Everything is optional

Every feature is its own module with its own switch in config/taczarmedmobs/common.toml (on NeoForge 1.21.1 also in the in-game config screen). Use only what you want:

• Only armed guards? [faction_wars] enabled = false, [diplomacy.mercenaries] enabled = false and [diplomacy.teams] enabled = false
• No Armed Guards in villages? [armed_guard.village] enabled = false
• No guns for Guard Villagers guards? [guards] enabled = false
• No armed zombies and pillagers? [extra_mobs] gun_chance = 0
• Guns, but not this mod's AI? [ai] enabled = false (for example to use Guard Villagers TACZ Support instead). Faction Wars mobs then get no guns either. Armed Guards keep their AI, it's built in.
• No random events? [faction_wars.rules.events] enabled = false. Wars then only start by command.
• Extras: smart fire, suppression, white flag, disguise, reputation, guard pouch, resupply and recruiting each have their own enabled switch.
• Iron's Spells: [iron_spells] enabled = false

TaCZ Armed Mobs (Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks Supported)

Village guards with swords are fine. Village guards with whatever guns your modpack has, factions waging war around you, caravans to escort or rob, and mercenaries who farm your fields are better.

TaCZ Armed Mobs brings its own village guard, the Armed Guard, and gives him, guards from Guard Villagers (optional), zombies, pillagers and any other mob you configure a random gun from every TaCZ gunpack that is currently loaded, plus matching ammo and its own tactical AI to actually use it. The Faction Wars module turns your world into a battlefield of 15 factions (18 with Iron's Spells).

With Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks installed, guards and mercenaries can also cast spells, and three mage factions join the war.

Available for NeoForge 1.21.1 and Forge 1.20.1. Both versions have the same features (see Version differences for the few exceptions).

New here? Every player gets the Armed Mobs Field Manual guidebook on first join (needs Patchouli). It explains everything below in-game.

The Armed Guard (new in 3.0)

This mod's own village guard, with the player model. No other mod needed.

• Spawns in villages with living villagers: at least 2, one per 2 villagers, at most 8. Fallen guards are replaced one at a time. Works in vanilla villages, player-built villages (a bell and villagers are enough) and villages from structure mods. Abandoned villages get none until they are cured.
• Patrols between the villagers' workstations and never strays more than 128 blocks from the bell. Lost or stuck guards find their way back, or are brought back to the bell.
• Comes armed: a random TaCZ gun, ammo and food in his pouch. With Iron's Spells, some spawn as battle mages.
• His own window: right-click him for armor, hands, an 18-slot pouch and his name. You need Friendly reputation with the villagers or the Hero of the Village effect. Guards that are angry with you won't let you.
• Recruit him: with Hero of the Village and Friendly reputation, his window shows Recruit. He leaves the village and you get a mercenary contract with exactly him: gear, pouch and name. Costs a little reputation, one per village per hour, and the village gets a new guard after a while.
• Skins: drop 64x64 player skins into config/taczarmedmobs/skins/ (..._slim.png for slim arms). Every guard picks one and keeps it. F3+T reloads them.
• Spawn egg in the creative tab, or /summon taczarmedmobs:guard.
• Everything is configurable under [armed_guard]: combat, diplomacy, pouch, resupply, villages, who may open his window, recruiting.

Using Guard Villagers too? Both mods put guards into new villages. A one-time menu lets you keep both, let Armed Guards only fill the gap, or keep only one kind. On a server, admins get a chat note instead.

Features

Weapons

• Works with any gunpack. Guns are picked at runtime from TaCZ's own gun index. Install a new gunpack and mobs will use it automatically. No ID lists, no datapacks.
• Matching ammo in the off hand, sensible fire mode (full auto > burst > semi).
• Filters: allowed weapon types, whitelist and blacklist by gun ID, whole gunpack or sub folder.

Tactical AI

• Mobs aim, shoot, reload with real magazines and cycle bolt-action rifles. Bows and other inventory-fed weapons work too.
• Combat profiles per weapon type:
  • Snipers hang back.
  • Shotguns and pistols push in.
  • Heavy weapons move slowly.
  • Single guns can be moved to another profile.
• Distance keeping: too far, they close in. Too close, they back off while shooting, also while reloading.
• Smart fire: realistic bursts and rates of fire instead of emptying the magazine in a second.
• Melee weapons and explosive weapons are detected automatically and handled sensibly.
• Configurable spread and headshot chance. No aimbot guards.
• Friendly-fire protection before every shot: guards won't shoot through villagers or players, monsters won't shoot through other monsters.
• Suppressive fire: machine gun hits briefly slow the target.
• Endermen dodge bullets, so armed mobs don't waste their ammo on them.

