Deep thoughts on Kenshi

[CptData]

So, here I am. Joined this forums just to ensure this game gets better and better - and won't scr*w up the very last moment before it gets gold

No, I'm not a programmer. I just love sandbox games and Kenshi allows even more "sandboxy sandboxiness" than most other games I like. And that has nothing to do with the desert biome!
But I do have some ideas what I'm missing in the current release and which might not have been suggested yet. In case my English sounds funny, keep in mind it's not my native tongue.

Here we go:

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-1- Characters

Right now you can create your own character and change appearance of your hirelings. You can skill'em up and all that, but they lack one thing needed for any RPG: character. Know what I mean? They're all the same, can do the same and as long as there's one member of your faction left, you can continue playing.
Of course: your PCs may develop some sort of character over time: the sweet girl Pins may become your faction's doctor, your own leader is the chief researcher and so on. In the final game it's planned to allow dismemberement, so your beloved fighter character may end with his left arm hacked off - but still capable of training new recruits and so on ... you name it.

However, that's not enough for a "immersive" RPG. I can write down a short and incomplete list of stuff that's needed in a "immersive sandbox RPG":

Loyalty
Well - you get it. Loyalty ensures your faction members stay together and don't run away if things go south. Some start with a quite low loyalty, others may start with an undying loyalty from the very first second you recruit them.

Loyalty may increase or decrease over time, depending on how you threat your characters. High ranking members of your faction doing daily labor may feel disgraced. Promoting lowly recruits into the inner circle may also cause unrest within the rest of your guys. You name it. Then again you can increase loyalty by winning battles, saving your members from certain death, increasing faction wealth, building your own city ... if you're doing it right, loyalty grows on its own.

Disloyal members of your faction are dangerous. They might leave your faction or steal stuff. In worst case a disloyal member not only leaves your faction but also joins your mortal enemies - lets hope that character wasn't one of your best fighters.
It also works the other way around: sometimes you may recruit a injured member of another / enemy faction after a battle - by healing him/her. There's no guarantee you'll get another recruit that way, but it's worth the risk.


Relationships
You've got your ragtag bunch of misfits. They're all struggling and fighting together to live another day - a great basis for a varied set of relationships - everything included!
I can give you some hints how to do this:

First of all: every character has his/her own set of relationship stats.
That set includes:

- Hatred Stat [0 ... 10]
- Comradeship Stat [0 ... 10]
- Friendship Stat [0 ... 10]
- Romance Stat [0 ... 10]

Second: each stat applies any time ('though "hatred" and "romance" won't work together, for example).
And third: each stat is calcualated between two characters. Of course, only characters you know for a little while, like your faction's members or that shopkeeper you visit every day.
The stats can, but must not be the same on both characters (ever heard of one-sided love?) ^^

Have these three examples to get into touch with my idea:

Your faction main trader <-> Shopkeeper in Brink
Shopkeeper
- Hatred Stat [0]
- Comradeship Stat [0]
- Friendship Stat [5]
- Romance Stat [0]
"You know this guy for weeks now and saved his life once from cannibals. Since that day [name of character] calls you a friend."
Effects:
- prizes for selling goods are better by [amount]
- prizes for buying goods are better by [amount]


Your male faction's leader <-> Female inner circle member
Female inner circle member name
- Hatred Stat [0]
- Comradeship Stat [10]
- Friendship Stat [8]
- Romance Stat [7]
"You went through hell with her. [name of character] was with you from the very beginning, fought side by side with you and survived against all odds. The deep friendship connecting you two is about to develop into something deeper - it's just a matter of time.
Effects:
- her loyalty grows as long as she's nearby [name of character].
- her fighting skills are improved by [amount]
- romance effects
--> she can be romanced (if not romanced yet / friendzoned)
OR
--> she is romanced and provides bonuses
OR
--> she's a friend with benefits, providing different bonuses


Female faction member <-> Male faction member
Female faction member name
- Hatred Stat [7]
- Comradeship Stat [5]
- Friendship Stat [0]
- Romance Stat [3]
"It's difficult to deal with him. Since he ditched you for that floozy, you can't look at him anymore without the urge beating him to pulp. But you have to work with him - until one of your enemies land a lucky strike."
Effects:
- Your loyalty decreases slowly if you're near [character name]
- As medic: you'll heal [character name] last.


Those three examples should give you an idea how things work. The small text beneath the stats is fluff for RPG - and should be based on things that have happened ingame. So, for example, if you -really- saved the shopkeeper from certain death in the desert, he'll be grateful. And if you deal with him on a daily basis, a friendship may develop - resulting in better prizes and such.
And what's about your romance with that girl? You can go down the romance path, become a one-girl-man. Or your character is looking for a friend with benefits? Your choice. Just keep in mind, some of them may have dire consequences, like in the last one.

