(Mod Request) AI Nations and Caravans

[d09smeehan]

A16 was an amazing update, but the current world system has two features that bug me. Faction bases are placed everywhere with no sense of borders. You'll find every faction spread everywhere across the entire world, next to friends and enemies. That makes no sense really. Also, you're the only faction to ever send out visible caravans.

The idea behind this is to set up a system so that the AI factions appear to interact realistically with eachother in the global theater. They'll raid and trade with one another just like you do, and because they're no longer just scattered around convincing trade routes and frontlines will form between factions.

Features I'd like the mod to add:
-Faction bases are clustered together to simulate areas of control. No longer should I find the same neolithic tribe on separate continents (or just half way around the world next to a pirate base)

-Factions can send out trade/raiding caravans visible on the World map. These should ideally travel between nearby bases to either attack/trade depending on the faction relations. They should be able to do this with you and npc factions.

-AI caravans can be intercepted by the players own to either trade with or attack. Attacks can done similarly to the current Caravan Ambushed event, taking place in a pocket map.

-AI caravans should be bigger than randomly generated vanilla raid/trade groups. The idea is these are the big groups the colony hears about ahead of time, and has advanced warning so they can form a plan to deal with them (be it dig in, intercept, find more trade goods or run away). Smaller (vanilla) groups manage to slip through the net and surprise you.

-Least important, but if possible simulate the effects of whatever the caravans mission was. Trade caravans should leave their destinations with different goods/more silver (ideally goods associated with the faction they visited i.e. they wouldn't buy a charge rifle from tribals). Raiding groups should disappear (aka be wiped out) or return with loot/fewer men. Probably not a good idea to let raiders outright destroy faction bases though.


I'm aware that any one of these points is probably a ton of effort to even begin implementing, but I feel it would add a lot more depth to the world aspect of the game. Personally I feel that if all of the above the factions mechanic would be a lot more convincing, and in my experience the best stories tend to be based in worlds that make sense and don't revolve entirely around the protagonists.

[Jerry The Hellbound]

bumpity bump

[Wishmaster]

I posted something with similar ideas few days ago. I mentioned a territory system rather than a random distribution of faction bases.
I did some code and there is the result
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cyh0e19akjqipd1/Capture%20d%27%C3%A9cran%202017-01-11%2019.14.49.png?dl=0

I didn't think about your other ideas but they give me ideas.

Btw by AI nations I first thought u were talking about an AI robots faction.

[rmconde98]

cool idea! it can be the bases for multiplayer!

[d09smeehan]

I posted something with similar ideas few days ago. I mentioned a territory system rather than a random distribution of faction bases.
I did some code and there is the result
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cyh0e19akjqipd1/Capture%20d%27%C3%A9cran%202017-01-11%2019.14.49.png?dl=0

I didn't think about your other ideas but they give me ideas.

Damn that's actually pretty close to what I was imagining! Looks great, and with a couple of tweaks it seems like a solid base for the other features mentioned. I'd love to see anything you think would work well with it.

[Techgenius]

Be great if some dynamics were involved, factions waging wars allowing us to see the battlefields, loot their bodies for equipment and lose relations, rescue survivals and send them back to their home or use them for our own gains, Factions conquering other settlements and losing settlements, mechanoid invasion and such... Tynan says rimworld is "pretty much done", but I disagree, there is so much more that could be "done" yet.

Intercept their caravans and travellers, live like true raiders, ambushing them, taking settlements by surprise.

[Wishmaster]

I posted something with similar ideas few days ago. I mentioned a territory system rather than a random distribution of faction bases.
I did some code and there is the result
https://www.dropbox.com/s/cyh0e19akjqipd1/Capture%20d%27%C3%A9cran%202017-01-11%2019.14.49.png?dl=0

I didn't think about your other ideas but they give me ideas.

Damn that's actually pretty close to what I was imagining! Looks great, and with a couple of tweaks it seems like a solid base for the other features mentioned. I'd love to see anything you think would work well with it.

There's a lot. However, they are quite different.
Have a look at the topic I mentioned above.

