Change in faction strength

[arthoz]

I'm don't know how the concept of a dynamic growth of a faction and cities are implemented but I got some ideas I'd like to share.

The game is designed so that there will be no level scaling and the characters or monsters will not grow stronger and stays the same all the time. But I think if you want to design a dynamic world this should not be static. Not in a sense that the enemy strength scales up as you level up but their strenght changes with outside factors.

For example an outpost. Give it a prosperity or wealth value that is affected by amount of trade, caravan arriving, facilities available and farmers sending raw materials. A well supplied outpost with adequate trading will grow into a city and the guards or soldiers will grow stronger with better equipments. Similar thing could be applied to villages, where they'll grow bigger with more people who will create more resources like food or minerals and have more militias to fight off bandits.

If the city is being constantly raided and caravans are prevented from coming, the prosperity or wealth value is reduced reflecting its loss of resources, fatigued by war or blockaded. They'll have less or weaker guards with bad equipments. How can a city continue to have strong, well trained and heavily armed soldiers when it's starving for food and with no supply of raw materials at all?

Also I read there are plans to have wild animals. Maybe these to would also change in strength dynamically. Maybe for a wild beast there is 1 in 1000 chance it will spawn a powerful legendary beast of it's kind. Even worse, left uncontrolled every year it will spawn a pack of beast (or maybe more) that will start roaming and attack villages and outpost.

Now there'll be more reason to fear going into the wildlands unprepared and also more incentive to explore and exterminate wild beasts. Outpost or village near wildlands would also suffer threat of attack from wild animals. If you don't reduce their population, they'll come out and hunt you.

I guess people living near jungles with dangerous wild animals would understand this situation. When human encroach upon their habitat, at some point there'll be a clash between human and beast.

[SnowyDay]

That first one would be a MAJOR pain to code. I get it, but you'd have to make some code where after a certain amount of profit after this set of time the npcs would have to start expanding the city.

I like it, but that one would be really tricky (without introducing major bugs to the game).

Your monster idea I love so much. That'd be awesome. Imagine your home city getting sieged over and over and over again until you kill the legendary beast. Yes. But again there'd need to be some control or people would never be able to build a city xD. Plus the world is constantly active... I don't want cities far away becoming ghost towns, ya know? Just cause I couldn't be everywhere at once. Would be epic to see a 100/100 fighter solo the legendary. Makes me all giddy just to see that

[iSuck345]

I like this constantly-changing faction strengh, it makes the world more dynamic and less static. Also the legendary beast seems awesome. I mean, thoose huge bones must've come from somewhere

said bones:

[arthoz]

I think the prosperity value is easy enough to implement because I saw that when traders visit shops there this money value floating. Just add a counter value for city to calculate the amount of money coming in and going out and reflect it with the number/quality of guards and their equipment.

I read somewhere that someone used a bandit to constantly train their unit by healing the bandit and fight it again. They mentioned that their unit and the bandit too have increase in stats. Haven't tried this myself and I haven't checked if everyone in the world would increase stat if they fight but if so this would be interesting.

Maybe the design said that npc unit will not scale up in strength like normal rpg, but why not allow them to scale up dynamically too. If a guard is constantly fighting bandits then their stat should also increase. Even caravans that survive a lot of attacks should have more experienced guards. That way if you abuse the guards using them to fight bandits, when later you want to raid the city you'll face an experienced guard who is hard to defeat.

Put it on an even wider view for example a faction that is constantly at war, although they might be bankrupt because of the cost of war, some of their veteran surviving soldiers should be highly skilled and not to be taken lightly no matter how poorly equipped they are. While rich faction who had never fought in war might have well equipped soldiers with average skill that's only achieved by using training dummies.

So tactically speaking making factions to always go to war might not be good because it might create a master fighter. While rich faction might have average soldiers but good equips. So there a balance of pro and cons for players to decide. Added with dueling options we could use our units to train city guards with dueling to make them stronger to help a faction to survive...the possibilities are endless...

Hey I'm just throwing wild ideas around...feel free to speak your mind. Some might not be workable for kenshi but I do hope to find an optimum point that would provide a dynamic sense that the world is ever changing...where there's a balance somewhere that generate the cost and effects of the player and the npc actions.

Eagerly to hear inputs from my fellow forumers...

[Gavin McStine]

The only issue i can see with this is people who start out in one area and stay there for a long time and then move out of the area might find other areas very weak compaired to there starting area. Also you may find some roving guys who are much higher in exp that even the lord group might be unable to defend against.

[islesofurth]

I read somewhere that someone used a bandit to constantly train their unit by healing the bandit and fight it again. They mentioned that their unit and the bandit too have increase in stats. Haven't tried this myself and I haven't checked if everyone in the world would increase stat if they fight but if so this would be interesting.

This does indeed happen and i'm sure as your wild idea mentioned, it will also happen on a greater scale to more war like factions.
Remember that with Kenshi, anything you can do the AI can do. That also includes how you level & tactics you might use. The only real limit is how well the AI are scripted.

I doubt the world of Kenshi will be balanced as balance is boring and predictable. Also this allows players to choose a game difficulty suited to them via the story. (I went with Holy sword and that made so many places i thought were safe at war with me, it was a challenge that could really enjoy)

so basically IMO you should pick a story friendly to the strongest empire or become them yourself

[arthoz]

Oh dear...now you're making me tremble with anticipation for the full game!

Right now playing with the 0.47 version...the world is beautiful and it seemed faster, maybe they've optimized some of the problems that slowed it. I just can't wait until the game to be fully fleshed and to start having quests and jobs. Seing the environment, I really hope they'll allow player to interract with the environment. Maybe not like minecraft but at least it's wonderfull to mine a rare ore sticking out of the ground, foraging plants and even hunt animal for food and materials. Even to have a horrible beast chasing and devouring me instead of bandits...

No, I must be patient. Take all the time you need Chriss! The moment v1.0 is out I think a lot of us will be having a whole day of orgasm.

[Hatsune_Neko]

Oh dear...now you're making me tremble with anticipation for the full game!

Right now playing with the 0.47 version...the world is beautiful and it seemed faster, maybe they've optimized some of the problems that slowed it. I just can't wait until the game to be fully fleshed and to start having quests and jobs. Seing the environment, I really hope they'll allow player to interract with the environment. Maybe not like minecraft but at least it's wonderfull to mine a rare ore sticking out of the ground, foraging plants and even hunt animal for food and materials. Even to have a horrible beast chasing and devouring me instead of bandits...

LoL
Sounds like a indie game that i play called Planet Explorers

[Santaissick]

Sounds like a indie game that i play called Planet Explorers

I remember that. It was mentioned in the Indie-game connection topic .

How's it going with the planet explorers now days? Back when I tried it myself it didn't really work because it was still in so early stage I was able to play for maybe two minutes before falling through land. Is it playable now?

[Hatsune_Neko]

its more playable now
but you have to buy into the game now to get access to play the newer version mostly without those fun bugs