Lo-Fi Games

Hello everyone!

I am new to this forum here and I will say I am very excited for this game. It has so much potential! I will say first that I realize some of the things I have added below might have been previously suggested. I am not attempting to steal anyone's thunder or ideas, these are just my thoughts on how I would like to see the game one day.

I also apologize for the formatting and wall of text, I wrote this in OneNote to keep track of everything and its kind of a rolling list of Ideas, I'll add more as I think of more and try to flesh things out but I was hoping to get some initial reactions from you guys here.

Lastly I will say that I am very intrigued by this game and while I do not expect most if any of my ideas will make it into the game I hope some of them will. I do not look for recognition or reward, I just want a great game that I can play for hours and hours.

• General Gameplay:
○ I envision this game as being an RPG/RTS hybrid. I think with the proper mechanics, players can switch seamlessly between the different styles depending on their intended play styles. Some of these ideas if not most may have been suggested before, and I do not wish to steal from others, these are just ideas that would make the game better for me personally. If I take an idea from the forum I will credit the specific user who suggested it.
○ Allow families to be created. Marriages. Dynasties. Kingdoms, etc…
○ Introduce buyable plots of land. If in a town a player can purchase plots to build on. If a player has his or her own town, with the requisite research they can claim an area of land and divide it into properties. This will allow traders and craftsmen to be attracted to your town and buy the property to build upon. They will pay taxes. Too high of taxes, they will leave the town. Etc...

• Faction
○ Allow players to design own flag.
○ Allow players to design official outfits/uniforms of soldiers (if requisite research has been conducted).
○ Set Capital.
○ Conduct Diplomacy with other Kingdoms/Towns/City States.
§ Send ambassadors.
§ Set up embassies.
§ Set up trade agreements.
§ Assist in defense and aid.
○ Allow player to create family for dynasty purposes.
§ Introduce aging.
§ AI Can start families too.
• AI Upgrades
○ Bandits will construct bases of their own with defenses depending on the loot or ransom they get from captives.
○ Bandit leader, if left alive, will continue to lead resistance.
○ Bandits will continue to construct bases, so just destroying one base will not necessarily eliminate bandit presence for all time.
○ AI Towns will conduct diplomacy and trade with each other, possibly war with each other.
○ AI Towns will improve defenses, quality of homes, etc…as money flows into city. If you decide to live in a city as a merchant/worker you can see the city transform around you and build homes.
○ AI Towns will recruit you for missions if you are a RPG style player, some missions will not be available as they are for larger armies. But if you are an RTS player its not worth your time to go and hunt down a single criminal.
○ AI will choose smart locations to construct towns.
○ Traders will create trading posts for their own use and yours too…if you pay.

• Economic:
○ Added resources:
○ Rubber, Wood, Stone, Iron, Copper, Gold, Gems, Water, Clay, Leather, Straw/Hay.
○ Rubber needed for wiring and electrical components for tech upgrades and machines.
Add carts and other transport vehicles to carry large amounts of resources. For instance I think building materials should only be able to be carried in any good number by using carts.

○ Forestry:

○ Add forests with replantable trees or auto-regenerating trees.
○ No special wood species.

○ Mining:

○ Require minerals to be found in mountains. Mines must be constructed in mountains. One mine will allow player to select which ore(s) are to be mined. Researchable upgrades allow one mine to mine multiple resources, provided player has enough characters in the mine to mine each individual resource. Flooding of mines an important factor, as mines go deeper for increased metal density (researched upgrade) must add upgrade of pump.
○ Instead of separate machinery, allow upgrades to buildings. Installing Pump Mk. 1 to Mine will see a pump model placed onto mine and add the function of the pump to mine.
○ Characters with higher mining skill will be able to increase mine output faster and will train other characters present in the mine faster.
○ Laboring skill is a benefit to all manual labor tasks, but Mining is specific to the activity of mining.

○ Farming:

○ Farms must be re-planted and harvested.
○ Small, Medium, Large Farms.
○ Upgrades to farms such as: irrigation (double food production), fertilizer bin, (more food yield increased, Hay baler (able to produce feed for animals and straw for other industrial processes with wheat farms).
○ Introduce cattle, goats, chickens and other desert livestock.
○ Introduce cheese, milk, meat, eggs, bread, flour, fruits and vegetables including grapes for wine production, olives for olive oil production and barley/wheat for beer production.
§ Wine production requires bottles which are made from sand in a glass blowers facility.
§ Olive Oil requires ceramic containers which are made at a Kiln.

