Suggestion - Game mechanics: Scout

[Vivoune]

Hi everyone,

First of all I'd like to salute the community as I just bought Kenshi and registered after trying the demo for a few hours, a bit overpriced in my opinion, in its current state $5 would be a fair price, like Minecraft in its early stages. But I'm still glad in helping funding the development and am confident new contents and features in the near feature will make up for the price.

To the point now, I didn't deeply search the forum or planned features so if this is planned or has been proposed already in advance excuse myself, that being said I would like to propose a new feature, or rather a new skill/stat: Spotting. I enjoy the efforts that has been put into realism in this game but I find it a bit odd that I, the player, am able to see the exact stats, strengths and weaknesses of every entities in the world thus allowing me to jump in easy fights or avoid harder ones like a semi-god. What I would enjoy is hidden stats for entities I do not control and the ability for the AI's I control to develop a spotting skill, just like they can develop attack, defense and medic skill. This spotting skill would allow to give average stats on spotted entities, be it enemies, friendly or neutral.

Several things could influence the spotting success/accuracy:
-The higher the spotting skill, the more accurate the stats intel of course,
-The distance between the spotter and the unknown entity,
-Day/Night
-Line of sight, terrain heights for example, spotting from higher ground would help.
-Weather (if it ever becomes a feature in Kenshi), Sand storm, Rain or in the opposite clear weather.
-Head "health" condition of the spotter
-Perception Attribute (obviously)
-etc.

I think spotting should be passive, but maybe an active skill could fit into the game just as well. I'm just afraid of micro management, not a big fan of it.

We could even get this little concept a bit further down the road by adding sort of a counter skill to spotting: deceiving, that would make spotting (grabbing stats intel) a highly skilled deceiver simply harder if not impossible and opens lots of gameplay possibilities besides just adding realism into everyday encounters such as:

-Sneaking weapons into places that wouldn't normally allow any
-Not be seen as a threat to enemies/patrols thus helping in making your way deeper into enemy faction's territory without being detected/harmed.
-etc, possibilities are endless in a such an open world sandbox game, whether it is in terms of "quests", random events or everyday actions.

Finally another aspect of the spotting skill would be to more easily spot water source, raw materials, better camping positions or randomly generated weapons/treasure caches. These are just examples amongst many. I always deeply enjoyed the exploration part in open world sandbox games, and in my opinion scouting is part of the fun which is why I propose this feature.

I really enjoy in squad based games to dedicate the members of my team to specifics roles, thus making every member a critical part of the team, I believe, in time, when the development allows it, a spotter (i.e scout) would make a nice addition to this game.

Of course it all depends on what the other skills do, like the Stealth and Tracking skill for one.

Thank you for reading and sorry for this first long post. On a side note: thank you Chris for dedicating your time, energy and faith into this promising adventure that is Kenshi.

[Shenzo]

I have to disagree, the game is well worth it, $10 isnt much. I look at it as a small investment, in a game with huge potential.

Looks like this game will be highly moddable similar to M&B. If your suggestions don't end up in the vanilla game i'm sure they could end up in a mod at one point.

[toaster Assassin]

Are you thinking of the spot skill the thieves class have from baulders Gate/ Neverwinter Knights games? ( The one you can find hidden items with). I think perception would take over this ability. I do like your deception idea, if you add the ability to wear enemy faction uniforms then we have an infiltrator ability. Deception along with the climbing ability will definitely make for an exciting town raid/ and or rescue (Not to mention the assassin ability). So yeah deception would be quite a feature.

[brad1995]

1. i cant believe i read all of that.

2. i like the idea but how would this skill be able to level up ( without it being abusable to lvl up quickly ).

[Vivoune]

Are you thinking of the spot skill the thieves class have from baulders Gate/ Neverwinter Knights games? ( The one you can find hidden items with)

Hmm its been too long since I've played those games, but i think that yes perception could be the attribute related to discover hidden things, passively. The scouting/spotting skill would be more of a dedicated skill to assess a living entity's stats which would otherwise be hidden until the entity is very close to you (basically when it's too late).

1. i cant believe i read all of that.

Ahah yea sorry, it's a bit hard to keep things short and detailed at the same time.

2. i like the idea but how would this skill be able to level up ( without it being abusable to lvl up quickly ).

Well, if it is an active skill it could be activated through a button, a bit like medic. Then the character would try to assess the stats of the targeted group within a zone (that could be targeted through a wide circle around the spotter maybe, that would grow larger with every spotting level). You could even keep in the inventory some spotting related items that would improve the accuracy of that assessment or range, like a brass telescope for example. As for the lvl up part and preventing it from being abused, it would only gain xp when the char successfully spotted something. If there's nothing to spot then nothing is gain.

Intels and precise informations plays such a huge role in everything that knowing everything just by looking at it just feels it's taking away a whole lot of potential fun. Although I'm well aware the game is only in early alpha.

[PnzrNorm]

Resurrecting this thread as other, more recent, threads I've searched have either different or irrelevant thread titles.

+1 to Chris sharing his thoughts on how perception is going to function.
+1 to adding sleight of hand and/or deception skill(s)