Individual factional relations

[Cat_Fuzz]

Before reading, bare in mind that the following should be something implemented further down the line, but I'm just throwing it out there.

I was just thinking about an idea I had which could add an interesting spin on the game. Would there be a way to add individual character relations to factions, as well as an overall factions relationship.

What I mean is, say there is an overall faction relationship (as it stands now) which determines how different factions interact with each other/ to you. Would there be a way of having a similar chart, but for individual characters ie: A sand ninja (for writing purposes will from now be known as Giles) who sympathizes with mercenaries, yet as mercs dislike sand ninjas overall they would still fight. If Giles attacked and knocked out a merc, he would maybe heal them after the fight perhaps.

This could lead to all kinds of future relationships happening within the game world, for example you'd find a hungry bandit nearly dying. You can leave him alone, or you could heal him and carry him to a bed. When he comes to, his individual character relationship with your faction is say around 30-50, but the Hungry Bandit factional relationship would be up by about 1-2. As his own personal relationship is high up in the positive, you could ask him to join your faction.

From here, you could have a gang of characters with different kinds of backgrounds. Say a team of 5: your starting character, 2 swords for hire, a sand ninja you rescued and a servant of the holy empire who you helped on a mission. Their previous allegiance could diminish over time as they grow more loyal to your own faction, or they may decide to join back-up with there previous team.

What do you guys think? Would this be a good idea (if at all possible)?

[djfabiokk]

maybe if for example you have good relation with a starving bandit he can become some kind of spy and tell you where are they or something

[Cat_Fuzz]

Exactly! Or if say you had a powerful member in your faction, who may have previously been with the Holy Empire. If you and your faction kept making attacks on the Holy Empire he might not join in, or after if this keeps happening, he might desert your faction and start turning hostile towards you and yours.

[Scotterius]

I dont think this would be as fun as you think it would be. Right now you cant have independent faction relations with squads, it has to be managed at the faction level. However if there was an helpful sand bandit squad that bandaged their enemies, then it could effect faction relations. You could also have seperate factions that work together, but differently. IE: Sand Ninjas West vs Sand Ninjas East. I could see conditions being set that would cause a Faction to splinter dynamically as well. IE : People's Front of Judea vs Judean Peoples Front vs People's Popular Front of Judea. Oh yes very nasty. Splitters!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS-0Az7dgRY

Having your squad disobey you is a great idea, and you will likely see some form of it in the final game (it is a common element). Unfortunately we cant mod it in now, that I know of.

[Cat_Fuzz]

I see your point, and yea I hadn't thought of that, however the chances that a sand bandit would have a friendly disposition to another faction would mainly rely on whether another faction had done anything for that particular individual since you first start your game. I imagine the Medics faction would probably be patching up everyone they see if only to improve their expertise in field medication - there's a chance they could stumble upon a Sand ninja, increasing the Sand ninjas own personal disposition towards the medic faction...

However, this idea is a long way off on the implementation timeline, I just thought it might be an interesting discussion. My main reason behind the idea is really that I'd like to have a more natural way of recruiting characters into my squad that doesn't require hiring them or going to the "recruitment centre", but I mean this game is still in the Dark Ages development-wise.

[Scotterius]

I My main reason behind the idea is really that I'd like to have a more natural way of recruiting characters into my squad ...

Well, you could support right wing politicians, then as employment rises you could just drive around corners in a pick up truck. Employees just jump in the back!

[Santaissick]

Imagine whole town full of people. There are people from maybe 3-5 different factions who all have faction relations to each other. And in each faction there are 30-50 individuals who all have different relations to you. Some don't like you so if they see you fighting, they help your enemy. Some like you and will protect you if you are attacked.

Also they have faction relations. Some like you and some don't like you. Also factions like/dislike from each others and those relations can be in conflict with yours. (2 factions are in war but both are friends with you.)

So... when you enter the town, it is possible someone hates you so much he or the faction attacks you straight away and the hassle starts from there. Or it all would work until you decide to start this ticking time bomb and attack someone.

And here's an example what might happen:
You attack police from united cities and they of course attack you back. They have good relations to traders guild who comes to help them. However, there is this trader caravan you saved from bandits and they have personal relations to you. They come to help and start fighting against other traders and united cities. When those traders, who you had helped, are being killed by united cities, their faction relations go lower (since traders you helped are still members of traders guild, even if they were fighting their own kind). There are also black cats who are normally neutral to all those factions but they don't like fighting in their town. So they attack someone and all friends of theirs come help them out and fight back. Also you had raided one black cat gang and left them alive but they are very angry to you, also had helped one gang of black cats who start helping you an attack other black cats. Then army of holy empire walks by and notices that their enemy, united cities are fighting so they run to join the fight. Unfortunately they attack one peasant from united cities who you had given food earlier so your squad gets angry at them and attacks the holy empire. Since you attacked them, all those who like you, also attack holy empire. There is also one general from holy empire who you had rescued from bandits cage who notices that others are attacking you so so they start fighting others from same faction. When holy empire kills those who helped you to attack them, their faction relations drop and they start fighting them. And it goes on...

