just get beaten down by the relentless attacks before then because they crash into the undead line which 100% does not give a poo poo that they're big and scary.

High End Raiders (when they show up with multiple leaders, swordmasters, and master archers) vs goblins or orcs would be fun to see. I think a reasonably nasty Barbarian Chosen group- even without armored Unholds, could probably take any encounter in the game short of I dunno- the Kraken. I don't think any AI group can take the Kraken because of how it fights where it pulls you in and instagibs you one at a time if you don't group up and keep the tentacles from pulling anyone away; the AI just isn't designed to know to do that.

# ¿ Jul 10, 2020 13:49

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

The early game for me is watching my legitimately good hires die to random headshots or consecutive hits and the lovely ones just live through everything no matter how dangerous of a position I put them in

Oh, a brawler with good traits, good stat rolls, and 2-3 stars in the right stats? I'll put him in my best gear and keep him towards the center an~ oh the enemies made like four 20% rolls in a row and he's dead. The clubfooted miller I hired to fill out the edges of my line I fully expected to get surrounded and die? Kills like 3 bandits.

# ¿ Jul 23, 2020 02:15

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

frogge posted:

Man, gently caress unholds. The only way I've found to deal with them is to use a combo of polearms and slashing weapons for the guys that get in close.

You can have a few dudes with indomitable step forward and let them crash into your line. If you can keep them from flinging everyone around for 2-3 rounds you can usually focus-fire enough of them down to get a handle on the fight.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2020 01:47

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Mazz posted:

I do do that, but you realistically should keep around 6 or you are still going to be at a notable disadvantage 3-4 poo poo tier bros against a mostly equal or higher number of thugs/raiders on vet/expert. If you do have a good seed (like the one I'm on now), you will have 5-6 decent starting bros and it's reasonable, but basically any Lone Wolf start is just making sure you don't run into a way outmatched fight and your lone wolf can kill 4-5 dudes easy, including 1-2 early raiders if he prioritizes, which should net you early 80 def armor for any recruits without spending a dime. Get him a dog and 1 decent starting friend (who basically just runs distraction while your LW kills things) and you can snowball through to day 60 at any difficulty, cherry picking long term bros on the way.

I'm not saying peasant start is impossible or anything, just that Lone Wolf is significantly easier than the 3 skulls printed on the label. Both require a good understanding of the game to really leverage, but there's way less pure dumb luck or seed strength on a LW game then peasant in my experience.

I watched someone messing with Lone Wolf start and it required like a half-dozen reloads but they took a fight with a big group of barbarian thralls right off the bat in a forest and used two cheap hires to kite dudes around while the Lone Wolf chopped through their ranks. Both the cheap guys died by the end but the Lone Wolf got several thousand XP and it completely snowballed from there.

# ¿ Jul 26, 2020 20:43

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

The gunpowder stuff would probably own goblins pretty hard since they're pretty squishy overall.

E: oh wow, the smoke bombs kinda sound like they'd be really nice for Black Monolith

Fabricated fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Aug 7, 2020

# ¿ Aug 7, 2020 17:13

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

9 Lives still seems bad because generally when you get into a position where it procs, you have hosed up a bunch. Getting one-shot from full armor/health doesn't really happen that much past a point, and if you're beaten up to the point your armor is busted and you take a fatal blow- you're probably in a position where there's a second fatal blow coming no matter what.

It always felt like a talent that was just there for NPCs to use to be loving annoying.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2020 01:27

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

I know it's set up that way for a reason (namely so you don't just stack fearsome, rout everyone, and instantly win) but there's a part of me that thinks it's really funny that enemies can only run away instead of just surrendering when they're all fully routed after a point. It's funny seeing Bandits of any stripe just gamely still going at it when you've killed like 3/4ths of their number. If I surround a bandit leader with my company and net him, and everyone else is dead or fleeing- I feel like you should just get a "Okay fine, gently caress- just take my armor and weapons" button to end the encounter. Not that daggering guys down isn't amusing but I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time in Caesar Circles, perforating dudes who are wavering at best.

