Footman [First Responder] Ability Change

Problem:

The knight is supposed to be the class tanking all the hits and being in the middle of the enemy mob. But thanks to the skill “First Responder” it happens very often that my bad armored footman are the first ones who engage in battle and therefore they tend to tank quite alot of damage until my knights have arrived. This shouldn’t be the case in my opinion. And to avoid this, the player has to do alot of micromanagement (select footman, send them back etc. so that your knight engages first). To make it more simple, it would be better if the skill “First Responder” gets some kind of change. I have some solutions in mind, but ofc other opinions/ideas are also welcome!

Solutions:

  1. Skill doesn’t activate when a knight is close. This way, footman can still react fast if no knight is around but dont rush in when a knight is close.
  2. You implement formations that will not break until getting into melee range. So you can place your knights in the frontline, footmen in midline and archers in backline, preventing your footmen to rush blindly in the enemy mob.
  3. Knight gets the skill “First Responder” and Footmen get the skill “Inspiring Presence” (maybe rename it, because inspiring sounds more like a knight). This would be the easiest (simple switch of skills) and best solution, since the knight IS supposed to be the first in battle and this skill would assure that this happens most of the time.

I personaly think 3 would be good, becuase it requires less coding time and also makes more sense. It would be a simple balance change which makes combat (especially late game, when you have 10+ soldiers) less exhausting.

I’d suggest ditching first responder, giving archers’s armor penetration to footmen, giving knights an arrow-block skill, and giving archers a bigger range bonus from height.

Instead of armor penetrating skill, archers could also get armor penetrating arrows.

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Hrm. I kinda think the armor penetration itself is a problem for archers. It’s a big part of why Kobold archers shred footmen into mincemeat; anything that penetrates plate shreds chain. Maybe their base damage needs to be tweaked, or maybe chain needs a missile defense bonus…

By the way, no-one might care, but it is almost impossible to shoot through actual rivited mail armour with bow and arrow.

Hey ya’ll, nice thread, but it’s been started for a while.

Check over here for the first version… with any luck we can get a merge: Footman [First Responder] Ability Change

Relyss, any chance you could give us a hand with the merge please? Last I heard everybody’s favorite Omni-crab didn’t have that trick in his toolkit for some reason :stuck_out_tongue:

— EDIT: Oh snap! Three cheers for Omni-Crab! Thank you <3

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haha… i seem to still have it :wink: i’ve just been really busy as of late, so i haven’t had much time to check anything on the discourse other than my notifs…

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I still would like to see giving knights the first responder skill and footman the inspiring pressence skill. It makes sense that they are the first in battle and take all the aggro at the start of a fight and that footman provide good backup for knights.

Though taking it from a reality standpoint, plate armor would make it harder to be a first responder due to it’s weight. I also find plate armor more inspiring than lighter armors. Though the game doesn’t have to follow reality. :wink:

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Honestly, the first responder skill is pretty good if you want to catch those god-damn archers.

In a real fight, you would let the good armored soldiers (tanks) be the first ones in battle, so your footmen should stay behind the knights. You could argue that the knight isn’t moving faster, but everyone else slower. Gameplay wise it doesnt make sense that the class who is supposed to tank gets in last and has problem getting the aggro away from your footmen hearthlings.

About the inspiring pressence, you could rename it to something like “encouraging roar”. Same effect, different name. :slight_smile:

I’m not saying it is a bad skill, I just think it doesn’t work well with footmen, since they are to weak armored to be the first ones in battle.

No, in a real (medieval) fight, your knights would NEVER be the first ones to charge. People who charge first in a battle mostly get themselves killed, therefore mostly peasants and low-ranking badly equippe dsoldiers were sent in. The few people who could really afford good weaponry and armour were noblemen who would swoop in and trample down said peasants once they were fully engaged and tired.

Come on ya’ll, let’s take it down a notch. Stonehearth isn’t, and has never been, about realism. I appreciate the effort, but this is supposed to be a constructive thread that will encourage the developers to make changes, and when the ideas get too far off topic it stops being something we would want them to actually take into consideration.

@Reedo, hijacking my combat threads is getting a little tiresome. If you want to rail for different combat changes, you’re welcome to make a new thread instead.

Well then. Sorry for trying to drum up some conversation. :unamused: I shall just go back to my inactivity. :wave:

Stonehearth isn’t about medivial knights. I’m talking about game mechanics and in every game out there, the tank is the one who engages and takes the aggro/hits. I dont know why Stonehearth should change anything about the formula. In this game, you are not supposed to lose soldiers, since you can’t afford it, at least not in the early game. So we need mechanics that keeps our soldiers alive, or at least make it easier to do so. And the First Responder ability makes it harder and feels just wrong with the current combat update and its introduction of hardmode.

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Catching archers is its only real use though, and other archers do the same job better. A charge-animation attack might be a better alternative.

That said, “realism” isn’t necessary but it can provide good ideas for combat rebalancing and enhanced gameplay (see this thread for examples: My thoughts on adding depth and tactical decision making to combat)

Ahm, I never said Stonehaert should be like the actual medieval era. I just responeded to your previous post, where you suggested just that: “In a real fight, you would let the good armored soldiers (tanks) be the first ones in battle, so your footmen should stay behind the knights.” I was merely correcting that this was not exactly true.

Hi, I would like to propose that there is something not quite right with the Footmans speed perks. In my current A16 game I just lost 3 lvl6 footmen because they ran far ahead of the group into a new spawn of orcs and ogres while on the way to kill off some wolves. Since it was an easy fight I was busy someone else and not paying attention (my fault) and was surprised when the death popups appeared.

It seems that the speed perks allow the footmen to completely out distance the knights and clerics; dashing into combat and getting picked off.

I would suggest either allowing the knights to keep their speed perks after transitioning so they can keep the agro off the others, or changing the speed perk into something else now that the knights, clerics and archers have been added so they can arrive more together.

Thanks for reading.

Was already discussed in another thread. The suggestions are to remove the speed buff entirely or give the knights the speed buff and footman something else (would make sense, since knights are the tanks and should engage fights).

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Excellent, glad to hear I am not the only one thinking this. Tried searching for that other thread but couldn’t find it; if you have the link please post it, I would like to read the discussion.

As a side note though, I think the knight should also have a rework to their perks. Having class only armour and then having class buffs to that armour makes no sense. Would be better to just buff the armour to include the perk buffs and then give the knights more combat orientated perks.