Lo-Fi Games

As a preface I wanted to firstly say I have tried to search for these ideas in the sticky, but if I have gone over something already discussed I apologise! This is somewhat of a ramble also so if things don't quite make sense, keep reading and there may even be an explanation further in!

To start with I want to address the short term/early game issues I currently see, and apply some long term gameplay changes to solve each one, which should add to the overall gameplay aspects. Some of these have been raised in other posts but to have a complete overview of my thoughts I've kept them here also (I am also aware that some are already planned). Namely the ease of which it is to start building a town and produce your own building materials - which you can then sell for cash, acquiring companions etc.

Encompassing this are a number of things:
- Who are you?
So you start the game as one of the stories and have a bio, but in the grand scheme of things that means little in the world that you interact with, stats, gear and faction relations aside. You are pretty much a nobody. It should take more than just C's to start your faction, a reputation being one of them, good relations with other factions another. This ties in with recruitment of companions - why would they sign up to join you for the rest of their lives and pledge their undying loyalty to you forever, for some C's - you are nobody to them.

- Recruiting companions is too easy/What are companions for.
In fact, part of my suggestions are that these guys/girls are you Champions or Captains. They still retain the aspect of being "your" characters too, but they would have more purpose. In fact there should be a logical process to starting your faction. Coming out of the gates you are just a single guy but over time you naturally progress in power and prestige and at that point you can start the faction, similar in a way to Mount and Blade. Some random guy planting a flag in the middle of London and saying he was starting a new country would get laughed at. Some sort of flow would be - start game - fight battles/trade/steal, get some rep, possibly tied to wealth or martial prowess, crime rating etc - scripted events where you, through your travels, save people or do jobs for them - they offer/ask to join you because they are impressed by what they see in you - you create a small band - your exploits are well known/higher rep/more cash - but you still start small, so you fight another band and wipe/buy them out and take over their little outpost (randomly gen locations) - get stronger - starting a town should be EXPENSIVE and HARD. Partly because of...

- Map resources
Randomly generated nodes/mines for Ores and Stones, wooded areas for lumber. Why the hell can I throw down a bunch of building mats and make a mine to provide me with infinite supply of stone to make more building mats. This takes you away from having one centralised town that produces everything you could possibly want and adds strategic value to certain locations that need to be fought over. Stone/Ore nodes could be randomly gen'd but I would say that lumber is part of the map but could be RG'd also. To have a fully functioning, self sustaining production line you would need 3 towns/outposts at minimum in different locations. Starting out, for example you could set up near or in a forested location, set up a trade route with a friendly town nearby, start producing lumber and sell it or trade it for other items (stone/building mats/food etc) - all of which can be handled in a trade ui that allows you to specify what goods you want to keep and sell in your outpost automatically. This trade ui can expand into every material/item, not just for trading to other factions or random travelling merchants, but also to keep your other towns/outposts supplied with things they need to operate.....

- Inter faction town supply routes
So to go with the above you have a number of towns/outposts. You have gained control of an ore mine, a stone mine and you have your lumber area. You need stone and lumber for building mats, and you need ore for production of weapons/armour. You can set up routes that are used to supply each town to keep levels of materials at a specified amount. Think outpost A needs lumber, outpost B produces lumber and prioritises supply to other towns over selling via trade. It has a max of 20 lumber for supply, anything over that is available to be sold for profit (all amounts changeable). You set up a supply route on the map for the path to follow and a caravan is dispatched along that route from OP B to OP A. Here is a use for your captains - you can assign them to protect your trade/supply routes! You put them in a group and have them guard any caravans or have them patrol the routes themselves.....

- Captains and what you do with them
There is a hierarchy to any faction, yours would be no exception. There would be jobs that only your captains can do, such as oversee a town thereby increasing production. Yes instead of having your characters - the captains - all in one bubble together running around or sat in a building for hours researching, or mining rocks, they are doing things, not menial things. These guys are heroes! Not villagers from Age of Empires! But who is doing all the manual labour? Well, part of where all your money goes is in the hiring of plebs. They aren't as efficient at doing jobs as your characters, who are awesome, but they add to the aspect of having a faction or an empire. You need more than just a bunch of guys! Each of your capt's has his or her own rep score as well, the higher the rep score the more plebs you can get. You assign a capt to oversee a town, he can have for example 15 plebs max (your starting character hires heroes, your heroes hire plebs), each pleb requires pay - minor amount but there needs to be a money sink, empires aren't free - which is determined by their job/skills.... see plebs below.
Over time you will need to fight against other factions, so whilst your main character has his heroes your heroes can have their own soldiers assigned to them so you can end up with larger armies towards the end game.

- Plebs
Their jobs can differ, you can hire manual labour plebs for basic stuff, mining for example, more costly plebs for more skillfull jobs such as weapon or armour smithing, research etc etc. You can also hire them as guards as obviously you will need to protect your outposts. To add to this, your plebs require their pay as mentioned above, but they also require housing, you need sufficient bed space for each pleb to exist, and they also require food to eat and perhaps some luxuries to keep them happy and their production up - you could use slaves under a similar principle if you were that way inclined, but their efficiency wouldn't be as high. Each outpost would need these things to operate.