Fabricated fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Aug 12, 2020

# ¿ Aug 11, 2020 18:04

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

the nomads sure loving love their pocket sand

# ¿ Aug 13, 2020 23:59

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

I like the requirement for the Drill Sargent because it can be a really funny ingame story for your role playing

You just have to retire someone with a permanent injury.

"Yep... I'm a grizzled veteran and I'll whip you all into shape! Oh, how many battles have I been in? Just one- the company leader hired me, put me in sackcloth with a wooden club in my hand, and had me charge some bandit with a two-handed flail who knocked my eye out while the rest of the company killed his men."

# ¿ Aug 14, 2020 00:25

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

victrix posted:

lmfao

I had a dude standing on a small rise against two bandits, one with a two hander. All off a sudden the second bandits head pops off. I had to open the combat log to figure out what happened. I guess bandits don't much care about whacking their bros

I've had a shocking amount of brigands shoot their own guys to death lately.

It WAS irritating in the previous expansions/base game where brigands just seemingly could completely ignore not having shots and just hit you 90% of the time anyway- so it's nice seeing them take these absolute bullshit shots and accidentally kill their friends with a crossbow bolt to the back of the head.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2020 18:40

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Jay Rust posted:

One day, I�ll come across a creature type I�ve never encountered before and NOT get turned into dirt

Seriously what�s the deal with these tree guys

Unless they added some really great treasure items to them (all creatures should now drop sell-only items worth gold) schrats are 100% not worth fighting ever under almost any circumstances.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2020 12:42

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

The Lord Bude posted:

The shields you can make out of them now regenerate durability each turn.

Is it a lot? Generally if you've got your shieldbros on full-time face tanking duty like with orcs, you're better off just backing a second shield and switching to that once it gets broken.

# ¿ Aug 17, 2020 12:52

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Poll - Funniest death sound:

1. the one where it sounds like a guy trying to violently clear a loogie from his throat
2. "OoowaaaAAAAaaaAaAah!"
3. All Goblin death sounds

# ¿ Aug 19, 2020 20:53

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

vyelkin posted:

Everybody always wants to bring dogs but I feel like I never use them because I'm impatient and forget they exist and also because I don't like the dog death noises that you inevitably hear if you deploy them in a hard fight

And they're so badass too- they somehow regularly bite people on the head.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2020 21:36

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

The snakes are weird in that they're not bad but there's some threshold based on how many people you field vs how many snakes- if there is one snake past that threshold it goes from being a manageable fight to guaranteeing like 1-2+ dead brothers.

# ¿ Aug 22, 2020 18:51

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Broken Cog posted:

Gotta watch where you're going when traversing the desert.

I'd kinda love to see what training that into a big army of anything else would look like

# ¿ Aug 26, 2020 00:57

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

The Lord Bude posted:

He's definitely good for a spot, but his stats are a bit awkward. His health is low enough that unless you get lucky with rolls you're going to need almost every level up between 1 and 11 to get him to an appropriate value, which in turn means you won't have much opportunity to put that amazing three stars in melee defence to good use. His stamina is also at the bottom end of what I'd like for a 2hander so it's not like you can skip a couple of rolls there - his melee attack is so high to begin with that It's tempting to skip a couple of those to increase his melee defence. Or you could make him a polearmsman; but that's a waste of his melee defence stat; and his background is too expensive to justify being used in that role.

If you put him in the front line you could give him a 2h mace since that uses less fatigue - and on a maceman you could free up a perk point for gifted to help bolster stamina/health. But I've never liked 2h macemen myself.

There's a streamer who described a "zero stam" build where you take Pathfinder and use two-handers (with a specialty in the weapon type). The idea is that with Pathfinder and a weapon specialty, you can take a step and attack for 15 Fatigue- which means if that's all you're doing you'll never fatigue out while being able to at least move a little bit and attack.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2020 13:37

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

I feel like you could just very marginally scale up and make an incredible sequel to this game. The balance to strike is how to just make "More Battle Brothers" without kludging it all up with poo poo.

Also I am bad with the Gladiator start like I'm bad at everything in this game but their special events are hilarious.

