Radio Towers & NPC Recruitment

[Eastwardrope91]

Has it entered your reality bubble? If it has then you can’t really edit it. You can edit how the map looks through the debug command Overmap editor but I’m not sure if it will work for camps. But as long as it never generated in your reality bubble and only on your map then you will be fine to use the Overmap editor.
It’s either Overmap or Map editor.

[nameless_survivor]

No, its inside the bubble unfortunately. I’ve been using it to store equipment for the future reconquest of New England ever since I broke into the bunker and found that it had an autodoc. Its much more convenient to use the one there for installing cbms in an army than a lab in the middle of nowhere or a zombie infested hospital.

[Eastwardrope91]

Well the camp system doesn’t care about what’s in a tile just that there’s a three by three of fields around it. Again it might not work and you might need to find a new area.

[Orange01]

You could set up a temporary camp which can clear forest tiles, and then set up one in the cleared tiles. I have a video on NPC base mechanics here.

[TheZoneWizard]

Wouldn’t the reality bubble limit the way in recruiting or does an NPC spawn out of thin air with a dice roll when using radios to contact anyone?

Perhaps I completely misunderstand the nature of contacting NPCs? 0_o

[nameless_survivor]

Yeah I was thinking it would just spawn npcs in your reality bubble, the number and the quality of their equipment based on your skill and two dice rolls.

[mlangsdorf]

The existing camp_recruit() function already does something like this.

[nameless_survivor]

I was thinking on a larger scale. For conquest purposes. Maybe have it take a lot of resources to get a transmitter up and running, but once it is, you have a near limitless supply of NPCs at your disposal.

[socom55]

it would be cool if you and the npc army went to war against the factions

[nameless_survivor]

That is exactly what I plan to do long term, at least in my game. Although I was primarily planning to exterminate the fungus, zombies, extradimensional entities, or any hostile mutant I ran across.

[mlangsdorf]

There’s also functions for NPCs fighting other NPC forces, but they’re badly coded and hard to invoke.

[TheZoneWizard]

Sounds like a solid end game idea. But I think unless the game moved completely into the 64bit realm. This won’t happen, due to the reality bubble holding so much stuff.

[mlangsdorf]

NPCs can fight each other, or monsters, outside the reality bubble. The performance impact is supposed to be pretty minimal compared to the cost of drawing the screen inside the reality bubble.

[TheZoneWizard]

Hmm. Neat. Reminds of me of working with STALKER mods. The reality bubble works similar. But sucks in a 3d first person due to being able to see beyond the bubble…2d top down though. I have hope for the future of it =D

[Mantar]

No, its inside the bubble unfortunately.

If you can work out the coordinates, you can go into your save folder and delete the data for those map tiles, and then use the overhead map gen editor. I did something similar once in my Testworld when trying to track down a bug.

[nameless_survivor]

What about the tile the bunker itself is in? Can that one be a “forest” tile as well? Or would it by default have to be a field tile for the structure to be placed there?

I have SO MUCH stuff stored in it I’d never be able to debug it all back in, and moving it would be less than desirable. Contents include, but not limited to, a couple hundred guns, 200+ CBMs, thousands of rounds of ammo, enough preserved food to feed an army, and a bunch of valuable jewelry that can’t be disassembled I kept for trading purposes.

[Eastwardrope91]

You don’t need the bunker to change unless that’s the spot you want to place it you only need a 3 by 3 map tile area to build a camp so if it’s in that area just move the spot you want it further back by a tile or so.

[anonanon]

debug no though you can for your character only leave messages about it
by this I mean when the player dies the messages are erased so careful

[kevin.granade]

Maybe have it take a lot of resources to get a transmitter up and running, but once it is, you have a near limitless supply of NPCs at your disposal.

Just to manage expectations a bit, what this would get you is the attention of potentially large numbers of NPCs, but it would not put them “at your disposal”.

As the number of NPCs it’s feasible to interact with and as they become more valuable, we will almost certainly start making them harder to lead. With a huge number of survivors at large, why are they going to follow you?

Most games treat the PC as “the chosen one”, but DDA does not. Nowhere is this difference going to be more stark than in interacting with other survivors. You need to prove, and continue to prove that you’re worthy of leading. Most games either ignore or only pay lip service to this kind of thing, but DDA NPCs are going to be a lot more demanding than you probably expect. If they aren’t fed, safe, entertained, and maybe even inspired, you won’t be able to keep good NPCs around.

[Eastwardrope91]

So would that mean that the radio tower might have more usage? So you could send out propaganda in support of you to kinda brain wash NPCs into loving/blindly following you or would it be only for recruiting? And also would you end up with kind of Kingdom sort of playstyle going from a nomad to a king of a province and use the NPCs to do everything?