World diplomacy system

[Etherfly]

Hello, everyone! Sorry to begin with a huge wall of text, maybe it was already discussed earlier, but I had been thinking about how diplomacy will work in Kenshi and how I wanted for it to work, so why not share it with you?

Considering the fact that we have the final feature list, what I am about to suggest can probably be only made true through modding. But since we don't yet have a full world map yet, instead of making a mod request I decided to share my thoughts here.

Two of the common complaints I hear about Kenshi are:

1. The game currently feels too aimless, too sandboxy.
2. The game world feels static and stagnant.

While I understand that these two are somewhat features of Kenshi (you set goals for yourself and the world doesn't care about you mostly), I think there is a way for Kenshi to improve in this area. What I'm talking about is a dynamic world state system, which assigns each faction its goals and behavior.

Each faction (perhaps only major ones) will have one or two conflicts which may involve other factions (maybe including minor ones like cannibals). These conflicts may be scripted ongoing struggles for territory, resources or something else, which the player faction can help resolve by:

1) Aiding the faction by finishing a set of objectives (assassination, negotiation, theft, significant investments and/or something else)
2) Foiling the facton by removing key NPCs or aiding their enemies if there are any.
3) Working out a compromise which allows factions involved in the conflict to partially fulfill their goals and cease certain hostilities.
4) Going into an all-out extermination war with the faction and destroying it completely by ridding its cities and bases of population.

There can be a finite number of such conflicts, and thus, a finite number of states the world can be in. Each resolution of the conflict would open up some new possibility for the player faction (e.g., being admitted as honorary members of some order within it - Honorary Invincibles, eh? - with benefits like additional merchants or specially crafted armor which your guys can wear without incurring anyone's wrath) and close another (e.g., ultimately destroying relationship with another faction or removing a town/a number of NPCs). As player faction participates in more conflicts, it will gain more allies and enemies that assault your towns more frequently/fiercely. This may eventually lead to having to occassionally deal with extremely strong assassins sneaking through your base or hunting your parties in the wilds.

Once again, since the number of states is finite, a variety of dialogue and events can be added which the player may be able to experience in multiple "playthroughs" (i.e., reimports). The player may even go to extremes like attempting world dominaton through extermination of everyone else, having the world react accordingly and making more scripted active enemies with each new fight picked, maybe even forcing certain factions to ally with each other. Imagine to find yourself not just wanted by authorities but being actively and relentlessly hunted by combined gangs of the factions you destroyed with their remnant members being more powerful than you remember them to be. Or the player may try to resolve every conflict peacefully, which will involve a lot of sneaking around, negotiating, investing and conducting operations to kidnap militaristic leaders without making the enemy of the faction in the process by not killing anyone and healing them so they don't bleed out.

Implementing such a system will not take anything from Kenshi as it is now - you will still be able to play it as it was - but will also allow the player to personalize the world by resolving a few of said conflicts and putting the world into a specific state. I assume that the final diplomacy feature will be something along the lines of this (maybe not to this length), but since not many details are known yet, I decided to point out what I would have wanted to see in it: having the world react to major power shifts that the player faction may be a part of in the form of extensive dialogue and gameplay consequences. This may come in the form of a big mod or an 1.x version, but I would love for it to be possible.

What do you, ladies and gentlemen, think of such a system? How realistic is it to implement it as a mod? Would it be fun to play?

[Phlipp]

I like the ideas here. Right now the faction system is fairly useless. Factions that should be neutral (lvl0) still attack me on sight. Though admittedly they are criminal bands, but that faction level has to account for something doesn't it? They set the starving bandits and Dust bandits to lvl-10 which makes sense as to why they attack.

Right now it just seems like the only way faction relations go is down, and there is little in the way of raising it. I feel like I'm wasting all these bandages trying to get in better favor with some of the local groups around me.

[Hatsune_Neko]

this is because it's being worked on.
the Diplomacy Feature should be coming to us with ways to increase or decrease relations. only thing i don't have is a ETA on when it will be added.