Time for some good news!

It’s been more than three weeks now since Battle Brothers released into Early Access and so far it has been pretty successful. The game was well received and we got a lot of helpful feedback from all of you, much of which we’ll incorporate into the game over the course of the next year. There is a lot still left to do, of course, but things are looking bright.

The game has also been a financial success for us. As you may be aware, Battle Brothers was developed by a core team of just 3 people over the course of nearly 2 years in their spare time while also working day jobs. The recent success now allows us to quit our day jobs and start working full time on Battle Brothers. That’s right, we’re about to have a lot more time we can put into the game and should be able to make progress much faster than before!

The downside for now is that quitting our day jobs and going full time is not something we can do over night. As you may know from experience yourselves, changing jobs always comes with a lot of organizational hurdles. Getting legal stuff out of the way, setting up new workplaces, doing a clean handover for you former job, existing contractual obligations, and so on. We are looking at a transitional period that will keep us pretty busy over the next couple of weeks.

During these next weeks we won’t be able to make much progress on the game itself and provide you with updates as frequently as before. It’s all worth it, however, because once things are settled, the game should progress at a much faster pace than in the 2 years before, and we’re already looking forward to really get going!

A big thank you to all of you who made this, our dream of working on our very own game, possible! And an extra big thank you to those of you who supported us even more by getting the Supporter Edition!

To give you a better idea of our immediate plans, once we have settled into working full time on Battle Brothers, we also want to share a small roadmap with you.

As explained in our last blog post, our next immediate goal is the addition of the event system to add interesting encounters and tough decisions outside of combat, as well as laying the foundations for dialog and a future rework of the contract system. Because a lot of events will change depending on what backgrounds or traits your Battle Brothers have, it’ll also add a layer of complexity to character backgrounds beyond just their different stats.

Next up are Goblins. Those are the green skinned cousins of the orcs that have an entirely different fighting style. While orcs rely on physical prowess and brute-forcing their way through your ranks, goblins lack the physical power to do so. In fact, they’re quite fragile individually, more so than your average Battle Brother. In battle they rely on their wits and dirty tricks instead, preferring to fight at range. Goblins come with their own arsenal of unique weaponry and skills – throwing nets to incapacitate their enemies, arrows with terrible poison and long jagged pikes. Goblins should add an entirely new challenge to combat in Battle Brothers and are also meant to be a missing piece of the puzzle that is game balance by making ranged combat more important. No longer is the nimble swordmaster safe from all danger!



The third and by far largest step on our immediate roadmap is a rework of the worldmap as a whole. It’s quite clear that the world simulation, as it is now, is not satisfactory. With the resources available to us now and the lessons learned so far, we’re going to design new gameplay around commandeering a mercenary company in a low-fantasy medieval world. We already have a solid concept for this, and we’ll update you once things are further along. Yes, there will be multiple human factions working against each other. And yes, we’ll make contracts a lot more interesting and dynamic.

Time for some good news!

It’s been more than three weeks now since Battle Brothers released into Early Access and so far it has been pretty successful. The game was well received and we got a lot of helpful feedback from all of you, much of which we’ll incorporate into the game over the course of the next year. There is a lot still left to do, of course, but things are looking bright.

The game has also been a financial success for us. As you may be aware, Battle Brothers was developed by a core team of just 3 people over the course of nearly 2 years in their spare time while also working day jobs. The recent success now allows us to quit our day jobs and start working full time on Battle Brothers. That’s right, we’re about to have a lot more time we can put into the game and should be able to make progress much faster than before!

The downside for now is that quitting our day jobs and going full time is not something we can do over night. As you may know from experience yourselves, changing jobs always comes with a lot of organizational hurdles. Getting legal stuff out of the way, setting up new workplaces, doing a clean handover for you former job, existing contractual obligations, and so on. We are looking at a transitional period that will keep us pretty busy over the next couple of weeks.

During these next weeks we won’t be able to make much progress on the game itself and provide you with updates as frequently as before. It’s all worth it, however, because once things are settled, the game should progress at a much faster pace than in the 2 years before, and we’re already looking forward to really get going!

A big thank you to all of you who made this, our dream of working on our very own game, possible! And an extra big thank you to those of you who supported us even more by getting the Supporter Edition!

