Hi. I have few suggestions:
-NPC shouldn’t be able to see us automatically when we are in his ,AI square". He has sixth sense? He sees us through the wall? Moreover, it is almost impossible to escape from NPC without a car
-NPC should be less aggressive when we have SWAT armor/deputy badge etc
-Blinking mark of NPC on map kills immersion because NPC can’t surprise us. We always know where they are. Is it possible to disable NPC marks?
NPCs cant ‘see you’ automatically. Its well documented that you can hide from them in shadows. And your stuff.
The blinking NPC marker is not present on the minimap, and they cant suprise us if we see him on our hud.
Running away from a determined person in real life isn’t particularly easy either. Normally, you’d try to break line of sight, then blend into some crowds or the like. But considering the distinct lack of humans around, when someone wants to chase you down, you will stand out, very sharply. If you run around a corner, your footsteps are gonna still echo out, and with nothing else, no power, no vehicles, its hard to miss.
I don’t see why all NPC’s should be less aggressive when seeing a specific armor. I was under the impression that the stats and equipment of a character affected the NPC’s fear value, which makes them less likely to want to fight you. Government organizations don’t mean much to people who are already aggressive in the apocalypse, so I don’t see how that’d be a logical addition. Anyone who would respect them is already doing so by not instantly trying to kill you regardless of what you wear.
And NPC’s can already ambush you, just run around with safe mode off and don’t check the overmap. Otherwise, having safe mode on and checking the map just represents paying attention to your surroundings. The reality bubble only seems to stretch a few blocks, and I figure that the one thing that’s moving like its human way down the street would stand out something fierce to me.
There was a pull request recently about adding proper line of sight so you can’t see every NPC on the map, but I think it got turned down for reasons I don’t remember. Will see if I can find it.
EDIT: Turns out it’s still open https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/16430 There were potential objections about making it too easy to lose important NPCs, but basically nobody’s really responded properly to the suggestion except Coolthulhu, by the looks of things