Loved watching this the first time I did it in my game! I smiled like a little boy who just destroyed his lego house he had been working on…or that some one kid was working on…whatever it went KABLOOIE and it was awesome!
I do like the idea of having a class do this. Like the engineer has the ability to make houses go boom…makes sense to me!
This makes building placement part of strategy too and keeps people from just placing, destroying, replacing, destroying, etc. shrugs idk…LOVE IT though!
Holy Cidflakes! ™
That is fantastic. Nice work, guys and gals!
I love that this now opens the door for monsters to break out stuff. Just awesome.
As we go into A19 planning, we have some questions for you. Aside from the usual big items (Mac, PC, Multiplayer), what could we add to Stonehearth that would most improve your enjoyment of the game? Let us know!
To be honest, I’m so distracted today with how bogged down the AI gets in the late game (idleness, weird pathing problems, etc), that I have a hard time focusing on new features and functionality that might further enhance gameplay.
But… as I sit here typing, these things come to mind:
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Mining:
** Improved digging capabilities like a stair tool for mining that allows for upward digging.
** Procedurally generated caverns to discover, uncommon/rare loot, rare mining ores/gems and game uses for those items (socketable items, fancy late game capabilities etc). -
Procedural ruins to discover/explore/loot.
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Water
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Weather
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Docile but Agro-able wildlife
** Defense of the young when you get too close
** Defense of home territory (think critters living in ruins, etc) -
Evolving flora and fauna so the region changes organically as it ages.
As we go into A19 planning, we have some questions for you. Aside from the usual big items (Mac, PC, Multiplayer), what could we add to Stonehearth that would most improve your enjoyment of the game? Let us know!
A couple of random things…
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Explosives → explosive goblins!
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Pigs and cows and goats!
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Board games for idling hearthlings to play
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Drinks and booze and a brewer class to make use of the lovely tavern blueprints
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Wizards!
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Trees regrowing over time
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Imported exotic goods, such as cocoa, coffee, etc.
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More lore
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More variety to hostile creatures
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CHIMNEYS!!! OMG YES!
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An in-game version of that wombat that was shown in stream #200, preferably wearable upon the head by hearthlings
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Ancient treasures hidden underground “The treasure marks the X on the map”
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We should have random visitors occasionally crossing our town, staying a couple days (eg. in taverns). They don’t need to have a purpose, they wouldn’t bring epic goods from distant lands, they wouldn’t bring menacing news from the the mighty wizard. They would be just critters. Weary travelers who’d like to stay a day or two.
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Hearthlings should be able to pick close friends, and they would spend an increased amount of time close to those folks
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The ability to steal the goblins’ neat green fire
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Less high-tech auto-turrets made by engineers and more not as advanced stuff like hearthling-handled cannons and stuff
Keep in mind that the above things are just random ideas that crossed my mind in the course of a few minutes. 
what could we add to Stonehearth that would most improve your enjoyment of the game? Let us know!
I think that it would be nice to see rivers, wells and irrigation for farming in the game. Currently farming and water are relatively simple compared to the rest of the game - you just drag out farms and wait for the crops to grow, and as for water, we only have lakes at the moment. If irrigation pipes and wells were added (as seen in the Kickstarter concept art), as well as rivers, both these systems would be made dramatically more exciting.
Combat, building, and crafting have been improved a lot recently so they are not as much of a priority for me. The combat in particular is currently a lot of fun 
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Edit: By the way, I hadn’t played the game for a while (just under a year) until recently, but when I did play I was amazed at the progress. As well as the main features, there are so many little “nice touches” which make the game very appealing.
This update is absolutely amazing 
Destruction : epic
@Mindemann, thank you for the continued use of your Giant Castle Template. One day… it will build!
“In a future alpha, we may also consider making this kind of speedy building removal the function of a higher level class: smaller, earlier structures would still have to be removed by hand. What do you think?”
This sounds like it’d help alleviate the “hearthling in building” problem, and since you won’t really want rapid deconstruction until the mid-late-game (when you want to clear up rubbish starting structures for nicer, newer real-estate), it makes sense to save it for later. It also encourages players to “live with their choices” a bit.
Say you give it in the form of an item: an Explosive. You give the order to prepare the building in the Building Editor, hearthlings place the item, hearthlings have plenty of time to evacuate, and when everyone’s out you get a “Building ready to demolish!” popup, which takes you to the building editor for the final countdown. Press a button, and BOOM! It’d also be a nice build-up and reward bit.
However, what I’m MOST excited about is enemies being able to demolish buildings! Titans are a given, but who knows - maybe we could get slightly smaller, earlier threats like Goblin bombers, or unattended Ogres/larger Elementals attacking buildings for a prolonged period until their “health” reaches 0 and it all crashes down. More threats beyond “Kill your hearthlings” is just what the game needs for a bit of spice.
More importantly, enemies being able to properly demolish buildings helps solve one of the biggest problems of this genre - perfectly engineered defenses. So many games, from Dwarf Fortress to Minecraft, allow players to become unassailable by exploiting the terrain. If that’s meant to be a later-game option with the Geomancer/Magma Smith, so be it, but having it available on Day 1 can pull the risk out from under you very quickly.
That was a nice one, especially seeing that castle dismantle as it leveled to the ground…
As to the bit about what would improve enjoyment…
The usual adding more aesthetics in vanilla game play for building. Namely distinguishing between the factions you can play, as well variants of objects/furniture that would fit with each faction. Is there a clay bench?
