Been thinking about this for awhile. Would it be possible to have a conversation option with an npc ally that adds it to a pool (and despawns the NPC), and you could spend that pool like a currency to acquire a set of random items (or a stat effect) in a list depending on another menu option? Perhaps the NPC could instead constently generate that pool currency depending on how many NPC have been despawned.
Maybe it could be a way to “fill out” the player’s faction in a non game-space way and enhance the game for people like me who regard NPC as they currently are as liabilities.
It might also be a way to keep score, as the number of NPCs despawned like this could be considered people the PC has ‘saved’ and are in a safe-ish place and are scavenging resources.
So basically something like FFT where you assign allies missions and they make small accomplisments while time passes? Actually we have options for this in the evecuation shelter questline, you can eventually unlock some NPCs that you can talk to and assign friendly NPCs to… I think go on caravan guarding missions?