Lo-Fi Games

I bought Kenshi two and a half weeks ago, and I've become completely addicted to playing it (according to Steam, I've played it for 87 hours in just two and a half weeks!). I keep blogging about it. My friends are probably sick of hearing me talk about it. It's just nuts!

And this is going to be more of the same. There are a lot of things I like about the game, but I just wanted to praise a couple of things about squads and about how enemies work.

Squads are the reason why I switched to the experimental version, and it was well worth the change. I wish we could have more than ten people in a squad. That's pretty much my only... well, not really disappointment. But I'm building a city, and I'd sure like to put all of my laborers into the same squad. It would be handy on recruiting runs, too.

But not at all essential. I really like how the game automatically puts a new recruit into a new squad, if there are already ten in the first squad. I just rename that squad to "Newbies" and tell them to follow the leader.

I like how easy it is to move people around, too - dragging people to different squads, dragging people into a different order within a squad, even dragging squads around to a different order. That way, for example, I can have my recruiting squad and that new squad of recruits listed together, so it's particularly easy to keep them organized. Meanwhile, my other squads - also listed together - are back building my city.

(I'm only recruiting women, so it takes me twice as long to get recruits. When I finish recruiting in every city, I just import into a new game and start the journey all over again. It's been working great, although I haven't tried to import buildings, yet. I know that's buggy, but no problem. I'll be prepared to start over in building my town, if necessary.)

Oh, yeah, I also like how empty squads don't show up on the main page. I have a squad called "Sick List" which is just temporary. It's for people in my town who need healing. It's on the squad page for easy access, if I need it, but otherwise, I don't even see it. Very nice!

Second, I love how bandits will attack each other, not just my characters (and those wild dog-things will attack everyone). I've played a lot of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, and it's a great game, but it's always ridiculous when wolves, cougars, rats, zombies, etc. completely ignore each other and gang up on the player character. It just doesn't make sense (not when it comes to the animals, at least).

The first time I encountered this in Kenshi, my party was lying bleeding on the ground from a sand ninja attack. But as the last of my people dropped unconscious, the sand ninjas were hit by a large band of dust bandits. That was great!

And just yesterday, when I was playing, my guys had almost finished healing in a town (can't remember which one right now), when a band of hungry bandits arrived. There weren't any town guards around (but then, town guards don't seem to attack hungry bandits, anyway). But obviously, this wasn't a problem for an experienced squad.

Just as we'd almost mopped them up, though, a band of dust bandits ran into the fight, attacking both sides. And immediately behind them, apparently chasing them, came a pack of wolves (or dogs, or whatever they're supposed to be). They hit the fight on the same side as the dust bandits, and they mostly fought each other. But it was still very clearly a four-way fight, with each faction (including the dogs as one 'faction') fighting the other three.

I loved it! I don't know, as yet, if the animals fight each other, too. I hope so. But although there are wolves just... everywhere, I've only encountered one other animal (one lone beak-thing, which was neat, but we had it hugely outnumbered).

Anyway, as I said, my friends are probably sick of me gushing about this game, so I thought I'd do it here. You, at least, don't have to listen.

This is a great game, already. I'm really looking forward to future developments. Thanks much!

seen animals attack each other when they not in the same group ( WIldlife ) but tis still in development so sure things wil change so that they do attack each other as well more reliably. just like the city guards not attacking bandits which should be fixed in the upcoming update in april.

But yea it is a good game, if i hadnt had that one time when the game refused to work for me i would have around 2,000 hours into it by now instead of only 1,300.

WCG wrote:I wish we could have more than ten people in a squad. That's pretty much my only... well, not really disappointment.

You actually can have more than 10! It's really easy to mod:
Open up the FCS and create a new mod, name it to whatever you like. In the top bar of the FCS you can find "Global game settings". Open it up and relatively fast you can see a "faction" section where you can change the max squad size. (Also max squads and max faction size) Save your mod, add it to your mods.cfg and you are done!

how do you put people into squad?

Butta wrote:You actually can have more than 10! It's really easy to mod:

Great! Thanks.

I don't like to run mods while a game is in development, just in case I encounter bugs, but I'll certainly keep that in mind. As I keep recruiting more and more people, I might have to do that, anyway. Thanks again.

starbust wrote:how do you put people into squad?

You have to be running the experimental version. (If you are, then your people will already be in squads.) Then, there will be a SQD button at the bottom of the page (near the TECH button).

If you want to move them from one squad to another, just go to that squad page and drag them. You can drag them around within a squad, too, or even drag the squads into a different order. It's simple, so I suspect that you're just not running the experimental version (which was my problem, initially, too).

WCG wrote: I don't like to run mods while a game is in development, just in case I encounter bugs, but I'll certainly keep that in mind. As I keep recruiting more and more people, I might have to do that, anyway. Thanks again..

There won't be any bugs. You just change one number and in past versions of the new squad management the squad limit was at 20 (I think) by default so it's definitely safe to set it to 20 at least. More shouldn't cause any bugs too.

