UC are straight D**KS

[Kazmeister]

So I’m on day 150 or so, started in Hub, made myself and two buddies a nuisance in HN training MA, Stealth, and Lockpick, (29000 bounty for LIFE with HN) ran away to the Desert, got shot at for sport by the nobles, ended up enslaved, stayed there for a while, escaped and lost my two buddies in the process, went back to Hub, hired on a scorchy and split for Squin, set up a smithy, made some cash, hired a few Shek toughs, and then went south to Clownsteady and then across to Catun (I’ve got over 500 hours in this game in past playthroughs, and never been to Catun, so I figured why not?)

Okay. To the point: HN are a bunch of racist, sexist d-bags. Shek are arrogant I crossfit jerks. But the UC Nobility? Holy hell these guys are straight-up D**KS. And not just to me. To their own samurai. They really don’t care if all their sammies die and their whole world burns.

I’m set up in Catun and churning out quality leather armor for cash, plenty of skins laying around, just need to pull it off the Gutters. I hired an apprentice smith for my scorchy just to tan hides because otherwise she couldn’t keep up.

My guard squad should be out hunting beakers full time but they can’t. Instead they’re all bodyguarding the Gate Guard Sergeant and four of his lackeys. This poor bast**d... They didn’t even get issued medkits. They’re never healthy, always in some state of f**ked up. One guy’s got a permanent limp. They’ve got guards whose job it is to go out and kite Gutters back to the gate. One of them’s missing a leg. How f**ked is that? He’s MISSING A LEG ffs. He’s trying to kite on his hands and knee! I’m constantly healing these dudes, because unlike Lord Jerkface up there, I understand that if they all die off, I’m gonna have beaks knocking at my front door. And I LIKE my front door. This HQ cost me a small fortune.

And know what I get for all my efforts, all my healing, all my beaker fisticuffs on the guard’s behalf? Nothing! The nobles in their ivory towers have got not a shred of appreciation (0 relations) for me basically single handedly keeping their Samurai alive, and believe me, I do. The one time, tbe ONE time, I went out hunting and left the gate guards to fend for themselves, I came back to find half the guards limping and bleeding, Samurai Captain unconscious and missing an arm, and a dead gutter outside the Shinobi tower... Inside BOTH gates. What the hell kind of sh**show they running here?

At least the Sammies appreciate me. I haven’t had my bags checked in months.

I thought this was going to be my forever home, but this is ridiculous. The Scrapyard Kings or whatever tf they call themselves aren’t pulling their weight, even though they’re supposedly running stuff behind the scenes (they’re not running a d**n thing except their mouths), the same Shinobi that absolutely OWN Hub, despite appearances to the contrary, are scared to even go outside because the gates don’t stop anything. I’ve had to patch them up too. I don’t know how Catun wasn’t overrun when I got here. Eventually the last of the guards are going to be eaten and then it’s only a matter of time before all is lost. I’m not sure where I’m going to go next, but this situation is untenable.

At least give your dudes some medkits, you absolute D**KS!

[Excellion]

Have you encountered the random event with the UC noble hunter squad? That event is one of the core reasons why i dislike UC more than most factions.

Essentially you will run into a squad of samurai, some slaves and a noble wearing a high-quality eagle's cross crossbow. Most times they will just ignore you, but at times the Noble will decide to attack you. Your crime? Well... he has a new bow and wants to try it so you have the honour of being the target. Even more fun? He has diplomatic status so even entirely justified self-defence will cause you to take a substantial hit to your UC reputation if you manage to off him.

One of my most satisfying moments in Kenshi was triggering this event on a single-character playthrough. The noble sent his samurai after me and fired a single bolt that wasn't even close to hitting. What he clearly wasn't expecting was that my main character had the same crossbow as he did... plus the skill to actually use it. The first return shot ended up headshotting and instantly killing him.

As for the samurai... i just ran away from them. Having them live to tell the tale felt like a wonderful warning for future nobles against hunting people for sport.

[Undead Rufus]

Your story is the kind of stuff that makes Kenshi great.

I usually give the UC a lot of leeway, because I make a lot of money selling slaves (bandits ... mostly).

Gotta say, though, the first time a noble hunter started taking pot shots at my miners, which resulted in my entire crew fighting Sho-Battai and fleeing a lucrative setup, I'm a bit more sympathetic toward Tinfist's faction.

[bunny de fluff]

I lived there for a long time in my first playthrough ever. Good place to loot and sell their weapons. The uniforms ain't worth a crap.

[Kazmeister]

Originally posted by Excellion:

Have you encountered the random event with the UC noble hunter squad? That event is one of the core reasons why i dislike UC more than most factions.

Yes this absolutely happened. Almost on arrival. Me and Pegleg Pyong, fresh in from World’s End where Pegleg Pyong got his name (carried that dude all the way up from Stack), hadn’t even walked into our first UC city yet, and here’s this a**hole taking potshots at us from a hill outside the gate. Just about took off Pyong’s arm before we got inside.

Ended up losing Pyong to the slavers a few weeks later when we tried to escape one of the desert stone mines. I got out, he didn’t make it. Then they f**ked up his stomach, stuck him in their sturdiest cage so he couldn’t pick the lock, even though he slipped his shackles, and then just left him to bleed. Poor b**tard bled out before I could sneak back in there to patch him up, and I tried like hell because they’d already done for Doc, and he was all I had left. RIP Pyong. ‘Til Valhalla buddy.

Hope his leg f**ked up their incinerator.

[Zloth]

I just started playing and set up shop in Catun. Looks like there are no med kits to be had in the entire town!

Can you build medkits and sell them from a store counter? Maybe some of the guards would buy a few? Or at least some folks that might see fit to heal guards?