- Food
Is more than just a trade resource, it's required so survive, same with water. Your outposts need to be sufficiently supplied with food/water to operate. As for soldiers assigned to heroes, well to make things simple your soldiers take food out of the outpost pool that they are recruited from rather than having to shove loads of food into your inventories which is just bloody irritating.

- Tech/Research
I think everyone is in agreement that the current implementation is lacking. No doubt the devs are too and have their own ideas. But this type of game setting I think would benefit from a scavenging type of system. Your characters go out and scavenge in ruined towns, cities etc to find items that are brought back for research. Getting these items isn't easy though. You can go deeper into cities or ruins but you'll never know if you come up against some type of beasts that tear you to shreds or some other band of cut throats that are tougher than you are. You can also take quests to find hidden artifacts to provide research boosts, or even purchase items for research from wandering traders. Think also of treasure ships in the distant past, the player gets notified of a caravan containing artifacts headed from one town to another, do they attack and take the artificats providing them with a research boost or new item to research, or do they ignore it or even protect it from other factions in order to get better relations with the caravans owning faction? Either way adding this to the game world I think could provide a great amount of immersiveness.

So, there are some ideas, sorry for the rambling. I had to get them out as they've been going round in my head for ages. Some might be shitty, already discussed or fantastic, so take from it what you will.

TL;DR ideas.

A lot of the ingame stuff at the moment are placeholders, like the infinite mines or even you able to place them somewhere, plan is to them be limited and not just any place (Correct me if i am wrong xD), same is with the companions, they wil have other forms of recruiting too if i am not wrong.

And i gotta say, you seem to be thinking of a different direction of what Kenshi had made plans ot be..

oakleyo0 wrote: Some sort of flow would be - start game - fight battles/trade/steal, get some rep, possibly tied to wealth or martial prowess, crime rating etc - scripted events where you, through your travels, save people or do jobs for them - they offer/ask to join you because they are impressed by what they see in you - you create a small band - your exploits are well known/higher rep/more cash - but you still start small, so you fight another band and wipe/buy them out and take over their little outpost (randomly gen locations) - get stronger - starting a town should be EXPENSIVE and HARD.

Scripted events is what is to be avoided, anything can happen, like real life, nothing is programed, if i am not wrong, in part i agree with it, and i believe the easy faction creation is just for now, at least i would like to be more elaburate in the future, not anyone hould be able to create a faction, OR, anyone could but 1 of 2 (or more), the faction is not recognized as one and gets laughed at like you say, or they destroyed, or they forced to join other as a village to pay taxes or variants of it.

oakleyo0 wrote: Recruiting companions is too easy/What are companions for.
In fact, part of my suggestions are that these guys/girls are you Champions or Captains. They still retain the aspect of being "your" characters too, but they would have more purpose. In fact there should be a logical process to starting your faction. Coming out of the gates you are just a single guy but over time you naturally progress in power and prestige and at that point you can start the faction, similar in a way to Mount and Blade.

I don t think to see the characters of Kenshi which you hire as "hero" or captains is the proper form by everything which was told till now, i think the proper way to look, at least at the moment, is not a guy which hires people to work for him, but a group of people with the same goal which joined together, there might be some hierachy, but nothing like how you said in here...

oakleyo0 wrote: - Captains and what you do with them
There is a hierarchy to any faction, yours would be no exception. There would be jobs that only your captains can do, such as oversee a town thereby increasing production. Yes instead of having your characters - the captains - all in one bubble together running around or sat in a building for hours researching, or mining rocks, they are doing things, not menial things. These guys are heroes! Not villagers from Age of Empires! But who is doing all the manual labour? Well, part of where all your money goes is in the hiring of plebs. They aren't as efficient at doing jobs as your characters, who are awesome, but they add to the aspect of having a faction or an empire. You need more than just a bunch of guys! Each of your capt's has his or her own rep score as well, the higher the rep score the more plebs you can get. You assign a capt to oversee a town, he can have for example 15 plebs max (your starting character hires heroes, your heroes hire plebs), each pleb requires pay - minor amount but there needs to be a money sink, empires aren't free - which is determined by their job/skills.... see plebs below.

I would see there be needs of workers sometimes, and this ones be different from your man in comand, but nothing like this, and by what was said in other place, this will not be happening, feudal lord if you will to call.

About the food and tech those been discussed indeed, so i won t say much about it here, we already know there will be a form of thirst, dehydration, i just don t know about the rest how wil be improved/implemented. But in line in case i was not direct with what i meant in the begin, i think you seing Kenshi mostly as a strategy game, gotta remember Kenshi is a rather mix of genders.

