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[Mephansteras]

What are people's thoughts on the Handgonne?

So far I'm underwhelmed with it. It's amazing against large groups of lightly armored opponents but by the time you can generally afford it, that's basically just spiders and nachzehrers. And killing swaths of nachzehrers causes it's own problems.

It'd be ideal against thugs, but it's sub-par against raiders. Maybe good against slave revolts, but I'm not too fond of putting down slaves so that's not really a selling point.

I can maybe see rushing for it as an early game purchase if you've got a merc with good ranged attack. Might be good for a hedge knight start where you're keeping your party count low for a while. But for the cost it seems hard to really justify over something like a war bow or arbalest.

[Sindain]

*snip*

I haven't experimented that much different builds of the Handgonne but I've had one dedicated gunner for a while now, and I would agree with most of those points. Its largely inaccessible/bad in the early game, but its most effective against lots of lightly armored front line foes, so its not great vs most late game armored enemies.

One thing you didn't mention is that IMO it has pretty significant issues with accuracy, it shoots at about -20-30% accuracy, so you need a really good range bro for it. That's generally not something you have early game.

It is fun to use though. Really good at shredding bandits. Its just bandits are not the enemies i'm worried about by the time I can have a good gunner.

While there is scaling in the game, my understanding is that it's largely based on your own team's size and level. A small amount is tied to renown and certain enemies get buffs once certain days are reached (largely additional abilities), but the size and composition of enemy groups is mostly tied to one's own team. This applies to contracts and (I think?) random patrols, but not to enemy camps - those are chiefly based on distance to civilization, I believe.

This means if you lose some hardened veterans or otherwise suffer a large setback, you'll be able to recover. At the same time, since two level 7 brothers can vary quite a bit depending on background and the like, it is possible to be on an upper or lower bound of power relative to how it's being scaled. Thankfully, the militia background compensates for the lack of access to 'premium' backgrounds by putting an upper bound to the scaling based on number of brothers - it'll go up to 14 brothers max, meaning you get an extra 2 brothers to field against its scaled difficulty.

This is generally all correct. Tho there is fairly significant time scaling its almost all tied to camps and a bit to patrols (which also scale with distance to civilization as you mentioned). Contracts almost entirely scale based on the strength of your team. Furthermore, the occurrence of the crisis is largely tied to the strength of your company. There are a few people who have gotten hundreds of days into the game without ever triggering a crisis by keeping a weak company.

[Majestic7]

Handcannon is great against zombies and billmen, though. I wonder, does it work against skeletons? Likely not, otherwise it might be good with the undead threat.

[Mephansteras]

It works ok against the pikemen, but pretty much useless against the shield legionaries. I could see it being of some use for the undead crisis, but not amazing except against zombies.

[Mephansteras]

Man, you gotta love it when the game just hands you something nice. Especially in the first 30 days.

Just got a legendary armor (366 armor, -33 fatigue) out of a random ruin I came across defended by just 7 nomad cutthroats and 2 slingers.

And here I was thinking it was worth the trouble for the dyes I looted at first...

[pisskop]

My current run, day 027, and I swear all ive been given was bandit ambushes in the deep dark woods that overrun my world, and caravan quests through said infested woods.

Theres a thin road that had many branches and i cant make any money.  Im not sure why I dont restart.

[Mephansteras]

I've had maps like that. To be fair, it's memorable if you can overcome the challenges.

[ChairmanPoo]

I'm getting more ambushes than I used to.

Actually netted me a few goblin falchions early, which are slightly bettwr than regular ones

[ChairmanPoo]

After a TPK by facing an assasin (really, withdraw if you see one in a low level rand encounter. They're worse than a surprise necromancer) I tried the manhunter origin. So far I love it. After battling humans you're kind of guaranteed a constript if you want. So you dont lack in recruits. Instakill if brought down its a nonentity, odds are you dont want cripples anyway.  Level cap of 7 on slaves.
. I guess thst might be a problem eventually? But high level slavers can give stat boosts so in a way  I guess the main thing is picking your perks with care. No hybrids, likely, though with enough spares you can likely afford to groom whatever you need

[pisskop]

I think I'd want to run my core men as heavies, a tank or two and maybe a stalwart whip/piker.

The indebted could be my 2handers and spear fodder, which I'd be using with their own defensive bonuses.  Give the indebted rotation and overwhelm and focus heavily on to-hit bonuses and shattering down armor?  Skip masteries for most of them and have them keep a secondary weapon for whatever effect of the week I want to use.

I want to run a bleed-heavy squad.  I think when I do a new campaign Ill try a bleed-centric manhunters.  Davukul is too swingy, imo, and peasant militia is meh.  I was never fond of easier starts, and peasant militia is literally just letting your extra baggage drop and use the money on a core cadre.

[pisskop]

So I did run a manhunter's scenario.

The start is rough, to be sure.  There were universally 2 jobs offered to me at the spawn city.  Kill a nomad camp and kill some beasties.  Given how reliably you can get a free indebted from every single battle against humans it might seem tempting to go after the camp, but Im convinced its a trap.  At least on expert it is not worth it.  Nomads are stronger than thugs, and even a group of 7 thugs require some morale swings to make it through with 0-1 loss of man.

