[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:3, topic:10092”]Vendors for resources are likely, a rough outline of the kind of thing we’ll likely do:
NPC faction starts a project, which might be constructing something or might be upkeep, like food or medicine production. This might be triggered when the faction is founded, or when the player interacts with them.
Projects would have manifests of materials needed, which would be fufilled in several ways:
Explicit missions for the player (please get us X metal frames).
NPC trader keeps buying metal frames until the project is done.
NPC scavengers would also be scavenging metal and delivering it, either because they’re faction members, or for the bounties.
The NPC faction would most likely establish a location where they could store the materials until they’re ready to be used.[/quote]
What about NPC faction capacity for crafting? If they have the metal and the metalworking equipment, I could see them making metal frames when there’s demand for it.
As for storage/raiding therefrom, I could see factions converting existing structures into storage facilities, or even making new structures as a project. They’d be guarded, but someone with the right bionics (night generator/invisibility, quantum tunneling) could conceivably sneak in and out. That said, it would be vitally important to track what’s actually in the storage facilities and ownership of the things (The Elder Scrolls style), otherwise a sneaky thief could take the metal, sell it back, take it again, and thus allow NPCs to build huge projects without actually spending stuff, or clean out NPC factions with too much ease. (Profit through robbery should be possible, but inconvenient.)