To give you a better idea of our immediate plans, once we have settled into working full time on Battle Brothers, we also want to share a small roadmap with you.

As explained in our last blog post, our next immediate goal is the addition of the event system to add interesting encounters and tough decisions outside of combat, as well as laying the foundations for dialog and a future rework of the contract system. Because a lot of events will change depending on what backgrounds or traits your Battle Brothers have, it’ll also add a layer of complexity to character backgrounds beyond just their different stats.

Next up are Goblins. Those are the green skinned cousins of the orcs that have an entirely different fighting style. While orcs rely on physical prowess and brute-forcing their way through your ranks, goblins lack the physical power to do so. In fact, they’re quite fragile individually, more so than your average Battle Brother. In battle they rely on their wits and dirty tricks instead, preferring to fight at range. Goblins come with their own arsenal of unique weaponry and skills – throwing nets to incapacitate their enemies, arrows with terrible poison and long jagged pikes. Goblins should add an entirely new challenge to combat in Battle Brothers and are also meant to be a missing piece of the puzzle that is game balance by making ranged combat more important. No longer is the nimble swordmaster safe from all danger!



The third and by far largest step on our immediate roadmap is a rework of the worldmap as a whole. It’s quite clear that the world simulation, as it is now, is not satisfactory. With the resources available to us now and the lessons learned so far, we’re going to design new gameplay around commandeering a mercenary company in a low-fantasy medieval world. We already have a solid concept for this, and we’ll update you once things are further along. Yes, there will be multiple human factions working against each other. And yes, we’ll make contracts a lot more interesting and dynamic.

Bugfixing time.

• Fixed sound compatibility issue.
  
• Fixed rendering compatibility issue.
  
• Fixed AI being unable to end its turn under specific circumstances.
  
• Fixed caravans being attacked not triggering combat for the player as it is supposed to.
  
• Fixed day/night indicator potentially going out of synch.
  
• Fixed outdated description of Captain perk.
  
  
• Added more debug output to logfile in order to help with hunting down unresolved issues.

For people experiencing rendering problems it should be worth a try running the game again with this update.

Bugfixing time.

• Fixed sound compatibility issue.
  
• Fixed rendering compatibility issue.
  
• Fixed AI being unable to end its turn under specific circumstances.
  
• Fixed caravans being attacked not triggering combat for the player as it is supposed to.
  
• Fixed day/night indicator potentially going out of synch.
  
• Fixed outdated description of Captain perk.
  
  
• Added more debug output to logfile in order to help with hunting down unresolved issues.

For people experiencing rendering problems it should be worth a try running the game again with this update.

New weapons! No longer is the Billhook the only melee weapon with a range of two tiles, as there is now the Pike. Also, the Pickaxe and the Pitchfork are introduced as early game equivalents of the Warhammer and the Pike, respectively, to smooth out the progression a bit. Some backgrounds will have these as starting items and you may see militia using these as improvised weapons as well. Also, other stuff.

• Fixed compatibility issue with sound.
  
• Fixed rare graphical glitch.
  
• Fixed Return Favor perk not working as intended.
  
  
• Changed Killing Frenzy effect to last for 2 turns (down from 3).
  
• Changed fatigue cost of Footwork skill to 25 (down from 30).
  
• Changed Captain perk to now grant half the difference in resolve between the captain and the non-captain as a bonus. Consequently, characters with low resolve of their own will profit the most from a leader nearby, while a potential exploit for characters with very high resolve is eliminated.
  
• Changed Rally the Troops to have a range of 4 tiles (down from 5).
  
• Changed the way Debilitate works. The skill is no longer an attack of its own but modifies the next attack done. Once used, the user gains a 'Debilitating Attack' status effect which has their next attack confer the 'Debilitated' debuff to their target. Missing the attack wastes the effect. This way, Debilitate can now be used with any weapon, including ranged weapons. A debilitated target has the damage it can inflict reduced by -50% for one turn (instead of receiving increased damage, as it was before).
  
• Changed the way movement for the player works on the worldmap. Setting a destination close to the current position will have the group move directly to it as it worked before, but setting a destination further away will now make use of pathfinding to navigate between forests and on roads automatically. We'll probably add an indicator for the destination and path in one of the coming updates.
  
