I start thinking about you can encounter with a NPC group instead of only a single one,
but unlike the random NPC, the one you’re found, has it’s own rules to running the group, such as a travel merchants with it’s own type stuffs and few hire guns on the road, you may going to trade a few item on them, or you can simplely attacking them, and loot any good stuff,
or you can see a bunch raider on the road, who will instantly attack you without or with any reason, some of them may even not be a hostility on the first time, and will threaten you for it’s own benefit, such as pay the trespassing, and you may even try to convince them to letting you go, or refuse and start fighting,
there can also found a mercenary with a few high skill whichs you can pay them to recruiting them,
or even slaver, that you may consider buy some slaves with a poor skill but very cheap,
Mabye the dead groups became alive too! the survived scientist group and military group,
and mabye you can even seen the gang fight really happening! whichs a two group who will fight each other, with lot drugs and guns, baseball bat, knife, or something like that.
–I like your thinking, but the problem right now is that NPCs are complex and they are less of a priority than some other stuff I believe. From what I understand, at some point NPCs will be massively reworked and changed, and if you think about it, some of their quest lines aren’t even done.
–I’ve had lots of ideas relative to this, and they were also good, but it’s largely a case of waiting for the development to be done. It’s sad, but it is a fact we must face. If you know any programming, then you might be able to work on it a bit yourself.
as far as I know, there was a few NPCs can barely count as design has it’s own rules, such as the raider from the outpost with minefield, and bandit from the building that dosn’t even appear on the map(whichs can be found by seen those bandit location),
we can just started by make a location that will spawn a NPCs groups, before we’re planning to make traveling NPC groups, sounds fair enough?
I used to read a few threads of people complaining about single NPCs becoming hostile, and then killing them, without being able to defend themselves. I haven’t seen too many posts about it lately, though. I personally never really had a problem with them, but maybe I’ve just been lucky. I usually try to turn NPCs hostile if they won’t join me so I can kill them without penalty… especially since they like to try and steal all my crap. I would imagine if people have trouble with the single NPC, then a group of them would be even worse, but would still be a pretty sweet feature IMO.