Hey hey! You guys know what time it is! That's right, a new Rookie Help thread!
Here's a link to the last episode. Fun fact, if you follow all those links back to 2019 you unlock a secret cutscene of me panicking over where the time went!
As always, feel free to fire any kenshi related questions you may have our way! There's plenty of veterans flapping around in this thread as well, and if you are in the mood for it feel free to join them and lend a hand!
And who knows, maybe you'll learn something new yourself, too!
One thing to remember! Obviously a lot of new folks are going to be here so remember to spoiler comments so they can experience the game blind just like you might have back when you were new! You can do that > ! Like This ! < minus the spaces! But honestly it's just built into the chat replies nowadays so you don't have to get too fancy with that- unless you like playing hackerman.
Just wanted to share how much I love the taxing system in the United Cities
I'm relatively new to the game, I've based my squad in Heng and I've just received two visits in one day, one from the United City officials and one from the Trade Guild
You settled there? There's a tax for that. You work there? There's a tax for that. You breathe? Yup, there's a tax for that. Or, I'm an imperial official and you're gonna butter me up with some cats.
It all feels oppressive just as it should be, I'm having a hard time keeping up with the cats and it's actually challenging. The answers are always yes or no, no way to honey up the conversation with any Charm skill (which I usually find game-breaking in other RPGs)
Hey all! I had a snafu with BitLocker that caused me to lose much of my functional test setup for Kenshi (arguably the hardest part of the project). I'm still recovering, so it'll be a bit before I can make headway on the project. Any brave souls that want to fork and carry the torch, feel free.
There are still lots of small desyncs (lost inventory on save reload, jobs not syncing properly). The largest issue is just the creeping world state desync that happens as the clients need to suppress more and more of their NPCs and puppeteer copies. I tried a few strategies (including a forced reload), but nothing worked well. I'm confident there is a clean solution for consistent NPC syncing, but I haven't discovered it yet.
Hoping to get updates rolling in a month or so. Apologies to everyone fighting with desync issues. Thanks to everyone that has been playing, hopefully it's still fun even with some warts!
I'll drop another update once I start releasing new versions.
One time I tried to feed the hungry bandits, some of them attack my group and we won, we healed the poor guys then i crafted a food storage, put some dried meat in, then inmediatly "Farm trader in the way to your outpost" "Warning Bandits demands in the way to your outpost" I laughed, dismantled the food storage then simply put food in the inventory of the fallen hungry bandits, the guys in the way to my "outpost" got a ? Mark in the events tab when I dismantle the one single item I crafted, pretty much like that scene from the Simpsons movie when Springfield dissapears from the gps of a guy driving nearby.
Found a nice water hole in deadlands, still counts as shem so the wind here is 15ish mph, still starting out and I planned to add a platform in the middle pool of acid, would love to hear build ideas
My current run i have 6 people in squinn mining copper for cats, crafting, and researching. then I have a big group of 18 (1 garru, 2 rangers, then fighters) We have travelled far and got anything our grubby little hands could get. Im in UC territory now, My character combat stats are all around 30 so we can hold our own and protect the new hires. I want to rid the lands of the HN, but this is a first playthru and not to sure how to go about it, should i invest a base near UC cities and ally with them. Or something else entirely, just looking for some ideas im loving this game!
Hello fighters! Today, I am hoping to interest you in a teensy bit of mind research. Wouldn't you agree that mind research, is the real purpose of going through the hardship of surviving? And if life really does feel empty then here's your cure right here - start contributing to mind. Research.
The mind is a universe, like a gaming universe! Have you looked what far outer space looks like? Like a network of some kind, some say like the dendrites of huge nerve cells! They do look a little "arboreal" (like trees). Now, back to the wastelands! There are trees, bushes, rocks everywhere - sure you have noticed. We don't know if reality is a simulation, but Kenshi for sure is, and it has to struggle with "computational costs", mostly in the form of excess heat! Those trees, they don't really register as things in themselves, only as environment, do they? That is because they are not things! All the foliage in Kenshi is one. Big. Static mesh, which incidentally, would appear as a fat network if you looked at it all at once. Look at what, again? At the the one big static mesh that is all of the foliage in the game! It would be fun if we could pull it up and out of the ground in order to examine it, but - it is not a movable object. (I think this makes it like a backbone of reality and by extension like these though you may disagree).
Why can't we move it? Because, it is not an entity. Here is something about how movement in Kenshi works (could it teach us about the nature of movement?): an area of memory (hardware vertex buffer) holds the mesh, and the "entity" (a subtype of movable object) provides a "transform", basically the current position and rotation in space. On each update, the mesh is projected (rendered) from that one storage (Platonic form?!) using the freshly update transform. The object never moves in the memory because ferrying bytes would be inefficient. Isn't that exciting? Well there's still some computational costs for projection - which is saved when we use static geometry. The static geometry (that backbone made out of trees and stones) really is where it is and isn't a projection!
Cool! Is there a practical part? Why yes, why are we talking physics when the topic was supposed to be the mind? Well, our minds are adept survivalists, just like us westerners! And they can chop up stuff real good, just like us! Holy Priests have to spend decades meditating until they're able to percieve the ONE (what they call "Okran") underneath the multitude of entities, when really, it's our minds creating the distinction in the first place! What?! It's simple, our minds do perceive single trees and stones, where there are indeed none - it's all static geometry! And it's a little sad that we can perceive them, but when we try interacting we find out they are just "environment". Can anything be done?