# ¿ Sep 8, 2020 20:38

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

after training unholds into chosen, I have to ask how they manage to tame them because they're very not good at fighting them

# ¿ Sep 11, 2020 14:30

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

I'm doing the cheat start of Barbarian Raiders + Noble War set as the first crisis and I feel really dumb for having slept on getting the cook. I feel like the cook pays for herself super fast. It also feels like nomads carry more food than regular bandits.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2020 18:27

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

A famed mansplitter would definitely be something to see.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2020 20:39

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

If only this could've gone to someone who was actually good at this game. :v:

I'm thinking this is about a max damage roll? I just retired my mansplitter.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2020 20:04

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

I think it's fun sometimes when most of your unit is even just level 5-6 and you get a pack of bandit thugs, and their heads all just start flying effortlessly when at level 1 a couple poor rolls from a thug swinging a bludgeon was fatal.

I feel like sometimes the larger crisis missions have a wild variance in difficulty. I tried taking a 3-star Noble War contract that started with a "go get supplies from this farm" which I just straight up got ambushed on (was all mercs, who would've been a bigger problem if they had decided to wear helmets), then a big noble battle, then a smaller noble battle with no support. I went to the end just to see if I could clear it and came out with 2 brothers. Scratched that, reloaded, went and hosed off for like 7-10 days. I took a 3-star contract that was worth more crowns (~6000-6500 total before any drops). First was a supply request I got the option to bribe peasants for, a caravan interception where all the billmen/pikemen decided to leave their footmen to die to protect the donkeys for some reason, then a really big noble battle where I had significantly more support than the failed contract I savescummed away. It was a cakewalk.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2020 18:00

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Weebus posted:

Would it be worth it to build a flail duelist to use this? Kinda conflicted since I've usually found 3 headed flails pretty underwhelming.

They're pretty good now IMO- they utterly obliterate lightly/unarmored targets and I think they work well otherwise.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2020 16:35

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Suction Bucket posted:

I have never been able to get whips to work. They seem to miss constantly, and when they do hit it's a glancing pathetic damage hit, and even when I had a cleavery mastery duellist par extraordinaire he was nowhere near as effective as my bog standard "man with big hammer".

I've generally only used whips to DIRECTLY attack for Alps and Geists. If you get a small pile of whips from messing around down south you can even more effortlessly dunk Alp missions by giving one to people on all 4 corners of your formation and just whip the whole lot to death.

Other than that I guess I keep one on someone for disarms. Disarming leader/champion units or stuff like Orc Berserkers with Cleavers or Mansplitters saves lives if you're as bad at the game as I am and let them base people up.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 15:29

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

I trained a big group of snakes into a patrol and man the southern troops don't give a poo poo

Assassins throw down firepots on the snakes and the guys they pulled in, who burn to death because they were almost dead from snake bites. Then they start rotating their own guys into the still burning fire.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2020 20:06

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

The skull ratings seem insanely trollish and I'd wonder if there's some sort of X-com style "help" that you get at various difficulty levels if you didn't also get 1 skull contracts that obliterate you. 3 skull bandit contracts that are literally like a half dozen thugs and a raider or whatever just baffle me. I mean, I'll totally take like 2k to brutally slaughter a handful of thugs with bludgeons and no helmets but it's just weird to take a "freebie" 1-star caravan mission going somewhere I was going anyway that throws like 3 orc fights at me in a row.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2020 16:18

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

800peepee51doodoo posted:

Lol yeah, shield breaking is such a trap. Congrats, the guy who spent every turn shieldwalling is now a double-grip murder machine isn't that wonderful! I don't think it's too far off to say that some of the mechanics aren't intended to be used by players. Things like Crippling Strikes aren't really helpful for the player to use but really loving suck to get hit by. The injured enemy will almost certainly be dead in a turn but your guy will be running around with a fractured hand for the next 2 to 5 days or whatever.

