Understanding start conditions

[dev0]

I restarted the game a couple of times. Most of those restarts I started off with the same 3 survivors (Bruno, Pavle, Marko; sometimes with Katia instead of Marko) in modest temperatures.

I would like to use this thread to work with you guys on analyzing how the game determines your starting conditions.

After playing the game to day 12 the first time, Marko was killed, so I decided to start over. This time I have 3 totally different survivors and it's freezingly cold from the beginning.

I've not once seen those conditions in my previous attempts. How does the game determine your starting conditions?

Some guesses of mine:
- Whenever you unlock an achievement (i've unlocked several in the day 12 game), you earn more starting variations from which the game chooses randomly.
- Whenevere you unlock an achievement the game starting conditions become harder. There's no way back to the other conditions.
- The game looks at how well you did in the last couple of attempts and provides you with a reasonable starting condition for your assessed skill level.

Has anybody else observed anything?

[Bravo]

First playthrough was Pavle, Bruno and Marko up to 43 days, no survivors.

Second play through started with Katia, Pavle and Bruno, I could be wrong, but I believe the actual first paragraph of the start was different this time around (talking about the war) everything that I could remember is the same other than Katia instead of Marko.

Probable that it's a weighted RNG though, seeing as most people I seen have said they started with a combination including Pavle, Bruno and Marko, with Katia as the second most common.

Just to clarify though, I didn't see Katia in my first playthrough so it can't be unlocking characters by encountering them in the game itself.

[ExecutorQ3]

My first game:
* starting with Marko, Pavle and Bruno
* temperature: something around 18 i think
* ended day 8 - Marko got killed (obviously people don't like guns staring at their faces). Since that was missclick i've decided to restart right away.

My second game:
* starting with Marko, Pavle and Bruno
* temperature around 18, stayed for ~20 days like that, than freezing and snow for 12 days, got better at day 33 till the end (smth around 10 without active burners).
* at day 34 a wave of looting started and lasted for about 6 days (i think). Also there was some military advancement between day 10-20, but i'm not really sure for how long (part of the town was unacessable, like during the heavy snow). And for last 6 days there was theft attempt every night (marko and bruno got wounded a few times, even with firearms and ammo).
* Katia visited shelter at day 4 (i think) and i let her in to live with us (even though in the epilog it says something like "Day 4: A visitor came, we did not open the doors.", which is bulls**t.
* All four survived the winter (heard there's achievement for that, but hey not for me) and the war lasted 45 days (the news about peacemaker arriving in the town came at day 43).

I'm planning to do my 3rd game soon (i'll let you know what happened then).

Btw i think there's some bug with the trade on the city market. It's like the guy who sells alcohol is willing to trade everything for 1 bottle of water, the medic will trade everything (not the pure alcohol) for 1 high quality cigaret and the man who sells materials will trade 8 slots of wood/scrap for something cheap too (i thing it's also 1 cigaret). I don't really think that is intended... And it doesn't matter what comodity is on high demand, it just stays that way.