Why do ambushes include neutral things?

[Cellar_Cat]

Noticed this on numerous occasions now. When I get ambushed during travel, the attacking group usually has a few standard enemies like you'd expect to see in the area, but frequently also includes some random animals on the map like a chicken or something, that would not normally be hostile.

This doesn't really cause any actual problems since if anything they are weaker than the proper enemies, but it does seem thematically weird. Are these supposed to join in, or is it a bug?

[~ Fabulous ~]

go to character > strategy > select "don't auto combat neutral NPC"

[Haperski]

Lorewise I think theyre recruited as part of the ambush group.
In any case, if an entity's name is red its hostile.

[Cellar_Cat]

Originally posted by ~ Fabulous ~:

go to character > strategy > select "don't auto combat neutral NPC"

Thanks, this seems to have stopped it (in one test case anyway).

I'm confused by this setting though. Why would the game default to aggroing neutral mobs specifically during an ambush? I am not using the auto fight so it's not like I've hit them or anything. And they don't seem to turn aggro if I fight the same types of enemy while just exploring a map tile. Seems peculiar.

[Cellar_Cat]

Seems I spoke too soon—the ones that didn't attack with that setting toggled were just part of a shrine. It still adds weird silly stuff like puppies to ambush groups.

[MechanizedCheese]

It's just how the game work, normally neutral mob can be enemies and normally hostile mob can be neutral in some city, sometime even on some random world map tile you can encounter neutral putit

[tatterdemalian]

Because ambushers don't care about civilian casualties. The point of an ambush is to be a surprise, and that means there will always be randoes wandering around (and on roads, guards that will come running to help, with the usual Keystone Kops level of competence I expect from NPCs).

[Question]

I dont know why people are trying to come up with lore reasons for something that is easily explained by the dev putting everything into one big list and using it for almost everything.

Why are there chicken bandits? Because they were all lumped into one list that the game uses to generate bandits. Theres no special lore reason for it.

Same for why NPCs want you to deliver vomit, its just dumped into one big list of items that are valid for delivery quests. There is no special lore reason for it.

[The Grand Mugwump]

It gets really silly when I get ambushed by children. My party just starts tearing them apart while they're trying to kill me.