Speaking of Hexe fights, I was looking over the perks to try to get a sense of what's changed and if any of the dead perks could serve some purpose and came up with a Hexe-hunter build I want to try. I'm thinking Lone Wolf, Resilient, Fortified Mind, Footwork and Mace or Cleaver spec with the idea of running down the Hexe and tanking Charms. High INI would be useful, I think, to do the move-then-wait trick so that any Charm that does land is ineffectual. Granted, this would be a super specialized build and almost certainly not worth it but might be fun. It could also run down Geists and Necros maybe, esp with a whip. I probably won't be able to try it out any time soon, though, judging by how well my runs are going these days lmao

Injuries are very good to apply to big bags of HP like orcs or anyone with a dangerous weapon you can't guarantee a kill on before they swing on you again.

There ARE a lot of things in the game that are wonderful for NPCs to be annoying with and only mildly useful/useless to you. Like Nine Lives for example- but Nine Lives is so bad it typically results in the same thing for enemies that have it (Nine Lives procs, then they eat a deathblow immediately after).

# ¿ Oct 2, 2020 19:09

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Wait until your whole band of hardened mercs gets hosed up by a bunch of kids with rocks

# ¿ Oct 3, 2020 23:45

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

The worst thing about gobbos is being pissed off at archers enough to have some 2h guy charge in and base like 3 of them up- then out come the loving daggers and they literally never miss their bullshit 5% chance punctures.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2020 20:56

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Moonshine Rhyme posted:

Just finished my second holy war, never working for the north again. Southerners are a way bigger pain in the butt to fight, it seems like conscripts just hold up better than foot men and assassins are a much bigger nuisance than any of the special units the north has

I was punished for being a cheat by picking a Barbarian start with Noble War as my first crisis so I could do whatever I wanted and get a free reset after the war. I spent a ton of time in the south and got in very good with the one noble house that wasn't pissed off at me at the start. Then right after it a holy war starts. :v:

# ¿ Oct 5, 2020 16:27

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Donkringel posted:

I havent done the numbers myself but didn't filthyrobot state that fearsome was somewhat of a trap? That additional resolve doesn't give a good enough bonus to make fearsome worthwhile if you aren't applying it to large groups of enemies all at once (guns, round swings etc).

I still use it for my gunners, 2 hand sword/hammer/axe since you can strike multiple peeps mind you.

Filthy's analysis of it I think is mostly him not really being able to notice its effect- he even had some addon installed that tries to explain the math and I couldn't really follow it because it looks like a lot of enemies have absolutely absurd resolve? I've tried it with really good banners (150+ resolve) and I really couldn't notice the difference. Filthy also hated guns until he just loaded up 3-4+ guys with them and then he noticed they were really good.

It could be expectations, maybe? Like for me to think fearsome is doing work, I'd hope that goddamn near any reasonably breakable enemy should lose a resolve level every time my 150+ resolve banner jabs them with the battle standard. But that pretty much didn't happen. It feels like it'd be one of those perks where someone would have to do a ridiculously in-depth breakdown to tell you something like "ah, with fearsome on X amount of guys with this minimum of resolve you'll see orcs fail morale rolls 30% more often" to get how much work it does.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2020 22:22

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

I like three-headed flails because you can get them really, really early sometimes in the south and for super early game enemies they just absolutely shred.

# ¿ Oct 20, 2020 14:08

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

Tin Tim posted:

Time to let him ~~run into a line of enemies without any gear~~ retire with grace and honor

The funniest thing about retiring people is that when it happens late the only reason to pay them off is basically roleplaying and feeling bad for a series of numbers. The optimal solution is always just to feed the brothers who get bad permanent injuries to orcs or something because morale hits from deaths aren't usually bad if it's just one death, and even then you can just go get hosed up at the tavern.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2020 15:45

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# ¿ Apr 20, 2024 04:12

Fabricated: Apr 9, 2007; Living the Dream

I have a drunkard monk banner and he loses something probably every 2-3 weeks but I don't whip him since I think that has negative consequences. I just throw him on latrine duty. He has mostly lost extra weapons I was hanging onto for some reason, but he hasn't lost anything named yet.

# ¿ Oct 21, 2020 20:51

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