Diplomacy

• Warnings: guards warn you before opening fire. Put your weapon away and they stand down.
• Strikes: an accidental hit gets a warning. Hit them again and you're an aggressor, no more warnings.
• White flag: hold white wool or a white banner and guards hold their fire. Betray it and they won't trust it for a while.
• Disguise: hold or wear an ominous banner and illagers take you for one of their own. Armed guards, however, will shoot you on sight.
• Guards talk to you in chat.

Guard pouch

• Armed guards carry a pouch with reserve ammo and food.
• Armed Guard: right-click him. Guard Villagers guards: sneak + right-click (same permissions as their inventory).
• Guards eat from the pouch when hurt and out of combat. The pouch drops on death.

Resupply

• Armed mobs slowly receive new ammo inside villages, pillager outposts, woodland mansions or near village bells.
• Guards fetch their own ammo: low on ammo, they walk to the nearest bell, restock and return to their post. Out of ammo mid-fight, they fall back to restock and rejoin.

Faction Wars (on by default since 2.11)

Don't want it? Switch it off with [faction_wars] enabled = false and the mod behaves like a pure gun mod.

Factions

• 15 factions in 5 families: Villagers, Illagers, Undead, Piglins and Wither, each with two sub-factions. With Iron's Spells, three mage factions join (see below).
• Every faction has its own alliances, grudges and arch enemies.
• Faction mobs fight each other in the open world too: zombies against pillagers, piglins against wither skeletons.
• The Villagers fight with Armed Guards, or with Guard Villagers guards if that mod is installed.
• Everything is defined in factions.json: add mobs from other mods, change relations, create your own factions.

Events around you

• Battles between hostile factions. You're a spectator until you pick a side.
• Hunts and ambushes by factions that don't like you.
• Sieges of your base, in waves:
  • A commander to protect.
  • A leader with an escort.
  • Engineers who dig, build ladders and blow their way in.
• Never inside your base (/base set or FTB Chunks claims).
• Adaptive: your Gear Score (shown in the inventory) scales event size and difficulty, so new players get small fights and veterans get wars.

Caravans

• Traders with guards and pack animals, a separate caravan for every faction. Some travel only at night as smugglers.
• Escort them for a reward chest, or raid them. Raids come in waves, and before each one you pick a side in the chat.
• Trade with them: a TaCZ pistol, a matching extended magazine, ammo, faction specialties and mercenary contracts.
• If the trader dies, the pack animals drop their cargo.

Reputation

• Every faction has an opinion of you, from Hated to Allied, shown above the Gear Score in the inventory.
• Hostile factions attack you on sight, refuse to trade and hunt you more often.
• Friendly ones give discounts and mercenaries.
• Allied ones send help in sieges.
• White flag in events: surrender to get out of any fight, at a price.
• Wanted poster: call a fixer and buy your reputation back.

Mercenaries

• Hire soldiers of any faction that likes you with mercenary contracts, up to 15 per player.
• Recruit Armed Guards straight from their village (see above).
• Your own mercenary window: gear, ammo pouch, name and orders.
• Orders:
  • Follow, even through portals.
  • Wait.
  • Guard an area.
  • Work.
• Work:
  • Farming: harvest and replant.
  • Animals: breed up to a target and slaughter the surplus.
  • Crafting: up to 9 recipes at crafting tables and TaCZ gunsmith tables, with stock targets and up to 5 barrels.
• Schedules: day shift, night shift or always. Off duty they sleep in a bed.
• They fetch ammo from your chests. Death is final.

Player factions (new in 2.12)

• Found your own team with /faction create <name>, invite friends with /faction invite. Set a name and color.
• With FTB Teams installed, your FTB party is your faction (manage it with /ftbteams).
• Shared reputation per team and faction. Your own reputation is kept and comes back when you leave.
• Shared bases: a siege hits the whole team, only one at a time per team. Events get weaker when your group shrinks.
• No friendly fire between team members.
• Mercenaries protect the whole team. Teammates can give orders, but only the owner can make them follow.
• Name tags show Name | Team, and the reputation tooltip shows your team.

Iron's Spells (new in 2.13, optional)

Only active when Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks is installed. Without it nothing changes.

Spell AI

• Any guard, mercenary or event mob with a spellbook, scroll or spell weapon in its hands and no gun in its main hand casts its spells.
• Order: heal or shield itself when low, heal hurt allies, protect itself when pressed, then attack.
• Mana from Iron's attributes: mage armor gives more. Out of mana, mages back off and recover. Spells use Iron's own cooldowns.
• No friendly fire: no attack spell through allies or next to them.
• Mages raise their arms like an Evoker while casting, with particles in the color of the spell school.

