Gypsies! (Or other, more politically correctly named group of Travelling Folk)

[Bappy1988]

If you live in a part of the world where a 'nomadic' lifestyle is common, like the so-called gypsies that live near my uncle's village in Bulgaria, you'll be familiar with them coming round settlements offering work as laborers.

You start measuring up a plot in the village for a new house and within a very short period of time you get some gypsies come round and tell you they have x strong lads who will happily dig your footings for you for the small sum of y lev/euros whatever.

I think a faction of 'nomads' of some sort or another would be contextually accurate, you might even consider it 'necessary' from a continuity perspective - there's no way (IMO) with colonies like we see on some continent wouldn't have nomadic groups running around.

Let's say your colony has just been raided, you've only got 4 colonists left, 3 of them in hospital, there's almost no food left and a blight just killed off your entire crop. there's nothing left to do but watch your colonists slowly die of starvation.

you then get a story event - a group of travelling folk (randomly generated number of workers) have arrived and want some work. You can offer them work - using a special version of the orders menu you allocate a 20x20 area of ground as a potato field and select a 5x5 area of compacted steel for mining. The nomads offer to do the work for you for x silver.

by the time your food runs out and your colonists are fit to work, there's a field full of potatoes ready to harvest.


there are lots of options for expansion here as well, capturing workers makes the faction angry, if people die whilst working for you, the faction gets angry. calling the faction up on the comms station to ask them to come and build a barn for you makes them happy etc.

Also lots of options for bad behaviour. Get a good rep with the travelers by giving them fairly regular work, then issue a huge project and capture 15 of their people and sell them into slavery to buy that exquisite gold statue you so badly want :-D



what do you guys think? I personally think something like this would add some extra depth to the game that could be used strategically as well as providing a 'means of escape' in situations that might otherwise result in a dead colony.


Funny enough I've been watching a lets play by the popular youtuber Blitzkriegsler whilst typing this and just heard him say "I wish you could offer these visitors work, like get them to haul a bunch of stuff...."

So I'm not the only one :-D

[Simon_The_Space_Engineer]

That would be really nice to see

[Jorlem]

Why not turn the random visitors into this (or at least some of them)?  They don't really do much at the moment?

[Kajin]

I think Nomads would be a good term for them, yes.

They come in and setup camp. Maybe build kotas out of leather or simple wooden structures. Hunt animals. Gather wild vegetation. Cook meals in camp fires. Friendly ones will offer to help work your fields for you in exchange for a share of the crops or otherwise do various manual labor for you in exchange for hunting rights to your lands. Bad ones will take what they want and fight you if you raise a fuss.

Yeah, I like this idea.

[Wex]

Good idea. Why raid, if you could use stealth to steal?
Also, a help for rebuilding, after a nasty assault, would be more than welcome.

[Jamini]

Making the visitors events more interesting would be nice.

[LouisTBR]

This can also be achieved through hotels in my opinion (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=16260.0).

To have these gypsies as an actual faction would be brilliant. You could trade with them as well as ask them for military/labour aid.

To be able to call them up and ask them to stay for x number of days for x silver would be cool, and, if you have a functioning hotel (see top), ask them to stay there instead of bringing a tent, thus making them pay you back some of the money you spent for their aid. They would work for you until they leave, but if they are hotel residents, they will behave like guests plus the fact that they will work for you. This includes all of the features in the linked thread above. They will have the default 10-6 sleep schedule, and will spend all of their awake time working. They will, in addition to taking your money, eat from your stockpiles and inevitably go for the best quality meals. You can evict them (-15 Friendship Points) if you don't want them taking up your food.

The tent is a new item which colonists cannot obtain, only gypsies can possess one and will sleep in it unless they choose to pay for your hotel's services. This will be where they sleep, and has a visible inside layout consisting of sleeping spots, a storage rack (decorative) and possibly a joy object. This tent will be kept in the boss's inventory and will be immediately placed when the gypsies find their destination.

They have a schedule which you can alter, and you can choose who does which tasks using a 'Visitors' tab (Visitor version of the work tab). All the work your colonists can do, they can do.

Now, as they are a faction, they will have friends and enemies, although they start randomly like the other factions. This means they will attack their enemies, but if they are friends with a colony, it will go down to friendship points. If the other colony has more friendship points than you do, they will not fight, if they have the same they will not fight, if you have more then they will. If there is only 5 friendship points more for one colony, you can bribe the gypsies to fight for your side for a fee of 300 silver.