To start with, buying some basic armor for the indebted seems like the winning go.  A pitchfork for the one you probably cant afford to cloth on hard economic difficulty.  The added survivability is just a little more important than getting better weapons for the slaves.

The beasts can be killed, with some luck, without lose.  Then you hightail it out into the desert to lure nomads back toward patrols from the city or you go north to pick on weaker thugs.  I kept buying better armor for my slaves, progressing from cloth to eventually leather padded by day 20.

The whip ability is pretty strong.
+10 melee and ranged skill
+3 defense
Reset morale to nuetral
Improved initiative

Thats a lot of buff.  +10 to spearwall rolls are fantastic.  Not every indebted crap rolls the matk either.  +10 to mace stunning is good too.  So is +10 to disarm rolls or archery.  You get the idea.

+3 defense is nice, but only situationally worth using as a defense buff instead of as an attack buff.  I was able to make good use of whip to beat 3 serpents.  Serpents are usually a hard nope for me when Im in Early Game.

As for later on, Im in mid game now, and we're doing -okay- against outlaws and raiders.  We take heavy hits, both due to the low hp of my indebted and the lighter armor we have because we have so many people, but having more men on the field and being able to selectively buff your men helps a lot.  Ive decided to put my real bros into the back line, one as a maceman, one as the standard bearer, and one as a whip/polehammer quick hands.  My favorite indebted is a barbarian thrall we took who uses an axe, my second is a caravan hand we took early on who quickhands a clutch of spears, a hammer, and a few fire lances.

Its slow leveling for everyone, because we have so many brothers and so many of them die and gain xp so slowly, but 4 out of the original 6 are still alive.  With 3 actual bros I only pay out 42 gold a day, its a pittance.  I find myself hanging on to only 150 or so crowns; Thats a crazy amount of poverty I can afford.  A single caravan raid can sustain me for several days since food is the bottleneck resource,

[Mephansteras]

Heh. That's about the opposite of my current Trader run. My daily expenses are over 700 crowns a day. Fortunately that's due to some very good and high level guys, and we're doing hard enough missions that I can keep up with it without too many issues. Not to mention the profits from trade.

I'm also at day 120-something, so considerably further in this run.

[Mephansteras]

Ok, I'm sold on handgonnes. They're not a game changer or anything, but having a gunner in my party has proven effective against most large groups of enemies of just about any sort. Especially with fearsome, since he scares anyone he hits regardless of the damage done.

Helps that I found a very good famed gun stashed in a necromancer's lair, but even before that he was doing solid work on most enemies. And damn near gold against zombies and spiders.

My run is now around day 200 or so, and I'm at that point where my group is good enough that most fights are easy but the hard fights could still wipe me out.

It's a bit of a strange time in the game. Do I fire some of my max level but weaker guys and train up more high end troops? Do I just keep getting them veteran levels and famed gear?

I always feel a little lost at this point, and nearly always get my company wrecked taking on a fight I'm not actually ready for.

Though wiping the floor with 9 necrosavants has made me feeling pretty good about this group.

[ChairmanPoo]

What are people's thoughts on the Handgonne?

So far I'm underwhelmed with it. It's amazing against large groups of lightly armored opponents but by the time you can generally afford it, that's basically just spiders and nachzehrers. And killing swaths of nachzehrers causes it's own problems.

It'd be ideal against thugs, but it's sub-par against raiders. Maybe good against slave revolts, but I'm not too fond of putting down slaves so that's not really a selling point.

I can maybe see rushing for it as an early game purchase if you've got a merc with good ranged attack. Might be good for a hedge knight start where you're keeping your party count low for a while. But for the cost it seems hard to really justify over something like a war bow or arbalest.

I was coming to the thread to say this same thing

I had been trying this  build: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2253054670

which was actually working fine. But then I realized that I was doing most of my killing with thrown weapons//sling. The handgonne was a very situational gimmick. And as far as very situational gimmicks go, it´s an expensive one: you´re going to drop at least 3000 for a single handgonne, more likely closer to 4000. I´d rather.... do other stuff with that kind of cash? Hire better mercs, etc?

[Mephansteras]

Well, like I said in the post above, with a suitably good gunner you can actually do some really nice stuff. Especially if you can get your hands on a famed one.

It's still situational, but depending on who you're fighting the gunner can actually rack up a lot of kills on their own. Not surprisingly, it's good against the southern slave armies. Also works well against zombies and goblins. More mixed results against noble house troops (or the stronger southern armies) and orcs. But even there I've had a high level gunner do some surprising damage even to troops with shields.

I'd say it is worth keeping an extra crossbow on hand to swap them to for fights where the gun isn't going to be great, or just leaving them out of those fights.

It's probably not a great choice for the number-limited companies like Lone Wolf, but my Merchant game has had great success with it once I got someone high enough level to use it properly and figured out how to really use it right.