Really Big Squads

[Meynolt]

I was testing the limits of the construction set, and found that although you can make squads of 500+ in size (takes a few minutes to load on my pc), the client doesn't really handle combat very well for squads of this size. Not sure where the cut off is - somewhere between 30 and 100 squaddies.

Problems included a delay in executing orders, moderately-low framerates, and a useless combat AI. Basically in combat, the intial fight would go as normal, but where there are only 2 or 3 enemies left, the squaddies just stop fighting and stand there to get it. Obviously some optimisation will need to take place before we ever see some really big battles. Perhaps some kind of formation options would help.

An improved multi-core capable client might help too, because my cpu usage never went above about 35% [1.5 cores].

Attached are some screenshots. You can see in the 3rd pic that a number of squaddies are downed, despite having 100 in all combat stats. In fact, the fight only stopped because my squad wasn't fighting back, so the temporary negative reputation ran it's course, and the guards ran back home.

[iSuck345]

Dear god, what have you done... also, use something else to render thoose images, like a link.

[Scotterius]

That is really interesting. Chris has said that he has plans for 'armies', but I am not sure how far that goes. I would not worry about optimization, and AI at this point. This will probably be addressed as things progress.

You do raise an interesting question in that there may be a scale at which kenshi operates best. Even the large capitals are small for 500 people, for two 500 hundred armies they are really small. Considering how harsh combat is and how valuable a trained soldier is to the player, a much smaller scale of conflict may be better. Perhaps 60-100 per side. That is still some large battles, and plenty of size to have specialized divisions. (Spearmen-swordsmen-bowmen)

[wolfwood296]

I totally agree with Scott.

most people who have been playing strategy games would be able to hold off huge groups of enemies with just two squads of archers (20 a squad) and a company (2 squads) of roman leagonairs (no spell check) without much trouble. (of course I'm not considering logistics, terrain, training and a lot of other stuff but for example the battle of thermopile (again no spell checks, just think the movie 300)).

of course having 500 people would just be completely awesome!!!

[Marilous]

I think when the game is closer to a finished product that it will be able to support some pretty large numbers if the graphics don't jump very far in quality, one of the major things stopping that from happening with indie games or when indie games don't quite run that great is;

A) Not having a profile that your card can access or B) That the game isn't currently designed to use your computers resources past a certain point.

[Blxz]

That the game isn't currently designed to use your computers resources past a certain point.

Like multi core stuff.

Does kenshi have full multicore support yet? I remember it was being talked about a long while back when I was a forum youngling. Does anyone know for certain since I have felt some noticeable slowness creeping in with recent updates.

[Kamos]

Multi threading is a big job and people wanted a bit more substance ASAP. So I think Chris decided to focus on adding content before going into developing the games efficiency. The game may have a small amount of support for making use of it right now though, I can't remember if I remember seeing Chris state that or not.

[pyrogt]

How do you create a big squad like that and max out your stats. I really want to test stuff like that out.

[Blxz]

Construction set. Its like a mod-maker or whatever. Just spwan the guys and give them stats and what not. Have fun.

[Meynolt]

There is a file called 'forgotten construction set' in your main kenshi folder. Go look on the modding forum for some tutorials. It's pretty straight forward, but it helps to see an example