I know no one will be able to follow what I was telling there , but the point is that cities comes impossible to exist. If conflict occurs, factions start fighting each other and because of personal relations, individuals draw more people to fight from other factions as well who join the fight.

So every faction in range joins the fight. Also individual relations inside factions leads people from the same faction to fight each other. It's just gigantic mob everyone versus everyone.

Massive battle like that would be epic to see but every town would be deserted, because when fight starts, everyone dies.

Sorry for this rant

[Cat_Fuzz]

Lol, I guess it would need some work to actually make Kenshi less apocalyptic and chaotic. The only thing I can think of would be to have a yield command, which may or may not work. But then this is going to begin implementing ALOT of different commands.

Mind you, a yield command could be an interesting addition aside from this, and different factions would be more willing to yield than others, maybe dependent on your own factional disposition to them.

Anyway, on topic - maybe personal factional disposition wouldn't work as the game stands at the minute. It would be great if at a later stage there was a way of establishing more personal ties with characters. Afterall, Chris's aim for the game was to have and RPGRTS, with more RPG. Would be a slight disappointment if the character development was skin deep, or relied solely on player driven action to achieve personality.

EDIT: there was a thread were Chris confirmed that the AI would pick favourites, but again it was quite vague information, and it seemed as if it would have been player driven development between characters.

[zibathy]

Well, you could support right wing politicians, then as employment rises you could just drive around corners in a pickup truck. Employees just jump in the back!

... what are you even talking about...?


Anyways, I think this is a great idea, but just far too complicated to ever be implemented. Scotterius and Santaissick are right in their points. It would just create non stop wars and would be a huge headache. Makes a good discussion though, since one could imagine you help out half of the Holy Empire and then wage war on them, and then you'd have half their population turn on them and help you. That would be awesome, but the personal is just way too in depth... Too insanely complicated to ever manage. Would be nice if there were different parts of a faction, though? Like Peasants, Traders, Troops, and Nobleman sub-standings under a faction? I dunno. That sounds like some good middleground.

[Santaissick]

Well, you could support right wing politicians, then as employment rises you could just drive around corners in a pickup truck. Employees just jump in the back!

... what are you even talking about...?


Anyways, I think this is a great idea, but just far too complicated to ever be implemented. Scotterius and Santaissick are right in their points. It would just create non stop wars and would be a huge headache. Makes a good discussion though, since one could imagine you help out half of the Holy Empire and then wage war on them, and then you'd have half their population turn on them and help you. That would be awesome, but the personal is just way too in depth... Too insanely complicated to ever manage. Would be nice if there were different parts of a faction, though? Like Peasants, Traders, Troops, and Nobleman sub-standings under a faction? I dunno. That sounds like some good middleground.

That sounds like a good compromise... When every individual character has relations of its own, it's too complicated to cope with and possibly too hard to make. But "sub-standing" might work. There could be like 2-5 of them so it wouldn't get too complicated.

If you start a business and sell cheap, not that good equipment, then peasants, traders and poor people would raise their relations to you. When selling high-class equipment that only rich, noble can afford it, then they like you. If you sell both in one shop, high-class and low-class, you don't have so much customers because rich and poor doesn't like each other. You have to start many shops to sell effectively.

[PnzrNorm]

Resurrecting this thread since its the most relevant I could find. Even if it sounds immensely complicated, it would still be cool to add this level of depth to diplomacy.

+1 to diplomatic relations on the individual level.

I find each of the points made previously to be an enjoyable scenario that I would like to witness (especially the city-wide brawl). Things like cataclysmic civil war amongst NPCs could be prevented thanks to the recently added Non-Combat state.
Another thought is to instantiate a boolean value, let's call it challenge.
If challenge is true (i.e. an individual is hostile to another individual for whatever reason, then if s/he is not in Non-Combat state, challenge will then be set to true) then prevent all characters from attempting to Protect Allies on the target.
Then again, its not exactly civilized, nor approved, behavior to simply draw your weapon in the streets and charge at another random person. That act would at least alert any nearby guards or other chars friendly to the target.

[A Space Ostrich]

The way I think it would work is to have individual relations override faction relations at a certain point. This means if you've become the legendary spectre of death for the Starving Bandits, they'd probably run away after you heal them, but if you are only a little bit negative with them, then performing basic healing on a wounded member after battle would probably turn them to your side.

Once that is done, have a script (I think that's right, my coding knowledge is minimal at best) which detects when a personal relationship is overriding faction relations, and prevent the faction relationship from changing negatively due to the actions of that individual. So if the friendly general turned on the angry Traders and some of his Holy Order Allies to save you, the Holy Order would not lose relationship with the traders. On the flipside of this, if enough people within the empire are friendly towards their faction enemies, their cumulative friendliness would start to raise the actual faction relationship, as only negative relations are stopped by the detection script.

Finally, the NPC's also have personal relationships with one another, so the friendly general might bring a fair few of his men with him to your aid if they like him enough. It would be complex, take a lot of time to put together, and might cause performance issues, but if it could be pulled off, it would very likely be stable, and bring Kenshi above even the mighty Dwarf Fortress, which would be quite an achievement indeed.