Factions are just a wrapper over the normal team library. Essentially, each faction associates a table with a team. So, extra information can be stored for teams (e.g. salary, descriptions, etc...).

To create a faction for your schema, first create a factions folder in your gamemode's schema folder if it does not exist. Here is an example.

One faction corresponds to one file within the factions folder. The files in the factions folder should be named sh_<identifier>.lua where <identifier> is a string containing only alphanumeric characters and underscores. By convention, <identifier> should be lowercase as well.

When the file is loaded, a global table called FACTION is available. This is the table that contains information about your faction. The following keys are required:

FACTION.name = "Faction Name"
FACTION.desc = "A description of your faction"
FACTION.color = Color(255, 255, 255)

Note that the name and desc are translatable.

Then, you can add any other details you would like for your faction.

At the end of the file, you must include the following:

TEAM_EXAMPLE = FACTION.index

The FACTION.index is a numeric value that is the team ID for your faction. This is the ID that is used with the team library. So, here the ID is stored to a global variable for later use.

Now, your faction is done!

You can specify a list of available player models for your faction using FACTION.models. This should be a table containing strings. For example,

FACTION.models = {
    "models/player/hostage/hostage_01.mdl",
    "models/player/hostage/hostage_02.mdl",
    "models/player/hostage/hostage_03.mdl",
    "models/player/hostage/hostage_04.mdl"
}

By default, FACTION.models is set to the list of HL2 citizen NPC models.

An entry in FACTION.models can have a specific skin set by using a table containing two values instead of a string. The first value in the table should be the model path as a string. The second value should be a number containing the skin number. For example,

FACTION.models = {
    -- Prisoner guard Combine soldier (red eyes).
    {"models/player/combine_soldier.mdl", 1},
    -- Normal Combine soldier (blue eyes).
    "models/player/combine_soldier.mdl"
}

Similarly, an entry in FACTION.models can have certain bodygroups set. Instead of having a table with only two values, a table with 3 values is used. The third value is a string where the ith digit represents the value for the ith bodygroup. For example,

FACTION.models = {
    -- Metropolice with a manhack.
    {"models/police.mdl", 0, "01"},
    -- Normal metropolice without a manhack.
    "models/police.mdl"
}

Characters within certain factions can be paid a salary. To set a salary for your faction, you just need to add the following line:

FACTION.pay = 123

The value for FACTION.pay is how much the character will be paid. By default, players are paid in intervals of the set value for the salaryInterval config (which by default is 300 seconds). However, you can change this yourself by adding the following line:

FACTION.payTime = 60

The value for FACTION.payTime is how often characters of this faction get paid in seconds.

If you want more control over salary payment, you can adjust the pay amount by returning a different amount in the GetSalaryAmount(client, faction) hook. You can also adjust the salary interval by returning a new interval in the GetSalaryInterval(client, faction) hook.

You can specify a list of weapons to give to a player of a certain faction when they spawn by setting FACTION.weapons. It should be set to table containing strings where the strings are the class of the weapons. For example,

FACTION.weapons = {"weapon_crowbar"}

Whenever a player of a specific faction spawns, the faction's onSpawn method is called with the player passed in. So, if you want something to happen when a player of your faction spawns, just add some behavior to the onSpawn method. For example:

FACTION.health = 150
FACTION.armor = 100

function FACTION:onSpawn(client)
    -- Custom health and armor for players in this faction.
    client:SetHealth(self.health)
    client:SetArmor(self.armor)
end

If you only want factions to be accessible to players who are whitelisted for that faction, you should set

FACTION.isDefault = false

By default, FACTION.isDefault = true. If FACTION.isDefault is set to true, a character could be created with that faction. If it is set to false, a character can only be created with that faction if the player creating the character is whitelisted for the faction.

The FACTION table is no longer available after the file for the faction loads. However, you can access the faction data later in two ways:

• Using nut.faction.list or
• Using nut.faction.indices

The "nice name" for a faction is the name of the faction file after the "sh_" prefix, but before the ".lua" extension. For example, if your faction file was called sh_citizen.lua, the nice name is "citizen". You can access faction data using the nice name with nut.faction.list[niceName] where niceName is a string containing the nice name.

If you have the index of the faction (the value is FACTION.index that should have been stored in a global variable), you can use nut.faction.indices[index] where index is a number with the value of the faction index.

You can limit the number of online players for a specific faction using FACTION.limit. Simply set FACTION.limit to a number, where that number is the maximum number of players in that faction allowed at one time. For example,

FACTION.limit = 5

means only five players are allowed to be in that faction at one time.

In some cases, it may be more useful to have the limit as a percentage of the number of players on the server. Instead of using a whole number, simply use a decimal number less than 1. For example, to make it so only 1/4th of the players on the server are allowed to be in a specific faction, you would have

FACTION.limit = 0.25

If you need more control over the limit, you can use the FACTION:onCheckLimitReached(character, client) function. This is a function that should return true if the limit has been reached (that is, the player is not allowed to load a character of that faction), or false otherwise. For example, you could make the limit a percentage of the number of players on another faction:

function FACTION:onCheckLimitReached(character, client)
    return team.NumPlayers(self.index) < math.Round(team.NumPlayers(FACTION_OTHER) * 0.25)
end

Similarly, there is the CheckFactionLimitReached(faction, character, client) hook. It is similar to the function above, except faction is the faction table for some faction. The default implementation actually implements the above features.