An Ideal Stonehearth

Suggestions
1

Hi everyone!

I’ve been a long time Stonehearth fan but I’ve never actually made an account, I was just happy watching :slight_smile:

However, the last twitch stream @sdee asked an interesting question: what would your ideal Stonehearth be? And I really wanted to answer it (I can’t make it for the live streams unfortunately). And since I haven’t seen a post about it, I thought I’d make one :slight_smile:

I love this game and the ideas behind it. My ideal Stonehearth would be one that balances customizing, combat, exploration, liveliness and tons of in game content. But I’ll break it down in more detail:

Customizing

  • I would love to see Stonehearth have lots of customization options. Right now there’s a very linear upgrade system for armour and equipment and a lot is left to the community to mod in but I would love the end game to have a big list of clothing, armour and weapon options from Radiant themselves just because their vision of the game’s art style is more in line with the game world’s art style. Rather than just one type of iron armour, have 2 or 3 iron armour. Have lots of options to make your people look like their own people!

  • I would love the ability to even dye clothing and armour. You could create your own personalized military for your own personalized kingdom!

  • I would love a really deep crafting system with a huge crafting tree of equipment and weapons that continue to surprise you from early game to mid game to late game, especially as your blacksmith levels up.

  • Custom buildings are very cool but I would still like to see options for filling up the house with knick knacks to really spruce places up. Not just desks and chairs and barrels and rugs but brooms and bookshelves and all those things that make houses feel like homes!

Combat

  • Combat is really shaping up great but I would love to see a more interesting system in the game. Like, for example, rather than just having to place markers down, your units battle on their own and they each have two thought bubbles that appear over their heads after a certain amount of time with different decisions their AI is about to make. Either a knife for backstab or sword for big smash or a shield for defend or hands holding to help an ally, but big icons that show options. And you can click on the option you want them to do (if you don’t click in time, they pick themselves). Something like this would make combat feel more alive and fun.

  • Plus, seeing as how the player is kind of a God character, hearthlings with low faith wouldn’t listen to your suggestions while those with more will obey your divine intervention :smiley: And hey, to add to that, building a church in town could up everyone’s faith! Just more fun systems like that!

  • I would love for combat animations to be a little faster and enemies to have more interesting animations than headbutts and weapon thwacks :slight_smile:

  • I would also love to see more rare attacks like a dashing strike for footmen or tackles for knights

  • Something like formations would be great so you can select formations for a Knight and a Archer so the knight will stand in front of the archer and defend or a surrounding formation for footmen who will surround an enemy before hacking away or a Knight Wall formation where knights line up in a circle to protect someone inside like a cleric or archer or civilians!

Exploration

  • I don’t know what Radiant has planned but I would love to see randomized dungeons that show up randomly in the world for a short time and you have to get to it to access a dungeon with a few floors and boss/treasure at the bottom.

  • Or just the option to create a crew of travellers and leave your map temporarily (where everything you’re working on freezes) and you can go travelling to a different map to just explore for resources and set up camp at nights and little fires and maybe visit randomly generated towns where you can trade or buy or just look around or maybe try and attack or even stumble across goblin camps and orc towns!! And after a long journey out, come travelling back to your map where home then continues and you have new things to share and people to mourn and celebrate!

  • I would love for more naval options! Like being able to build a boat or even a ship and go exploring new maps that way (by touching the edge of the map and a load screen?)

Livliness

  • This is hard to explain but I mean making a town that really feels alive than just modelling buildings and crafting resources. I know there’s plans to have hearthlings interact and chat but I’d like to go more than that and have little hobby animations. Like if it’s raining, then the farmer doesn’t need to water crops and on his day off just sleeps or wanders around or paints his home or plays with the dog or goes fishing.

  • The thought bubble thing I was talking about earlier could extend here too with Earthlings trying to decide what they want to do and you can click one of two bubbles to influence their decision. Or even two hearthlings who stop working when they walk past each other to chat and the bubble pops up for you to get them going or let them chat (letting them chat makes them happier but gets less done). I really like the random thought bubble idea the more I talk about it now!

  • I would like more story content, that things happen as the months go by and slowly you learn more about the world and where you are! Maybe find books and buy them from travellers to start a library!

  • And Libraries! And Churches! Having reasons to build important buildings rather than just making them for looks. Like how characters level up their professions, once a building has a sign post stamped on, it becomes that building and you can level it up by filling it with things. A levelled up church means hearthlings obey your thought bubble suggestions more, a levelled up bar means more recipes! A levelled up inn means more travellers and a levelled up barracks means soldiers who sleep there get better boosts and buffs!

Tons of In Game Content

  • I would love for there to be tons of options in getting money and happiness and new hearthlings. Has anyone played Stardew Valley? That game has content! Having options to plant various vegetables, trills and fruit trees per season and wait for them to grow and planning your seeds carefully cause you only have so much time per season and longer growing vegs/fruits give better sale price and recipes and happiness boosts.

  • Fishing requiring different crafted rods and baits to catch different fish and 20 different kinds of fish in the game not to mention the ability to catch the odd treasure or ancient book or recipe!

  • Or having a farmer who’s job it is to how the ground, plant crops and water them every day and one farmer can only handle like 30 crops a day to water and harvest so you can boost that by building a well nearby so he doesn’t have to go very far to get water, or putting up a scarecrow so he doesn’t have to keep checking on his harvest to make sure birds haven’t eaten the seeds, or having two farmers if you want twice the agriculture area and more crop based economy. Plus being able to use different cartable fertilizer that gives boosts to veg/fruit grow speed and size! Or make even being able to add sprinklers or water tunnelling systems so the farmer doesn’t have to water crops anymore and can plot a different area! Lots of options and content! Simple but easy and fun!