○ General Building:

○ Buildings have upgrade slots. Production buildings have upgrade slots to add new pieces of equipment to aid in production or generation of secondary resources.
○ Shacks become general purpose buildings, interior pieces are added through use of upgrade slots. A Small Shack will have 4 upgrade slots allowing 4 items such as 4 beds, 4 training dummies, etc… to be built inside. Allows full customization of shacks.
○ Each character must have some sort of housing. Tents count.
○ Sleep required for proper healing. Normal healing rate in home, +5% in Medical Cot. +10% in Medical Station, 15% in Medical Bay, 25% in Medical Wing.
○ Medical Wing allows robotic limbs to be added with appropriate research.
○ Buildings can have medical bays added as one of the upgrades. A general purpose hospital tent/building can be constructed that gives further benefit to any medical upgrades.
○ Warehouse added. Must research and then build individual containers for each resource. Small warehouse has 5 Bays which hold 100 of each resource. Medium Warehouse has 12 Bays which hold 150 of each resource. Large Warehouse Has 20 Bays and holds 250 of each resource.

§ Upgrades (Including number of upgrade slots followed by requisite research and what items may be be produced at each upgrade:

□ Medical:

® Cot (1 Slot) - Medical I -
® Small Medical Station (2 slots) Medical III
® Medical Bay (3 Slots) Medical V
® Medical Wing (5 Slots) Medical VII
® Suture Facility (1 Slot) Medical I + Sutures - Allows Bleeding to be slowed 75%
® Pill Mill (2 Slots) Medical III + Medication - Allows 1/2 movement effects from wounds.

□ Production:

® Small Rum Distillery (2 Slots) - Rum Distilling I (Requires Storage I + Barrel), Farming I + Wheat.
◊ Barrel of Rum
® Small Olive Press (2 Slots) - Olive Pressing I (Requires Storage I + Amphora (( Requires Ceramics I)), Farming I + Olives.
◊ Amphora of Oil
® Small Wine Press (2 Slots) - Wine Pressing I (Requires Storage I + Glass Bottle ((Requires Glassblowing I)),
◊ Bottle of Wine
® Flour Mill (2 Slots) - Baking 1, (Storage 1 + Packets)
◊ Flour Mill + Electric Grinder (4 Slots) - Baking III
◊ Sack of Flour
® Small Oven (1 Slot) - Baking I
◊ Bread Loaf
® Large Oven (2 Slots) - Baking III
◊ Bread Loaf
® Small Smelting Furnace (2 Slots) - Ore Smelting I
◊ Ingots
® Large Smelting Furnace (4 Slots) - Ore Smelting III
◊ Ingots
® Foundry (8 Slots) - Ore Smelting V
® Small Kiln (1 Slot) - Ceramics I
◊ Bricks
◊ Moulds
◊ Amphorae
® Large Kiln (2 Slots) - Ceramics III
® Glassblowing Station - (3 Slots) - Glassblowing I
◊ Glass Panes
◊ Bottles - Bottles I
◊ Lantern - Lighting III
® Joining Station - (2 Slots) - Joining I
◊ Torches
◊ Spearhafts
◊ Bow Staves
◊ Wood Planks

□ Military

® Saddlemaking Station
◊ Saddles
® Armor Smithing Station
◊ Helmet
◊ Cuirass
◊ Boots
® Sword Smithing Station
◊ Sword
® Poleturning Station
◊ Spear
◊ Halberd
® Fletching Station
◊ Recurve Bow
◊ Longbow
◊ Crossbow
◊ Arbalest
® Shieldmaking Station
◊ Buckler




○ Civilian Character Additions:

○ Introduce professions. Characters can be assigned professions as the buildings are researched and built. They will work in these buildings and gain skill. Bakers, Weapon-smiths, miners, blacksmiths, stone-masons, engineers, soldier (different classes), scientists, doctors. They will collect resources as needed.
○ High leadership characters can be assigned to "manage" buildings, essentially automating the entire building including the depositing and retrieval of resources in warehouses. Will submit requests to player for more resources, more workers, etc…
○ Bookcases added and certain books can be purchased to train characters in certain skills.
○ Possibility to automate characters and let them go about their daily lives as they wish. Going to work, earning wages, spending wages at shops in outpost, upgrading own homes as they accumulate wealth.
○ Ability to tax population of outpost once certain research conducted requiring a certain number of citizens, houses and production facilities.
○ Food and water important. Characters must eat and drink.
○ Road construction for double travel rates.
○ Safehouse/Bunker. Adds a safehouse. When "Professional Army" doctrine is chosen, sounding the alarm will send all noncombat characters fleeing for such facilities. Certain trading caravans will look upon your outpost as more desirable if there are adequate safehouses in the event of a bandit raid.
 
