"Upstart Factions"

[Lord Vorian]

Sorry for the title, not sure what to call this feature.

Allow a certain number of individual NPCs to act as the player in the game world. This includes recruiting squadmates, building and outpost, and going to war with other factions. Still limited in that they cannot remove key characters and events from the player experience.


After loving the hell out of my firs 60 hours of this game, I had this thought:
"So I'm not the chosen one eh? I'm not special? Well I seem to be the only one creating my own faction and making new squads, so I guess I am pretty special in the world of Kenshi."

As features go, this one is pretty deep and involves more changes to the macro-AI than my other suggestions. But I think the reward in player experience is also high relative to the increased cost of implementation. Imagine meeting one of these squads early on in the game. Perhaps they would attempt to recruit you. (accepting wouldn't give you control over the squad, rather it would mean getting the "squadmate" job similar to the way the "obedient slave" job works) Perhaps they attacked you and left you for dead. They could get wiped out early, or they could get stronger doing the same things the player does.

This means once you have your own faction you may have up-start squads giving you trouble the same way you did for the established empires. You may strategically decide to raid their outpost early on so they don't become a threat later. It provides late-game interest because as your empire expands, so does your exposure to these up-and-coming squads. These are a few examples among the many ways a system like this could breath life into an already impressive, dynamic world system.