So I created an NPC faction camp. I have 2 kitchens, 1 blacksmith and 1 garage, all of which are fully upgraded. Now I sent one of my NPCs to cut down logs (50% trees, bring back 100% materials) and he’s stuck at 1 week 23 hours left for a few days now. Selecting/clicking on ‘Recover Log Cutter’ doesn’t do anything. How do I bring him back? I see that logging works most of the time but sometimes the estimate is < 24 hours (5-10 tiles from the camp) but when I actually execute the command the actual time is > 1 week.
While I’m at it I upgraded to a radio tower so that I can recruit more NPCs (according to the text). I don’t see any option anywhere to recruit NPCs. What I do I need?
To be honest with you, theres probably a raft of issues with faction camps that kept breaking, as they were being worked on intensively, and the foundations we inherited to build upon were a bit brittle, but the main contributor to faction camps seems to be on hiatus, and I’ve been putting off working with them for a while because what needs to be done seems daunting.
So all I can suggest is log an issue on the github or wait until they get worked on more, because it’s very likely it’s just broken right now.
The ideal situation Im working towards very slowly is just to remove the concept of a structured faction camp altogether, and have all of the “missions” replaced by actual NPC activities to construct blueprints / do farming / general jobs, so a camp can be wherever you are, built in whatever way you want.
The radio tower was meant to just amplify the range of any radios you have on you, when contacting your followers remotely, though it’s possible the recruitment missions were tied to it at some point, and if so, its very possible thats not working currently.
Hi, I don’t know what happened but it somehow fixed itself. I left the area and came back after a few days. The timer finally moved and after a few days he finally finished the job. It might have been a display issue shrug.
As for a temporary workaround I’m going to try a few things:
Give myself and all my NPCs each two-way radios. Perhaps that’s how you communicate with them to ‘cancel’ the job and return home.
Only give logging jobs on tiles that are very close to the camp.
For the NPC recruitment issue I can adjust the NPC spawn rate. Actually my character is a cannibal so if they’re hostile on sight well… ;).
Don’t change too much about the NPC camps. I think the following features are very useful and should be kept in and/or enhanced.
Hunting for wildlife.
Logging/gathering of resources (eg. logs, food) is useful but could use more testing.
Automatic dis-assemblies of vehicles is very good. An improvement would be to allow NPCs to travel to a vehicle location (within camp range) and disassemble it. Right now you have make sure the vehicle works and have to drive it to the camp.
Things that need to improved:
Cooking. NPC camp cooking is really not worth it. You can craft more food with NPCs help on your own and in less time. Perhaps allow multiple NPCs to batchcraft at the camp and/or have some industrial oven that dramatically reduces cooking time like the drop-hammer in the blacksmith.
Cooking recipes at NPC camps are really limited. Add a ton more recipes to make upgrading cooking station to the final stage worth it.
Same goes for blacksmith (needs more recipes) though the drop-hammer is good idea.
Farms are not worth it IMO. With player auto till/planting/harvest you can plant/harvest more and faster than in the (limit-size) NPC camps. Of course this depends on your playstyle. I tend to plant ginormous farms so that small area for farms is not enough for me.
To be clear - two way radios dont allow you to cancel their missions, when they are on a mission they are uncontactable.
When they are on a mission they dissappear into the ether and thats the bit I want to change.
And to reassure you, I want all current camp activities to still be possible, but im working towards them actually occuring as an NPC activity happening in real-time, so you can watch it happening, and so the NPC dosnt need to dissappear for x days.
thats what ive been working on ^^ the NPCs now use farming zones.
once ive finished that and the other activities, ill replace the camp missions with them.
The new proposed changes look good! :). Just wanted to add some more things to my suggestions:
Add support for liquid-related recipes in NPC camp cook addon. So when you select the recipe you must select an output container (eg. barrel). Or the cooking task isn’t done until you either output the result into a container, dump it on the ground, or finish it later.
Add an animal zone where the NPC can auto butcher or milk/sheer animals within that zone.
NPC training zone. NPCs can increase levels by reading books deposited there or spar with each other for leveling fighting skills.
Just found an interesting bug. Winter just set in and everything converted to white tiles and the NPC bulletin board within the reality bubble is still visible. However, I have an NPC camp about 150-200 tiles away and when I went there I the NPC camp bulletin board disappeared, probably hidden. So my logger is now unavailable until spring in about 89 days lol.
Any ideas how to fix this?
Thanks.
Edit: Made a backup then used debug menu to change season back to Fall. The bulletin board is gone. So it seems season changes will remove the bulletin board if its not within the reality bubble.
Another Edit: Ok, turns out it was my fault (eg user error). At some point in time I ran over the bulletin board and destroyed it. I figured this out by surveying the area and finding some random nails. I then rebuilt the bulletin board (where I found the nails) via the construction menu and now have access to the NPC camp again. Sorry to startle anyone. Perhaps make the NPC camp bulletin board a special one that’s indestructable or immensely stronger than normal ones?