What Feature do you think needs improvement?

[Full Frontal Yeti]

Little AI faction tweak maybe.
Basically as time wares on in the world, it begins to seem as if the factions are kinda all programed robots designed to harass you.
Rather than self preservation interested factions, that one would expect can learn to leave well enough alone.

I can see if i go out and harass a faction they get mad at me and seek some revenge on me.
i can also see a faction that comes to knock on my front door to harass me, and gets shown off, may be a little mad about and come back for some, we'll show'em this time.

But at some point, if i'm not going to out to purposefully harangue them, they are only coming over here to harangue me.
But they keep getting it handed to them when they do this...at some point this becomes obvious bot is obvious bot world is less real, situaiotn.

So a little tweek where, NPC faction AI, trying to raid the player.
That 1: are not themselves return raided by the player + 2: they just keep losing each assault = at some point they actually "learn" to leave well enough alone, as it were. Stop bashing yourselves against the rocks as if you were an unthinking ocean, this ain't working out for you.

If they behave a little too much like bots that just do the one job thing they have to do...

[lucidmadness]

When looting an enemy you used to be able to unequip things from their inventory (eg drag an item to the ground and it would move from his inventory to the ground) but now it just snaps back into place unless i transfer it into my inventory first, and then the ground. This has been very frustrating since it was put in, if it was meant to be put in at all and isn't a bug. I would love to have the old style back where I can just drag things from his inventory onto the ground directly.

[Vandala]

I think you need to look at the ammo situation the game has right now, its not making any sense to me.

What purpose does ammo currently serve? It's just an artificial limit on our inventory space.

What choice does having ammo offer us? It's not like its really limiting our shots in combat because you can simply take a huge backpack and fill it completely with ammo so you can shoot for days at the cost of inventory space. Its also not like we have a choice in the matter, characters have stats, it takes a lot of exp to raise those stats, which takes a lot of fighting, which uses a lot of ammo, so we need a lot of ammo.

Ammo doesn't really do anything, it doesn't affect the damage of the crossbows, or their loading speed, or their range, etc.

Why even have ammo in the first place if it doesn't do anything but waste inventory space and cause busywork by having to make sure you keep your stocks filled. It's not like this game doesn't take liberties with ammo use in other facets, like with its turrets, turrets don't seem to need ammo and they function just fine so why not do the same with crossbows?

If your going to use ammo, have it actually do something, give the player a meaningful choice, have it be like an upgrade or mod to your crossbow instead of limiting its use. Right now, you might as well remove ammo entirely and have crossbows function without it like turrets do, that would be an improvement to the game.

[Vandala]

I just want to mention that weapons still have a hidden stat.

The length of a weapon is still not listed anywhere in its stat line, nor does the game give any hint that weapon length is a thing that has an effect in combat.

Same goes for racial hit allocation, (that thing that determents the likelihood of which limb gets hit by an attack), the game never tells you this is a thing that exists and that it can be different for the different races.

[Vandala]

Please consider lowering the crafting time for some of the higher end shirts.

17 hours for a Leather Vest, 24 hours for a Leather Shirt, 33 hours for a Leather Turtleneck, these craft times are quite absurd.

I've been trying to equip my team of only 13 people with masterwork quality leather turtlenecks and its taking hours of real time on the highest speed setting. Getting all the other armor equipment to masterwork combined doesn't take as long as even just the leather vests, something feels very wrong here.

Why can I equip a character in full masterwork armored gear (drifters boots+mercenary leather armor+rattan hat+samurai clothpants) in just 13 hours but the leather vest alone takes another 17 hours of work?

The chain versions are even worse of course.

I hope these crafting times can be changed to put them in line with the normal craft times of the other craftable armor pieces. I just don't see the point of these absurdly long craft times.

[Vandala]

This is just a reminder in case this was overlooked.

The Robotics skill still only has a exp.bar and a description in its description section, I would expect it to have similar information as the field medic skill, like; listing the stats affected for using repair kits and listing the ways to train the skill.

Also the Science skill could use a slight touch up, in its listed ways to train the skill it only says to use the research bench and then two samey just do science notes. Maybe I'm missing the joke here but if not, could you just add the other ways of training science, I believe it was producing that drug and making electronics.

Also none of the weapon skills say how much of an increase they give to the damage dealt.

[Vandala]

Just a funny observation, Wind Generators (both big and small) will turn to face the wind even if there is no wind at all.

