The care and feeding of NPCs

[Michi]

NPCs. They are pretty useful in the very early game, since they can dish out quite a nice amount of damage compared to a fledgling player. They are also quite useful when you arent using the anti-revivification mod.

After that, they are just whiney … feed me, thirsty, need sleep… waaaaa. And feeding them is so annoying. It would be way better if the “/” advanced inventory would work on them, then at least I could load them up with the right food, water, armor and weapons I wanted them to use.

Also, some shout commands like, attack “this target” which is followed up by selecting with cursor, as well as “disengage and fall back to my position”, “go there and stay” (and then a cursor select) … with the percentage chance they will comply based on however that is calculated today.

Any plans?

[Coolthulhu]

They’ll eat all the “pure food” stuff you trade them (when they need it). By “pure food” I mean things that don’t have special effects (alcohol, caffeine, parasites). They are quite good at picking their food and will start with old food (not rotten but about to be), avoid overeating, preserve non-perishables etc.

My current idea is to give the player the ability to mark items/tiles/vehicle tiles as “shared”, then the NPC could approach the car(t) and grab food out of it when hungry, swap weapons with one in the car(t), dump own items there etc.

Orders are planned, but for later, because the current NPC code isn’t too good at preserving the attention span of NPCs.

[Michi]

Is there a reason that the indirect route of marking things as shared is easier/better than just allowing the player access to the NPC’s inventory (once trust has been established) ?

[hobophobic]

Best thing you can do is just give them a gallon jug of clean water and a good sized stack of meat. Sleep is a bit harder to manage, but you definitely want to be on as close to the same schedule as possible. But lots of little problems always seem to occur no matter what, it would be nice to finally just gain full and free access to their inventories once complete trust is gained.

[Coolthulhu]

Is there a reason that the indirect route of marking things as shared is easier/better than just allowing the player access to the NPC’s inventory (once trust has been established) ?

Not needing to have NPCs wear backpacks to carry their stuff.
Possibly easier to write, though could also be much harder. Advanced inventory code is weird.

[Wally-kun]

I know that vendors should at least have a bottomless inventory space. Having them drop random crap you just dumped on them is kind of silly. What’s to stop you from just picking it up and selling it to them again for infinite ‘money’?

[Logrin]

You guys are going about it all wrong. What you NEED to do is forcibly mutate your buddies into tree people or elves…

Trog would have been at the top of my list if they’d consume booze…need to do some fact checking. See if alcohol metabolism makes them less choosy.

[deoxy]

I know that vendors should at least have a bottomless inventory space. Having them drop random crap you just dumped on them is kind of silly. What’s to stop you from just picking it up and selling it to them again for infinite ‘money’?

The fact that vendors don’t HAVE infinite money to give you? Also, I haven’t seen them take stuff they couldn’t hold for a while now…