Relations Not Damaged If All Travellers/Visitors Killed

[Damien Hart]

So, as it is, visitors or passers by that get "attacked" (usually because they thought walking through the middle of a fire fight or between my hunter and their quarry was logical  ) immediately turn hostile, but then so do the rest of their faction.

The faction, however, shouldn't become hostile until a member of the party leaves the map. This would allow players to cover up their transgressions, and for those more unscrupulous players (like me  ) to ambush neutral/friendly groups.

In order to avoid unbalancing gameplay, after say 3 groups "disappear"  - no penalty for individuals - while passing through your land, the faction becomes suspicious, causing a relations penalty (but not opening hostilities) and stops sending groups for a time. Once groups begin returning, if more disappear soon after, hostilities are opened.

As an extra addition, the counter on the number of missing groups could decay over time, allowing a patient player to avoid suspicion altogether. It would need to be a fair amount of time though, say 90 days to take 1 off the total.

[a89a89]

This is a great idea!

[Ruin]

Very nice alternative to the "one stray bullet in a firefight ruins the relationship" problem.  But, it might be challenging to implement?

[Thunder Rahja]

One of my colonists was shooting at a psychotic boomrat and a visitor in a neutral faction took a hit. The faction didn't do anything about it though, but it probably lowered their relation value.

[Damien Hart]

One of my colonists was shooting at a psychotic boomrat and a visitor in a neutral faction took a hit. The faction didn't do anything about it though, but it probably lowered their relation value.

It's not usually just one bullet though, so sounds like you lucked out on that one 

Very nice alternative to the "one stray bullet in a firefight ruins the relationship" problem.  But, it might be challenging to implement?

It shouldn't be too complicated; the simplest way in my mind would be for groups to arrive as a temporary sub-faction, whose relations are equal to the main faction at the time of spawning. Whatever happens to the group whilst they are on the actual map affects only their relations, and the main faction's are only updated when at least one member of the group leaves via the edge of the map.

This could also be a double edged sword once Tynan works in some more interaction with visitor groups, because a raider group (or just another visitor/traveller group who is hostile to that faction) could easily wipe out a group whom you've just boosted relations with.