Timed events / Evolution

[Targa]

Not sure if this has been suggested or is planned, but I searched through several pages and didn't see it, so...

One of the current issues (IMO) with Kenshi is difficulty scaling. It really doesn't take that long at all for your squad to get trained up enough and equipped well enough that they're trashing all the enemies. This is especially true if the player recruits large numbers of NPC's. With the addition of Timed Events, it would be possible to have the game scale up in difficulty. Kenshi already keeps track of how much time has passed since you started playing, as displayed in the "Day 27" (or whatever) on the HUD. So... I propose (looking at it from an FCS point of view), Factions > (Faction) > Misc > "Start Day" and "End Day". The misc category already contains diplomat/mission interval min/max, so this seems like a likley place to add this feature. Then the Devs (or a player making a mod), could create NPC squads of increasing strength, abilities, and better equipped, and specify what day to start spawning them (this would be done through the Biomes/Zones spawn functionality), and what day to stop spawning them. This would allow a gradual difficulty scaling of some or all enemies, and would appear as if the enemy groups were evolving. You could also have new enemy groups showing up after a set amount of time, or have some enemy groups actually decline and vanish over time.

[Hatsune_Neko]

Kenshi won't have level scaling. its in part of the description about the game.

http://lofigames.com/about-kenshi/

Train hard

There is no level-scaling, the world does not level up along with you. At the start of the game almost everyone will be stronger than you and you'll have to use your cunning to survive

enemies already gradually train up. its just by the time you get really good you start killing off all the trained ones leaving the weaker newbies to roam the desert. making it seem like no one also levels up.
I know this from practice. around clownsteady with max nests set. my Mod Running. i had one battle that lasted for 5 or 6 hours in real life fighting in that area. many times i was the only one defending the town as i had all the citizens resting in beds recovering. eventually in time they trained up and i didn't have to pick them up off the ground as often.

You can make Mods to make everyone stronger and make it random on top that. as i have done in my mod Larger Group Combat V1.1 on Kenshi V0.69.2/70.6 and as others have done as well.

Timed intervals to me is boring because you can time them and know when they gonna happen. and be prepared for them. i would rather have the current random attacks.

[Targa]

"Enemies already gradually train up". This does not fit with my experience, as well as from what I've seen in the game's engine log file. When the player has characters in a certain area (you know, when the game pauses and says "loading"), the game spawns all the NPC's for that area. When the player leaves an area, the game engine "destroys" all NPC's from the area the player just left. Here's a very small snippet from Havok.log:

19:32:52: Destroy character Hungry bandit
19:32:52: Destroy character Hungry bandit
19:32:52: Destroy character Hungry bandit
19:32:52: Destroy character Dust bandit
19:32:52: Destroy character Dust bandit
19:32:52: Destroy character Dust bandit
19:32:52: Destroy character Dust bandit

Your reference to the battle around Clownsteady is one where the player, you, were always in the area, thus the NPC's in the area never despawned, and as such, they were able to gain battle experience and "level up". Had you taken all your characters/squadmates and gone across the map and back, I think you would have found that all the NPC enemies around Clownsteady were back to vanilla default ability strengths. I haven't seen any change in enemy stats since I started playing.

"You can make Mods to make everyone stronger and make it random on top that."

Would you mind sharing how, or pointing to a link showing how to mod randomly timed attacks/events?

[Hatsune_Neko]

don't know on the log part.
it may be referencing something else. the Dev would have to explain that part.

but from experience it doesn't destroy them when you leave an area. for i travel around a lot and come back seeing certain ones damaged from fights i wasn't involved in only to come back later to see the same group ( after changing areas many times ) healing but still damaged. ( usually knocked out )

the Battle around clownsteady was persistent after i had left. i was only doing a trade run when i got caught in that epic fight. and when i came back around again they seemed to have lost a few more and the same ones were still healing but not reset back to default levels. after a long play thru the population in Kenshi towns slowly drops down due to losses in battle.

if it reset as you say then the populations would go back to normal. but they dont. eventually you have to import into a new game just to replenish the towns populations.

i didn't say random attacks or timed events, i was talking about random stats, armour, weapons, skills, bounties. i can make all that randomized via the FCS. i can make NPC squad sizes random sizes as well.

the closest to a timed event the game has is when you build a base, and it attracts enemy NPC's to shake you down for loot. or in the hungry bandit cases, steal your loot instead. which was removed then heavily modified due to some server bugs related to it.

[Targa]

I completely agree with the part about certain town NPC's dying/vanishing, as I know from experience the game keeps track of these NPC's. I've stolen police armor from KO'd cops and goen back to that town much later in the game to find naked police walking around still. I'm not completely convinced the game keep strack of every homeless NPC, however. I'm on my 4th playthrough now, and I reckon I've looted the weapons and armor from hundreds of homeless NPC's by now. Yet not one single time have I ever found a naked/unarmed bandit after they wander off and/or I leave the area and come back. I guess as you say, only the devs will know for certain if 100% of the population is kept track of and has their stats adjusted by combat. Town citizens and cannibals are not homeless, so yeah, the game keeps track of them.

[Zeal]

You are right that squads spawn and despawn, but I've just been assuming this is only temporary until optimization.

Not long ago, they were all kept track of, and by god the fps 7 days into a game of 4/4 was HORRIBLE, even staring solidly at the dirt with nothing on the screen, and no enemies in sight.

Another thing is squad deaths happen a certain amount of units from that squad are unconscious for a period of time. This is why sometimes you look at units who are dead, but do not have the hp's to justify it. It's a form of cleaning..

Keeping track of all of the units all over the map was a bit difficult for me to believe possible. That kind of resource use to that extent of keeping track of positions, stat growths, and inventory data, along with running thousands of unit's AI's in realtime.. Again.. I think the despawns/squad kills are a temporary workaround until the game is better programmed.. That is just a guess, but the IDEA is that everything remains as it were without those kinds of things. If they are planning on making that happen, then the world growing with you based on system events won't be necessary. You will eventually have people who have managed to survive long enough to grow with you by natural mechanics. (better AI's are a must aswell, for things like retreating... no units will grow stronger if they simply fight until they're dead.)

We'll just have to see how all that all plays out though... The current world is a placeholder for now, so we'll have to see if any of this changes with the new map.