Love this mod, it always bothered me how kenshi had sentient robots that have been around since the first empire but none of them remember how to make the humans preferred weapon. Could use some damage adjustment though, the jump from shoddy to masterwork is just insane. Maybe buffs and debuffs vs certain creature types too.

@UnRaCkS FisTs yeh!? the original mod. this mod spawns the pipe guns. into the world. the original mod just adds them as something you can craft..

Is there a version of this where npcs dont have them?

i love your pipe guns mod photo lol

yeh just triple checked. nothing in pipe gun mod, or pipe gun mod spawns, could be affecting the crossbow level. i suggest you look to see if its something affecting squads overall that is putting the dust bandit guns to high>special grade, cos that cannot happen from this mod alone. i put up a screeny of the dust bandit changes heh - and the only other changes besides adding guns to characters this mod is doing is adding them to the vendor list of a handful of appropriate shops.

p.s also as you noted, Fido, you might see only low grade weapons, and yet strangely high grade crossbow, that's cos weapon quality is controlled from CHARACTER class per Npcs, whereas crossbow quality is dictated by SQUAD class for all members of that squad.
i assure you something (not this mod, check changes yourself) is meddling w/ your squad crossbow quality level settings.

do you use this other mod i tested, which varies the clothing spawns on all npcs? i don't know its name, cos i unsubbed after using the mod file to pick and choose what changes i wanted into a personal ''merge'' mod...
but
when i merged those changes i purposefully omited the crossbow level changes (which is on the Squad portion of the npcs spawning and equipment-levelling).

and this was only two days ago, pre me actually making pipe gun mod + spawn mod, which i made on a clean build of kenshi, with no other mods even in my mod folder..

this mod which varied the costumes of NPCs, that i poked my nose into cos i wanted to merge it and save myself HOURS of adding new costumes to the various NPCS, right? hear me out, This other Mod, just so happened to upgrade the crossbow level from shoddy/standard to the level above or two of it.. that's why im saying. plus also cos in my tests of pipe gun mod plus pipe gun spawns, i played only with those two mods installed, and i was very happy with the distribution of prototype, shoddy and standard and the rarity of even high grade amongst the dust-bandit and even as far as skeleton city etc..

Fair enough, I was mainly just giving feedback since I thought it might be useful. In the end, it doesn't bother me super much, it does make the game more lethal (which is the point of a game like Kenshi) and I don't mind the HN being equalized some. I don't know what mod would cause them to spawn with high-quality weaponry since the highest tier of equipment I ever see on them is blue for clothing, and Ancient Refitted/white for weapons. I don't know if something removes ranged weapons for the HN for me, though, because I've never once seen HN use any ranged weapons other than harpoon turrets.

but holy nation sentinels and servants are 100% meant to be spawning with guns. all civilized nations and factions (who arent special stealth ninjas etc) should have at least a troop or two using guns...
. i'll do a reinstall of this workshop edition (i don't even use this specific module, this was made clean for vanilla kenshi plus pipe guns for some friends) from my backup folder, and look through it all over the next 24 hours, though.

i just made this so the pipe gun mod people have a way to get the pipe-guns into NPCs.

i think of the the paladins (in the dodgy world of kenshi with gun mods lol) should just be jackasses who are resistant to change and LOVE their big stupid final fantasy swords too much to give them up for a gun.

but the quality thing? that's on your end. you got another mod effecting the Squad Crossbow Quality level. the character, which is all that is getting the gun reference added to its inventory, doesnt actually control the crossbow quality level.
the SQUAD does. this mod doesn't touch Squads, AT ALL.

so you MUST have another mod which affects the squad crossbow quality of dust bandits and hungry bandits, for some reason. i do not, i am playing with vanilla squad crossbow quality. and i assure you, while yes, they spawn with all the pipe gun variants (although statistically mostly bolt action), they are NEVER, ever, about High.
they are proto, shoddy, normal, and Rarely high...

i'd recommend learning to use the construction kit. its heck easy and alot of fun, making, merging and modifying mods :D

then you can balance (and CHECK WHAT OTHER PEOPLES MODS ARE DOING) as you wish.

ah my dude, this mod was made as a fun request :P i only half bothered to make it as good as i did

i'd actually recommend if you want balance, use the pipe gun mod without the spawns, and roleplay being the first person to invent weapons - as the research tree is designed that way :)

:D if you're using pipe gun mods, spawning them into the world into npcs that were never meant to have them, i don't think you really ought to be worrying about how much caps you get per bandit. especially when they can one tap you, haha, it's a reward worth it, kinda..
the default crossbow (and all these are, remember, are crossbows with a re-skin, basically, lol, and some mods to damage and capacity and range) used by dust bandits is not OP. its specifically designed for that player tier, starting at the hub in the default scenario. so if you're messing with that, as this mod joyfully does, then yeh.

I haven't seen any HN spawning with them, probably because I don't think any HN spawn with any ranged weapons. However, hungry bandits I've seen spawn with any variety I've come across so far, magazine, bolt-action, stock, no stock, a shorter 6-wide one, from varying quality levels ranging prototype to masterwork.

https://i.imgur.com/ebDKDer.png

Also, maybe low-level enemies need a type of ammunition that is significantly cheaper and with less charges, because half of all hungry bandits I encounter have one, which means you get 668 cats of guaranteed loot on any ranger type.

they shouldn't spawn with specialist!? should they by default? I'm only seeing prototype, shoddy and standard on dust bandits... you got another mod improving their crossbow spawn class?

Man the thing probably does need balancing, though. Are any holy servants or sentinels spawning with pipe guns? In my game (separate to this mod) the Holy Nation has some additional crossbows and muskets etc - because by default they don't really use any crossbows, despite using wall-turrets.

Mod may need rebalancing when, after watching a squad of hungry bandits and a group of HN paladins, sentinels and chosen fight, with ~6 hungry bandits downing about 10-12 of them, doing ~80 damage with their high, specialty and masterwork long pipe bolt-actions.