Cataclysm-dda: Allow of designation of buildings for faction purposes

[FulcrumA]

A discussion/suggestion ticket for long-term expansion of a faction system.
Currently, a faction is mostly operating in boundaries of structures that are generated specifically for a faction's purposes. It pertrains both to NPC and PC faction. Faction members are limited to the predesigned role and functionality of the structure, as well as to the tiny location all of those structures have to be in.

I'd like to suggest making the game place smaller survivor groups or even designate outposts for various factions more procedurally - rather than just living in their camp, a bunch of raiders could have an outpost in some city as a staging point for retaking it or merely an offloading platform for scavenged goods to elsehwere. Would also make scenarios with a few survivors living in a barricaded building, with a tiny, protected vegetable garden more reasonable and believable.

Lastly, it would be good if instead of having to erect new, pre-designed buildings, player could build and designate already existing structures for certain roles the same way as abovementioned NPC factions could do it (for ease of implementation, it wouldn't even have to track whole building, just x tiles from the marker point of indoor location) as long as the buildings have facilities and tools required.

The benefit of such feature would be not only create more active inter-faction politics/warfare framework for the future, but also new goals in establishing one's own camp/town or even retaking and repopulating already existing infrastructure. Perhaps even allow future emergence of structures of strategic importance, like missile silo which could be staffed (only if it wasn't used yet), allowing one to call a strike through the radio, water treatment facility which would replenish fresh water in designated tanks/canisters every x time (only if it has functional pumps, tanks, possibly something more befitting its role) or a farm producing new crops/raising livestock (requires seeded tiles which then would be automatically harvested and replanted by the staff or tamed cows/birds feces of would be cleaned/stored and milk/eggs gathered).

[mlangsdorf]

It should be relatively straightforward to create a faction camp upgrade path for the ranch, farm, and dairy farm overmap tile sets. They're all regular and fairly standardized,

It might require some code changes to allow you to start in a place that isn't an empty field, but 90% of the work would be in JSON.

[FulcrumA]

It has to be pointed out that while being able to take over current building and utilize it/modify using some camp prefabs, ideally it'd be the best if a player could create rooms/building from ground up and designate them for particular roles on the basis of their furnishings/contained items.

[Asmageddon]

What about a system like colony-building games, where you designate rooms/stockpiles/workspaces/etc. yourself, with space/tool/etc. requirements?

I think that in the long term, it would be a far more robust option anyway.