Battle Brothers Reforged

    Announcement

    Welcome to a brand-new overhaul mod for Battle Brothers called “Reforged”.

    “Born from the fiery womb of the furnace.”

    Announcement

    It brings us great pride to finally announce the release of our new mod Battle Brothers: Reforged. The mod has been in development for over two years and has benefited from a year and a half of closed beta testing. We plan to release publicly on Thursday, September 12, 2024 at 5 PM CET. We will be releasing a series of Developer Diaries every day leading up to the release showcasing the features of Reforged and going into some detail about the design of the mod.

    Vision

    We have a grand vision and are lucky to have a team that is both dedicated and qualified to make it a reality. While still in development, here are some existing and in-development features of Reforged:

    Implemented

    • A highly robust and flexible dynamic perks system.
    • Over 100 meticulously designed new perks.
    • Reworked enemies with new perks, abilities and deeper theming.
    • A flexible dynamic spawns system to tweak and scale enemy parties.
    • New mechanics related to combat.
    • Three expanded enemy factions (Ancient Dead, Brigands and Nobles).
    • New Weapons, Armors and Helmets.
    • Nested Tooltips.
    • Many QoL improvements.

    In Development

    • Expand all remaining enemy factions with new enemies and mechanics.
    • An expanded Retinue system.
    • A livelier world with new entities and interactions on the world map.
    • New items and contracts.

    The Team

    We have named our team "Battle Modders" and we are lucky to have among us renowned members of the BB modding community. The list below shows their names and some previous mods they have worked on:

    • LordMidas: Modding Standards & Utilities (MSU), Perk Trees Rework (PTR), Better Fencing, Legends
    • Uberbagel: PTR, Legends
    • Darxo: Unrecognized UI, Player Hideout
    • TaroEld: MSU, Stronghold, Davkul Rising, Dev Console, Combat Simulator
    • Enduriel: MSU, Modern Hooks, End’s Inventory Management Overhaul (EIMO), Swifter, Legends
    • Houman: Artist

    Reforged also includes art contributed by many members of the Battle Brothers modding community, including:
    Von Krolock, Enclave, Felix DELANGE (IKON), Gilded Wraith, Shkimart and Crow.

    Pillars

    Considering the scale of the project, we have established guidelines to direct our focus throughout development. The following are our pillars:

    Design

    • Variety – Add content that increases variety and replayability in the game.
    • Depth - Improve depth in systems where appropriate while maintaining usability.
    • Simplicity - Effort should be made to avoid unnecessary complexity in features.
    • Immersion – Features should be believable within the theme of the vanilla game.
    • Value – Features should not be added for the sake of adding more content. Each feature should add value to the game and not overshadow other features.
    • Cohesion – Features of the mod should nicely fit together with vanilla systems to provide a cohesive experience.
    • Scale – Stick to the vanilla game’s vision of the player being a mercenary band in a harsh world. The world has a greater impact on the player than vice versa.
    • Balance – The game should be just hard enough that it feels challenging at all stages of the gameplay, and just easy enough that a player can win with skill. Life should not be easy, but skill should be rewarded.

    While most of these sound rather open-ended, these pillars help us critically analyze every feature proposal for the mod and stick to a coherent, productive design.

    Tech

    On the back-end (code) side of things, we have written Reforged in a modular, highly compatible way. As Reforged makes many leaps and pushes the boundaries of Battle Brothers moddability, we have created and will be publically releasing new tools and frameworks which help not only us but also other modders. Our tech pillars are:

    • Frameworks – Implement back-end frameworks for large features. These frameworks should work in a modular and stand-alone fashion.
    • Compatibility – Effort should be made to write code in a way that ensures maximum compatibility with other mods or sub-mods.
    • Documentation – We should provide documentation to use the mod’s frameworks and code back-end for both our own developers and sub-modders.

    Art, Writing, Sound

    • New art, writing and sounds must follow the style and aesthetics of the vanilla game.