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=29329.0

edit: fixed broken link.

[d09smeehan]

There's a lot. However, they are quite different.
Have a look at the topic I mentioned above.
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?action=post;msg=296031;topic=29329.0

Sorry but that link just leads to an error for me.

[Wishmaster]

oops fixed.

[d09smeehan]

A lot of those ideas seem downright awesome.

I'm definitely down with the idea of varying the richness of locations. Especially if you find a way to balance it out i.e. some regions are high in arable land but low in mineable veins and vice versa. I'm not sure how I feel about reducing the map size by much though, especially since the rearrangement of factions will make the progression between territories much more pronounced. The map may seem huge now, but it wouldn't make much sense to be able to just rush through an entire factions territory to reach a juicy spot on the other side.

As for your ideas on trade, I personally would prefer more physical encounters and caravans (especially on the world map) than simple "send/receive pod" exchanges. But hey its still a big improvement over the current system provided its balanced.

I love the idea of being able to effectively ransom faction leaders. I reckon with enough development and other options i.e. killing them to take over/recruiting them this could be a great end game goal, especially with more powerful factions. Having something to do with prisoners would be awesome too, since currently I try to keep prisoners for as short a time as possible. There's never a reason to keep them long term. I don't think there's much need to remove the Prison Break event outright though, seeing as its already pretty rare unless you hand the prisoners weapons.

Maybe a lieutenant system would be a good modification i.e. certain faction bases have officers with additional information on the leader or supplies. Hell with enough effort this could be an excellent mod by itself.

However that could be a problem too. You have a ton of great ideas, but from this newcomers persective this seems like a hell of a lot of work. Practically an overhaul. Personally I'd say if this is going to happen it should be modular or it'll take months or more.

[Wishmaster]

As for your ideas on trade, I personally would prefer more physical encounters and caravans (especially on the world map) than simple "send/receive pod" exchanges. But hey its still a big improvement over the current system provided its balanced.

This is feature a want badly. For trading I personally avoid caravans. Of course can travel next to a friendly town or just land next to it. That's seem to easy for me. I think this needs to be balanced, hence my influence zones idea.

I don't know many ways to make physical traveling more relevant.
* Make pods much more expensive.
* Perhaps some hostiles factions should have some kind of pods "interdiction" system, preventing your pods to travel above their territory.

I know you want more physical encounters but atm, pods are more powerful. For a decent cost, they can travel in seconds what you do in days, without the risk of being ambushed.
Perhaps AI caravans and raids should be in pods, sometime. But it would make their interception impossible (unless you can have that interdiction thing).

I love the idea of being able to effectively ransom faction leaders. I reckon with enough development and other options i.e. killing them to take over/recruiting them this could be a great end game goal, especially with more powerful factions. Having something to do with prisoners would be awesome too, since currently I try to keep prisoners for as short a time as possible. There's never a reason to keep them long term. I don't think there's much need to remove the Prison Break event outright though, seeing as its already pretty rare unless you hand the prisoners weapons.

I do not want to remove the prison break incident. I want to suppress it under a very specific condition: only if you are too distant from any hostile base or a decent climate.
This would allow you to have a lot of prisoners...
For kidnapping faction leaders. I did not exactly mention ransoming but, why not.
I was had the idea that killing the leader would make the faction collapsing, make it neutral, easier to conquer or something.

Maybe a lieutenant system would be a good modification i.e. certain faction bases have officers with additional information on the leader or supplies. Hell with enough effort this could be an excellent mod by itself.

I was thinking about that too ! Even if I did not mention it.

However that could be a problem too. You have a ton of great ideas, but from this newcomers persective this seems like a hell of a lot of work. Practically an overhaul. Personally I'd say if this is going to happen it should be modular or it'll take months or more.

You are right. I am a modder but to be honest I'm done with RimWorld since more than a month. However if I know I can make the game more interesting, that may help to be back to business.
Also since it's a lot of work, I would first make that pod trading thing first as a mod by itself because I badly want this feature.

