The settlement building is fun, the job assignment is decent, but then comes a big problem, that all settlers don't have NPC behaviour. They don't interact with furnitures, since they don't have "needs" to drive them to do so. I wish Kenshi 2 can take a leap from this, by adding "needs" for the player's faction members, so they can interact with the whatever object player provided to them. This would also making the player's roaming party's management more interesting, because they may now expecting an extra share(payment) for risking their life.
Better Equipment
1. Equipment Slots
Like the equipment slots in Kenshi 1. By a lot. It can still be improved though, by making the equipment slots more specific and to have layers, to allow more specialized build. For example, if I equip a weapon holster belt on the shoulder, then I won't be able to wear a backpack but allows me to sheath this heavy weapon to fight with a sidearm without droping the heavy weapon onto the ground; or if I equip a polearm, I won't be able to carry it on the back but have to hold it in the hand or have it in the backpack, so from staff to naginata to polearm will now always in one hand with a new idle/move animation, by doing this, now all mighty warrior will look as mighty as they should be.
Also please don't include the default inventory for player's characters. You can make their Cargo Pants' pockets to be the inventory(with a reasonable inventory space), or any other clothing that has pockets to keep the stuffs. The free&big default player inventory is making the Kenshi 1 super easy. If not having any pocket nor bags, then just hold items in hand(one item per hand).
"Head" is a 5*5 slots box, see in the pic. It shall have 3 sections, one for the cap, one for the eye, and one for the mouth. Different headgear may disable from 1 section only up to all 3 sections.
- equipment slots Head detail.png (42.37 KiB) Viewed 1617 times
"Torso" shall take as many slots it needs to fit in the largest torso equipment. 1 section only and can only place 1 item in it. But it shall have a switcher to switch the display of inner layer and the outter layer for this body part. You probably want to merge the "Shoulder" box as a layer of "Torso" box if you were interested in using the switcher mechanic.
- equipment slots Torso detail.png (32.83 KiB) Viewed 1617 times
- equipment slots waist hip detail.png (49.46 KiB) Viewed 1617 times
"Hands" slots box shall be similar to the Kenshi 1, but this time, be placed a long side the left side of the Torso&Legs boxes, in a vertical form, much wider, having a fade out visual effect making its left boarder seamlessly extends, allow the hand to pick up all kinds of items, but with a limitation of 2 items(stackable or not) only. So, if you have a polearm in "hands" box, then you won't be able to wield it with another item in "hands" box or carrying some. And if you have 2 items in "hands" box, then you cant attack nor carry anyone.
"Wearable Containers" will be the weapon holster belts(back/waist) for keeping weapons, pants with pockets, jackets with pockets, slingbags of all sizes, backpacks of all sizes, quivers of all sizes for keeping bolts that can be retrived from during the combat.
Pockets' extended inventory window should be small, if a piece of clothing has more than 1 pocket, then make sure the extended inventory window it created by right clicking on it to have seperated slots areas for each pocket rather than linking them together.
2. Equipment Durability
The loot variety in Kenshi 1 is limited. Once you get Meitou, you stick with it as soon as you have enough strength to wield it properly. It's a sad truth. Adding Equipment Durability feature will fix this and making the game more balanced. Set all equipment's durabitily to 100%, but different material and manufacture may have different impacts. And add prefixes/attribute such as "dull", "sharp", "fragile", "rusted", "corroded", "Acid-proof Coating", "water-proof Surface" to further play with this Equipment Durability feature by adding different modifiers or even special effect.
"Dull" weapons are not going to deal good cutting damage, but you can use a grindstone to sharpen it, remove its "Dull", and even add "Sharp" to it if the Weaponsmith Skill was high enoug. But beaware that by doing so, the max Durability percentage may decrease if the Weaponsmith skill was low and eventually making this weapon unable to be trusted with.
"Fragile" weapons and armors are poorly crafted from their root, making a gear's durability taking critical loses from time to time. "Fragile" shall be very common among low tier gears made by nobody.
"Rusted" shall be common among ancient gears and "Corroded" shall be mostly found in regions that known for having acid rainfall. They shall both multiple the base durability desolation rate of a gear and might "gained" by a regular gear if exposed in a correct enviorment.
"Acid-proof Coating" making a gear acid proof. Apart from posibly recieving damage along with gears losing durability, A metallic gear without such attribute or attribute of similar effect will gain "Corroded" which is similar to "Fragile", and faster its desolated rate.
"Water-proof Coating" should be a very important attribute for all wearable containers. So that without it, any item inside of this container shall start to suffer the enviormental hazard the wearer was exposed to. For example, If it was just water, then only the food will got spolier faster, but if it was Acid, then every food item in this container should be "Contaminated" instantly. Making it can only be consumed by those who can eat foul meat.
3. Immersive Carry Weight & More racial combat style differences
No more dramatically increased carry weight capacity at mid/late game that allows someone to be equipped with the heaviest armors and weapons while still be able to roaming the world as the party's mule. Please make sure a high strength character's role in a party to be more specific and varied from other high strength characters. Big muscles should make choices among heavy armor, heavy weapon, backpack and carrying a companion, no more 1 guy do it all. Also each race should have their limitaion, and their learning speed modifier should be varied in a reasonable way. For example, a scorchlander should have a very low strength learning speed and even the strongest scorchlander fighter should only be able to wear a high tier mercenery armor, a high tier nodachi, a cloth shirt, a cloth scarf, a cloth pants while still be able to fight properly , otherwise they should be over encumbranced. Meanwhile, a Skeleton should have very low strength learning speed as well, but it should have a very decent starting carry weight. As for a shek, should be able to way much stronger(carry weight) than scorchlander in the late game at least since sheks are much taller than scorchlanders and looks stronger. So with the carry weight capacity differenciated among different races, when lead by the player, they should start to have different combat loadouts. To enchance this even further, armors should have more racial restriction regarding their appearances. For example, a shek with horns, even sawed off, should still not be able to fit in most metallic armors for scorchlander and human, the same goes to Skeletons. Both shek and skeleton should have their own racial equipment and can only use the common one if it has no sloping issue.
By the way, speaking of which, I hope in Kenshi 2, all hair styles can be labelled with "long" or "short" tag and can be replaced with a hat wearing version if wearing a hat. To avoid the bold head or hair slope problem.
4. Wearable Container
These Wearable Container should not have any item weight reduction effect. Instead, they should have a item weight increasement effect.
And let only the best wearable container to be the exception of such increasement. Also, I hope when carrying a character, the weight was not just a fixed weight, but also the weight that carried character was carrying(armor, weapon, backpack, etc.)