# 'Guard' upgrade, Raiders, building armies, and proper factions

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456>\
**Category:** The Drawing Board\
**Created:** [February 26, 2017, 2:51am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456 "2017-02-26T02:51:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 12\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![redxlaser15](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/redxlaser15/32/1573_2.png) [@redxlaser15](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/redxlaser15)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2017, 2:51am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/1 "2017-02-26T02:51:16Z")

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```
   There should be more option with setting a follower to guard a location, here's how i think it should work:

```

1. Guard this position. (The current only option where the follower stands in one place)

2. Patrol this area - Have the follower patrol this tile (example: house, bowling alley, shops) or several tiles (example: Hospital, Mall, fema camp, large power substation)

3. Set patrol route - Sets a path that the follower will patrol and guard until otherwise told not to (Areas must be visible of course, however it does not need to be cleared)

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**Author:** ![\_k1](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/_k1/32/1335_2.png) [@\_k1](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/_k1)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2017, 4:20pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/2 "2017-02-26T16:20:30Z")

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That would be a combination of cdda, df fort mode, df adv mode, and would be the best sandbox roguelike.

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**Author:** ![redxlaser15](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/redxlaser15/32/1573_2.png) [@redxlaser15](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/redxlaser15)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2017, 6:27pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/3 "2017-02-26T18:27:43Z")

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```
 Of course, you need to survive long enough to get to that point. It may take ingame years to build a fully productive faction. I don't i mentioned this earlier, but your Faction members can also do things like hunt and scavenge for you, after all, once you have like, 20 followers, they all need food and drink and clothing. It's something you would need to set up potentially, but you could send them on a route to a forest to cut down trees for supplies or hunt for food. It all adds up to a cool late-game civilization type change to the game. Of course, to accurately program all this in without too many bugs and for it to actually work right (most of the time) it would take a LONG time to finish. But boy would i love it if this was all added, or at least some of it...
```

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**Author:** ![deoxy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@deoxy](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/deoxy)\
**Post date:** [February 27, 2017, 2:51am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/4 "2017-02-27T02:51:44Z")

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> [@§k](#):
>
> That would be a combination of cdda, df fort mode, df adv mode, and would be the best sandbox roguelike.

Yes, it would be tremendous, and my recent thread on “secure” areas had those exact kinds of things in mind, trying to solve how to handle the “fortress” area part when you weren’t there. I hand-waved the “better NPC guards” problems away, but yes, improvements would definitely be needed.

Nice to know other people are thinking the same kinds of things.

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**Author:** ![Arek\_PL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b77776/32.png) [@Arek\_PL](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Arek_PL)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 12:03pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/5 "2017-04-30T12:03:27Z")

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making base what we can strategically manage would be interesing, while i think that raiders should be only human a firefight of your followers with raiders or sound of gasoline generators and trees falling on ground will make enought noise to summon zombies if there is horde nearby, they could alslo follow sound of engine of your looting party truck, df system of stockpiles and labors would work fine

but sending teams to automaticaly loot would be useless because of stupid ai or staright op if they just walk outside of reality bubble and spawn some loot when entering it again after some time, i think that we should have some better way of commanding npcs what are walking behimd us, ability to tell them to chop trees or help you haul your loot

but there is one large issue, optimalization

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**Author:** ![kevin.granade](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/kevin.granade/32/1316_2.png) [@kevin.granade](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/kevin.granade)\
**Post date:** [April 30, 2017, 7:50pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/6 "2017-04-30T19:50:43Z")

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I think we could do npc looting “right” pretty easily. The NPC team would spend most of it’s time not even spawned on the regular map since they’d be travelling to and from a target through areas with no enemies\*. Once they start interacting with enemies, we’ll probably do some kind of “fast combat” to resolve it with less load on the game\*\*, then when they start looting they’d actually retrieve items from the map, then head home and drop off their loot.

Easily doesn’t necessarily mean simple, this would be a lot of code, but none of it should be terribly complicated.

\*This would use “fast travel” code that we want to write for the player anyway.  
\*\* I’m thinking about a situation where you have many NPC teams active at once.

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**Author:** ![Valpo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/valpo/32/341_2.png) [@Valpo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Valpo)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2017, 11:25am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/7 "2017-05-07T11:25:05Z")

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I like it.

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**Author:** ![Arek\_PL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b77776/32.png) [@Arek\_PL](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Arek_PL)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2017, 10:00pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/8 "2017-05-07T22:00:06Z")

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fast travel for players? im curious how this will work, maybe corssing a bridge with large car will not be that hard anymore

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**Author:** ![kevin.granade](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/kevin.granade/32/1316_2.png) [@kevin.granade](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/kevin.granade)\
**Post date:** [May 9, 2017, 10:37pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/9 "2017-05-09T22:37:20Z")

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My only intention for fast travel is to cut down on pointless player interactions. Crossing a bridge with a lot of obstacles wouldn’t be affected because the fast travel code probably wouldn’t know how to move obstacles, just avoid them if possible.  
The npc version probably wouldn’t support vehicles at all, since there’s no fallback n if it can’t navigate something.

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**Author:** ![Lesseps](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/lesseps/32/442_2.png) [@Lesseps](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Lesseps)\
**Post date:** [May 10, 2017, 8:16am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/10 "2017-05-10T08:16:35Z")

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I would support OP’s suggestions, as having cdda more social in terms of NPC interactions is something a lot of people want for the long time. Factions, quests, reputation system, managing big group of friendly NPCs etc. Sounds like cool future for cdda.

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**Author:** ![Dragometh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7993a0/32.png) [@Dragometh](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Dragometh)\
**Post date:** [June 1, 2017, 7:10am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/11 "2017-06-01T07:10:43Z")

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[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:6, topic:13456”]I think we could do npc looting “right” pretty easily. The NPC team would spend most of it’s time not even spawned on the regular map since they’d be travelling to and from a target through areas with no enemies\*. Once they start interacting with enemies, we’ll probably do some kind of “fast combat” to resolve it with less load on the game\*\*, then when they start looting they’d actually retrieve items from the map, then head home and drop off their loot.

Easily doesn’t necessarily mean simple, this would be a lot of code, but none of it should be terribly complicated.

\*This would use “fast travel” code that we want to write for the player anyway.  
\*\* I’m thinking about a situation where you have many NPC teams active at once.[/quote]

Maybe make an option to see the battles, too, or even control one of the npcs in the fight. You could also have the npcs call in a radio, saying they found enemies, and actually have the player order them to either engage or sneak past them; Also applying a speaking test there, to see if the minions followers are actually gonna listen to the orders.

About the looting, if there is a way to get info on which items are on the tile, maybe show a list to the player about said items, and have him choose which ones are gonna be taken, taking in consideration followers’ volume and weight capacities(also vehicle storage, too). However, that would come after the npcs checked if the house has enemies or not. Also, what about z-levels? Would the npcs check underground stuff, like labs and the basements on houses?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![redxlaser15](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/redxlaser15/32/1573_2.png) [@redxlaser15](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/redxlaser15)\
**Post date:** [January 8, 2018, 6:00pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/guard-upgrade-raiders-building-armies-and-proper-factions/13456/12 "2018-01-08T18:00:24Z")

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There is in fact a radio in the game, so that idea should work just fine. If nothing else you could probably tell them to bring back something in a category, such as guns, ammo, weapons and things like that. Or you could do something like the auto-pickup system, where you tell them a more exact description of what to grab.