Lo-Fi Games

I bought Kenshi when I saw it in the recent steam sale. I love the atmosphere of the game, I'm having a lot of fun with it, am really impressed with how far along it is and can see a remarkable potential in it, and am really looking forward to future updates.

There are a few things that could be done that I think would noticeably improve the player experience and make it more enjoyable. Some seem like pretty minor changes, others more complicated.

1) First and foremost, I would like bandits to stop chasing you if you get to close to a town. Bandits would know they have no chance against the town guards, and this would stop the "drag bandits to town guard and loot them for gold" early kick start, which makes the exciting and highly vulnerable early game so interesting.

2) The [b]combat system when running away[/b]. At the moment, when I need to run away from bandits, even if i'm loaded up on items to the point where I have "Heavy" encumbrance, their attack animation is slow enough that by the time the swing ends I'm out of reach, and can just walk back to town without ever getting hit. Again a little too easy. I'd rather have to dump my backpack and all my hard earned loot to get away from the band of bandits chasing me. Maybe they could even stop chasing me to loot my discarded goods instead.

3) An easier way to sell to traders. I've currently set up a nice little town, with good trade goods coming out (bread, rum, building materials which i don't need anymore) and have a small party of 4 roaming, killing, looting and selling. The problem is, if I load up 2-3 guys with loot, either trade goods or weapons looted on various bandits, I'll have to spend a significant amount of time walking to every single trader in the town to sell the items, and sometimes even have to move to a different town because I have too much to sell. Stacking weapons and trade goods in stacks up to 6 in trader backpacks would resolve this.

4) Be unable to put a filled up backpack in my inventory, or in another backpack. At the moment, my roaming party, sets out with -10 combat stats trading backpacks which I just remove from my shoulders when I need to fight and put back on when I need to loot. This would force me to organize my squad with a few fighters and maybe a couple of looters/medics that would have light combat equipment but could carry a lot of gear, while the fighters would have the heavy equipment and do all the fighting.

5) Have manual labor increase strength. Maybe encumbrance could also factor in how fast the strength is increased AND how fast the work is done. For example, you could have all your miners wear heavy equipment and be encumbered, which would increase their strength pretty fast, but would significantly lower their efficiency and productivity. You would sacrifice productivity for training.

6) Storage for bread/rum/cloth. I hate having to manually walk my guy to the storage chest every time he's made 5 of whichever luxury good he's making. I assume that feature was planned anyway but wanted to put it out there.

7) This one's a little more out there. Sparring has been mentioned before, and I would love to see that. Something else I would love to see is once one of your characters has reached a really high skill in a weapon skill and/or martial arts and/or fighting spirit (stats that I see are planned for the future) some people would seek you out for training and/or duels with such a high skilled opponent. Your renown as a great fighter would attract people to you for knowledge and/or a competition to know who's best.

I had other ideas but I can't recall them right now.
Again, I'm really excited about this game and love to see what can be done with it.

1) Considering the state of the game now, though, that would make raising your attack stats nearly impossible without highly risky combat, as well as making early profits impossible if you're not a trader or meager scavenger. Granted, that could also press players to play smarter, which could be a bonus for the theme of the game...

2) I think this is going to tie in to endurance: how long people can fight, how far they can run, how long they can go without eating, etc.

3) Traders will, in upcoming updates, buy your stuff if you have a staffed store with goods. In preparation for that, I have loaded up on fabrics and rum, the best stuff one can sell so far. I'm not going to make constant runs to the city to pull in money, especially given the one time I did, bandits attacked, nearly TPK'ed me and I lost my first recruit ever (RIP Setles).

4 - 7) Makes sense. Especially like the idea of #7. I think this also ties in to the idea of other factions perceiving you differently if you become masterfully skilled in a certain combat style, whether they respect you and appreciate your presence, or fear you and wish to see you die before you pick sides.

Just my opinions and/or rebuttals:

1) This would probably depend on the bandits. I mean, thirst-crazed or starved bandits might not care that you're approaching a town, and most bandit groups I've encountered have outnumbered city guards usually around 2 to 1. Forcing all groups to stop and turn away would take away from a feeling of "these guys really are insane and desperate".