Butta wrote:There won't be any bugs. You just change one number and in past versions of the new squad management the squad limit was at 20 (I think) by default so it's definitely safe to set it to 20 at least.

OK, I tried that and had nothing but problems. Maybe I'm doing something wrong? But I have no idea what.

"FCS" is Forgotten Construction Set.exe? That seemed to make sense, at least. (I normally need very specific instructions!) I ran it and clicked on "Global Game Settings." No problem, so far. However, I was surprised to see that the squad size was already set to 20. (It's only been a maximum of 10 in my game, so why was it already set to 20?)

However, the maximum faction number was only 100, so I changed that to 200, for future expansion. I changed nothing else, closed the window (there seemed to be no other way to get out of it than to click the 'x' on the corner), then saved the mod to "Larger_squad_size.mod" (note that I opened up the "Global Game Settings" again, just to make sure my change had persisted - it had).

Then you said to add it to my "mods.cfg," but you didn't say how. Well, I found the "mods.cfg" file, opened it with notepad (it was blank), and typed in "Larger_squad_size.mod" - then saved it. I figured I could always delete it again, if necessary, but that seemed to work. At least, when I started the game again, my maximum squad size was 20.

I didn't actually test it by moving people around, but it did say 20, instead of 10, in the squad window. So I headed out into the desert, where we ran into one lone beak thing. The minute we ran up to it, though, it dropped dead,... and so did three of my most experienced followers.

Now, maybe a beak thing can kill three experienced followers instantly, but I've fought them before and nothing even close to that has happened. And, certainly, they don't normally drop dead, themselves, the minute we start fighting them! Something was clearly wrong.

So I exited the game, ran "Forgotten Construction Set. exe" again, and loaded my mod. However, when I clicked on "Global Game Settings," it showed a maximum of 50 people in a faction (not 200) and a maximum of 10 in a squad (not 20). That's not what it showed the first time I ran the program, not when I first started it and not after I'd changed it.

So I changed it back to 200 and 20 again, looked around for other screwy settings (like "drop dead instantly"), but couldn't find anything obvious, re-saved the mod and started the game again. This time, the beak thing wasn't there, so it took awhile to find something to fight. (I did, however, noticed that my research times had gone through the roof. Note that I did not change anything to do with research, but it had been changed, nonetheless.)

Eventually, we encountered a few dust bandits - no problem for my group - and went to attack. The minute we met with them in combat, half of my squad instantly dropped dead.

I have no idea what's going on, but I'm definitely going to delete that mod. I only hope I can get my game back without too much trouble. I appreciate the attempt to help, but trying to run a mod with just a very, very simple change is ruining the game for me.

As I say, I have no idea what's going on. Any ideas?

It's really easy to mod:
Open up the FCS and create a new mod, name it to whatever you like. In the top bar of the FCS you can find "Global game settings". Open it up and relatively fast you can see a "faction" section where you can change the max squad size. (Also max squads and max faction size) Save your mod, add it to your mods.cfg and you are done!

Note that this leaves out a step, which is why it caused me such problems. I thought I'd better post something here, in case another newbie stumbles across this thread.

So, here is a link to the complete instructions from Butta - very clear, very easy to understand and to do. My thanks!

WCG wrote:The minute we ran up to it, though, it dropped dead,... and so did three of my most experienced followers.

Now, maybe a beak thing can kill three experienced followers instantly, but I've fought them before and nothing even close to that has happened. And, certainly, they don't normally drop dead, themselves, the minute we start fighting them! Something was clearly wrong.

Sounds to me like the global damage and death chance modifier got capped somehow. That would do it.

And yeah, I think i know what step you were talking about, and that is very first thing you do is create a new mod via the menu, save it as a name, then load both the mod you just created aswell as the basedata (top item).

party mod fuck my game up but yeah.... '

had this Ore mining town going with low party mod on... Felt cocky and scroll it up...
about 5 minute later... 30 beak thing rush my town ( it scout me out before I tune it up)
So yeah... 30 lives escape barely into town and fend off. 25 more beak thing are still in my ore town...

So yeah... thats my end of that map... gotta move on, nomad style... good run. since before i've start the town I was only with 10 guys.

Most of the goal for me is to recruit as many soldier as possible until the game limited me.
for wish is think its about 250+ give more.

This game is fun in all aspect. I love to keep going around the map and picture if trees were being thought about.

The possibility of map adding can be cool also. You can make an entire new map and link it to the old one and you can just travel there. New map can be river country or jungle forest.

and I think if I can mod in places. It would be awesome.

starbust wrote:
The possibility of map adding can be cool also. You can make an entire new map and link it to the old one and you can just travel there. New map can be river country or jungle forest.

and I think if I can mod in places. It would be awesome.

Might wanna check out the updates regarding the new map that's been a WIP for quite a while now

.. or were you specifically referring to the idea of modding in new maps areas?