 
• Military: (OPTIONAL IDEA)
○ For defense, players can select a defensive doctrine at their faction page (just an idea). Options include:
§ Citizen army. Sounding the alarm will mobilize citizenry to take up weapons stored at their homes. Characters will have their own armor stored at their homes.
§ Benefits:
□ No salary paid for military work.
□ Quick and easy method of defense.
□ Entire base can rally to defense which adds large numbers.
□ Daily patrols and sentry duty will add training to every citizen as they rotate.
§ Drawbacks:
□ Citizen soldiers are not as powerful as professional soldiers.
□ Equipment is not uniform, so some characters weaker than others depending on economic circumstances.
□ Difficulty sustaining a military campaign due to lack of resource production.
□ Limited use of formation.
§ Professional Army. A standing army of characters who are warriors by trade. Removes the option of sounding alarm to arm citizens.
§ Benefits:
□ Powerful units.
Uniform equipment.
□ Ability to use more complex formations.
□ Ability to sustain a campaign effectively.
§ Drawbacks:
□ Expensive, must be paid salary.
□ Lesser numbers depending on faction's financial circumstances.
□ Require uniforms, weapons, and a base level of training before they are available as soldiers.
□ Much research therefore required.
§ Nomad Army. Every man for himself, basically an RPG setup.
§ Benefits:
□ Free-ranging.
□ Difficult to track.
□ Ability to flee easily.
□ Strong individual units.
§ Disadvantages:
□ No base to hole up at.
□ Range limited by baggage train and character inventories and proximity to food and water.
○ More use of formation. AI bandits can use cavalry/ camels or infantry. Horse-archers, camel-archers. Some entire tribes of desert beduins with mobile bases.
○ Faction specific uniforms including player created faction. Uniforms can even consist of rags but these can be colored and symbols attached. Armor can be customized for certain types. Heavy armor of faction can be customized by player so any characters wearing armor created by the faction will have matching pieces. Use of weapon smithing table allows players to make individual suits if they prefer a more RPG like setting as opposed to the RTS style of matching uniforms. Allow players to tinker with armor composition. Increased weight with inclusion of heavier armor vs. actual benefit of added material. (i.e. iron vs steel, plate vs. lames vs. mail vs. scale vs. leather vs. cloth).
○ Players can adapt research to their intended play style, medium infantry can use a certain type of armor and like with weapons, can be shot-gunned or can be focused. If an RPG style arrangement is more the style, players can order armor from armor smiths and purchase plans to produce a certain weapon/armor. Wherever this weapon falls on the scale of quality depends on price. RTS players if located in a dangerous area but have large amounts of money can purchase plans for specific weapon/ armor plans as a stop-gap until research is able to catch up.
○ Shields same research qualities. Different styles: large shields, small shields, bucklers, etc… single grain, double grain, plywood, metal rimmed, metal coated. Bronze, iron, steel.
○ Different types of weapons. For instance, researching “blade” will open up several different categories like “katana”, “cleaver”, “washiki”, “sabre”, “falcate”, “long sword”, “gladius”, “dirk”, etc…
§ Allow research trees for each weapon.
§ The further down each tree the better weapon can be created (lighter weapon, more damage, greater defense).
§ The greater research times forces players to decide between shot-gunning every weapon to make each type but not of the best quality or choosing to specialize depending on intended fighting style.
○ Ability to engineer defenses such as ditches, palisades, small fences, spiked ditches, moats, etc…this is based on engineering skill ONLY. Plans cannot be bought for such things. Higher engineering skill unlocks more complicated defenses and allows them to be built quicker. This rewards RPG style players.
§ Perhaps introduce a “supervise” role for RTS style players that allows characters with higher engineering skills to “supervise” several other characters and allow them to increase their rate of construction at ½ that of the supervisors and allow double experience accumulation while being supervised. Great engineers can be hired.
§ Basic defenses known to every character are: ditch, small fence.
§ More complicated defenses can be researched and learned if engineering skill is high enough: spike lined ditch, trench, spike pit, palisade, moat.
○ Siege weapons.
○ Cavalry introduced along with the ability to capture wild horses/camels or breed them.
○ Ability to group characters into formation. This is in keeping with the game’s RPG element. Can fight in formation or as individuals.
○ Ability to create temporary camps for the night allowing a “nomad” type of player to set up temporary encampments for the night or for a few days. Even solo players are able to set up defenses on their own.
○ Set sentries to keep watch. Lack of sentries will allow enemies to sneak up on camp without player being forewarned.
○ Torches, lanterns, braziers, etc…required for night time sight.
○ Diplomacy with other factions.
○ Ability to create mercenary group and fight for bounties. Different missions, protect city, eliminate any enemies within certain area, destroy enemy base, hunt certain enemy group.
○ Ability to raid caravans/villages. Allows a more RPG style setup. Players can create their own little bandit bases without the need for massive research systems or economic support perhaps only food and water. The income produced from raiding caravans will allow them to purchase weapon plans and allow better weapons and armor so they can perform raids on more well defended caravans and villages.