My base is in a location that seems to get no wind at all, yet both the big and small wind generators are turning to face the nonexistent wind constantly. I don't know if such a thing is normal in real life, but it looks silly in the game. XD

[bargian]

They are looking for a wind

[Elfnet]

Logical prices:

I can’t get to wrap my head around Kenshi’s illogical (for players who want to build a settlement: crippling) in-game economy. It is a post-apocalyptic world, where modern technology is basicly non-existent and even a simple sword or a leather armor cost a fortune. Thats OK, but than why is the economy backwards?

• The problem(s):

For example: a raw iron ore’s avg. cost is 90 cats, but an iron plate is only 135?!
To get one iron plate, you need one man making an ore and then refine it, which is about 3 times slower and require a special building.
Basically the time you need to get 1 iron plate, you could get about 4 iron ores.
Even stranger: an animal skin’s price is 240, but if you have the equipment, take the time and effort, you could make a leather out of it. Great!
Or is it?
A skin, what require nothing to do (except to get one) is 240 cats, while a leather only 156?! With you're hard work, you actually decrease the price.

In a logical world, what will a trader do, if I sell them an iron ore or a skin? Sell it to a manufacturer, who makes an iron plate or leather out of them, or even a sword or leather armor, and than resell for profit. But here the profit-margin is negative!

I understand, if this mechanism is a way to force the players to fight or steal, instead of building profitable settlements (Alex, the developer made something similar in Starsecor to prevent lucrative trading), but now the logical way in Kenshi is to stop researching, dismantle all you’re high-tech manufacturing equipment and send everybody to mines (except the traders, who will run with the full sacks of raw iron).
There are exceptions: most higher level stuffs, like decent weapons have significantly higher prices, so I don't understand, why low- and mid-levels don't.


The biggest problem is: this made almost impossible to start a self-reliant, peaceful (relatively speaking) settlement, since the more advanced you get, the harder the game become to the point where you will most likely die out from starvation before you start to make profitable stuff (like drugs), or forced to sell iron ores, even when you manufacture Tier3 things and have everything before artifacts.

I played a ton of games with in-game economy from Rimworld to Factorio, but I never encountered one where you forced to stuck in the neolithic technology level, despite the fleshed out research.

• A possible solution:

This could be easily fixed, since it only needs a price-change: the ore could cost the least amount, the plate more, the low level weapons proportionally more, etc. (even if the prices still forces the player to do bounties or other activities, there would be at least a cause to research).

[Lhama]

So like... is everyone in Kenshi-land born with a set of unbreakable lockpicks? Or are the locks just that bad that all you need are fingers to open them?

Like medkits are required for the medic skill, lockpicks should be required for lockpicking. Maybe even different tiers for higher level locks. Being able to lockpick without some sort of tool makes getting enslaved or imprisoned kind of a joke...

[andyysole]

I hope they improve the AI ​​of the npc of the cities, I would like the npc to build their own cities, camps and their technology and new npcs as if it were Age of Empires. Or to do something else in addition to exploring and fighting the npc.

[Zephandrypus]

The Robotics skill still only has a exp.bar and a description in its description section, I would expect it to have similar information as the field medic skill, like; listing the stats affected for using repair kits and listing the ways to train the skill.

Not to mention that it's used to determine the quality of crafted robotic limbs. You can't even see the critical success chance in the bench itself.

[Zephandrypus]

Even stranger: an animal skin’s price is 240, but if you have the equipment, take the time and effort, you could make a leather out of it. Great!
Or is it?
A skin, what require nothing to do (except to get one) is 240 cats, while a leather only 156?! With you're hard work, you actually decrease the price.

Part of the problem is you are assuming a 1:1 ratio when refining. You actually get two leather per skin, so you are still making a profit. I don't know the ratios for anything else, though, or if they are affected by efficiency.

Farther up the tech tree, you get drastically increased efficiency, and it requires no workers. For both the refinery, and the specialized ore mine. The Holy Nation, for their lack of technology, has slaves and servants instead.

You may have noticed that copper ore is worth three times as much as iron ore. I assume this has something to do with there being no machines for it. The profit margin is in the labor.

Look into Supply and Demand. The lower-level weapons and armor are the ones equipped by all the bandits running around. Thus the only demand is for higher level stuff. And training smithing skills takes so long that supply gets exponentially lower as the quality gets higher.

HOWEVER...

Making money in the early game is still quite severely limited. Your only options are basically copper and loot, barely scraping together enough.

But I think this is by design.

[Raijin]

Military Formation Option Helps for Platoons. Setting column and rank files would really help in engagements

[Zargoras]

I did already another thread for mouse controls. Dont saw this topic before i made it public.