However, all that does work only, if faction members have some sort of "idle mechanics" - you don't want to set up all romances or hardships on your own, do you? Exactly. That's the next point about:


Independent Character Development
It's nearly a year since you founded your faction. You saw friends dying, a revolt that nearly costed your life, but today everything is fine. Your faction is prosperous and your faction members are happy with what they've achieved.

That's nice and good. It's just impossible if you have to micro every single character of your faction. It's time to give them some sort of "independence" from your management. The easiest way is to allow them to "idle" when not selected or given a permanent task (more about that later).

Characters interact with each other. That means, they slowly develop some relationships with each other. Two guys working at the same crop field for example may become friends and work better together. At the end of the day, they'll leave the field and visit the inn: both eyeing the same single girl. Obviously, only one can get her attention and the other one might feel jealous, reducing friendship. Characters interactions with each other are based on their relationship stats (as mentioned before), so if two characters like each other, they'll hang out together more frequently than others. Or they might avoid each other, if the hatred stat is high enough.
However, each interaction may or may not change those stats: friends can turn into lovers or enemies - depending on how things work out for them. The new guy might feel welcome if he can make new friends within days, or he might feel entirely unwelcome, thanks to the hatred of most other members, name it, with the right setup of interactions and relationship stats, nearly everything is possible.

For you, the player, it's possible to enforce or avoid certain developments, of course. The two workers in your crop field? They now hate each other since one of them got the girl both had feelings for. If unchecked, the unlucky one may lose loyalty and leave your faction in worst case. Don't force him to continue working with the other guy - assign him to another workplace so there's some space between both. In that case, loyalty won't drop anymore.

Oh, and didn't I say I'll say some words about "permanent tasks"? Here you go:


Daily Tasks
The town you've founded a year ago is properous thanks to its denizens. You still can remember when you've set up all daily routines for most of them - and god thanks, it works!

That's another point: in the current release you can give any member a permanent task. However, it's not possible to give those tasks priorities or a time schedule. The first one might help a bit, but the second one is even more important. It also adds some character to your ... well, characters.

Such schedule could look like this:

Schedule for Lowly Farmer
- 8:00am Farming at Crop Field
- 1:00pm Free Time / Break
- 2:00pm Gathering Water at Well
- 5:00pm Guarding at Watchtower
- 9:00pm Free Time / Break
- 11:00pm Sleep

That's his daily routine. All you need is to set it up once and activate it. Your lowly farmer will continue his daily tasks until you deactivate his daily routine. Attacks might also interrupt his daily routine - unless you set him up NOT to attack / chase anyone. In that case, let your fighters deal with the enemy.

In the times marked as "Free Time / Break" the character won't work but deal with other characters. That's important for bonding and such - as said before - and might increase loyalty and such.

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Okay, that's it for the first part. It's just a suggesting for characters & character development, so you -really- start to care about them. I do have two more big suggestions in my mind, but won't post them right now. Stay tuned.

[CptData]

Placeholder:

-2- Faction Management

The current state of the game doesn't allow much management of your faction. All you can do right now is to hire new members for your faction, rename it and, if you do unprovoked attacks, "declare" war on other factions. That's it, for now, and I think faction management won't remain on such basic options only.

Current Status: WIP

Basic Faction Management
Who are you? Where do you come from? And what do you want?
If you know the answers for those three questions, you're on a good path to lead your faction to its destiny. To support this, you might want to manage your faction in one or another way.

Depending on your chosen start, you may begin as a leader of a small group of people - or entirely alone with nothing more than a rusty katana and worn cargo pants. And: you're in charge of a not yet known nameless faction. That's a good opportunity to set up the very basics of your faction, isn't it? Basically it's shaping your faction's character - are you going to found a religious sect? Or do you want to preserve old days knowledge as some sort of "Brotherhood of Steel" (Fallout). Is your faction going to be a peaceful society full of farmers? Or something else?

Faction's Flag
Next to naming your faction, showing its presence by wearing its colors can help a lot to gain recognition. It also makes it much easier to control your soldiers in a mass battle - the enemy might wear green, yours are red - perfect! Also you might want to decorate your base with your faction's flag.

A nice side effect: whenever your troops take down an enemy fort / base / town, you may collect the location's main flag for your own collection. HONOR

Payroll
Not sure if that's planned to add already. However, your faction may (or may not) work like a company of some sort, which means you have to pay your members. At the moment you have to pay a minor fee of 700 cats when recruiting new members, but that's it.

