From my play through of Kenshi:
The day started innocent enough. My merry band of five had just finished building their first House are the crossroads near the starting town. It was a choice shot with lots of trade caravans passing my way. If I were to ever figure out the economy in this game I'd be rich. But, unfortunately, that learning curve is a wall I had not yet been willing to climb.
We were all milling about in the house when a large band of the local brigands arrived outside our house and began reading to us the list of crimes for which we were guilty. That's never good.
I was able to sneak out during the airing of grievances, and was on the road towards the nearest town when I saw them bust in my door and begin looting my stores. I would have tried to fight, but this game is unforgiving, and a raging mob of 20 with sticks will defeat a band of 5 seasoned fighters most of the time, and with lingering injuries you don't want to risk even walking away with a limp since you then become prey to everyone and everything... so I chose to leave with the gear I could carry and still keep ahead of the mob.
I arrived at the entrance to the town to find that more of the brigands were milling around there. I can't be certain if they were canvassing for me specifically, or just being general a-holes, but I started getting the feeling that I was no longer welcome in the region. Something about hanging around with members of differing races and robots and not praying to their gods.
I decided to head south to check out a town I had heard of not far away, but far enough to be out of reach of the brigands. I had enough rations to last a while, and as long as I had my head on a swivel the southern area was a bit more open, giving me more opportunity to skirt around encounters rather than being funneled into them. It seemed like my best bet, even though I'd essentially be starting over... just slightly more armed and armored and fed.
It wasn't long before I started to regret my decision. The south was bustling with roving bands... some starved to the point of rage, all better armed than I was. So I spent most of my time running in circles just to keep out of eyesight of the new angry mobs.
It was at that point that I hatched a cunning plan. I decided to see if I could kite mobs into conflict with one another. The plan would rely in two things: 1) I needed to be faster than them and 2) they had to be opposing factions. The game isn't great at telling you about the factions in any clear way, so #2 was not a given.
It eventually paid off better than I could have hoped for when I ended up creating a three way fight between city guards, and two separate roving mobs. I nearly lost some team members to the few attackers I couldn't shake, but I made it out alive, and not only had the two mobs been defeated, but the guard force lost several soldiers who they then chose not to loot and headed back to town. That left the entire battle field for me to loot!
... sure, some of the guards were only MOSTLY dead, but I'm pretty sure they never knew who was taking then weapon sand armor!
I'm now fairly rich, have decent non-starter armor and some nice weapons. I guess it is time to start hiring some more team members.
Some, some more things I have learned while scavenging my way through the game:
* Squad size is pretty large. The cap on a squad is 50 members, though that may be done by a mod.. and that mod extends total group size to 256 (you can have multiple squads).
* Unlike most RPGs of late, there is no randomized loot tables for downed foes. What you see is what you get. Every NPC in the game has an inventory just like you do, and if you defeat them you get whatever they have, assuming you have room to carry it. The great balance here is that people with great gear will hurt you greatly when you try to take it from them.
* There is a whole automation system for pretty much all jobs in the game. When you get big enough to build a town you can actually go full Factorio on it.
