2000 for infinite service?
Bit OP to me. How about alternate, more balanced 10-25k "one-time payment" submod?
At least in the future, when you finish other stuff)

PS Ideal situation - ~1000 for every man in the squad. Dunno, can the game handle this formula =\

Yes, for now I will add some more characters, but if you want that, it will be easy to do.
However increasing it with squad size is sadly not possible.

I correct myself. It IS possible to make it scale with squad size. I can do that. But it will take a lot of time.

Nahh, its not necessary, just an idea)

you seem eager for feedback and the chat seems inapprorpriate, so I fire away here.

As i said the mod works, there are of course a few things that could be enhanced, not really related to your work but more about how kenshi has done things.

the "issues" are:

-food, they will never starve, but they will go hungry, often ending up with maluses, I solve this by setting hunger rate to 8 and once every zillion hours, pick up the dudes and stuff 3 dustwiches in their inventory, It does not bother me, it's a minor hassle, but I'm aware that I'm past hunger management, I have 700hrs on the game so it's not really a chanllenge for me anyway, a fresher player may not want to play with low hunger rate though. I'm not sure you can solve this

-athletics: hungry bandits do not seem to gain athletics, or if they do it's nerfed to the ground by the devs to keep balance for early game, my guys in the 40s have been running around a bit now, I have one or 2 that have athletics 6, the rest have 5: athletics seem frozen, I solve this by putting sandals and pants I've myself tweaked to compensate for the lack of boots: they run at 18 mph, it's alright, enough to follow and not be a pain, but they could run faster, and again, a player who has no understanding on how to tweak stats for objects ends up having 15mph(or low leg armor), or less, it's okish but objectively slow.

-Strength: the main issue, the only that is a bit limitative.
Hungry bandits gain strength like any other character, but due to the above points, they don't because if they do, they don't follow fast enough.
Strength is a bigger issue because it does limit equipment and weapons.
Again, I have a work around, they are equiped with polearms(a good weapon anyway), mercenary leather armor, drifter leather pants, a helmet and a turtlemeck.
They can handle that equipment, their strength does not have to progress much to be on par with the respective requirements, and it's fine(I've buffed the merc armor to match samurai armor since I can mass produce it and am late game) But fresher players may not know how to do such adjustements and anyways, cosmetics wise the bandits can not look like tincans because metal stuff is way to heavy for them.

All in all, you can have very satisfying late game hungry bandits, mine are in the 40s even 50s, have great armor, a good polearm, good stats and are badass fighters, but the player has to be a bit inventive to get there.

Late game if you leave equipment/hunger setting to vanilla, you end up having good fighters with 5 athletics, 7 strength that have -15% stats maluses, due to how hungry bandits are coded in the game.

I'm not sure you can solve any of this, as this is not in relation with your mod.
But if you have the time and knowledge on how to tweak stats for groups of enemies, do not be afraid to set their athletics to 35, strength to 25 and tweak their hunger behaviour.
This would come at the price of more dangerous hungry bandits for early game but would be enough for them to be free of the small late game issues they have since they do not progress.

Every other stat has no issue, they gain them like they should.

Your mod is a godsend for people with a potato, I personally can not have more than 12-15 characters, but with your mod, I can have a real army of i dunno A LOT since they are obedient AIs( even if they are AIs I know their faces, recognize them and I'm attached, it's just like I had a real party of A LOT at the price of a little micro, and that's clearly worth it, it turns my potato into a top end pc and it allows me to enjoy kenshi like I should, like every one else does.

EDIT since I'm a genius, I write my stuff before reading the thread^^, what i describe is already being discussed, sorry^^

The cost of hiring bandits is fine as it is, 2000 is a pain(as it should) early game, and honestly...
I've hired 100 to end up with 12 high level guys: they tend to lose limbs, get lost, die etc.

My remaining guys have cost me quite a fair bit of money in equpment and prosthetics, so in truth, to bring them late game, their individual cost is way over 10K, and it's great.

Originally posted by happy:

you seem eager for feedback and the chat seems inapprorpriate, so I fire away here.

As i said the mod works, there are of course a few things that could be enhanced, not really related to your work but more about how kenshi has done things.

the "issues" are:

-food, they will never starve, but they will go hungry, often ending up with maluses, I solve this by setting hunger rate to 8 and once every zillion hours, pick up the dudes and stuff 3 dustwiches in their inventory, It does not bother me, it's a minor hassle, but I'm aware that I'm past hunger management, I have 700hrs on the game so it's not really a chanllenge for me anyway, a fresher player may not want to play with low hunger rate though. I'm not sure you can solve this

-athletics: hungry bandits do not seem to gain athletics, or if they do it's nerfed to the ground by the devs to keep balance for early game, my guys in the 40s have been running around a bit now, I have one or 2 that have athletics 6, the rest have 5: athletics seem frozen, I solve this by putting sandals and pants I've myself tweaked to compensate for the lack of boots: they run at 18 mph, it's alright, enough to follow and not be a pain, but they could run faster, and again, a player who has no understanding on how to tweak stats for objects ends up having 15mph(or low leg armor), or less, it's okish but objectively slow.