I'd like to see a payroll feature including options to manage it. Depending on your settings, you pay your members on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Or you don't pay them at all, allowing them to loot their enemies on their own (your soldiers will do it without your doing and the loot vanishes as soon as it hits their inventory). In the later case you might want to ensure there's enough to loot, otherwise troops' morale will drop.
Also you may be able to set up different payments for each "rank" of your soldiers (if you adopt a ranking structure, of course).

Hire, Fire and Death
You can hire characters already. But how do you get rid of a once hired soldier you don't want anymore?
Lets say one of your soldiers has a low loyalty and is disliked by a lot of your other characters (as discussed in part 1). Why do you want to keep someone that's causing unrest and isn't even liked by anyone? Correct - there is no good reason. Kick him from your unit - fire him.
I think that's a very basic feature - and therefore important.

Another form of "disposal" is death. Of course, in a harsh world like this, there are thousands of ways to get rid of a disliked person. Eaten by predators? Check. Hacked to minced meat? Check! Killed by a bunch of starving bandits? Yes!
Of course, sometimes people you like die. In that case, there should be an option to bury them - and add them to some sort of memorial wall. The memorial wall is a basic feature in that way, as it's adding more character to your faction (faction history, see next entry), also it keeps track of the people you've lost already. And it's nice. Period.

Faction History
Not much to say here: I'd love to see some form of faction history (a chronicle tracking important events, like diplomatic actions, when hiring/firing members, founding towns, ...)

I mean, do you really remember what did happen what day, when your playthrough lasts for thousand days already? That's what your chronicle is for: just go back to the first days, when did you invent power generators, when did you forge your first Catan 4 Katana?

Other, TBA, ...
There are even more basics I have in my mind but can't sort them into a way to add it here in my posting. Therefore - stay tuned. Maybe I'll add them soon.


Advanced Faction Management
Your faction is ready. It's set up, you bolstered your ranks with new faces and you're earning good money. Everything feels complete, right? Nope! There's more fluff to add, so to speak, but it also can help you to control your soldiers. More micromanagement on the papers means less micromanagement in battle - which is a good thing.

Rank System / Faction Hierarchy & Uses
You may adopt a rank system anytime - as soon as you've done the research, of course. The rank system should give you some freedom: some players just need 2 different ranks, "Leader" and "Member", others may want to add far more ranks. So the number of ranks should be free, maybe between 1 (minimum) and 10 (maximum). Also you might want to rename those ranks the way you want.

The more ranks you have, the better you can massmanage your soldiers. In part 1 I mentioned a time schedule for your workers, right? What if you don't have to create that schedule for every single member of your faction but for ranks only? You could say all "civilians" are 'farmers" and have to work on the farm, operate the mill, bake bread or brew booze that makes you go blind. More about that in the next point.

Another use for your rank system is to set up who's going to fight and who's not leaving his/her post, even if attacked. So you may want to set up your "civilians" and "eggheads" to NOT engage the enemy, while your "privates", "sergeants", "lieutenants" etc are eager to take that foe down.

And why not using doors to control who can enter or leave certain buildings? You may want to keep your "civilians" out of any military used building, for example.

Ranks can be displayed as different colors or if a rank insignia - it's up to you to set it up the way you want. Bonus points for the developer: if said rank color / symbol appears on your member's armor / clothes.

There are much more uses for a rank system. Basically, it simply allows you to mass manage your characters, which is very important for larger factions. As long as you've got only 5, 6 guys you won't need it at all, but it gets really important

Assigning Posts to Ranks
Remember you can use ranks to control what your faction's members do? Why not assigning them to posts? Why not creating a schedule for said posts? After all what's a rank system for if it's fluff only without any impact on the game? It's worthless, that it is.

Schedule for all "Civilians" in your faction
- 8:00am Farm at Crop Field OR Operate Mill OR Operate Bakery OR Gather Water at Well OR Operate Rum Stil
- 1:00pm Free Time / Break
- 2:00pm Farm at Crop Field OR Operate Mill OR Operate Bakery OR Gather Water at Well OR Operate Rum Stil
- 9:00pm Free Time / Break
- 11:00pm Sleep

The game's engine automatically assigns all "civilians" in your faction to free equipment. So if you say all your "civilians" should farm, grind, bake or make booze, they'll man the small farm, mill, bakery and rum still, obviously.

