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Flesh Forge
Jan 31, 2011

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DOG
Sorting outputs from production, hell production management in general is a gigantic pain in the rear end in Kenshi, it's one of the things the game does the worst. Really spoiled by Fallout 4's "all your poo poo goes into one arbitrary container pool", all these games that have dozens of separate chests annoy the piss out of me.

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Plek
Jul 30, 2009

The Lone Badger posted:

I think if you put it in his backpack then he won't.

As far as I can tell, that won't stop them. I just stick their personal gear in their own chest somewhere and hope I notice if they're being attacked before it gets bad.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
So it seems like the back of the napkin quick guide to kenshi is

1) start out training your first dude to be a ninja by stealthing around and stealing everything that isn't nailed down, then progressing to stealing from containers in shops and lockpicking

2) Do a grand tour of the map and hit all the major cities and grab a full team of recruits / the named recruits while your first guy is also stealing every blueprint from everywhere. Be sure to grab a couple of pack animals (i like wild bulls from the nomad village) to carry all the loot you're stealing and sell it off in the next town and loot up again and move on.

3) set up in squin and mine and mine and mine and craft basic armor until your guys are all STRONK and have good baseline production. Have everybody stealth the whole time so they also all crank up their stealth stats.

4) take groups of your guys over to Skinner's Roam and let them get their noses pushed in repeatedly by the big swarms of hungry bandits to raise toughness

5) Build a basic base somewhere near squin in relative safety (border between border zone and swamps or vain are best spots) and set up full production of gear.

6) Divide your guys into about 10 frontliners, 10 crafters, and 10 or so backline. Police helmets / white plate jackets / samurai legplates and a mix of cleavers and polearms on your frontline and crafters, and iron hats / dustcoats / legplates and toothpick crossbows on your backline.

7) While your crafters stay home the rest of your group goes around the map hitting ancient workshops and other research sites and grabs the ancient research books and engineering research needed to build the good poo poo. EAch time you stop back at base fill up your pack animals with the crafted stuff then go sell it off again.

Obviously there are other strategies you can do (steamrolling the dust king with mercenaries etc) but this seems to consistenly work and not take much meta game knowledge or game experience

Flesh Forge
Jan 31, 2011

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DOG
Take any start except the torso, start practically anywhere, get captured by slavers, recruit only freed slaves, raise an army of living weapons made out of dust, iron and hunger

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat
So I went into the fog islands last night for the first time. Real peaceful route into Mongrel, walked past some death poles and smashed a straggler pack of scrubs. In mongrel and I found out my overcomplicated constellation of mods didn't jack up the medicine prices or any of the trade goods I got going on. So now I have about two pack bulls of stuff, my main day 30 squad, and the recruits and decided to poke out into the death yards the shinobi was scrapping in.

There's a lot. A lot of fog folks. They haven't stopped yet. The heads are heavy, but if I don't loot them these psychos get back up and munch on more shinobi.

So my max speed is gonna be 16mph walking out and I'm kinda feeling the worry. I get why this place is scary and I want out.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Flesh Forge posted:

Take any start except the torso, start practically anywhere, get captured by slavers, recruit only freed slaves, raise an army of living weapons made out of dust, iron and hunger

If you start with a dog and get enslaved the dog will be lonely

Flesh Forge
Jan 31, 2011

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DOG
Even a dog in Kenshi can have a rich and varied life experience, see Ambiguous Amphibian's video of this and he didn't even discover one of the coolest aspects of doghood

BrainMeats
Aug 20, 2000

We have evolved beyond the need for posting.

Soiled Meat
Massacred Stack and Bad Teeth for the Shek and they've moved into The Hub as well. This is with reactive worlds mod. My army heads back to base over in Gut to rest and repair. Get the announcement that Holy Nation is sending over the retribution of God and think that sounds fun. But they never show up. Shek allies arrive and help fend off two other raids but no HN. I look around the map and the only red dot I can find is in The Hub. Odd since that's not exactly friendly territory. So I send my runner over to investigate.

The surprisingly sneaky paladins managed to launch an attack from inside the faction headquarters.


Greeting from The Hub!