Thanks for responding

hbrown wrote: Scripted events is what is to be avoided, anything can happen, like real life, nothing is programed, if i am not wrong, in part i agree with it, and i believe the easy faction creation is just for now, at least i would like to be more elaburate in the future, not anyone hould be able to create a faction, OR, anyone could but 1 of 2 (or more), the faction is not recognized as one and gets laughed at like you say, or they destroyed, or they forced to join other as a village to pay taxes or variants of it.

Yeah I don't literally mean scripted such as in games like skyrim where things are on rails, but there could be certain instances where characters have the opportunity to take part in things happening in the game world that provide them with benefits, be that wealth, fame, items, or new companions.

hbrown wrote:I don t think to see the characters of Kenshi which you hire as "hero" or captains is the proper form by everything which was told till now, i think the proper way to look, at least at the moment, is not a guy which hires people to work for him, but a group of people with the same goal which joined together, there might be some hierachy, but nothing like how you said in here...

I totally get that, I likely have not put that forward in my original post. When I referred to the "you" in my post it did include all of your companions, though I may be looking at it as more of a primary character (the one you start with) and secondaries (the companions that join you). The point remains though that they would still need a reason to join you and that would be tied into your starting characters fame/rep.

hbrown wrote:I would see there be needs of workers sometimes, and this ones be different from your man in comand, but nothing like this, and by what was said in other place, this will not be happening, feudal lord if you will to call.

Ok fair enough. I just see the whole faction/empire thing needing to have a subservient class for menial work whilst your companions are the ones you use for the RPG elements rather than the strat side.

hbrown wrote: But in line in case i was not direct with what i meant in the begin, i think you seing Kenshi mostly as a strategy game, gotta remember Kenshi is a rather mix of genders.

I don't see it as mainly a strategy game, I just think that the strategy side needs to be just as deep as the RPG side, combining them both together and doing it well is such an intricate part of the game and so important for both the games longevity and the length of gameplay enjoyed. If anything I'm looking at it from a mixture of minecraft/dont starve and skyrim, a smattering of mount and blade for the factional side and then some Towns thrown in.

Sorry if i mistook your thoughts then but at first site to me gave me that impression, as it seem most your ideas were mostly from the strategy side so to say.

oakleyo0 wrote: Yeah I don't literally mean scripted such as in games like skyrim where things are on rails, but there could be certain instances where characters have the opportunity to take part in things happening in the game world that provide them with benefits, be that wealth, fame, items, or new companions.

Think i know waht you mean then, and i guess there will be sxtuff like that, if there will be a sort of reputation or fame or what you wnat it to be called system implemented, those events wil have to reward you with such, till now i didn t found anywhere confirming so, but i

oakleyo0 wrote:
I totally get that, I likely have not put that forward in my original post. When I referred to the "you" in my post it did include all of your companions, though I may be looking at it as more of a primary character (the one you start with) and secondaries (the companions that join you). The point remains though that they would still need a reason to join you and that would be tied into your starting characters fame/rep.

Is wrotten somewhere i think was a post from Chris, where he said he gave a bit of the recruitement in the future (i might be wrong, but i cna look it later), that or i thinking something he said simiar to it, i don t know at th moment how it was, but i think was more than something than just take the cats and follow me. But in here i go with you, we need something "more complex" about the recruitement/companion side. Tho i enjoy to go in a tavern and know i will recruit that one for sue, would be somewhat fun to have people join you for other reasons, like when you finished sae a village, lets say some young man who got inspired by your group wants to live the vilage and join you, it s then up to you if you let him join or not, or you find a strong person and you wnat him to join, annoy the crap out of him to join, or do what he wants, conditions, or simply be famous to get him in xD.

hbrown wrote:Sorry if i mistook your thoughts then but at first site to me gave me that impression, as it seem most your ideas were mostly from the strategy side so to say.

That's cool, re reading it all and thinking about it more, it does seem that way, but I wouldn't want them to ever put that RTS side of things ahead of the RPG! They were just things I saw and had ideas about.

hbrown wrote:..would be somewhat fun to have people join you for other reasons, like when you finished sae a village, lets say some young man who got inspired by your group wants to live the vilage and join you, it s then up to you if you let him join or not, or you find a strong person and you wnat him to join, annoy the crap out of him to join, or do what he wants, conditions, or simply be famous to get him in xD.

That's exactly the type of thing I mean when I say scripted events!

yeah in a form such things like that would have to be somewhat prepared, not so random as others, but still would be one thing to enjoy, instead of having like simply at the moment, gime money and i ll join you, which leads me to the question, where the moneys goes to?
We give them money to join us, they do and the money is faction money not from each one, so they eat the money?? Because saly i don t see them buy good equips with it.

hbrown wrote:...instead of having like simply at the moment, gime money and i ll join you, which leads me to the question, where the moneys goes to?
We give them money to join us, they do and the money is faction money not from each one, so they eat the money?? Because saly i don t see them buy good equips with it.

Yeah right, this is part of the reason I've seen them as captains or heroes rather than fighting for the same cause, you're paying them go to with you, if they really were fighting for your cause they'd want to do it for free!