You can create such schedules for every rank you have. Your "privates" for example may patrol your town's outskirts or hone their skills at the training dummy, your "eggheads" are researching technology and the "sergeants", "lieutenants" and "captains" may simply wait for direct orders, as they're part of your team you usually throw at your enemies ...

Keep in mind, directly ordered schedules OVERRIDE rank schedules. So if you want one of your "captains" to do some labor, you simply have to assign a personal schedule to him or her. In that case s/he'll do whatever tasks you gave - regardless of the rank schedule s/he usually has. To end this, remove the personal schedule.

Promotion & Demotion
Sometimes you may want to change a certain characters rank. Maybe you dislike him or her. Or your lowly "private" did something outstanding, improved his/her skills enough so s/he's more capable of filling the role as a "sergeant" for example. In that case, you may "promote" the member in question - which assigns him or her to the new rank schedule (if there's any) and removes him/her from the old one. Also color and rank insignia will change automatically.
Demotions are also possible and done the very same way.


Diplomacy
Go to war or make peace?

TBA

Town Management
Doormen and how to allow members of other factions how to visit, live and work in your town

TBA

Civil Affairs
Taxes, law, punishment & co

TBA

[CptData]

Placeholder

- 3 - Combat

TBA

[ChiefNinja]

I think schedules is really cool idea. I'd love to see that.

Not sure about all the romance mechanics- I'm pretty sure raising families has been discussed before and the general consensus was that children take faaar too long to grow up to really fit within the scope of the game.

That said, I'm quite a fan of ck2, and I'd love some devious plotting and complex character interaction.

[CptData]

I think schedules is really cool idea. I'd love to see that.

Not sure about all the romance mechanics- I'm pretty sure raising families has been discussed before and the general consensus was that children take faaar too long to grow up to really fit within the scope of the game.

That said, I'm quite a fan of ck2, and I'd love some devious plotting and complex character interaction.

Well, technically you can play an endless game with thousands of days - which is indeed enough to found a family. Then again, as you said, that's not really the focus of the game. And do you want to micromanage families? Kenshi is neither Sims nor Dwarf Fortress ('though I'd love to see some of DF features ingame, like the injury system or similar - which is already on the feature list of Kenshi).

I'm more looking forward to a -real- society simulation as part of Kenshi. The illusion of a working, real post-apocalyption world would be nearly perfect. And that is, as far as I can get the idea of Kenshi, the intention of its maker.

[Morthranduil]

I like some of these things, but I'm sure the Romance mechanics you have described would just take too much effort for Chris to implement.

I do like the idea however. Perhaps someone could think it through code-wise and make it into a mod.

[Roque]

Your faction design would synergize very well with this idea as well:

http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... =16&t=2695

Please take time to read it, if you want.

I'm reading your post right now, but I will time my time to dissert it, such good writing and ideas as far I can tell.

I will put it here as well some ideas I thought earlier today.

Kenshi Day/Month/Year.

Rather than; Day 1,2,3/1000 <- this is ridiculous.

Console commands in experimental version to reset/unstuck npcs would also be welcome.


Daily tasks is a must in my opinion,

[LootedWhileAwake]

These are some really great ideas, I would add non lethal and verbal fighting between two people or groups of people who don't like each other, talking angrily, slandering, murder, forgiveness, and physical disrespect. For being loyal: physical respect, forgiveness, truthfulness, more likely to sacrifice self, willingness to help, and follow orders exactly. Friendships: like being loyal but not to the great extent of being loyal. Romantics: Greater than friendship (could have some bonuses as well as friendships).

[philthymcnasty]

I love a lot of these thoughts, but one of the things that i discovered early on, is that we are making assumptions with an incomplete picture.

There are a lot of features for the devs vision of the game, that are yet to be implemented. I have some assumptions of what the theme will be, based on the screenshots of the map, as well as the factions that are hidden in the code and construction set.

Keep in mind, that later on, limbs will be hacked off, and everyone will be a cyborg. Cybernetics are going to be a huge portion of the game, as will ranged combat, and drug smuggling.

But i do think the romance portion is something that should be looked at.

Imagine, a dust bandit walking along, and he sees that your faction is filled with hot women, food, booze and is behind a big wall. Why would he want to remain a bandit then?

Or imagine, killing so many cannibals, that they view you not as a man, but as the incarnate of violence, and start worshiping you as a living god. so you can go all Apocalypse now on the holy empire, with an army of well equipped cannibals.

But right now, the NPCs, and the squad, lacks personality. I know this personality will come soon, because of the dialog options.

Hell, you can offer to sleep with the cannibals if they spare you life if you talk to them. the dialog is in the game, i just wonder how it will be implemented later....