2) Have you ever swung a weapon at someone while they are running away? I did some things with one of those nerdy medieval groups who wear armour and swing swords at each other, and I've actually tried this. It's real. The only way to hit someone who is running away with any amount of real force is to run beside them, at which point if they're smart they'll peel away. I actually like the way it is now (and when ranged combat is added, running probably won't help).

3) Weapons probably won't be able to stack unless Chris homogenizes the stats on each item, which I do not want to see. You can't stack two different items. A katana made by, I don't know, ChopCo might do 0.65 slashing damage, and a slightly better katana made by the same company might deal 0.68 because of the circumstances of its crafting. I disagree with you.

4) I don't know what you mean here. Are you saying currently you can put a full backpack into another backpack? Because if so, that's retarded. Are you saying you should be able to put a full backpack into another backpack? Because if so, see above.

5) If it doesn't already, it's supposed to. It actually specifically says in one of the tooltips that this is the idea.

6) I assume it's coming but I agree with you 100%.

7) I like the "master" idea a lot. I think it'd be cool if a guy - or hell, even a group of guys - would seek you out and try to learn from you or take you down if you became a god with a weapon. Good one.

"I'd rather have to dump my backpack and all my hard earned loot to get away from the band of bandits chasing me. Maybe they could even stop chasing me to loot my discarded goods instead."

Love that idea. run away today and drop a heap of cool stuff. next day the same bunch of bandits attacks you again wearing the armor and weilding the swords you spent 2 hours producing rum to buy.

Dongsmasher wrote:Just my opinions and/or rebuttals:

1) This would probably depend on the bandits. I mean, thirst-crazed or starved bandits might not care that you're approaching a town, and most bandit groups I've encountered have outnumbered city guards usually around 2 to 1. Forcing all groups to stop and turn away would take away from a feeling of "these guys really are insane and desperate".

I actually like your reasoning. Maybe the insane/desperate bandits would also have very poor quality loot which would sell for barely more than pocket change to make up for that.

2) Have you ever swung a weapon at someone while they are running away? I did some things with one of those nerdy medieval groups who wear armour and swing swords at each other, and I've actually tried this. It's real. The only way to hit someone who is running away with any amount of real force is to run beside them, at which point if they're smart they'll peel away. I actually like the way it is now (and when ranged combat is added, running probably won't help).

If I were running at the same speed as them that'd be fine, but even if i suffer from heavy encumbrance and am being chased by 6 guys they just start swinging as soon as they're in range and then miss. If they run faster, they could surround me, run ahead of me, and start swinging which would then hit me etc.

3) Weapons probably won't be able to stack unless Chris homogenizes the stats on each item, which I do not want to see. You can't stack two different items. A katana made by, I don't know, ChopCo might do 0.65 slashing damage, and a slightly better katana made by the same company might deal 0.68 because of the circumstances of its crafting. I disagree with you.

That's the thing though, they stack in my trader's backpack because most bandits have the same set of rusty sabres. There's like 4 different qualities of sabres they have and each type have different stats, but the ones with the same stats DO stack. Just not in the trader's backpack.

4) I don't know what you mean here. Are you saying currently you can put a full backpack into another backpack? Because if so, that's retarded. Are you saying you should be able to put a full backpack into another backpack? Because if so, see above.

Yes, you can put a full backpack inside another backpack. No you shouldn't be able to. You can also put a full backpack inside your inventory, which I don't think you should be able to, because it completely negates the negative stats system of the backpack since you can simply put it in your inventory as soon as you need to fight. Empty backpacks only in the inventory.

5) If it doesn't already, it's supposed to. It actually specifically says in one of the tooltips that this is the idea.

Encumbrance does increase the speed at which your strength increases, but manual labor does not increase strength. Running around encumbered with a heavy backpack, and fighting do however.

6) I assume it's coming but I agree with you 100%.

7) I like the "master" idea a lot. I think it'd be cool if a guy - or hell, even a group of guys - would seek you out and try to learn from you or take you down if you became a god with a weapon. Good one.