much easier if you search for relevant topics and post your ideas in them.
most everything you talked about has already been suggested and talked about... alot.

I could indeed, but then it is a patchwork across the forums. I did read the rules but I thought that if collected into one general area, it would allow an ease of access. And some topics dont quite...fit...each of my suggestions perfectly.

I apologize if this is not the best way of going about this, but that is my logic.

might be patch work and harder to do but you have a better chance of getting your ideas across. Since this topic covers nearly everything it will most likely be lost and not seen by the Devs.

In the future please use the method posted in the posting rules for feature requests and ideas
thank you.

Got it.

Antonio_Sacchini,

Reading over your idea I liked a great amount of the ideas and think they would fit the theme of a topic i made a bit back about growing outposts, if you like could you copy/paste it there for a grand feature idea that is suggested by players instead of having all these small ideas (not saying yours is small though) scattered that will never be seen again it would most likely help Chris pick out ideas easily from one forum than it would be for him to search a bunch so if you would like to I would love if you could post it in the topic titled Growing outposts.

Hatsune_Neko wrote:might be patch work and harder to do but you have a better chance of getting your ideas across. Since this topic covers nearly everything it will most likely be lost and not seen by the Devs.

In the future please use the method posted in the posting rules for feature requests and ideas
thank you.

Could just merge relevant threads together.

cant
there is too many other types of feature requests in this topic for this to fit into a single older thread.

may suggest taking the topics people have used to post their ideas ad setting them to sticky with direct instrucitons in announcements to make a generic category structure? most people are too lazy to go through pages and pages of topics and some like op here have so many notes and suggestions that it will take an insane amount fo time to trawl through them all, setting up some rudimentry indexing will make it much easier for people to do as you have requested

azuchisamurai wrote:may suggest taking the topics people have used to post their ideas ad setting them to sticky with direct instrucitons in announcements to make a generic category structure? most people are too lazy to go through pages and pages of topics and some like op here have so many notes and suggestions that it will take an insane amount fo time to trawl through them all, setting up some rudimentry indexing will make it much easier for people to do as you have requested

Wouldn't it of been better to actually post this in feature requests?

azuchisamurai wrote:may suggest taking the topics people have used to post their ideas ad setting them to sticky with direct instrucitons in announcements to make a generic category structure? most people are too lazy to go through pages and pages of topics and some like op here have so many notes and suggestions that it will take an insane amount fo time to trawl through them all, setting up some rudimentry indexing will make it much easier for people to do as you have requested

We have one. its not complete but i do work on it from time to time.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/233860/di ... 604153269/

used to be here but seems it got removed.
Actually doing one topic for one person to do all their ideas adds even more clutter and is harder to go thru and find which feature requests are the most popular.
The list here is so long and full of other feature request types that people will read the top part.
skip to the bottom and comment on only the top part.

When we have time, the Admin does go thru and merge posts to fit the relevant topics being discussed so we can keep the same ideas with older posts that have already discussed the idea.
makes much easier to find and its popularity.

I do a lot of merges in bugs forum so as to keep the same posted bug together so it's easy for the Devs to find and how much of a problem it is turning out to be.

Same goes for feature requests. You want your idea in the game. search for it first. if its already there, post in that topic. if it becomes a popular enough feature it might get added to the game.

current attitude about the arrangement and such seems like bit of a cheap way to drive away dedicated feedback like op to me if it gets railed on like this tbh but maybe thats just me

oh just make me an admin so i can add an index of forums, i will also post up what i wanna do in this forum as well so admin or whoever hass acess to the control panel cna do it themselves

I'm about to reply to OP in multiple posts, but I will eventually get to each point.