The piles of bodies attracted slave mongers who I'm hostile to, so they attack and the Shek rush to my aid. Same thing happens with traders guild caravans. Any town I idle in for too long turns into a war zone.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
I'm really happy with how my first real go at a base turned out:













It's on high ground right between the swamp and the border zone; two iron nodes for 100% iron efficiency and one copper node; hemp, riceweed, and cactus grow at 100% and wheat grows at 60%, so the only crop you need to hydroponic is greenfruit, and if you put your hydroponics on a roof in the back corner of the base where they're technically in the "swamp" area, the rainfall means they don't need to be watered. Wind power from the arid region takes care of power needs.

Tower location where it is means it controls both gates with a +50% height advantage.

You get raids from dust bandits, swamp and desert ninjas both, and red sabers, but you *don't* get taxed by anybody, not even the Shrek despite being so close to squin.

Overall just a really strong location.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:25 on May 4, 2021

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist
Wild background scenery from the swamp too.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound

Zesty posted:

Wild background scenery from the swamp too.

Yeah, I hate actually building in the actual swamp because all that poo poo really fucks with fort visibility but right in that exact spot you can get swamp biome land without dealing with the actual swamp biome. And off to the side it makes a nice fort backdrop.

I think i'm gonna relocate to Greenbeach though just because this location doesn't have any really challenging enemies any more and i'd rather build in a new spot than tear everything down to replace with the tier 4 walls.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:30 on May 4, 2021

Zesty
Jan 17, 2012

The Great Twist
That could be a fun location.

I dropped a base right on the most fertile spot in Okran's Pride with iron/copper/stone. The Holy Nation can suck it.


Old image I posted from that save.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Yeah I haven't pissed off the Holy Nation *yet* just because they're too convenient for selling and stealing. But I kinda want to kidnap an Inquisitor just so I can dye all my clothes that sweet red.

Agnu's blue color is my favorite overall but such a narrow window to dye things and since he's a skeleton you can only do chest and legs.

Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 13:29 on May 4, 2021

Soks
Apr 1, 2006
lol internet

Flesh Forge posted:

and he didn't even discover one of the coolest aspects of doghood

Please enlighten us?

Wish animal skills weren't so funky, and the weird unable to eat problem...! I'd love a nearly all animal run.

Flesh Forge
Jan 31, 2011

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DOG
It probably isn't what you expect you can recruit Beep as an animal

Leal
Oct 2, 2009
You could probably do an all dog run. Just gotta tear off the legs and limbs of organics to get your food :unsmigghh:

Flesh Forge
Jan 31, 2011

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DOG
I'm pretty sure dogs can eat off of prone live people too?

Also, a herd of garru would probably work too since they can eat whatever the hell, if they're able to open corpses. I dunno about bulls, do they eat plants or what?

Soks
Apr 1, 2006
lol internet

Flesh Forge posted:

It probably isn't what you expect you can recruit Beep as an animal

:psyduck:

Hope there's special dialogue for it! Probably not? I don't remember how recruiting Beep goes.

Flesh Forge
Jan 31, 2011

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY DOG
Pretty sure that's true, if it's not him then it's some other NPC that just joins without any dialogue (possibly more than one)

moroboshi
Dec 11, 2000

Agnu maybe? Though you do have to get him out of a cage.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
Bone dogs would rule the world if only they had opposable thumbs

SMEGMA_MAIL
May 4, 2018
Now cyberbeep can solo fog deathyards without breaking a sweat, ive got him around 80 toughness, 60 dex 70 strength and 70 martial arts. One punch beep just exploded a paladins chest Kali-ma style with a single hit.

BrainMeats
Aug 20, 2000

We have evolved beyond the need for posting.

Soiled Meat
Messing around with some high level content that I've never really looked in to before. Built a research outpost in the ashlands, finished up the tech and beat all the big bads for their legendary gear. Unleashed the apocalypse in the process. Had to resort to kidnapping to take out the skin bandits leader because they are absolutely endless and so singularly focused on peeling your troops. Skeleton bandits in their base weren't hostile but the leader wouldn't talk to me so they're all dead now. I guess reavers are next just to give some more space to my crab friends.