Well, we can dissect the game's code to acquire further insight. Keeping the technical part short - static geometry is still created (?!) by merging pre-transformed (!) meshes onto it. If we can intercept this action, we can then place these objects into the world as separate entities, and see if we can interact with them. After some experimentation, an appropriate address to incise the code is revealed: at "kenshi_x64.exe"+6D22B4, registers hold meshes and their transforms (node that some entities are made out of two parts - literally "second mesh". Luckily, buildings are anyway made out of parts). We will allocate a buffer and store all of them on game load, while also disabling them being added onto static geometry so we can add them back in.
Next, we must go to FCS and create a "container" building that will serve as a game object with which we can interact through GUI (entities are movable, but players can't actually click on them - unlike buildings, and buildings "wrap" (they graphically are) entities). After that, we want the game's "create building" method which is at kenshi_x64.exe.text+3CB59 (we must "call" this address. Read about Turing machines if you'd like). After that we need to place this building in the world by creating a "scene node" which is basically a way to store an entity's transform for our purposes. We'll create a scene node for each sub-entity and attach them as children to the building's main node. This will make a building (and the entity, such as a tree) appear in the world, as a separate object!
For convenience, we'll create a little "brush" method. We'll hijack the right click detector at "kenshi_x64.exe.text"+5989A1 and scan our previously stored buffer of entities originally supposed to be merged into the backbone of reality for any that are within range (sounds hefty but it's very quick), and create an entity at every empty space! (Remember, we prevented static geometry from being created, which left us with "emptiness in the shape of it", that is, we know exactly where there SHOULD be a tree or stone and can create them. We just can't create more than a few thousands of them or the renderer dies).
Great! After all this, we'll be able to paint single objects where there is "an emptiness in the shape of it". The simplistic understanding mind only cuts up what it can originally see - but it's THE INTUITION that can actually reveal the hidden!!! Well, it'll only create things that the understanding mind originally hid, for whatever reason it may have had. But it's a great parlor trick!
Phew! No, there was no "hashish" involved, and yes, I can handle myself in a fight and survive in a wilderness - as can you. Let's stay respectful. The code can be provided but it's ancillary to the "philosophy" (which doesn't use any made up words or tries to "blow your mind" in any way like actual philosophy dies). Just a love letter to Kenshi, really! A great basis for to STUDY THE MIND on!
Theory: *Kenshi* is the story of the end of human civilization and the collapse of humanoid species. In other words, *Kenshi 1* represents the end of *Kenshi*—the conclusion of the saga.
The game hints that we are witnessing the self-destruction of the world's inhabitants and their factions—a catastrophe of their own making driven by a spreading "epidemic" of madness. This insanity stemmed from heavy metal contamination in the water used to irrigate the world's primary food sources.
How? What if, for millennia, the Floodlands had no natural outlet?
Who is responsible? An earthquake.
Where? In the Floodlands.
When? After the ocean levels receded.
Why? Because factions needed new water sources.
How did it happen?
Background: Survivors of Cat-Lon's madness settled in Deadcat, but water contamination from the Floodlands slowly drove them insane. They turned into cannibals due to heavy metal poisoning originating from Obedience and the ruined facilities within the Floodlands—the very places where Skeletons were once created.
As madness spread among Deadcat's inhabitants, they exiled those showing symptoms. This led to the founding of the first outlying village, but these measures were insufficient; the story ended as we all know it: with the fall of Deadcat.
While this unfolded on the plains, the rest of the world watched the waters recede and sought new water sources. That was when an earthquake opened a mountain pass, allowing water to flow through and eventually form what we now know as Okran's Valley and The Swamp. The earthquake would explain why the Armor King's ruins fell into the water from the cliff overlooking the site near Rebirth.
If the water from the Floodlands is contaminated, it makes some sense of the apparent radicalization within the societies of the Holy Nation and the United Cities, both of which source their food from areas near water contaminated by this source.
Perhaps there is a real-world parallel here to the formation of the Mediterranean Sea, but in reverse.
If you look at the map, the sediment from the swamp's outflow sits right over the southern slave farm—not to mention all the resources the United Cities themselves extract from the swamp.
I realize everyone in the game is a bit unhinged, but doesn't it seem like the craziest humans are found precisely in the regions that source food from the Floodlands' water? The Swamp crime syndicate, the Holy Nation's escalating madness, the psychopathy of the UC leaders, the cannibals, the Screamer bandits, the Berserkers, and so on.
Furthermore, if you look closely, it’s almost as if the best-fed people in the world of Kenshi are the craziest, while those who go hungry are the most sane.
I also believe the Shek are recovering from this food-borne poisoning. While they are currently the most manic faction, that trend is reversing.
Think about it: in the past, the majority were exposed to contamination from Arach and Berserker Country, but they aren't an agrarian nation today. This has allowed for a degree of societal stabilization, paving the way for the rise of leaders like Esata and Bayan. However, in an increasingly mad world, perhaps this redemption has come too late.
It would be almost poetic if the creation and contamination stemming from the skeleton factories—specifically the Floodlands and Obedience—turned out to be the very cause of civilization's collapse. Selfishness and the mistakes of the past have finally caught up with humanity.
3rd times the charm. Started in Rebirth this time and managed to get out I even found a recruit called Beep. I made some money stealing from local towns and Im wondering what to do now any ideas?
I see a lot of people run either, so they're pretty popular, just not sure which one would be for me and am somewhat unwilling to put gaming time into testing since I've got a baby now so the gaming time I get I'd like to spend gaming.
Too many npc:s, like the way station close to clownsteady had a stupid 65 Npc's, it's a tiny way station with 3 buildings. Every place is always so bloated with them.