  • A whole animal farming system similar to above but with animals instead! A Shepherd not only milks and sheers them but can also use craftable goods to upgrade the progress! Better petting brushes means happier cows means better quality milk! Better seeds for chickens means happier chickens means more eggs! Etc etc :slight_smile:

  • I really loved the original idea of having these standard characters who were end game classes! Like the Magma smith was this really huge guy who looked the same for everyone’s game. It’s a shame Tom decided to change it because I liked the idea he could just tuck himself in uncomfortably to get through doors but it would be so cool to have a vibrant town of different clothing and hairdo’s and you could right away tell who the legendary tall, fat guy was. Made things feel more vibrant!

I haven’t touched on Mining and Military and other stuff cause this post is already so big.

I hope a lot of this doesn’t come across as criticisms! I really love this game and I really want it to be successful. But since @sdee asked, this would be my ideal Stonehearth! A huge, fun, bright game with lots of options and content and fun systems and depth. I would play it for ages and would never know when to keep playing my same old big town or start a new one all over again!

What do you guys think and what would you like to see and what do you think of my ideas! :smile:

2 Likes
2

dwarf fortress with 3d graphics :stuck_out_tongue:

More seriously, I think it still needs the rest of the kickstarter promises – especially engineers, traps, and flowing water. I’d like to see seige engines and similar features.

I’d like a lot more RTS elements than currently exist in the game, especially truly large-scale attacks and endgame content. Combat as it is now is a good first pass but it needs another pass or two to really get nailed down. Knockout state, real choice of weapons with tactical differences between weapons chosen (reach, damage, penetration, knockback).

I’d like to see flying enemies – dragons, etc.

I’d like to see a lot more emergent gameplay and interactivity between game elements. Food doesn’t impact happiness enough; happiness doesn’t really have to be managed; constructions can’t collapse; there’s no ecology (nothing grows back; there’s no downside to clear-cutting).

I’d like a wider roster of events – weather, disease, disasters, etc. Internal fort elections based on the most popular hearthling. Hearthling likes, dislikes, tantrums.

I’d like a wider range of hearthling personalities and more Sims-like personality variability between hearthlings; there’s no happiness subgame right now.

4 Likes
3

Just a few points I’d like to add. Firstly, unfortunately I personally asked Tom on one of the streams if he is planning to make a ton of items. He said he would much rather leave it to the modding community, so unless he changed his mind I dont think we’ll see too much item variety. Dyeing items (clothes in particular) is a great idea, really cool for people attached to details and good way to make your game last longer (also to give more work to weaver). I agree that fighting animations could use some diversity, but its not a priority by any means. Same with formations (and i am not sure if we’ll ever see armies big enough that they’d need formations). I can happily say that there is much more dungeons and events being planned, and map is going to be much bigger, with different planes and biomes on it. Water is not being planned however, unless something big happens. Idle Hearthlings are going to go do some things like fishing, or at least this is something Tom thought was really cool. Lastly, I dont really like this “bubble thought” idea of yours. With all respect, this does not fit the game at all. Hearthlings are supposed to think for themselves, much like in DF or Gnomoria, thats why you dont control them at will (excluding military forces).

1 Like
4

I agree with all you said. The thoguht bubbles don’t strike me as great either and i just read somewhere that hearthlings will keep auto-equipping stuff so colour variations could only be random, as you don’t get to choose what your guys wear anyways.

1 Like
5

Ah thanks for the information and addressing my points! :smile:

Sure maybe a lot of my suggestions are not practical but that’s the ideal Stonehearth I’d like to see! And I totally get the thought bubble idea getting in the way of the game but I like the idea that this could open up combat. For example, you level up your archer to get new abilities and then in combat, the archers fight for themselves and make all their own decisions, but occasionally two bubbles pop up with a special attack in each (they decide which bubbles two bubbles come up) and you just select one to activate it. This gives room for their personality to decide what to choose between and you the option to be more involved. An archer could have a knockdown snipe arrow you could aim or the footman a dash attack that cuts through multiple enemies or a knight who has a counter stance where he holds a pose for some seconds and if someone attacks, they get counter critical-striked.

And hey, if you didn’t want the bubble “influence” you could always raise an atheist society :wink:

But I understand if you don’t agree! Thanks for the thoughtful reply nonetheless.

6

Hmmm, that’s a shame to hear that everything will remain rather sterile in that way, where the AI just allocates efficiency over player preference. Ah well…

7

All I can say to you is if you like this game, keep posting your ideas and thoughts, these devs are really awesome if it comes to listening to us. If you make a really valid point, you can be sure they’ll consider it thoughtfully.

3 Likes
8

I don’t know how far you are into the game, but later on combat gets pretty micro-management heavy anyways, so I don’t think we need extra button mashing during combats. Also this seems like a very childish feature (i know stonehearth is also for children, but anyways)

9

What do you mean by “water is not being planned”?

“more realistic rivers and lakes” is still on the Trello board right now as we speak

10

I meant boats and traveling on water :slight_smile:

1 Like
11

oh ok whew

because flowing water and water sources is something that I think the game really needs if it’s going to replicate the dwarf fortress emergent-gameplay experience. Water traps, moats, etc.

1 Like