So, I’ve noticed from a few videos that Hearthlings like to get stuck in places that require them to build a ladder. However, when the player is off designing buildings or commanding foot soldiers, etc., he/she isn’t noticing that the hearthlings down in his death pit are starving to death because he needed one more clay to build a small pot. Not only that, but the Trapped hearthlings can’t build a ladder out by themselves. That’s where my idea comes in.
Hearthlings should be given the ability to call for help, after which a non-trapped Hearthling(busy or idle) could bring wood and build a ladder to save his brethren. I think this would help ease the frustration of having trapped Hearthlings and not realizing it, until it was too late to save them. You could also tweak it so that it takes them awhile to call for help, just in case the player is paying attention if you wanted too. What do you guys think?
TL;DR, Trapped Hearthlings call for help, other Hearthlings come to get them out.
Although calling for help is a great suggestion and should be a notification like “XY got lost and can’t find a way back home”, I don’t think it’s a good idea to let them auto-build ladders to areas I don’t want them to open completely unnoticed. I know, at the moment the enemys are not a great deal most of the time but think about the backdoor your hearthlings could create with a simple ladder in the cnter of your town to another level of the map.
They would have to remove the ladder after freeing the lost Hearthling without trapping someone else but as soon as such a ladder has been built the pathfinder could finds objects to haul to your stockpile, some haulers could run to the objects while the ladder is removed, then calling for help, ladder is build, others want to pick up the objects and get trapped as the ladder is removed after the original trapped used it … and so on
Better just call for help, let the player decide how to rescue
Well my hearthlings, like a bunch of dimwits, have found a found to all get stuck in a building. So no one can help them. Maybe they should have the reflex of jumping down, with some loss health, but they won’t die of starvation.
