Build on top of Rugs + Drop objects at point + Disassembled material spawning + Show NPC Tooltips

[SocuciusErgalla]

The observations and suggestions made here pertain to version 96.5 (Experimental).

Sorry for the long post, I did my best to break it up and make it readable.

Build on top of Rugs:

Who wants to place their nice clean sitting pillows on the dusty floor?

When I discovered the furniture blueprints and started building furniture, I was thrilled to have pillows, chairs, rugs, wall dividers, and all those wonderful things available to furnish my outpost and make my buildings look like more than containers for my storage and crafting stations.

However I was incredibly dismayed to learn that , while I can place rugs on top of rugs and intersect them to cover the floor as I liked, I could not build anything over the rugs. Now only part of the standing area in front of my crafting benches are padded, my sitting boxes scrape the wooden floors, and that carpeted den I had planned out with sitting pillows now is only partially carpeted with my pillows on the cold, cold floor.

Since rugs can be built to intersect each other it would be nice if other things could too.

Why it can't or shouldn't be solved with mods:

Although a mod could be made that adds rugs to existing furniture models or adds a model that is basically other furniture plus a rug together as one model, that would be missing the point since you still wouldn't be able to place rugs wherever to create a nice authentic design. Also that would be a lot of work to make a new furniture item each time you wanted a rug a certain way.

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Drop objects at point:

While on the topic of decorating and placing things, another really nice minor feature would be the ability to specify where objects appear in the world when you drop them from a character's inventory. Currently it seems the object is placed directly in front of the character on the highest surface still within the room (that is, if there is a table immediately in front of your character and you drop an item, it will appear on the table, but if there is nothing in front of your character then the item would appear on the floor instead of the next highest surface, the roof).

It would be nice to have at least a little control over where discarded items land so that my outpost can be decorated with more than just empty shelves and tables.

A minimal implementation could be something similar to how the concept works in TES III: Morrowind where items that are dragged and dropped from your inventory appear in the approximate location in the world where you released the mouse (basically it set the coordinates of the item to the first point where the mouse intersects with a collision-enabled stationary object within a maximum distance from the player character).

More specifically, you could drag and drop an object and the game would try to place it where you dropped by using the coordinates of the mouse (similar to what they would be if you clicked there for a move command I would assume, since I don't actually know how the system is set up) as the reference point and then just drop the object as if the character were standing right in front of the reference point.

As far as orientation of the dropped items go, it might as well be just be some default value with respect to the character/camera/map. There doesn't really need to be some involved rotation/placement system like in build mode - I'm just hoping for something minimal to allow a bit more control over the world.


Why it can't or shouldn't be solved with mods:

Since my underlying goal for this is to be able to decorate (or junk up) my outpost with various items, the same effect could be achieved with mods that introduce new furniture like shelves pre-stocked with whatever items, and tables that already have junk placed on them.
While this is a valid solution that I will probably try if this feature doesn't get added, it has the same problem as the similar carpet-included furniture mod solution in that it provides only a limited, canned set of decorations.

Additionally it would mean that you couldn't pick the items up again to use them or move them, and I think being able to control item placement in the world is a great mechanic to include anyway.

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Dissembled material spawning:

This is a related issue to item placement and something that is more or less a quick a dirty fix for a bug.
Currently when you disassemble things throughout your outpost there is a chance some of the resulting materials are spawned somewhere inaccessible to your characters. A lot of times when I disassemble things in that are in close proximity or that are below a low ceiling or next to the wall of another building/incline a material will end up below the ground or above the original object or in the ceiling/wall/on an unreachable incline.

A simple and possibly temporary solution could be to just spawn the materials in front of the characters as if they dropped them from inventory.

Another more involved solution could be to replace disassembled objects with a "rubble" or "refuse" object that is a container holding the reclaimed materials. This container cannot have items placed in it, would be deleted once it is emptied, or could be deleted without claiming the contents which would in turn disappear as well. When only one material is reclaimed then that material would simply spawn in front of the character like normal instead of having the container object spawned.

Or you could just extend the item pick up range I guess.

Why it can't or shouldn't be solved with mods:

Aside from adding new content I'm not sure how easily you can change behavior like this with mods. I've never used the construction set so I'm not sure if it provides any sort of scripting ability or if there is any sort of API available for working with Kenshi.

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Show NPC tooltips

Lastly it would be really really nice if conversation-able NPCs (vendors, drifters, anyone you can have another character actually talk to) could have tooltips that pop up when in range if you hold down a button in similar fashion to how items generate tooltips when you hold down ALT.

When you have NPCs wandering around after loading a game, when everyone in a town is scrambling here or there because a fight broke out, or just when you need to find that one guy you saw earlier but have no clue where he went, it is incredibly frustrating to have to pause and play "Wheres Waldo" for five minutes and mouse over every NPC to see if they have a speech option. The fact that I can quickly scan a disorganized ruin for hidden treasure by pressing ALT but have to carefully inspect every single person in the police station/bar/hive trading post to find the one interact-able person I want to talk to makes it even worse.

Heck instead of making a whole new key that does it just for NPCs, you could just add a toggle-able setting that determines whether or not NPCs are included with highlighted loot when ALT is pressed.

Why it can't or shouldn't be solved with mods:

Pretty much for the same reason I mentioned above.