But to stick with controls I would prefer to switch with TAB between the 3 speed settings. Saw it at "Oxygen Not Included" and for me it feels very comfortable for my hand. =)

My biggest issue is to understand all the stats of weapons, armor, attributes and so on.

I would like to get more informations about what exactly makes my attack value (and everyhing else) positive or negative. At the moment I only see that it must be any part of my equipment. But which one?

The information about how much damage my character will do with a full hit (without penalties by opponents armor and so on) could help to understand how strong the character already is.

For me there is no chance to get the feeling range from "oh shit. run!" to "come one. I believe I can beat you!".

Also the numbers shown like 0,50x blunt damage is not very understandable, too. And at the same time penalties on items (armor for example) is not clear enought with just showing a red number like 0,21x or so.

A translation of that numbers would be nice. Or an additional window at the bottom of the actual looked item like "Effective Stats when you equip this".

[OopsLoops]

Team control. I think there is still a lot of things are waiting for improvement.

• Hierarchical team formation (battalion, squadron, platoon ...)
• Batch command to the same group (Batch editing of job list, block, hold, etc...)
• Automatic movement speed adjustment and formation (Now I'm doing it by follow command to slowest character)

For example, if these are realized,
It is easy to give different command to the traveling member, to ranged weapon user, melle attacker, and transport animal, respectively.
and it can easily edit the task of members at same site, who perform farming members, who perform blacksmithing members.
and there don't have to figure out who is the slowest in the members, who got hurt their leg, every after battle before move.

I think there are more things may be, but this is all of I can remember about this thing at this time.

[bowidl]

Fighting many vs many or many vs one.

My main fighters all have 60+ weapon skill, same for attack and defense. So they are pretty op. Each of them can solo 4 or more beak things without taking a single hit.

When it's 1 of mine vs 4 of them, they correctly anticipate incoming attacks from all enemies and patiently wait with their own attack for a safe time frame. Especially with a fast weapon like a katana, they will most likely win the fight having blocked every single attack.

In a balanced fight though, say 4 of mine vs 4 beak things, each of my chars picks their "main" opponent and completely ignores the others. Thus they get hit by almost every attack made by the other 3 enemies. Of course this is only a problem with enemies who have a long range, who are likely to hit more than 1 character. Beak things are an example.

Things get really awkward when the balance is in my favor, say 4 of mine vs 1 beak thing. Then it seems like only the player closest to the enemy blocks, while the others completely ignore the incoming attacks and take every single hit. Only when it happens that 2 of mine end up in a line in the "front row", then both of them will block. The characters behind them still won't.

Somehow the game should apply the same strategy of 1vs4 also when fighting 4v4 or 4v1.

[b3nt0b0x]

Pathing, AI looting of player to see inside backpacks, being able to mod the AI.

[Elfnet]

Even stranger: an animal skin’s price is 240, but if you have the equipment, take the time and effort, you could make a leather out of it. Great!
Or is it?
A skin, what require nothing to do (except to get one) is 240 cats, while a leather only 156?! With you're hard work, you actually decrease the price.

Part of the problem is you are assuming a 1:1 ratio when refining. You actually get two leather per skin, so you are still making a profit. I don't know the ratios for anything else, though, or if they are affected by efficiency.

Farther up the tech tree, you get drastically increased efficiency, and it requires no workers. For both the refinery, and the specialized ore mine. The Holy Nation, for their lack of technology, has slaves and servants instead.

You may have noticed that copper ore is worth three times as much as iron ore. I assume this has something to do with there being no machines for it. The profit margin is in the labor.

Look into Supply and Demand. The lower-level weapons and armor are the ones equipped by all the bandits running around. Thus the only demand is for higher level stuff. And training smithing skills takes so long that supply gets exponentially lower as the quality gets higher.

HOWEVER...

Making money in the early game is still quite severely limited. Your only options are basically copper and loot, barely scraping together enough.

But I think this is by design.

(Sorry for the late reply, ”Notify me upon replies by default” was NO by default. Also, I couldn’t write short answers)

I don’t want to repeat myself, but I have to:

„Part of the problem is you are assuming a 1:1 ratio when refining”

I don’t assume, it is fact (in iron ore/iron plate). Fair enough, in the skin/leather case it is 1:2, but that is basicly the same.
https://kenshi.fandom.com/wiki/Iron_Plates

Than stick with the iron example:
As I stated, to make for example an iron ore, you could build a drill and have one worker.