Battle mages

• 10% of guards (Armed Guards and Guard Villagers guards) spawn with a staff and a spellbook instead of a gun.
• Give a mercenary your own spellbook (off hand) and it casts your spells. Its window shows its mana.

Mage factions

• Solaryn, keepers of light: holy and nature magic, priests and battle mages. Allies of the villagers.
• Nytheris, children of shadow: blood, eldritch, ender and evocation. Necromancers, cultists, archevokers. Allies of the undead.
• Drakaryn, heirs of the elements: fire, ice and lightning. Pyromancers, cryomancers and battle mages.
• Solaryn and Nytheris are arch enemies. Magehunters fight for the Illagers and hunt all mages.
• Sieges, battles, mercenary contracts and reputation work like for every other faction.

Summons

• Your summoned skeletons, zombies, vexes and polar bears count as yours: guards and allies leave them alone, their kills count for your reputation.
• A Necromancer's summons fight for its faction.

Everything is configurable under [iron_spells] in common.toml: chances, spell filters (whitelist, blacklist, schools, max level), mana, AI distances and visuals.

Dependencies

Guard Villagers is optional since 3.0. Without it, the Armed Guard takes over its role everywhere: villages, Faction Wars, caravans and mercenary contracts. Old contracts keep working. Removing Guard Villagers from an existing world removes its guards from that world.

Guard Villagers TACZ Support is not needed. This mod has its own AI. If you prefer that mod's AI, set [ai] enabled = false. Never run both AIs at the same time.

Tested gunpacks

Works out of the box with every gunpack tested so far, no configuration needed:

• TaCZ Default Gunpack
• Perseus Gun Pack
• Create Armorer
• Cyber Armorer
• Applied Armorer
• Immersive Armorer
• Ars Armorer (needs more testing)
• Helldivers 2 Gunpack
• TTI Gunpack
• MS-Mobius Gunpack
• TRIS-dyna Gunpack
• EOS - Dawn Goddess Lab
• Destiny Gun Pack

Important for 1.21.1: Most gunpacks were made for Minecraft 1.20.1. On Forge 1.20.1 they work directly. To use them on 1.21.1 you need TaCZ Pack Upgrader (also built into Gunsmith Lib). This is a TaCZ requirement, not one of this mod.

Using a gunpack that isn't listed? It will most likely work anyway. If something behaves oddly, let me know in the comments!

Configuration

All files live in config/taczarmedmobs/. Most changes apply on the next spawn. On NeoForge 1.21.1 you can also edit them in-game (Mods > TaCZ Armed Mobs > Config). Forge 1.20.1 has no in-game config screen, edit the files instead.

Main sections in common.toml

Updating from 2.x: the guard settings moved. Everything for Guard Villagers guards (spread, warnings, pouch, resupply) is now under [guards], and [resupply] only covers extra mobs. Your old values are moved over automatically on the first start.

How weapon filtering works

Every time a mob spawns, each loaded gun goes through three filters in this order:

1. Whitelist: If empty, every gun passes. If not empty, only matching guns pass.
2. Blacklist: Matching guns are removed, even if whitelisted.
3. Allowed types: Only guns with a listed type remain, whitelisted guns included.

Entries can be a single gun ("tacz:ak47"), a whole gunpack ("create_armorer:*") or a sub folder ("destiny:sword/*").

whitelist = ["create_armorer:*"]

whitelist = ["destiny:*"]
blacklist = ["destiny:sword/*"]

Enabling heavy weapons

Launchers, cannons and similar weapons use the type rpg ("Heavy Weapon" in the creative menu). They are disabled by default. To enable them, add rpg to the allowed types:

[weapons]
    allowed_types = ["pistol", "smg", "rifle", "shotgun", "sniper", "mg", "rpg"]

Heavy weapons use the heavy profile: longer range, slower movement, and an automatic safety distance so mobs never fire explosives at targets close enough to hurt themselves. Melee weapons that gunpacks file under the same tab (e.g. swords) are detected automatically and charge in instead.

Before you enable them:

• Explosions may damage your village. Whether explosions destroy blocks is decided by the weapon and TaCZ's own config, not by this mod.
• Zombies and pillagers can get them too, since allowed_types applies to all mobs.
• Only want launchers, no melee weapons? Blacklist the melee weapons, for example:

  blacklist = ["destiny:sword/*", "create_armorer:special_melee_wrench"]

Common pitfalls

• Whitelisted gun never shows up? Check its type. Launchers, cannons and some melee weapons use rpg ("Heavy Weapon" in the creative menu), which is excluded by default.
• All guards suddenly have swords? Usually a typo in the whitelist.
• Guns that fire from the inventory (e.g. bows) or use fuel are not handed out on spawn while this mod's AI is active. Inventory-fed guns still work when you give them to a guard yourself, fuel-based ones don't.

