This mod so good it is the reason me and my friends started playing the game again years after and right before the next version too. So I compiled a list of our opinions regarding the mod mainly on our experience in multiplayer.

Definitely keep the NPC autonomous (We enjoyed looking at the NPC trying to organize thousands of our loots lmao then offering a fish in exchange for its safety). We liked the path the mod direction in NPC is autonomy because it feels more realistic and we got more way things to micro manage than NPC. Here is a list of our suggestions for.

Friendly NPC:
+ Friendly NPC needs to be invited to join and once they joined disable friendly fire at least with melee and firearms (We accidentally killed our favorite NPC)
+ Random patrol around the base (Especially if players are sleeping or there is a bandit raid)
+ They should randomly talk what they are currently doing like saying "this place is dirty" then proceeds to clean for example.
+ If possible remove or lessen jump scare sounds for the recruited friendlies
+ They mainly do jobs that align their position (Chef offers to cook meals, Electricians repairs the generator, fisherman fishes and etc)
+ If there are more than 2 friendlies that u recruited they try to do a looting session to enhance their gears and carry necessities like food, ammo or even books back to base then this ends either good or bad.
+ Recruited friendlies get a tag same like when i created a faction in mp and invited players (To differentiate recruited friendlies and just wandering friendlies)
+ They sleep, eat and drink (Should encourage players if they want to recruit a lot of npc that they should be able to provide enough supplies)

Bandit NPC:
+ Raiders should only know your general location or base not your exact location that you were hiding in the bathroom shtting yourself and if they cant find you they ransacked the place (gives chances for poorly equipped players to hide and escape from them)
+ During night if you spotted them while they are sneaking, they should try to run to you instead (Sometimes they keep sneaking while I am shooting at their face)
+ If possible to adjust the option in which they instalock players just with brooms and beat them to death without any chance of doing anything

Well, I am pretty sure most of what we suggested are already said or thought of but regardless we give thanks to this great mod and I will be keeping a watch on the mod direction especially when the NPC arrives at the vanilla future versions. (indie stone should hire you)

being able to give them weapons, clothing and equipment would be nice though

Originally posted by thejavieljefe:

Because no one cares about the autonomy of NPCs people want to play online in singlepalyer. Simple as that. "Imitation doesn’t align with my passion for original work" sounds like you don't know how to do it, and you could just make a patch for survivors 2 in 1 but for some reason you won't. We will have to wait for build 43 and official NPCs I guess!

I mean, you can do thoose things? you have the lua knoweledge to make your dreams possible? if you dont even know what program you need to code then dont talk about other people project, that was so rude from your part when this man is programing a mod that itself is hard to introduce, is not adding a colthing, an item, or a weapon, is literally adding a mechanic that is not on the default game so every piece of code is new to zomboid even if others did something close like Superb, if you want compat patches or different behivors do it yourself

I wanted to add, could be possible to add a text or voice acting telling "hey you need help?" or "hey you alright?", to friendly npc to indetify them easier, cause a running npc with a broken bottle at me is not so friendly

Since this has been pinned 7 minutes ago, does this mean we can expect an update on the mod, very excited for this mods progress. could possibly be a must have for pz playthroughs

Will their car riding behavior be fixed? Passengers keep shooting it up trying to do drive bys and most collisions result in the screen cutting to black. Not to mention coming to any less than a 99.99% stop before getting out gets them injured turning the group on you. Also think name tags for NPCs in your group would make them harder to lose track of.

Originally posted by Slayer:

why do you want to change it and dont let them change it themselves?

i feel like being able to give the npcs weapons and armor at the very least is a must have. it can be immersion breaking if your running around fully geared and you have a companion who is naked with a frying pan. yea it might be cool if they can gear up automattically but what if you want the npcs to wear specific clothing or use specific weapons in a sorta rp scenario

Please consider allowing the player to select the friendly people’s clothing and weapons. You can simulate creating your own faction this way and just equip people with stuff that makes sense. Them automatically selecting whatever they wish results in a bit of weirdness. Customization is a more important part than NPC autonomy in my opinion.

In supurb survivors there was an option to debug an npc character taking control of them (it was an early dev option). I was wondering if that was ever a possibility not necessarily telling them what to do but being able to play as them, learning some skills might be difficult to start where as using an npc as a playable character might ease that grind like a lego charcter switch. The only down side when you died as those debugged characters your game ended.

Yeah, sounds like State of decay. And you are able to equip them with armor or etc. If you can play as them. An NPC.

And have you considered adding a feature to heal allied bandits? The most common problem I have with them is that when fighting large hordes there is no way for the player to heal them or equip them with better armor to resist damage.

at least give us a debug option or something to change their outfits, names, stats etc, i want NPCS so i can create groups from TWD in areas of the map, which i cant do without changing the outfits, names, and stats

This is great, but this all doesn't matter because the Bandits are too braindead retarded to survive.

Originally posted by Slayer:

Friendly NPCs won’t be programmable robots. You won't be able to give them direct orders, alter their inventory, change their names, clothes, or weapons. They are human-like, with their own sense of autonomy, and should know how to handle basic needs.

I would love being able to give them a set of clothes or weapons, simply to give my group of survivors a theme. Like: our gang all wear baseball caps and use baseball bats. Or to tell them to not use guns unless absolutely necessary, noise kills. Or to hand out guns with suppressors.

The other thing would be NPC 'gangs' with themes, like a military unit trying to guard some civilians so they take over a building and fortify, a merchant with guards trying to do trade, a farmer/rancher family which has fortified a farm.

I found a bug with friendly NPC that if you pick up a zombie corpse in B42 they will attack it and the attacks can revive it and stun lock the player.