-Strength: the main issue, the only that is a bit limitative.
Hungry bandits gain strength like any other character, but due to the above points, they don't because if they do, they don't follow fast enough.
Strength is a bigger issue because it does limit equipment and weapons.
Again, I have a work around, they are equiped with polearms(a good weapon anyway), mercenary leather armor, drifter leather pants, a helmet and a turtlemeck.
They can handle that equipment, their strength does not have to progress much to be on par with the respective requirements, and it's fine(I've buffed the merc armor to match samurai armor since I can mass produce it and am late game) But fresher players may not know how to do such adjustements and anyways, cosmetics wise the bandits can not look like tincans because metal stuff is way to heavy for them.

All in all, you can have very satisfying late game hungry bandits, mine are in the 40s even 50s, have great armor, a good polearm, good stats and are badass fighters, but the player has to be a bit inventive to get there.

Late game if you leave equipment/hunger setting to vanilla, you end up having good fighters with 5 athletics, 7 strength that have -15% stats maluses, due to how hungry bandits are coded in the game.

I'm not sure you can solve any of this, as this is not in relation with your mod.
But if you have the time and knowledge on how to tweak stats for groups of enemies, do not be afraid to set their athletics to 35, strength to 25 and tweak their hunger behaviour.
This would come at the price of more dangerous hungry bandits for early game but would be enough for them to be free of the small late game issues they have since they do not progress.

Every other stat has no issue, they gain them like they should.

Your mod is a godsend for people with a potato, I personally can not have more than 12-15 characters, but with your mod, I can have a real army of i dunno A LOT since they are obedient AIs( even if they are AIs I know their faces, recognize them and I'm attached, it's just like I had a real party of A LOT at the price of a little micro, and that's clearly worth it, it turns my potato into a top end pc and it allows me to enjoy kenshi like I should, like every one else does.

EDIT since I'm a genius, I write my stuff before reading the thread^^, what i describe is already being discussed, sorry^^

First things first, I want you to know, that I do appreciate your comment very much! It means a lot to me, that you take the time to write at such lengths about what you like and what you would like to see in the mod. This is a huge morale boost and tells me, that there are some people out there, who enjoy the same stuff as I do^^

-food: I know how to tweak this, but it will change all hungry bandits, including those, who are not part of your army.

-athletics: I tried a lot, even got an answer by Shidan (awesome modder) and it seems like there is no way to change that they don't level athletics.

-strength: Same with athletics. They don't level it through walking while being encumbered, but I haven't tested if they level it through combat with extremely heavy weapons. (fragment axe) They should, as they do level dexterity while fighting with a katana, but I have to do further testing to ensure that. I guess the best way to test this is to knock out a single enemy hungry bandit and give him a meitou fragment axe and then taking a extremely high def character and getting the bandit to aggro this char while he is set on block.

So, what am I going to do? Well, I will keep looking for a way to set a single squad on "not starving" but as it is now, it is not that bad as they do regenerate hunger after some time or while looting something (at least I have got the impression while playing). They will starve again, which results in a loop of up and down, but they will never reach the maximum debuff. I know that the holy nation has a scripted event where all its citizens get hungry, but I haven't looked into that yet. Maybe I can create a world state which changes things, however this seems unlikely at the moment.
About tweaking the stats of the base game: This is something which I would like to refrain from. I want this mod be a ghost, which does not shine through as long as you don't want it to. It should not change the actual Kenshi experience and therefore I do not like the idea of making the weakest enemies into formidable foes. But worry not, I have the perfect solution! I plan on making more bandit types recruitable, which means that you will be able to recruit stronger followers. As you probably know, I have added the holy nation outlaws recently and they do have much better stats. Same with the lost drone. I got one of those poor guys, but his legs were chopped off, before I could do something about it. Luckily those scout legs are a perfect fit to the need for speed^^ Now this guy runs like a champion and easily keeps up with a 80 athletics char in equipment with no speed buff. I suggest that you do use those hungry bandits for stationary defending purposes and that you recruit stronger squads for late game bodyguarding. Next will be the dust bandits (athletics around 15) and I guess I will add the shrieking bandits (athletics around 25) too. My goal is to make many of the less aggressive bandit factions recruitable so there will be more content to come.
The only other fix I can think of, is to make a belt item, which increases athletics by a huge amount. I don't know how to do that yet, but if you say that it is a must have, I can try to add this.