What I didn't expect was the southern hive moving into a lot of destroyed locations. I know you can help them invade up to the border zone but was wondering if there was a way to ally with them first. Anyone manage to do that? I might be out of luck without slavery shenanigans but I can still heal downed blue bugs. Or I could turn them all into more fogmen.

Also I met the royal couple for the first time. :stare:

Ass_Burgerer
Dec 3, 2010

Southern hive is hostile to everyone. Way more independant and defensive. Western hive is the only one willing to cooperate and trade with others, despite occational hiver defections. Foggers are just rando hivers that got brain-mold infected from the misty area (maybe? Lore is foggy here).

I'm about to start a new playthrough with the big project genisis mod. You guys have any critiques on genisis?

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat
Nah, I'm doing the other one, Age of Blood and Sand. My biggest friction with the big mod pack is the lack of documentation. I think Genesis is better at that, enjoy the one click modding experience.

McSlaughter
Sep 12, 2013

"Kill white people and get paid for it? What's not to like?"

Ass_Burgerer posted:

Southern hive is hostile to everyone. Way more independant and defensive. Western hive is the only one willing to cooperate and trade with others, despite occational hiver defections. Foggers are just rando hivers that got brain-mold infected from the misty area (maybe? Lore is foggy here).

I'm about to start a new playthrough with the big project genisis mod. You guys have any critiques on genisis?

Genesis is good, join their Discord community and you'll see a lot of the process that goes into the mod pack's continued development. You can change certain features by adding the submods if there is something like the Genesis map you don't like and you have another map mod you'd prefer to use. Just be careful about what mods you run alongside it and be aware of compatibility issues and mod load order, with Genesis going first and any other mods after it.

Fun fact re: Hivers, if you are ever playing an all-Hiver playthrough like me you actually can't do business with any Hive traders because they consider you a Hiveless and will just scream and shout "NO HIVE! GET OUT!" and follow you around until you leave their poo poo-caked hovel. Also once you find most of the Hive recruits first off, it seems they become a lot less common to stumble on in major cities. I have been trying to find some mods outside Genesis that alter the Hivers, provide more Hive recruits in towns, include more equipment for them, etc. Genesis already has the Hiver Expansion mod baked into it but that's mostly for enemy and other NPC changes, so I'm left with a lot to be desired in my Bug Dudes run.

silentsnack
Mar 19, 2009

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current President of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.

McSlaughter posted:

Also once you find most of the Hive recruits first off, it seems they become a lot less common to stumble on in major cities.

Renewable hiver recruits aren't rare; they're nonexistent. From the wiki:

quote:

Bar squads such as the [generic NPC recruits] will NOT respawn or change over time. If you have emptied a bar, or they got killed, do not expect it to refill at some point. An Import must be performed for any of them to refill.

You can recruit an arbitrary number of hivers by using Goofy Player Shenanigans to get them enslaved (without triggering the conditions that make them blame you) and then """rescuing""" them. Also getting them grabbed by Cannibals might work too, but even if it does they would have a significant chance of bleeding out.

If those sound too exploity for you there's the fallback option of building an outpost (or three or however many) in UC/HN territory and/or Flat's Lagoon, and waiting for one to wander in and join

edit after remembering the time I made a base so big it crashed reality... there's the chance of hiver caravans running into trouble and getting enslaved, so as long as your machine has ram for it you can station one squad member in each UC city and occasionally switch to them to make the game spawn active patrols, and zoom/pan your camera to see if there are any hivers about.

also tldr on the shenanigans: I think the safest way to get someone enslaved without breaking the canJoin script is to stealth around (so the NPC has never seen a member of your faction at all), wait until they get KO'd fighting monsters/bandits/etc (so they don't consider you an enemy from failed stealth-KO) and bandage/grab them while they're unconscious, then take them to a slave shop and drop them on the floor so the slave trader enslaves them before they can get up (they somehow know if you directly put them into a cage or shackle them)



or, as always, just skip all that poo poo and use a mod

silentsnack fucked around with this message at 23:19 on May 6, 2021

SMEGMA_MAIL
May 4, 2018
I use a similar mod that just adds a shitload more recruitable random characters in bars and packs of recruitable characters wandering

FrickenMoron
May 6, 2009

Good game!
I wish people would recommend Squin as "the" newbie town to be. Squin is terrible. The only advantage it has is it's near the starting location of the wanderer start. Squin lacks shops and has a terribly unstable power issue.


