any way to stop hungry bandits or to help them?

[Commander Raymond]

Is there any way to help leave food or give them food to increase relationship with them in order for them to stop attacking me? one group stopped by and iw as able to give them money and it increased my relationship a little bit but the rest of the groups just attack on sight? how do i help them?

[5nap]

if i remember correctly there are 2 types of hungry bandit groups: those who attack on sight and those who talk to you first. you'll be able to give money only to the second type and there is a 2 day cooldown to it. there are however mods for this, kaizo comes to mind with an option to initiate conversations first, as well as giving food instead of cats.

[Cattrina]

No, they are meant for low level practice. You will need it to survive.

[Shidan]

That dialog that boost relations is the only legitimate vanilla way, you just have to avoid all the fights without hurting any of them or you'll lose relations.

If you get to +50 though, all attacks will stop, and they have special dialog where they can bodyguard and follow you around.

[Mokona]

Technically yes but pulling it off is hell. First you will need to never hurt them. Second you will need to heal them. This gives a very small relationship boost but would probably take a good 50 hours just to get it high enough where they are friendly to you. Of course this will never stop them from being hungry as there programming forces them to be forever hungry but it will eventually get them to stop attacking you and calling you one of them.
Or you can just install a mod. I know there is one where you start as a hungry bandit because I requested it years ago and someone made it.

Found it again
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2180757843

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by Mokona:

First you will need to never hurt them. Second you will need to heal them. This gives a very small relationship boost but would probably take a good 50 hours just to get it high enough where they are friendly to you.

Without mods, healing can't bring any faction's disposition score any higher than five, and you shouldn't even expect to achieve that unless you bandage someone "important". No Hungry Bandits are important.

You can potentially get some other factions from "hostile" to "neutral" this way, but it won't get you an "alliance". Most bandit factions will continue to attack you at "neutral" anyway.

Homicidal lemmings is what they are.

Originally posted by Shidan:

That dialog that boost relations is the only legitimate vanilla way, you just have to avoid all the fights without hurting any of them or you'll lose relations.

Paying to free them from UC slavery is another way to raise their disposition score, and as far as I've ever observed, there's no penalty for hurting nor even killing them. Possibly this might change with mods.

I know they don't like being put in cages.

[Shidan]

Originally posted by Bomb Bloke:

Originally posted by Shidan:

That dialog that boost relations is the only legitimate vanilla way, you just have to avoid all the fights without hurting any of them or you'll lose relations.

Paying to free them from UC slavery is another way to raise their disposition score, and as far as I've ever observed, there's no penalty for hurting nor even killing them. Possibly this might change with mods.

I know they don't like being put in cages.

Personally, I don't consider the slavery trick "legitimate". I expect if it had been discovered sooner, it would have had its relations capped like healing did. So that it could improve relations, but never get to alliance. It only persists because it was found after the devs mostly moved on to Kenshi 2.

I've seen my relations plummet by fighting them. Was trying to ally with them, and got attacked by one group, and got brought down from a slight positive to like -50ish over the course of one fight.

But you're right, it's not impossible this was due to mods. I don't think I had any odd that give them faction importance, but it was years ago, and I never explicitly tested it in vanilla.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by Shidan:

Personally, I don't consider the slavery trick "legitimate". I expect if it had been discovered sooner, it would have had its relations capped like healing did.

I agree that the slavery system is half-baked and very exploitable, but I can make the same observation about many of Kenshi's mechanics.

In the case of the "factionRep++ when purchasing" code, my impression is that it may've been implemented for the specific purpose of befriending weaker bandits such as these. They're frequently enslaved without any player intervention.