Beyond that I would say improvement on mining, so one could technically mine upward; even if it is done in a similar way to how castle story does it with marking a path to be dug.
Same premises as above, being able to build walls in those tunnels from floor to ceiling; which would mean practically making so hearthings could place blocks at eye level and 1 block above them. Something like that…
Of course more color options when it comes to walls and floors; I just love making my own wall & floor patterns with slabs. I can already do this with floor, even if a long task to do by placing the slab first and then going back over with floor. I make a lot of raised housing. Would be nice to have such functionality with the walls in a way though, but unsure if that would be possible with the way it works. That last bit I know would be a tricky one.
More hearthling interactions. This one should be obvious, and probably something later down the line once the AI has improved enough to handle the pathing and the like in tasks. You know, just think… Hmm… best example I could give is a recent post someone put up in suggestions to have something similar to what rim world does that seems sims like. Creating a more atmospheric village in the end. 
That is all I could think of off hand, even though I do enjoy watching them build all too often what I design. 
from just the still image, I tot kablooie is some mega-monster and it was tearing up a house… 
EDIT: ok, it could be because of the games I played before… but when I understood the situation (demolishing building) fully, the first self response I got was:
- Do the dropping stuff do damage. How much. what is the “function”.
- Can I now use “buildings” which are demolished as weapons/traps.
- How can I fit a building designed to collapse to cause maximum damage into the area just outside the entrance to my village.
“emergent reasoning”? 
I think having hearthlings tear town small buildings early game is a great idea (maybe put a cap on the size that they can tear down manually to like template size buildings) and in the late game a class that can easily destroy buildings like this (like the castle and other big builds). Personally I would like the engineer to do it so that he would have more functionality and maybe he will learn some other explosives to make… my military desires cannons… Other than that I thought the update was great!
This destruction feels so great, and the reverse-of-building destruction so terrible, that I’d be reluctant to have the new destruction moved to a later game class.
Unless there could be something in the middle to start off with. Maybe Hearthlings could destroy a building one part at a time, needing just a bit of scaffolding to get to that part. So it takes more time and manual Hearthling work to destroy a building than a proper explosive demolition, but it doesn’t take as much time as building and still looks cool.
Please. We have a stair tool and mining, so it shouldn’t be that much of a leap from the current game. Though I imagine it would probably still be more work than it sounds.
I really want travelers, too. Though perhaps a bit more ambitious, eventually, at least.
Here’s my suggestion, for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.
I need this badly. But not right away.
Love watching my houses explode 
Water
- usable as resouce for drinking/brewing/watering crops
- rivers, sources, drains, rain
- fishing
Flora & Fauna
- plants spreading/growing
- animals spreading/growing/hunting/eating plants
Resource Colours
- use of colour swaps (similar to hair) on crafted objects crafted from different resources (wood from different trees looking different when used for a table)
- introduction of differnt types of stones (w. different colours)
while i love the idea, it does introduce problems,
such as the fact that we can’t control what resources our hearthlings use. so i might get 2 oak tables, 1 juniper table, and 1 pine table when tables are auto queued for my dining hall.
and if each resource had its own recipe, the recipe list could easily get overfilled, with the fact that there are already about 40 carpenter recipes…
then again, i’m really tired and haven’t had coffee yet, so maybe there’s a simple solution i missed…
while i love the idea, it does introduce problems,
such as the fact that we can’t control what resources our hearthlings use. so i might get 2 oak tables, 1 juniper table, and 1 pine table when tables are auto queued for my dining hall.
and if each resource had its own recipe, the recipe list could easily get overfilled, with the fact that there are already about 40 carpenter recipes…
then again, i’m really tired and haven’t had coffee yet, so maybe there’s a simple solution i missed…
No, you’re quite correct; the same problem exists in Dwarf Fortress, and is only permitted to exist because A) painstaking simulation and B) it lets you get neon-colored carpentry and masonry. The same end-goal of nicer colors can be implemented in much easier ways in Stonehearth.
That said, a second set of “tan” Masonry goods for Rayya’s Children masons would be nice…
p.s. +1 on Water demands. My hearthlings are thirsty.
I’m just used to this because of gnomoria, there you can let the gnomes decide which ressource to use if you don’t care about mixed tables or select it while giving the craft order by using a simple drop down
And of course, whater is much much more important
My suggestion for the next Alpha would also be something that I call the “more lively World” update.
First we definetly need more of those idle animations, I love them!
As others already suggested I would also really appreciate the idea of a bartender.
Random travelers could fill the gold stock by paying for a warm meal and a cozy bed in the INN.
Backpacker and trader groups that randomly visit the town would really increase the feeling of having a living and breathing settlement instead of an ant farm with pretty buildings
Maybe some of these travelers even want to stay in the town?
Some might be thieves, spys, murderers, (badly) disguised goblins…you never know who enters the gates.
Random events inside the woods would also be really cool.
A hunting group that needs one of your archers to hunt down a scary mountain lion?
A bear/boar mother with her cubs…
Leftovers of ancient civilizations you can mine down or include inside your settlement.
The ghost of an orc wo needs you to find his corpse in order to be able to leave the world.
There could be so much more to fill the empty spaces between the rocks und trees!
Also: We need gras! My hearthlings are tired of cleaning this giant green carpet every day!
thinking about it further, they could possibly make there be separate tabs for the different material types, something like this,
really rough concept to show the basic idea
but i’m not sure how well that fits with the rest of the game…
Mmm… delicious tabs.