I have seen NPCs going in patrols. Watch out for them is higly possible to be armed and attack u or your group survivors.

interesting, would those be bandits tho?

Originally posted by Sam:

interesting, would those be bandits tho?

NPCs currently do not roam around. I am working on a plan for how to change this and some other things:
1. Make npcs scavenge - This involves solving the issue of having things happening in the background and for changes to be made once that area of the map is finally loaded.
2. Rewrite how npc bandits work - Right now, bandits can appear randomly and attack your safehouse. The risk for this is very, very small (0.1 - 0.2% roll every hour). Instead, they will be a part of procedural generation i.e. some of the npcs generated turn criminals during their lifetime and will be put into the world as bandits.
3. First iteration of Rimworld-esque job assignment system - This will make both npcs at your safehouse as well as other npcs in the world do things on their own according to a priority and scheduling system similar to Rimworld.
4. Bandits will have new behaviors added where they move around every now and then, and learn about their surroundings e.g. where safehouses are, and conduct raids every now and then.

Originally posted by Snejk:

Originally posted by Sam:

interesting, would those be bandits tho?

NPCs currently do not roam around. I am working on a plan for how to change this and some other things:
1. Make npcs scavenge - This involves solving the issue of having things happening in the background and for changes to be made once that area of the map is finally loaded.
2. Rewrite how npc bandits work - Right now, bandits can appear randomly and attack your safehouse. The risk for this is very, very small (0.1 - 0.2% roll every hour). Instead, they will be a part of procedural generation i.e. some of the npcs generated turn criminals during their lifetime and will be put into the world as bandits.
3. First iteration of Rimworld-esque job assignment system - This will make both npcs at your safehouse as well as other npcs in the world do things on their own according to a priority and scheduling system similar to Rimworld.
4. Bandits will have new behaviors added where they move around every now and then, and learn about their surroundings e.g. where safehouses are, and conduct raids every now and then.

Huh, YES PLEASE!

This is generally all I've been waiting for in this game. Bandits mod is good in some regards but it feels too in your face. What I love about this mod and what you wanna do with it is all the procedural gen, background sim and the rimworldesque features you plan on adding. It's honestly very exciting, I can't wait!

Couple of inquiries and suggestions:

1 - Scavenging will make things very interesting, I was wondering if you were thinking of adding some chatter on the radio channels when some of them plan on going on scavenging trips? I was thinking it could happen when they on exploring some risky/Infested locations. That way other groups might decide to send some people to join them and help them on their trip. And players could also decide to join.

2 - For bandits it will be soooo much better that way omg! This I also cannot wait for! It's a great way to go about it and I would add that some other friendly NPCs could have a chance to turn as the game goes on and especially if they're running out of resources and food. There could be a scale or multiplier lowering the chances of it and the weight of avaible resources impact on this.

3 - Very cool! in these jobs, is it gonna include things like farming and construction? I can easily see barricading, cleaning, etc but if it's possible to do so, it would make things interesting to see little gardens for their long time survival. Buidling I mean't like fences and walls around their safehouse to add protection.

4 - Are the bandits gonna be always on the move or will they set up a safehouse of their own?

5 - A thing I liked about the bandits mod, was the Cannibals. Could be interesting to see some here too!

6 - Will there be a type of relationship system? Like for exemple I see some people with the same last name in groups probably part of the same family. Now I haven't experimented too much so far, but I thought that adding those could mean some NPCs wouldn't want to join you and leave their loved ones behind or atleast they would all leave together with you if they're willing to do so

That's pretty much all I had,
Thanks for your anwsers and amazing work,
can't wait to read your replies!

Originally posted by Sam:

1 - Scavenging will make things very interesting, I was wondering if you were thinking of adding some chatter on the radio channels when some of them plan on going on scavenging trips? I was thinking it could happen when they on exploring some risky/Infested locations. That way other groups might decide to send some people to join them and help them on their trip. And players could also decide to join.

I'd like radios to be more useful for communication, but I think it is tricky to make it work well. On one hand, I don't like cramming all npcs into a single radio channel, since it becomes too chatty and kind of breaks the immersion (if everyone is listening, you could make the argument that all npcs with a radio has perfect information and would act accordingly).

I've thought about how to address this specifically for the military i.e. the frequency would be random per save and the patrols would be carrying a piece of paper with the frequency on for you to find, which would allow you to listen in.

For player groups, I want the communication frequency to be configurable and for npcs with an active radio who are killed e.g. in MP by a rival faction to reveal their radio frequency, so an enemy can listen in to what they're up to. I think that can be quite exciting.

Originally posted by Sam:

2 - For bandits it will be soooo much better that way omg! This I also cannot wait for! It's a great way to go about it and I would add that some other friendly NPCs could have a chance to turn as the game goes on and especially if they're running out of resources and food. There could be a scale or multiplier lowering the chances of it and the weight of avaible resources impact on this.

I've thought about how to make npcs turn in the way you describe by having some kind of morality stat that goes up and down i.e. bandits can turn friendly and normal survivors can turn into bandits, but I haven't fully fleshed out the specifics yet.

Originally posted by Sam:

3 - Very cool! in these jobs, is it gonna include things like farming and construction? I can easily see barricading, cleaning, etc but if it's possible to do so, it would make things interesting to see little gardens for their long time survival. Buidling I mean't like fences and walls around their safehouse to add protection.

Eventually, yes. The tricky part is how to apply changes to the world after the fact when that specific chunk is loaded in. I think I am pretty close to making this work in terms of scavenging, but farming and building is obviously more complicated, so it will take some more time.

Originally posted by Sam:

4 - Are the bandits gonna be always on the move or will they set up a safehouse of their own?

I haven't fully thought through exactly how it will work, but my current line of thinking is that they will set up a safehouse in an area and then live there until either a certain period of time passes (1w? 2w? Maybe configurable?) or if they have made a certain number of raids or if they have been successfully raided. Something along those lines.

Originally posted by Sam:

6 - Will there be a type of relationship system? Like for exemple I see some people with the same last name in groups probably part of the same family. Now I haven't experimented too much so far, but I thought that adding those could mean some NPCs wouldn't want to join you and leave their loved ones behind or atleast they would all leave together with you if they're willing to do so

There already is a relationship system. You can't really see the relationship you have with random npcs (yet), but you can see it with your npcs by looking at the NPC overview. It scaled from -100 to 100 and is visible if you check the NPC overview window.

The current relationship system is a bit scuffed, since it was initially designed out of necessity. Npcs need to fight back if you attack them and not just stand there and take it, so if they take damage from you, you will lose relationship with them, eventually turn hostile. However, friendly fire can sometimes happen, so you need a way to counteract that by being able to raise the relationship with them, hence I implemented the dialogue system, so you can speak with them and raise your relationship with them back to where it was before the friendly fire.

What I'd probably improve first is to make relationships more visible to npcs overall, but especially for npcs outside your group, and for relationship gains to be capped daily, so you can't just spam it to increase relationship. This would mean that you need to actually go out of your way to talk to npcs nearby your base on a regular basis to maintain and build relationships with them in order to recruit them into your group.