Suggestion direct follower control.

[RenegadeElement]

Current issues. Followers are useless and very likely to have friendly fire. grenades/flamethrowers.

This makes them more dangerous than useful.

My idea for a solution is to have a skill that lets you have RTS style control. The skills name leadership.

The following is a very rough and more than likely flawed idea of it and is only meant to serve as a general outline.

It's effects. Higher levels unlock more controllable actions. Reduce the chance of them "going rogue" for a few turns.Increases the number of banked moves for your units(max number of moves to queue at once per unit before the game forces you to control another unit) . Increase the range in which you can control them, and increase the number you can control at once.

You add a new key function that lets you swap between people in your range. Who are followers. You play out the turn as a follower, but if they will in reality do what you did will depend on your skill and their trust in you,, for example you instruct

Other behaviors -having a follower for a long time reduces the need for a higher skill to control that follower. -skill allows for more complex behavior, for example if your follower have a knife you can instruct them to automatically butcher any corpse of type X,C,or Y. 1 That you kill. 2 That they kill. 3 That they find. -ability to ask for a certain item from your follower -ability to give them items that they will keep and use (example ability to give and instruct them to use certain items in certain scenarios for example telling them that X weapon is for killing at X range Y Target provided that you supplied them with X weapon) -ability to mark what animals and targets to kill or filter by target type and killing method (stop them using guns and attracting Zed because they killed a dog using a gun.)

Skilling it up -Using basic follower commands like convincing them to give you stuff and train you (first use of the skill ) -Using followers in combat. -skill books on leadership

[KA101]

Great idea. Nontrivial amount of coding.

So no promises or timeframe. :-/

[narc0tiq]

It's a good future plan.

[RenegadeElement]

ya. I restrained myself alot on this because i want this done in my lifetime.

like i said it is a very rough idea if i am still around I will suggest my part 2 and that is the really scary stuff. this is like the bare minimum so your followers arn't a threat.

[kevingranade]

I'm strongly against 'rts like control' for NPCs. Giving orders, even very specific ones like 'go to x,y,z and do foo' are fine, but directly taking control of them is a very problematic interface. It would get very cumbersome very quickly. That having been said, I'm pretty sure issuing orders is going to do what you want.

[Rivet-the-Zombie]

Yeah I think 'possessing' your followers would be a weird shift in gameplay, but having an option to say things like attack this:, move to:, or defend this location: and then selecting an individual square or monster or item or whatever like as if you were aiming a gun would be a good means of handling this.

[KA101]

like as if you were aiming a gun

That's a pretty good check, because I'd imagine line-of-sight would be a factor in directing personnel. If I was radioing orders the most I'd expect to be able to specify would be "snipe out all the milspec turrets at this location (which happens to be a mil-outpost)".

[RenegadeElement]

This isn't a suggestion for complete or perfect control. at the lower levels NPC's would still be quite unruly. Or just rts style like controls. This is a suggestion to provide a base for more long term goals for the player.

controlling your followers is merely a interface that supports a great many tasks and opens up large new possibilities for addition of new content, rather then depending upon the ai and being forced to script and debug so many actions, I figured it would just be easier and better in the long run in terms of dealing with new actions added in the game this way than getting those to work with another command system. Which is why I asked for a possession like system.

The explanation behind this is that you shout orders at your followers or give them hand signals.

[kevingranade]

As written this is a non-starter, this isn't a RTS or even a party-based adventure game. Direct control of followers clashes heavily with the feel of the game and would make interacting with friendly NPCs very cumbersome, since most people are going to want to micromanage them even if they don't need to.

In addition, if you DO give the player direct control of followers, they are (justifiably) going to expect them to always follow orders, making it unreliable is going to surprise and upset them.

What fits for this goal is an orders system where you tell your followers what to do, not issue commands as if you were them.

[narc0tiq]

So more dwarf fortress styled: designate some area as a stockpile and expect them to put stuff there, designate bedroom and get them building beds if need be, that sort of thing?

On 22:15, Sun, Nov 9, 2014 Kevin Granade notifications@github.com wrote:

As written this is a non-starter, this isn't a RTS or even a party-based adventure game. Direct control of followers clashes heavily with the feel of the game and would make interacting with friendly NPCs very cumbersome, since most people are going to want to micromanage them even if they don't need to.

In addition, if you DO give the player direct control of followers, they are (justifiably) going to expect them to always follow orders, making it unreliable is going to surprise and upset them.

What fits for this goal is an orders system where you tell your followers what to do, not issue commands as if you were them.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/9774#issuecomment-62317464 .

[KA101]

We have zone designation. How to handle (in-game and mechanically) briefing 'em on zones/changes thereto needs worked out, but apart from that, sure.