On the other hand, to make an iron plate, you need an iron refinery and a worker, but you ALSO need a drill and one worker, yet you sell the final product only 1.5 times higher, than the ore.

So in short: in Case1, you make 1 ore, refine it and sell for 1.5 times iron ore price (135 cats), in Case2, you put both workers into the same mine, not refine and sell 2 times the ore (180 cats).
Assuming in both cases you have 2 workers and the same time.


It is even worse, since in Case1 you also have to buy the resources for the iron refinery, while in Case2 you could sell the same ammount of resources and buy a third worker instead, so now in Case1 you have 1 worker in the mine and 1 in the refinery, what makes 1.5 times iron ore money (still 135 cats), while in Case2 you only make iron ores, but 3 times faster (so basicly 3 ore: 270 cats in the same timeframe).
(the last part was only a thought experiment, but you have the gist of it).

You could research better refineries to make more iron plates, but you could also research better drills, so higher tech don’t change this equasion.

I could link a Wikipedia page too:
Opportunity cost

When evaluating the expected profit, you also have to factor in, what you could achive with the same ammount of resources and in this case the logical decision is to stick to the raw iron and don’t research (making steel bars is ever worse).



The copper is backwards too. A copper ore sells 2 times higher, than an iron ore, yet an automated iron drill makes iron ore like 10 times faster (without the workers), while you couldn't speed up the copper ore mining. In X ammount of time, you could make 2 times iron ore worth of money (1 copper), or you could have 10 times (10 iron = 5 copper). The only downside is iron ore's weight is 9 kg, while a copper only 4 kg, so you could transport less, but this small disadvantage doesn’t make up for the 10 times slower mining. Also, this is true for the higher level stuff (like Electrical Components).




About the Marshall-cross (Supply/demand): yes, this is exactly my problem: as I stated, this is how the real world (and basicly every game economy) works, but Kenshi's isn’t.

Stick with you’re example (about sword qualities):
In low level (crappy) swords the demand is high (90% of the NPC’s use them), but the price is quite low, since making a low level sword is easy (the supply is also high).

But making a high quality sword is extremly difficult and only a few people could do it, so while the demand is relative low (only a small group have the required ammount of cash), the supply is even lower, and as a result, the high quiality swords are extremly expensive.
The problem is: this is how ecomony works, but this is true for everything.

The base price of a raw mineral (like an iron ore) should be extremly low, since it only require work hours (and a pickaxe), while making processed goods out of it should sell multiple times higher, since mining raw iron, refine into iron plates, and that into Steel Bars takes soo much manpower, but also equipment, research, starting money, time, etc..

In the real world the price of sand/copper/iron is almost zero, electrical components are cheap while a smartphone is quite high, since making iron into a smartphone is hard, yet in the game it is more logical to run a low level mining empire than making smartphones out of it.



This is also problematic for early game: you’re only option is mining raw iron and than sell it;

„barely scraping together enough.”

OK, the start is hard. The problem is, when you have enough money/resource to build up you’re colony, the logical path is to build another mine, not build a refinery and make high level stuff (like good swords).

Maybe a good sword sells 50 times higher than an iron ore, but in the same time with the same workers and resources you could make like 500 iron ore, so in the end you could mine ores or work hard and in the end earn 10 time less.
And there are other factors, like if the enemy raid you’re compound and steal everything, than what? If you only had 10 iron ores that time (you already sell the earlier ones), that is sad. If you had an iron ore, than refined it and now you had 1 high level stuff (like a Steel bar), you lost everything and have to start over, before making the sword, so in the end, in Case 2 you don't have 500 times the iron ore cost, you have 490 times. In Case1 you don't have 50 times, you have 0 (since you never made the sword).




In the beginning of the game, you could only mine iron ores, so you are poor. Thats is the way it should be. As I stated, the mid-game sucks, but the endgame is also good (in my opinion). You could build up you're tech up untill a point, where you have to scavenge Research Artifacts, what is extremely difficult and risky. This is realistic: making very high level stuff could be super-lucrative, since you need special books for the tech, yet it is incredibly hard to get them.

I understand, that it is easier (forced by the developers) to get a bunch of great soldiers and get the books, intead of making a peaceful settlement and only rely on what you are produce, but in my opinion it shouldn't be forced.

[IdealAverage]

My thaugts are about....
to have more micromanaging options in fight, like force attacks to specific limps. And having healing potions, that can be used once a day, so that you can turn a fight, but don't get to overpowered.
Also I am missing shields. It would be awesome to have more tank abillitys.