Yeah.
Will need some reworking after some instructions from Kevin, but its doable.
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The hivemind mutation is all coming together >:3.
i always thought the code was kinda there, since you get to control cars via remote control, changingt he camera and even the controls
1- If you reach endgame , you will be basiclly sitting on a pile of food , skill books , weapons and gear , Bionics and mutations. You will have no concern training NPCs , you can just tell them to keep reading skill books to a bunch other followers , gear them up with survivor clothes and weapons , Implant bionics and mutate them , and then you got yourself an army of full skilled “backup characters”.
2- Theres mutations and Bionics to compensate for that - and that assuming the NPC has bad/worse traits compared to your character , wich can or cannot happen. What if the NPC ends up getting better stats and traits than your character , for exemple ?
3 - 1 and 2.
4- 1 and 2.
5- Once again , what if i get an endgame character and start leaving backup vehicles (such as motorcycles wich are easy to maintain/build and fuel up) next to where my followers are ? Will it be that much of a travel ?
edit: And better yet , most people that starting building vehicles preffer large ones such as APCs. Putting extra seats on them allows NPCs to travel with you , thus making sure that you won’t have to travel back to recover your old character stuff
If you already reached the endgame, you’ll have to try really hard to even get close to dying. Also, if you got all these materials, nothing stops you from putting them towards your freshly generated character. You use time and material to train your followers, just as if you would do it to your own character. You use up mutagen, bionics and lots of time. Is there a difference if you invest those pre death or post death?
You say that there are mutations and bionics to compensate for bad traits. Of course there are - but it takes time and lots of mutagen/bionics to compensate for something you can choose at a start of a character. If you die early game, this is harder than just start with a new character (especially, since if you switch into your NPC follower, you will loose said follower). If you die in the endgame, there’s practically no difference between having used them on your follower or using them on yourself.
Also, if you get a NPC with better stats than what you can get by starting a new one - where it’s also possible to turn on freeform and go wild - you got really, really lucky; because I seem to only ever find stupid & underpowered NPCs.
Yes, you can leave a vehicle at your base or take NPC(s) with you - as I said, not having to travel to your former character’s death point is “[…] (probably the only positive effect you’ll get out of that)”, but you could also just leave a vehicle at the place where your new character will spawn into the world (which, depending on the starting scenario you pick for your next character, is between indeterminable (in the wild) and absolutely determinable (lab challenge, sheltered start)).
Before you go to argue that you never going to use freeform because it feels like cheating and you don’t choose your traits/stats/scenario and randomise everything - well, that’s totally fine. Nobody (well, atleast I don’t) wants to force you to play the game differently. And this NPC bodyswap function - however (and if) it’s going to be implemented - also won’t force you to use it, since it’s an option, the same as freeform and as exactly defining your new character is.
All I’m trying to say is, it will not make the game easier than it already is with all the options given at character creation.
Edit: Also, @dpwb, that was fast! Well done. Just a few more questions, since I don’t see them in the file changes:
Does the uncovered overmap reset to be covered again? Cause your follower probably didn’t went at all these places - or do we just assume that the character always shares his map with his followers? Unless… “g->m.invalidate_map_cache( g->get_levz() )” isn’t - as I assume - for the “memory map” but for the overmap instead.
Doesn’t “reset_all_misions()” mess up the faction camp (not sure, never died with a camp)?
If you hit [ESCAPE] while choosing a follower, will you get a “Are you sure you want to quit? [y/n]” menu, just return to the main menu or crash?
Finally, if your character dies during an action (like reading, foraging, …), will the action get properly cancelled? - Found it. The answer’s yes.
It’ll be neat if a ‘command center/war room’ was added as an option to player faction base as a build option.
- If built, gives option to promote follower to second in command allowing extra life, but said npc must be living. (better not die while they are following you into battle)
-Map room or map archives building piece, when built will update users map allowing new characters to share maps. Can also send scouts on missions to reveal map. (could be realistic way for new characters spawned thru npcs after death to recover map data your old toon had)
Also wanted to give some points against the whole ‘this would trivialize death’ concerns.
-This is realistically what would happen, upon death, your followers would mourn & if morale wasn’t too bad would live on in your name. The world doesn’t stop when you die, others lives continue. This option would follow their stories as they have to survive without you.
-Recovering your stuff from dead body won’t be as easy as hopping into a car to retrieve it. Heavily depends how you die. Did you die deep underground? In a dungeon surrounded by bots? Far into a radioactive zone? Surrounded by a city of undead? Either way unless you died right near home, your npc can’t just simply retrieve your stuff unless they were with you when you died.
-Like @Valase mentioned above, it’ll still be a hassle to die. Taking over as your npc won’t be a walk in the park. They won’t have the skills, stats, mutations/cbms or loot you had. If they do, then thats your reward for taking the annoyingly hassle of training them up Before you had perished.
-If the game is being pushed towards realism, and a future where the world evolves & persists as in game time passes, taking over as an npc is more realistic & less broken then if you were to create a new op character in the same world, and retrieved your dead body.
-True, this option would allow you to keep playing on death instantly, but Some of us would prefer this than going all the way back to start menu, slogging thru the timesink of character creation, then reloading back into the world.
-All of this also depends on your npc spawn options chosen on game creation. I find Npcs pretty rare, and half the time they are murderhobo bandits. Not to mention, if i do manage to recruit someone, with my luck, they are almost always far below average stats/skills. True they can be trained, but that does require the time investment of building them up.
-Extra lives thru npcs can also be balanced by making it an option where you have to have a certain building piece built at a player faction camp, and can only choose one npc on death, an Npc you had to promote at camp long before death.
–Lastly— ideally this would be completely optional! A option one can choose when creating a new game. And doesn’t necessarily make the game easier, immortally is a moot point as long the game world isn’t deleted on player death.
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