Town Creation Guide

[omegamarcel]

Alright, since the wiki for building a town in-game is a bunch of garbage, I'll be showing you how to make a (working!) new town. I'll try to be as thorough as possible, but if I miss something or you have a question be sure to yell at me about it.

Step One: Make a New Mod
Pretty obvious right? I thought i might as well include it because theres some other stuff that doesn't need a new step.Before you do any modding, BE VERY SURE TO MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR "leveldata.level" FILE.This file is located in "kenshi/data" having a backup of the original file is the only way to revert to the original map without reinstalling Kenshi. Now that you've done that, open the forgotten construction set, located in your kenshi folder. Now, create a new mod and name it whatever you want. Now open the newly created mod and gamedata. Finally, save your mod. you'll want to save as much as possible, or at least after every change.

Step two: make a new faction (OPTONAL)
Now, this step is entirely optional, because already existing factions work just fine for new towns. If you would rather just use a pre-existing faction just skip this step. Now you could either copy an already existing faction or create one from scratch, but for the sake of time, we'll just modify a copy.
Find "the Holy Empire" under factions, and right click on it, and select duplicate item. Now open the copy and change the name to whatever you want. On the right side, right click and remove all instances of holy enforcers, holy guardians, and holy army. now you'll need some squads to fill those spots, so under divisions, make copies of what you just removed from your new faction. you'll need to create some new characters, so use copies of the characters in the squads you just copied and make any modifications to the copies that you want. now remove all of the characters from the copied squads and add your newly created characters and make the numbers match the original squads. its best if you don't change anything on the left side except for the name of the squad. now add your squads to the new faction, and again make the numbers match the original. the numbers don't have to match, but keep them the same for now, you can change them later if you want. Now, under color schemes, create a new color scheme for your new faction. after you've done that, go back to your faction, and add your new color scheme, and remove the color scheme that was already there.
that should be all that you need to do for your faction.

Step three: Make your town
First, you'll need to actually create the town in the construction set. go to towns, and right click and make a new item. rename it to whatever, and make sure that it is set to public. in the drop-down box, select faction, and add the new faction you just made. The new town is now ready to be created in-game. If you don't already have the Mod Manager, go download it, you'll need it. Be sure to back up your current save file if you have one. in the mod manager, open the save manager, and create a new profile. now make sure your mod is the only mod loaded. Now, open Kenshi(duh). Now create a new game. skip the character creation and just hit done. after that hit "Shift+F12". That command opens the map editor. See those buttons up there that say "Towns" "Populate" "Re-Path" ? Don't touch those right now. nothing good will come of you fiddling with those buttons right now. instead, open the map, and look for a nice open space to put your town. Once you've found one, push the Towns button, and look for the town you made earlier in the construction set. select it, and Right click faaaar away from where you want to put your town. Then hit the save button as soon as possible. hit F5, then close kenshi. Go back to the construction set. make a new game start-off and select town from the drop-down box. add the town you created. add whatever characters to the squad that you want and make sure to add a number other than zero next to it. now open kenshi again and start a new game using the start-off you just made, this makes it easier to continue building after you make a change and have to start a new game. Now, hit Shift+F12. place at least one of the building called "outpost s-III". then hit save, then space. after that, click on the outpost building, and select police, load, and load the sign as well. the hit save and F5. now place various other buildings in the general area you want your town to be and make stores by using the same method as above but by selecting store options. be sure to put some houses as well so you have civilians wandering about as well buying things and stuff. BE CAREFUL! Some buildings can't be removed after they've been placed, so remember this: If you've never seen it before, don't place it. After you've placed all the buildings you want, it's time for walls. Most of the time, walls will be facing the wrong way automatically, so rotate them to face the right way. Be sure to leave a space for the gates. Gates will also be facing the wrong way sometimes. When you finish placing a length of walls, right click to stop placing them, then save. then place the gates, then save. now that you've done that, you've finished creating your town. So push towns again, and select your town. Right click somewhere inside of the walls. Thats all you need to do to build the town. Now you need to push save AND hit F5. It's always best to double save, just in case. Next you'll need to populate the town. WARNING: when you push populate, all of your units will disappear. After you populate, you need to save. Then you need to re-path your town so units dont just walk through things. After you Re-path, save, close kenshi, open kenshi again, and start a new game with the new start-off. Check to see if you can run through buildings, units spawn where they need to, etc.

That's all you need to do to make a working town so if some of the stuff doesnt work, you may have done something wrong, or i explained something wrong.

[Denninja]

Thank you!! This was way overdue and you delivered 150%.
Gonna try everything right now.

edit- eh, Kenshi crashes every time I hit space to build anything.

[Horasm]

Same here, and if i just shift+F12 to quit the editor, the game crash after 2 or 3 sec. impossible to edit something on the map without a quick crash. Hope the editor will be more efficient with the next update.

[omegamarcel]

Yeah, the editor can be a bit fickle at first, but I must have done something, and i have no idea what, but the editor doesn't crash unless i right click to remove or i push too many buttons. It seems a bit more stable though, for whatever reason.

[Nanny_Oggins]

I was sooo happy to see this article, however, though I followed it to the letter I still cannot build properly. My editor does not crash or freeze but I don't get the statue marker for the town when I right click. i can place the building outpost but when I try to edit it to add signs etc it won't edit. If I exit the building appears to be there but NPCs walk through it and there is no floor.
My editor does not look right to me. the boxes are squashed together and it's impossible to choose buttons which makes it hard to use. I have a screenshot of the map editor interface but can't paste it here. Thanks for the effort but it hasn't solved my problems unfortunately. Any chance of a video version on Youtube?

UPDATE: I uninstalled and reinstalled Kenshi and now I can place the town marker statue. However, It now crashes when i press the spacebar after adding the Outpost 3 buildings. another issue is that, despite making a new faction and Start scenario as suggested, my squad doesn't spawn at the site of my new city it still spawns at Brink (usually). though also Port South but never at my new site.

[Goldenes UBoot]

Thanks for that guide.

My problem is: When I try to do the Interior Layout stuff and I select a Watchtower House with a mouseclick in the map editor for example, the house is deleted. But I can only choose from options like Residential and Barracks after choosing the building via mouseclick. And if I select Barracks or Residential after the tower is deleted I just get a crash because there is no tower anymore.

Maybe the solution is quite simpleand I am just to stupid to find it, I wait for an answer.

Thanks.

[Goldenes UBoot]

Or does anyone nknow how to change the function of the keys in the map editor? Maybe it would solve the problem if I could tell the game or my mouse not to delete a buildung that I select.