Animation for guards with weapons

[F_Constantine]

Guys, it seems to me alone that the tralls protecting my settlements look very foolish without a weapon in their hands? And just as absurdly it looks as if they were suddenly retrieving weapons from nowhere, or not?
Ok, in the “distant past” the tralls, who are constantly in aggressive combat stands with weapons, also looked silly.
The developers changed their stances to normal, relaxed ones, but their weapons were retracted into inventory. I did not like it, and I solved for myself the problem with the weapon, filling all slots in the inventory of tralls, and then putting the weapon in the “slots of the hands”. It was not too good either - open palms with “glued” weapons to them - but from a distance for me this option looked more acceptable than unarmed guards.
Developers again made changes - now the weapon is always retracted into inventory outside of combat. Okay, we do not have to see NPCs talking to each other or eating again, swinging huge swords. But the sight of my unarmed tralls does not please me.

I see two options for solving this problem.
Either make a weapon in the scabbard and the points of attachment of shields, bows, two-handed swords on the back (although I can not think of a normal way of carrying spears without hands). Either (it’s easier, faster - and personally I would be more than satisfied) to create additional animations of a free stances for guards with weapons in hand (one of them may simply repeat a free stance, only with clenched fists (they will have weapons and shields), another - the same free stance, only with a spear in the right hand, on which the person leans).

[Mikey]

We should be able to assign thralls to one of a few states, like “guard”, “stand here” and (preferably) a few more. Even if the AI never got to the point where thralls can really do anything, explicitly setting them to a state ought to be an option.

If in “Guard” stance, they’d have an appropriate animation, and their weapon out. If a different option was selected, maybe it’d be fine for them to holster (or “inventory”) their weapon.

But then again, Thralls are still barely functional, so we’ll probably never see anything like this. I guess most people would settle for a working AI on the functions that are (ostensibly) already there. But hell, if my thralls run out to combat enemies, they run back and promptly stand around staring at the wall, since for no f-ing reason the rotation component of their “assigned transform” is not respected after the first placement.

[TwoJay]

The possibility to assign emotes to Thralls was made several times in EA. In one of the last Devstreams before release they answered on this question: maybe, but not now.
Assigning emotes to Thralls could be a part of the thrall system they had planed in EA, but it was cut for Release. The conditions for such a feature would be a better AI with reliable pathfinding, set up for behavior and chain of command. It sounds easy? It isn’t-it means a lot of work. Nevertheless it would make this game even better and would increase longtime motivation enormously.

[F_Constantine]

Listen, at what here emotions ?! Have you ever read my post? I’m asking just two simple animations in addition: free racks with weapons in hand for tralls (at least only for tralls - NPC on the map to look at we do not have a special possibility)!