Regarding forum aesthetics, I adopted the mindset that the Title of a thread needs to convey what exactly is the bug/request/point of the whole post so the devs can thumb through pages and see what is currently outstanding.
For this reason, I make it a point to resurrect old threads so long as the title is clear and concise and doesn't already have a more recent thread.

Posts relevant to this thread to follow

Alright, I'm finally back to this thread to start my series of replies to OP.

Antonio_Sacchini wrote:...
• General Gameplay:
○ I envision this game as being an RPG/RTS hybrid...
○ Allow families to be created...
○ Introduce buyable plots of land. If in a town a player can purchase plots to build on. If a player has his or her own town, with the requisite research they can claim an area of land and divide it into properties. This will allow traders and craftsmen to be attracted to your town and buy the property to build upon. They will pay taxes. Too high of taxes, they will leave the town. Etc...

I really like the idea of adding some common elements from economic simulation RTS games as well as militaristic RTS games.

I feel that it could take away from the RPG and close-combat elements of Kenshi if there were options to allow macro-management of your military.
However, I'm the type that would prefer to have less tedious tasks and more complex overall gameplay.
So here's my thoughts, with the 'multiple squads' capability in mind, confirmed to be implemented in the future, it would be more than enough for me to simply organize my militaristic characters into one or more squads and set the squad(s) to either defend a location, patrol between two or more spots, or "attack-move" to a location ("attack-move" is an RTS term that tells the unit(s) to move to a location while attacking anything along the way, and this leads to hilarious results more often than not).
This allows the player easier management of variable size forces, while giving the player the choice to manage these forces from either the individual character level (RPG) or the squad level (RTS).

There are dozens of economic simulation RTS games out there, and I could pull bits and pieces from many of them that could mesh well with Kenshi, should an expansive, dynamic economy be on the horizon of Chris's beard.
There have been many threads prior to now requesting more complexity to the economy of the Kenshi-verse, but I will pitch some ideas here followed by links to these other threads.
I feel that a lot of the "manage NPCs in my town" discussions in other threads contain some great elements, and if they were to be added to Kenshi, they would be nothing but positive and would breathe more life into the NPCs of the Kenshi-verse (on micro and macro scales).

Here is a list of economic RTS elements I believe would mesh well with the Kenshi-verse:

• OP's request for 'buyable plots of land' could work in the current build of Kenshi, and I am confident that this is possible with the planned procedurally generated map.
  However in my mind, the capability to buy packages of land should be only possible outside of the city's walls, similar to present-day pastures and common land. This represents the town either "being skeptical towards outsiders" or "preserving the peace/prosperity/beauty of their city" or otherwise allowing the player to build any size structure without interfering with the aesthetics of the city.
  
  OP's request to 'claim an area of land and divide it into properties' within the player's town/outpost fits in the same category as 'buyable plots of land'.
  As an example, take any structure created by the player and envision there being an option to toggle between Owned and Rented. Obviously Owned structure will retain their current functionality, but Rented structures will open up additional options to allow "zoning" the structure to develop in a manner specified by the player, thus allowing a certain type of NPC to occupy this structure, thus benefiting the player with their services.
  This could also be applied to certain areas of land to be designated as farming, mining, etc. since resources will be confined to fixed locations in the future. This would allow the player to acquire rare and/or limited resources, albeit at a much slower rate than if player-controllable manpower is utilised, in addition to whatever other benefits would be included with NPCs living in player-created structures.
  
  OP's request for 'taxes' fits into my previously mentioned category of "manage NPCs in my town".
  In addition to a satisfactory tax/rent rate, NPCs will also need to have access to ample food, water, and shelter from the elements in order to satisfy their basic survival needs, whenever these needs to survive are implemented.
  There could also be additional factors included that affect an NPC's "choice to live in your outpost" like Outpost Safety, NPC Happiness, Player Faction Reputation, Recreation Availability, Job Availability, etc. A lot of these citizen management elements can be found in games like Pharoah, Caesar, SimCity, or essentially any game where the short-term goal is to maximize immigration with minimal emigration/death.
  