  
• Added Pike, Pitchfork and Pickaxe weapons.
  
• Added icon dropping on everyone affected by use of the Taunt skill to make it more appearent how the skill works.
  
• Added hint to targeting tooltip if the selected skill affects the hitchance.
  
• Added command line argument (also known as Game Launch Option) to potentially fix rare compatibility issue with some video cards. If you're getting pixelated sprites in the game, try to start Battle Brothers with the command line argument -t2. If this works for you, you can increase this to -t3, -t4 etc up to -t8 for better performance. You can read up on how to apply the command line argument with Steam here. If it doesn't work for you, please let us know so we can continue looking for a solution.

New weapons! No longer is the Billhook the only melee weapon with a range of two tiles, as there is now the Pike. Also, the Pickaxe and the Pitchfork are introduced as early game equivalents of the Warhammer and the Pike, respectively, to smooth out the progression a bit. Some backgrounds will have these as starting items and you may see militia using these as improvised weapons as well. Also, other stuff.

• Fixed compatibility issue with sound.
  
• Fixed rare graphical glitch.
  
• Fixed Return Favor perk not working as intended.
  
  
• Changed Killing Frenzy effect to last for 2 turns (down from 3).
  
• Changed fatigue cost of Footwork skill to 25 (down from 30).
  
• Changed Captain perk to now grant half the difference in resolve between the captain and the non-captain as a bonus. Consequently, characters with low resolve of their own will profit the most from a leader nearby, while a potential exploit for characters with very high resolve is eliminated.
  
• Changed Rally the Troops to have a range of 4 tiles (down from 5).
  
• Changed the way Debilitate works. The skill is no longer an attack of its own but modifies the next attack done. Once used, the user gains a 'Debilitating Attack' status effect which has their next attack confer the 'Debilitated' debuff to their target. Missing the attack wastes the effect. This way, Debilitate can now be used with any weapon, including ranged weapons. A debilitated target has the damage it can inflict reduced by -50% for one turn (instead of receiving increased damage, as it was before).
  
• Changed the way movement for the player works on the worldmap. Setting a destination close to the current position will have the group move directly to it as it worked before, but setting a destination further away will now make use of pathfinding to navigate between forests and on roads automatically. We'll probably add an indicator for the destination and path in one of the coming updates.
  
  
• Added Pike, Pitchfork and Pickaxe weapons.
  
• Added icon dropping on everyone affected by use of the Taunt skill to make it more appearent how the skill works.
  
• Added hint to targeting tooltip if the selected skill affects the hitchance.
  
• Added command line argument (also known as Game Launch Option) to potentially fix rare compatibility issue with some video cards. If you're getting pixelated sprites in the game, try to start Battle Brothers with the command line argument -t2. If this works for you, you can increase this to -t3, -t4 etc up to -t8 for better performance. You can read up on how to apply the command line argument with Steam here. If it doesn't work for you, please let us know so we can continue looking for a solution.

Quite a bunch of changes this time.

Most importantly, this update should resolve some issues with poor performance and UI lag that a few players were experiencing. Please let us know if the issue persists for you despite the changes.

Valve has also fixed issues with upgrading to the Supporter Edition. If you want to support development of this game even more, you can now do so by upgrading on the storepage. Thank you!

• Fixed some performance issues.
  
• Fixed crash related to the AI using the Rotation skill at the edge of the screen.
  
• Fixed pathfinding not always returning the optimal path.
  
• Fixed issue with villages being placed without any connection to the road network on the worldmap in rare cases.
  
• Fixed UI label of available stash space not updating correctly.
  
• Fixed Hammer skill not inflicting a minimum of 10 hitpoint damage in some cases.
  
• Fixed Bloody Harvest not working correctly with the Split skill.
  
• Fixed Ghouls feasting on corpses while at the same time being repelled by the spearwall skill.
  
  
• Changed worldmap speed of all parties, including the player's, to be slightly higher on default but get reduced by 1.5% per individual unit. This way, the player has an easier time outrunning large armies and can get away easier with few men than the full contingent of twelve. With more different worldspeeds, AI parties also shouldn't chase each other for as long anymore with no chance of either catching up or losing another.
  