My city of choice is Heng in the UC desert. Heng has a ton of stores with all kinds of materials available, as well as a thieves guild tower. It also has bigger houses for sale with plenty of space. Making money early on is no issue since you can loot tons of people and sand skimmer corpses, and if you don't mind you can even sell unconcious people to the slavers. There's also the big farm nearby where you can buy cheap ingredients for crafting food / fabric.

Gyoru
Jul 13, 2004



any location near in the center of the map is dull

gotta go to the coastal regions for the threat of being eaten or skinned alive

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
The nice thing about Squin is that it's reachable, safe for pretty much everybody, and it's easy to set your squad to automatic mining / sneaking / carrying and go afk for a half hour and come back and everyone has 50+ strength. Plus it has everything you *need* with the vendors, and there are a lot of good Baby's First Base sites nearby.

I feel like everywhere else requires more meta-knowledge to really get rolling. The problem with the desert towns is that too many things randomly aggro you, whether it's nobles or City Heroes or whatever. There are probably a lot of better places to start htan Squin if you know what you're doing but if you don't it's very safe.

zedprime
Jun 9, 2007

yospos
Missing the forest for the trees here, I don't trust anyone who successfully integrated with UC society.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
Squins power issue is sorted the second you make a battery shack tbh

KirbyKhan
Mar 20, 2009



Soiled Meat

zedprime posted:

Missing the forest for the trees here, I don't trust anyone who successfully integrated with UC society.

Same.

If you're doing first base ever and are spooked about it I would recommend the Swamps. It is like the only location that has a questline and some built in support for base building and rice+hemp=ezlyfe

The Lone Badger
Sep 24, 2007

If you just want an easy place to build I recommend Fish Island. If you assassinate the fishking there are literally zero raids. Plus you never have to water your crops since it is raining 100% of the time.

Flavahbeast
Jul 21, 2001


FrickenMoron posted:

I wish people would recommend Squin as "the" newbie town to be. Squin is terrible. The only advantage it has is it's near the starting location of the wanderer start. Squin lacks shops and has a terribly unstable power issue.

be nice to newbie

silentsnack
Mar 19, 2009

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current President of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.

Flavahbeast posted:

be nice to newbie

it's kenshi, subjecting yourself to needlessly complicated/inconvenient dumb bullshit is how you improve your skills as a player; just as you torture your characters to make them stronger

SMEGMA_MAIL
May 4, 2018
I built a fort right in the middle of the holy nation valley, beep took about 4 tries but eventually he soloed the inquisitors in stack. After that we carted them off to my fort where beep used them as training dummies until they died. I then used my 30 or so martial artists and purged stack completely save for the odd drifter or shinobi thief, the shek have taken over and resettled the town.

I’ve built a MASSIVE base in the valley, had a long extension so I could get copper in despite being in the middle of the valley which is essentially a giant wall that cut off stack from the rest of the HN territory, forcing all their traffic that was going to stack into an ambush. Before I kill another city I plan to recruit all the slaves from the mines and train them up. I have whole prison station house where I can train up against dozens of captured HN. At this point I’ve had get the martial artists and beep to constantly clean up since their habit of instant killing or de-limbing frees up space for more HN prisoners.

I think I’m going to massacre bad teeth next, save the Phoenix for last.

After that I’ll probably turn to raiding the UC again. Last time was before project beep and my raid on tengu’s vault lead to us being imprisoned inside and having to repeatedly try to fight our way out, taking way too many losses. I do want to destroy another UC slave camp, I haven’t touched the UC since I’ve gone all in on the HN.

Azhais
Feb 5, 2007
Switchblade Switcharoo
Can you split the hn between the shek and ninjas, or is it one or the other?

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Clark Nova
Jul 18, 2004

Azhais posted:

Can you split the hn between the shek and ninjas, or is it one or the other?

If you're allied with the flotsam ninjas they'll get the capitol and the shek will control the cities to the south. I'm not sure what happens if you aren't allied or you wiped flotsam out first

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