Lo-Fi Games

I didn't see it as a planned feature nor any discussions about it, sry if I'm wrong.

I believe that a random item generation, specifically weapons and armors, plays a huge role in sandbox games in keeping the player interested as the quest for better loot is vastly longer and funnier with randomly generated loot rather than pre defined fixed stats items.

It's harder and longer to code and think than pre defined items, but once it's developed it basically is a huge time saver in terms of development as the game will take care of all the loot on its own, from what I understand. That doesn't mean devs can't place fixed special items here and there if needed anyway. Not to mention the randomness if of course "controlled" within ranges given the item type/owner etc.

The visuals and skins doesn't have to change radically, if at all, from a weapon/armor to another but just random stats would be a huge plus in my opinion on the various items you find in the game. I love loot. I really do, searching for the best gear plays such a huge part in motivation and dedication of a player that having fixed pre defined items, especially in such a vast and complex universe that Kenshi will offer sounds a bit like driving a Porsche with a Beetle's engine.

Let me be clear though that I'm not talking about conventional RPG's random item gen with a rarity color that defines the stats quality or various name algorithms that gives an item various statistics, no no, Item's names and looks stays the same, I like this game's realism, only their stats become random within certain ranges (that are defined by the item's manufacturer for example).

It's already implemented to a certain degree with weapons from bandits for instance. There are a handful of different quality swords from one manufacturer or an unidentifiable manufacturer.
Thing is is with to much range it would make inventory management absolute hell.

They are generated. the manufacturer represents the quality band, and each manufacturer has a bunch of tiers for each item. So it creates numWeaponModels X numManufacturers X numTiers. Theres a few hundred weapons and armours already, and that will multiply everytime a new model is added.

I indeed noticed the variety of weapons within the same manufacturer and thought that it was nice, I just didn't realized it was randomly generated as I seemed to find always the same 4 or 5 same exact weapons within a given weapon model and manufacturer, which would stack in my inventory, so I just thought there was plenty of weapons but not randomly generated, my bad.

they're not random, they're procedural, meaning they are the same each time. So its not infinite weapons like diablo, just 100's.

Oh i understand, thanks for clearing things up. Still plenty of items to have fun with, looking forward to the next designs.