Greetings medievalists!
You know what your settlers need? They need to know the people around them. That’s right, social interactions are coming in the next update. Here is what you can expect:
When a settler is within a certain range of someone else, they will attempt to initiate a social interaction. The possible outcomes of this include: engaging in small talk, having an insightful conversation, praising each other, or insulting and ridiculing one another. The results of social interaction will be affected by random things like their perks, speechcraft skill, or their current status. It’s going to be difficult to chat if someone has a broken jaw, for example.
You’ll notice when a conversation has taken place because a speech bubble will appear above the settlers’ heads. Depending on the result, it will show one of these images:
Selecting the settler and checking the LOG tab will allow you to see a short description of what was being discussed. These sentences will also be tied to the factors mentioned above and present events. If a wolf pack appears on the map, there is a chance that it will be referenced.
These interactions will also allow settlers to influence one another. If a settler has a high speechcraft skill and the zealot status for their religion, they might convert others to their beliefs.
It’s worth noting that the amount of these social interactions are limited per day, but limitations can be influenced by other things, too. Being drunk might circumvent these limitations when paired with certain perks, which will create interesting scenarios. All of this will play an important part in the affection system.
The Affection system will be represented by the Social tab in the settler’s STAT bar. It will indicate how much settler’s like each other. This rating can be affected by a settler’s personality, their religious alignment, and the outcomes of social interactions.
The affection rating between two people will impact how certain events in your settlement affect individuals. So if someone they like dies, then they will get a negative mood modifier. Or, if an enemy of theirs is banished to the wilderness, then they might actually be happy about that.
These systems will be later expanded so that the relationship between them will trigger certain events. For now, though, we think it adds an extra layer to your settlers and gives you a sense of how they feel about one another.
That’s it for today! We hope that you’ll like this feature once it is released in the official update. When is that going to happen? Well… until then…
Stay medieval!