it's essentially kits, but the game has saveloadout, deployloadout, and deployloadoutinrange. would it be possible to use deployloudout on one npc, or several.. like all tunnel dwellers, or maybe one npc mission providor in a save zone?

I have seen a similar sort of request before, where some body wanted to customize the outfit of existing NPCs. The issue is, that's not really an add-on. It's more of an alteration of existing NPCs or existing Spawn Points/Groups, so it falls a bit outside the current scope of the plugin, and will introduce new complexity for the plugin to manage adding and removing these alterations. I will consider it, but I will be more likely first add the ability to set the outfit of NPCs spawned by the plugin itself.

I'm not sure what those commands do, but I assume there would be no advantage to trying to reuse what the game has provided, but I will look into it.

sure, just something I'm throwing out there. every wipe I go up to a NPC and use deployloadoutinrange. And I figure it could be something easily handled by this plugin. your input and incite on this forum is incredible. you spend so much time just elucidating things to people it blows my mind, only because I know its probably not even really valued. :(