• Changed enemy factions on the worldmap to acquire resources slightly slower via scavenging and hunting animals.
  
• Changed newly constructed enemy bases to have slightly lower resources to start with.
  
• Changed Escort Caravan contracts to be more readily available later on in the game.
  
• Changed bonus hitchance of Bloody Harvest perk to +10% (down from +15%).
  
• Changed Horrific Scream of Lost Souls to be slightly easier to resist.
  
• Changed Lost Soul AI to stop trying to shout at characters who are obviously immune to mental attacks.
  
• Changed Lost Soul AI to more readily engage into melee once everyone in their vicinity is fleeing or immune to their screams.
  
• Changed a few values around for the difficulty rating system on the worldmap.
  
• Changed hidden enemies to no longer show up in the tooltip as a factor affecting hitchance when they're in the line of fire between a Battle Brother and a visible target. Actual numbers used still include their presence, however.
  
• Changed Alt + Rightclick to no longer sell items on the shop screen for those players who are actually trying to set items for repair there.
  
• Changed retreat confirmation dialog to also be shown when retreating via the ingame menu.
  
  
• Added Lost Souls using Horrific Scream to combat log.

Quite a bunch of changes this time.

Most importantly, this update should resolve some issues with poor performance and UI lag that a few players were experiencing. Please let us know if the issue persists for you despite the changes.

Valve has also fixed issues with upgrading to the Supporter Edition. If you want to support development of this game even more, you can now do so by upgrading on the storepage. Thank you!

• Fixed some performance issues.
  
• Fixed crash related to the AI using the Rotation skill at the edge of the screen.
  
• Fixed pathfinding not always returning the optimal path.
  
• Fixed issue with villages being placed without any connection to the road network on the worldmap in rare cases.
  
• Fixed UI label of available stash space not updating correctly.
  
• Fixed Hammer skill not inflicting a minimum of 10 hitpoint damage in some cases.
  
• Fixed Bloody Harvest not working correctly with the Split skill.
  
• Fixed Ghouls feasting on corpses while at the same time being repelled by the spearwall skill.
  
  
• Changed worldmap speed of all parties, including the player's, to be slightly higher on default but get reduced by 1.5% per individual unit. This way, the player has an easier time outrunning large armies and can get away easier with few men than the full contingent of twelve. With more different worldspeeds, AI parties also shouldn't chase each other for as long anymore with no chance of either catching up or losing another.
  
• Changed enemy factions on the worldmap to acquire resources slightly slower via scavenging and hunting animals.
  
• Changed newly constructed enemy bases to have slightly lower resources to start with.
  
• Changed Escort Caravan contracts to be more readily available later on in the game.
  
• Changed bonus hitchance of Bloody Harvest perk to +10% (down from +15%).
  
• Changed Horrific Scream of Lost Souls to be slightly easier to resist.
  
• Changed Lost Soul AI to stop trying to shout at characters who are obviously immune to mental attacks.
  
• Changed Lost Soul AI to more readily engage into melee once everyone in their vicinity is fleeing or immune to their screams.
  
• Changed a few values around for the difficulty rating system on the worldmap.
  
• Changed hidden enemies to no longer show up in the tooltip as a factor affecting hitchance when they're in the line of fire between a Battle Brother and a visible target. Actual numbers used still include their presence, however.
  
• Changed Alt + Rightclick to no longer sell items on the shop screen for those players who are actually trying to set items for repair there.
  
• Changed retreat confirmation dialog to also be shown when retreating via the ingame menu.
  
  
• Added Lost Souls using Horrific Scream to combat log.

A few important fixes. Have a nice weekend!

• Fixed crash with non-equippable items.
  
• Fixed issues of the AI being unable to end its turn.
  
• Fixed enemies warping across the tactical map in rare cases.
  
• Fixed UI highlighting of paperdoll slots not being removed correctly when dragging items from the ground into the paperdoll.

A few important fixes. Have a nice weekend!

• Fixed crash with non-equippable items.
  
• Fixed issues of the AI being unable to end its turn.
  
• Fixed enemies warping across the tactical map in rare cases.
  
• Fixed UI highlighting of paperdoll slots not being removed correctly when dragging items from the ground into the paperdoll.