[d09smeehan]

Ok, I can see the pod idea being pretty good, especially with the other features you mentioned. You'd have to do a hell of a lot of work to balance it though seeing as the only factions you could do it with will all have access to high(ish) end gear. Maybe limit it to food and raw resources or something, inflict damage on items, or have a low capacity on how much can be traded per day. Because being able to immediately purchase resources like armor or meds at any time would probably completely mess up the challenge of the game. It would make crafting largely obsolete and caravans completely worthless for any stationary players. Unless it's insanely big, an additional fee would probably only partially solve that problem.

I didn't mean literally ransoming the leader for money, but since we're talking about it that would be pretty cool! I mean't more you capture the leader to get him to end the hostilities. Shotgun diplomacy style. But killing works fine, and actually given the randomness of the downing mechanic capturing might not be reliable enough anyway. As for the prison break deal, tell me if I'm wrong but don't prisoners basically never break out already in bad temperature regions since A16? I rarely play extreme biomes so not too sure on this issue. But if you're adding a reason to actually keep prisoners then I'd definitely be down for more nuanced prison mechanics to go with them.

[Wishmaster]

Ok, I can see the pod idea being pretty good, especially with the other features you mentioned. You'd have to do a hell of a lot of work to balance it though seeing as the only factions you could do it with will all have access to high(ish) end gear. Maybe limit it to food and raw resources or something, inflict damage on items, or have a low capacity on how much can be traded per day. Because being able to immediately purchase resources like armor or meds at any time would probably completely mess up the challenge of the game. It would make crafting largely obsolete and caravans completely worthless for any stationary players. Unless it's insanely big, an additional fee would probably only partially solve that problem.

I didn't mean literally ransoming the leader for money, but since we're talking about it that would be pretty cool! I mean't more you capture the leader to get him to end the hostilities. Shotgun diplomacy style. But killing works fine, and actually given the randomness of the downing mechanic capturing might not be reliable enough anyway. As for the prison break deal, tell me if I'm wrong but don't prisoners basically never break out already in bad temperature regions since A16? I rarely play extreme biomes so not too sure on this issue. But if you're adding a reason to actually keep prisoners then I'd definitely be down for more nuanced prison mechanics to go with them.

Trading in pods in a thing in the current vanilla game. But it is so inconvenient and I'm not sure if it's intentional.

In order to balance it I had other ideas, because I still want you to have a chance to find everything you currently find in traders.

* Only a (very?) few faction bases will have a "spaceport" that makes them able to trade directly with you.
* You could be able to donate a large sum (like 10000 silver or a lot of steel and components, tbd) to a faction base so they can build their own spaceport.... or podsport. You should also gain a standing boost.
* Trader kinds of factions bases will change much less often than they currently do and maybe will be more restricted.
* A fee for every pods sent back to you.

Also here is why pods trading in vanilla is a thing but is so inconvenient:

I really feel like pod trading should be part of the game. Atm you can build your outpost next to a friendly town, send your money/things to your outpost with pods, trade and get back in pods from your outpost.
I even made that a bit easier with a mod I created "Reuse Pods" (which allows you to *spoiler* reuse pods at the expense of an extra building. Balance of this is a debate).

But then I realize that while it is relevant to trade items like that, it's a giant pain to do:
- You need at least one colonist at your outpost and perhaps some mufallos to carry all the items to friendly base that's only one tile next to you.
- So the friendly is adjacent to your base ? Great. Your caravan can be back from there instantly. But you can't travel TO there instantly. You have to go an adjacent tile first which can takes 12 hours in winter. Tynan, seriously...

But wait... I found a way to make caravans more relevant

What about roads ?
They would give a boost to move speed and prevent winter from slowing down.


In the vanilla game, all non player pawns have a 66% chance to die if they are downed even not injured fatally.
I will reduce that chance to 0% for leaders, lieutenant. And maybe to a lower rate like 33% for all enemy pawns.
Btw there is already a mod that does that "no more random death". It sets the chance to 0%.

I don't extreme biomes prevents prison break. I haven't tested but I just had a quick look at the RimWorld source and found no clue.