  Work Orders, or Work Chits, are items given to the player by an NPC that request some item(s) to be delivered to the requesting NPC in exchange for compensation.
  This falls under a specific category of quests that require the player to use the crafting skills available to their character(s) in order to produce the item(s) desired by the requesting NPC.
  The link below goes to the original feature request, and that thread goes into much further detail about Work Chits and their speculation in Kenshi.

The idea of having families in the Kenshi-verse has been tossed around multiple times, but I have yet to see the community come to a definitive verdict on it.

It would be awesome to allow the people of the Kenshi-verse to repopulate not just for the sentimental RPG values, but it could add more depth to all of the previously mentioned economic elements simply by increasing the current, and maximum, population of the Kenshi-verse.
However if reproduction is going to be implemented, then aging and dying of natural causes will have to be implemented as well, which the majority of the community seems to be against, in order to prevent Kenshi from encountering memory leaks in the future with the possibility of having an infinitely large population stretching across the procedurally generated world.

Personally, I have flipped my opinion back and forth regarding the issue of implementing death by natural causes in Kenshi, but now, I am much more confident that death would be a positive factor in Kenshi, since the player would be continuously challenged with the need to update their squads with younger members when the elder members die off.

Reproduction would be able to satisfy the player's demands for a fresh supply of manpower, should the player be lucky enough to have offspring survive long enough to mature, while retaining the current capability of hiring random yokels out of bars across the Kenshi-verse (mmm... genetic diversity).

There have been many games, like Pathfinder, D&D, and other paper/board games, that made additional uses of a character's age by modifying their attributes and stats in a certain manner (i.e. younger characters are stronger and more dextrous whereas elder characters are wiser and charismatic).


Links to relevant threads:
Roadmap (Player Controls Multiple Squads; Hunger, Thirst, and Weather; Map Location Based Resources)
More in-depth and Reactive Economy
Citizen needs-based dynamic economy
Procedurally generated map
Dynamically Growing Outposts
Work Orders/Work Chits
Families, Marriage, Reproduction, and Ageing

Antonio_Sacchini wrote:• Faction
○ Allow players to design own flag.
○ Allow players to design official outfits/uniforms of soldiers (if requisite research has been conducted).

Y'know, I think the capability to design outfits/uniforms or any other 3D models would be best left in the modding section, in my opinion.
I'm not nearly informed enough to know the capabilities or limitations of modding in the current build, but I have to say that it would be amazing if it were possible to place 2D image files (.jpgs, .pngs, etc.) somewhere in the Kenshi folder which allows their use in-game.
That would allow those images to be placed on structures, outfits, etc. in-game (i.e. create images in photoshop, drop them in a folder, and slap them on building walls, exterior walls, or even clothes).

Antonio_Sacchini wrote:• Faction
...
○ Set Capital.
○ Conduct Diplomacy with other Kingdoms/Towns/City States.
§ Send ambassadors.
§ Set up embassies.
§ Set up trade agreements.
§ Assist in defense and aid.
○ Allow player to create family for dynasty purposes.
§ Introduce aging.
§ AI Can start families too.

In my mind, setting a capital wouldn't affect the gameplay in the current build, but if it becomes possible to build several outposts, then a capital could be an area for centralized governing that allows members of your squad(s) to become figurehead governors of the other towns or something similar.
Think of a 4X RTS game that allows the toggling of a planet/city to be governed by the AI, like Sword of the Stars or Civilization, which will automatically designate construction or maintain production and consumption levels so that the planet/city doesn't fall into decay.
If Chris contemplates adding things like morale, reputation, or other mental stresses to affect gameplay, then designating a capital would be a largely positive thing for the whole faction whereas losing the faction's capital would be devastating to its surviving members, which could open up a whole new line of quests.

The Roadmap states there is a 'mission system, faction diplomacy, alliances' that will be in the works in the near future, and there are many threads about different kinds of diplomacy with other factions.
I will just link some of these threads:

• Thoughts on Assaults/Diplomacy
  Prisoner Handling & Diplomacy
  Individual Relations
  Executions and Infamy
  Trade Relations, Embargoes, & Privateering
  Government Types
  Factions That Emerge & Fall
  Faction Politics, Diplomacy, & Cultures
  Religion

I even linked this thread inside the second to last link. LINK-CEPTION

I mentioned families and ageing in my previous reply.
However, I just listened to Chris's podcast with JustPressStart, and he mentions that he will not be including ageing nor offspring. So there's the final verdict on the matter.

Tags: Confirmed Offspring Reproduction Ageing Aging Old Elder Families Family Baby Babies Dynasty Children Parents