[Kazmeister]

Originally posted by Kazmeister:

Hope his leg f**ked up their incinerator.

It didn’t though. I went back some months later determined to burn the whole place down and they were still running it. My plan was to knock out and drag every single one of them out into the desert one by one and beat them to death with my bare hands for what they did to Pegleg.

That didn’t work out either though. I drug three of them out to the desert, stripped them naked, and fed them to the skimmers before the fourth got away and raised the alarm. Then they got wise and ran me off with turrets. Limped most of the way back to Hub, dodging HN patrols the whole way. Still had (still HAVE) that 29k bounty with those racist dirtbags to consider. After that I was done with fighting the system and focused on getting the smithy profitable instead.

I’m a lot tougher now though. I used to struggle with the prison guards in Stack, now I punch gutters into submission on the daily. Almost got enough cats put away to buy my way into a UC alliance. And then I’m going back to the camp. See, they’ve completely forgotten about me and as a pal of the UC they won’t look twice at me when I waltz my squad right through their gate, easy peasy.

Then those mofos gonna pay for what they did to Pegleg Pyong.

[Kazmeister]

Originally posted by Zloth:

I just started playing and set up shop in Catun. Looks like there are no med kits to be had in the entire town!

Can you build medkits and sell them from a store counter? Maybe some of the guards would buy a few? Or at least some folks that might see fit to heal guards?

Well if I got any of them alone I could probably knock em out and plant a bunch in their pockets and noone would be the wiser, but as terrible as they are against the gutters they’d just blow through them like a crackhead through rock after they won on a scratch-off.

[bunny de fluff]

Originally posted by Zloth:

I just started playing and set up shop in Catun. Looks like there are no med kits to be had in the entire town!

Can you build medkits and sell them from a store counter? Maybe some of the guards would buy a few? Or at least some folks that might see fit to heal guards?

Welcome to Kenshi !

[Pyrrhus]

Heng is prolly most easier UC town for temporary starting base. I never have seen noble hunter around Heng at all. Catun is more difficult due to more dangerous bandits and wildlife. Hub is best for starting base then maybe you could move to Mourn after stats of your characters are higher to handle hostiles around there. There aren't enough buildings in towns under major factions like Hub and Mourn to progress further toward player's outpost.

[Radiosity]

Originally posted by Zloth:

I just started playing and set up shop in Catun. Looks like there are no med kits to be had in the entire town!

Can you build medkits and sell them from a store counter? Maybe some of the guards would buy a few? Or at least some folks that might see fit to heal guards?

You can, but it's debatable whether the guards would ever be in a position to be shopping for them. Not sure they even have a shopping AI package added. Townsfolk will buy basic stuff like that (dried meat, first aid kits, alcohol, etc), but not much use for the guards.

[Darsaine]

I approve of your playstyle and storytelling, Kazmeister. Very Kenshi.

[Gespenst Gaming]

The Shek are kinda like dickish jock bullies who steal your lunch money, but when you compare them to the hitlers in the HN and the unregulated capitalists in the UC, they really come out as the only reasonable faction to be allied with.

[bunny de fluff]

Originally posted by Gespenst Gaming:

The Shek are kinda like dickish jock bullies who steal your lunch money, but when you compare them to the hitlers in the HN and the unregulated capitalists in the UC, they really come out as the only reasonable faction to be allied with.

My hiver ran past the Admag gate guards the other day when one of them shouted "Watch your bones, stick man!" it was so funny

[Kannon]

Originally posted by Gespenst Gaming:

The Shek are kinda like dickish jock bullies who steal your lunch money, but when you compare them to the hitlers in the HN and the unregulated capitalists in the UC, they really come out as the only reasonable faction to be allied with.

Sheks have no future as a nation. Their culture is just screwed up and their outlook towards farming, industry and thinking will prevent them from moving past being a bunch of feudal warlords. The base of their culture just isn't good.
UC feels extremely malleable compared to them. All you have to do to be respected within their culture is to be rich and powerful, which tends to be the player's endgoal. From the roleplaying perspective the long term goal of the alliance with them is fairly simple - becoming acknowledged as an organization on the level of Trader's guild is and shaping the politics with targeted assassinations and removal of the unfriendly nobles. I think it's entierly possible to turn that nation into something not as terrible as it's politics are defined by specific people rather than a super strong creed.
Holy nation is actually not that bad as a friend, they are just very polarizing. If you are human, why not, seriously? They offer a lot and ask so little in return. Long term - their religion will probably mellow out over centuries as the world will become a better place to live in with less ancient murder robots and cannibal psychos around. But it will be a really slow grind.
The robotic limb issue is dumb but is not something an average farmer in a pacified region is likely to encounter. You really shouldn't be losing your limbs when a horde of paladins are protecting you after all.
If you aren't human, why would you ever tho?


I would also add that UC is a nation that needs the player the most. Sheks might be screwed up after recent war but they are fairly well dug in in the remaining cities and HN is fighting with UC on the other side of the map and will likely fight for eternity so they are not in danger of extinction.
UC however is in the worst position in the game. They are clearly overstretched, without even having a direct connection between the two parts of the empire and they are half starved and riddled with internal issues. Most of the land they control is nightmare for living - desert with cannibals - desert - desert - MORE desert - beakland - beakland spiderswamp - beakland. It's no wonder they are half starved and need their hyper draconian policies.
Comparatively, HN has like no reason to be ♥♥♥♥♥ on the same level.

[Pyrrhus]

Sheks are hunters, not farmers, although they might even be foraging for wild grown food in their nature. As long they still can survive, nationality isn't in their interests, honor is.