Lo-Fi Games

Vendors and Slave Traders can go away and never come back. While the bug is not common, it eventually happens. How to make it happen ?

Set Nests to Max. Squads to Max. Population to Max. This will force the bug to happen faster, maybe you won't find it instantly, but guaranteed 100% over a few months of gameplay, or maybe in a week, who knows (I tested it, it's random, but when it happens is hilarious, yet annoying to lose the shopkeeper/barman forever).

Why does it happen eventually? The game did not break. It's just that.... Nests (and maybe Squads/Residents?*) CAN SPAWN IN SHOPKEEPER NODES. Edit: Additional Correction: rather, the building designation for bars and a few other vendors like bakers have buildings that are tagged as GENERAL NODE like Outpost sIII as they are used for ruins, various locations and also for shops.

What happened to me twice in Eyesocket was that 1 beak thing spawned inside the bar, but the barman wasn't anywhere to be found. Everyone else was there. The barman was gone forever not because he died, but because he just was replaced with a Beak thing spawn in that particular instance, maybe as I was reentering the chunk the nest loaded sooner than the barman (Not an AI PACKAGE problem that causes the guy to wander off either, I tested it and the AI works perfectly, it's just that this bug cannot be easily tracked as the spawn itself happens instantly and without notice.

Edit: Solution:

All the building designations that have shopkeeper nodes should account for nests and other hostile spawns not spawning/overriding the shopkeeper node , preferably at safe locations.

It might need to duplicate references to all of the building locations affected and specify in the spawning-building reference code the exception, but that would be tedious and it wouldn't really solve the issue in the end, as those buildings also need General Nodes to have people/monsters in it depending if they are used for ruins or otherwise.



Hard way? Create a new NODE called: SHOPKEEPER_EXCEPTION or something, that allows for hostile spawns to ignore shopping locations altogether IF they are either already taken or belong to an In-game populated City. Anywhere else inside the city they can spawn, as there are GENERAL nodes that allow it, so there should be no trouble at all with existing locations that have, say, a Gorillo inside a city. Those SHOPKEEPER_EXCEPTION nodes should allow for any other hostile or non-hostile residents to spawn and respawn if needed in non-shopkeeper nodes inside those POI if needed-be, but shopkeeper localized spawns in a place inside a POI in SAFE towns and locations should be always left alone (we are talking about local nodes inside the NODE tagging, hierarchy stuff, allowing for the shopkeeper node to respawn a shopkeeper-npc if needed were to be a mod in place or otherwise).


Easier solution:

Edit/create a Nest/hostile squad spawn behaviour that does not spawn inside buildings in all the faction-specific towns, so they ignore Nodes inside buildings . I believe that there are quite a few enemies/animals inside buildings, but they will not affect this if the Nest behaviour activates after the second spawn check (and beyond) always. The first spawn check in any location should spawn shopkeepers/animals as they are, in case there are tailored locations marked as towns with creatures inside that are not unique.

Edited post with actual needed solution.

There's actually a workaround that doesn't fix the issue but rather makes it irrelevant.

Set every trader to regenerate : true and, (does not work on barmans and others, so you have to : ) set every trader to wear faction uniform. That results in having to heavily modify faction relations in order to not trigger a slaughter (every faction in Heft and Heng, hub and Swamps has to be reciprocal friend to eachother except obvious bandits and misfits, that also fixes the all-out war that triggers every single time when you have all the spawns and nests in the game set to highest).