Customizing factions

All factions live in config/taczarmedmobs/factions.json. After editing, run /taczarmedmobs war reload (no restart needed) and check the chat or log for warnings. /taczarmedmobs war factions lists what was loaded.

Add a mob from another mod to an existing faction: put it into that faction's members. A single mob always wins over a tag, so this also moves a mob out of another faction.

"undead": {
  ...
  "members": [
    {"entity": "minecraft:zombie", "spawn_weight": 10},
    {"entity": "examplemod:ghoul", "spawn_weight": 3}
  ]
}

Change relations: enemies and allies are always mutual, so one side is enough.

"piglins": {
  ...
  "allied_with": ["illagers"]
}

Create your own faction: add a new entry under factions. This one turns the drowned into their own faction:

"deep_ones": {
  "name": "Deep Ones",
  "color": "#2E8B8B",
  "build_block": "minecraft:prismarine",
  "hostile_to": ["villagers", "illagers"],
  "members": [
    {"entity": "minecraft:drowned", "spawn_weight": 10}
  ]
}

The file itself also contains a short explanation of every key. Mobs from mods that aren't installed are skipped silently, so one file can be shared between modpacks. Only unknown mobs of installed mods give a warning. New factions only send caravans if they also get an entry in [faction_wars.caravan] types.

Version differences

Both versions are built from the same code and get the same updates. Differences on Forge 1.20.1:

• Ammo stacks max out at 64.
• No Mace support (the Mace doesn't exist in 1.20.1).
• No in-game config screen. Use the files in config/taczarmedmobs/.
• FTB Chunks claims haven't been tested on 1.20.1 yet. If its API doesn't match, claims are simply ignored and the log says so.

Debugging

Something not working as expected? These commands are for ops:

• /taczarmedmobs debug: stand next to a guard (Armed Guard or Guard Villagers). It lists every condition for the AI, ammo, profile, target and resupply with a green YES or red NO. The first red line is usually the reason.
• /taczarmedmobs war inspect: look at a faction mob to see its faction, relations and target.
• /taczarmedmobs event status: event timers and cooldowns.
• /taczarmedmobs merc debug: what the nearest mercenary is doing and why.

Please include the output in bug reports!

Notes

• Only newly spawned mobs are affected. Existing mobs keep their equipment.
• Guard Villagers guards never attack players with Hero of the Village or the guard's owner, even if they're disguised.
• If another mod already arms pillagers or zombies, remove them from entities or add them to ai_excluded.
• Faction Wars events need difficulty Easy or higher. On Peaceful, hostile event mobs can't spawn.

FAQ

Events don't happen. Check that Faction Wars is on, that you're outside your base, and that the difficulty isn't Peaceful. /taczarmedmobs event status shows when the next check is due.

My villages have two kinds of guards. Guard Villagers is installed too. Pick what you want in the menu that shows up once, or set [armed_guard.village] count_guard_villagers_guards = true (Armed Guards only fill the gap).

I can't open an Armed Guard. You need Friendly reputation with the villagers or the Hero of the Village effect. Admins can change this with [armed_guard] inventory_access.

Guns show as a pink/black texture (1.21.1). That's a gunpack loading issue, not this mod. Older 1.20.1 gunpacks have to be converted by TaCZ Pack Upgrader (also built into Gunsmith Lib), and that conversion can fail if Windows locks a file. Close the game, delete the .gunsmithlib folder in your instance (if you use Gunsmith Lib) and restart.

Which file do I need? Files ending in +1.21.1-neoforge are for NeoForge 1.21.1, files ending in +1.20.1-forge for Forge 1.20.1.

Can I use this in my modpack? Yes.

Roadmap & ideas

This mod is actively developed. Here's what's on the table. Nothing is promised, but it gives you an idea where things are heading:

• Custom models for the Armed Guard: Blockbench/Bedrock models, and Yes Steve Model support once its new API allows it
• Team diplomacy: war, peace and alliances between player factions, with a warning period before a war starts
• Swear allegiance: join an NPC faction at Allied. Its mobs fight with you, its enemies hunt you
• Point Blank support: mobs armed with Point Blank guns as well as TaCZ
• More mercenary work: lumberjack, smelting, shearing and milking
• Smarter targeting: guards prioritize dangerous enemies like ravagers over stragglers
• More magic: Apothecarist, mage caravans with scrolls and ink, spell loot

What would you like to see? Got an idea for a feature, a gunpack that doesn't work right, or a mob you'd like to arm? Leave a comment! Suggestions really do end up on this list.

Credits

Friendly-fire and repositioning logic inspired by Guard Villagers TACZ Support by denialpan (MIT). Works with Guard Villagers by tallestegg.