What you CAN do is give them move-orders away from the enemy. That should make them check for targets to heal.
lol, you think I didnât try that? Doesnât make a difference.
And that is why we need a heal button.
Congratulations, youâve brought my thread full circle.
@mods or whomever would be appropriate to page, I would have no issue if this got locked until the devs feel like they want to take a look at it. Weâve passed the point of producing valuable, constructive feedback.
i personally see no reason to lock this thread, but maybe the others willâŚ
also, for future reference, its actually @moderators not just @mods 
Thereâs actually a thing for it? I didnât know that, thank you⌠I meant â@modsâ to just get the point across, I didnât expect it to actually do something 
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Hey everyone, thanks for the feedback! Itâs really useful to us, because SH inherits different things from lots of different games. Which paradigm is/should win? I think thatâs still very much in flux.
Re: Cleric, the cleric actually has an invisible cooldown on their directed healing spell. If healing is in cooldown, they attack, so they will be close to the front lines when their AOE healing goes off (thatâs a different ability) theyâll be right beside the person who is presumably most injured. They heal every single time they can, and they try to heal the most injured person. If you want to change their behavior, right now, youâre limited to pulling them away, so their AOE healing is more likely to catch say, an injured archer in the back ranks.
We should probably message this better, in addition to taking another look at their AI.
Re: Unit control, all I can really say about this is that our game is at an interesting intersection of games with no direct control, ever, at all, and RTS/RPGs. No matter which we pick, it feels like we must surprise someoneâs expectations, given the background they come from. Our job collectively, I think, is to pick the thing that makes the most sense (and this is open for debate) and then help everyone learn to use it.
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I just waiting for some RTS style quick select hotkeys for individual parties or unit types 
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I just waiting for some RTS style quick select hotkeys for individual parties or unit types
Given SHâs current keyboard layout (and the ability to customize in settings) which commands would you want and what keys would you bind them to by default?
You actually DO have the ability to self program tactics into your hearthlings. The game is infinitely moddable and you can use overrides and mixins to update parts of the logic how you please at any time. It just involves learning a little LUA and the basic game API/structure. Iâve done plenty of my own local mods to fix various niggling little things that the devs havenât come back to or rebalanced in various releases. How the clerics work right now is decidedly a little⌠crude, but I imagine that will get addressed in time by the devs. In the meantime, it could be a fun exploration to fiddle with their logic yourself. 
A stronger RTS player may have better suggestions, but I think at least having something like shift + 1 - 4 for party selection. Maybe having a button to âselect next military unitâ could be useful (similar to âselect next idle workerâ in Age of Empires). Iâll have to play a bit more to give better suggestions
Yeah, 1 to 4 sounds best. However, they are occupued by the time settingsâŚ
Therefore i suggest changing the time things to shift being pause and un-pause and +, - to change game speed.
Iâm sorry, but I think the Answer âjust make your own modâ is a horrible one. People expect to buy a game, not a skelleton of a game which they have to flesh out themselves and most people have absolutely no odeo hwo this would work. Early access exists to give feedback and by this mean change it, or influence development, not by actively developing yourself. So if you can mod, good for you, but act like modding is the answer to people suggesting changes to the game mechanics.
Clearly youâre unfamiliar with everything released by Bethesda Games in the last 10 years, and World of Warcraft, which both have such active modding communities that there is more modding than game present. Modding is definitely a valid option/path with Stonehearth and something that the devs have encouraged from early on. Finally, my comment is in direct response to this statement by the poster Iâm replying to: âwe should be able to self program tactics into the Hearthlingsâ - Modding offers exactly what the OP was asking for. You think my response was horrible, but I think itâs exactly the answer to the ask.
I have played elder scrolls, quite much so, skyrim is my most played game, also due to mods. BUT, when your answer had been, check out this and that mod, they do what you want to, thatâs one thing. Tellinh someone who probably has no idea where even to start, to modify the game himself is something very different.
Furthermore, as i pointed out before, this is EA and itâs made for making suggestions. As you can easily tell, i didnât agree with OPâs suggestion either, but I still think a plain âdo it yourselfâ is a bad answer.
Itâs also made for making mods. The devs want an active and healthy modding community that already has content and fun things to play with to keep the game fresh and new when it releases. Considering that it took me less than an hour to learn how the modding system works in SH and less than another hour to make my first basic mods, I donât think itâs really off-point to suggest looking into modding the game. The modding pages in the official SH wiki are very thorough and well-written already. If someone asks for âself-programmed logicâ then really the only option is modding - do you think the devs are going to provide an in-game logic programming system so users can write pseudo-code in the standard game UI?
White-knighting the OPâs intelligence on the assumption they are a moron who is incapable of modding doesnât really benefit anyone. They asked for self-programmed tactics - modding is how you do that. I will continue to stand by that until someone from Radiant definitively tells me otherwise.
Thank you for your feedback, and Iâm glad that this has been able to generate something relatively productive! From my gameplay experience I havenât been able to really see the cooldown on that heal in effect very much, it seems to me that the clerics are either spamming heals (as in, three heals in a row on different targets) or only attacking, and getting them to switch between the two is challenging. While this is certainly just subjective observation, if we did end up getting the ability to direct healing to different hearthlings, I donât see why that button couldnât have an indicator of the cooldown remaining or something, if you wanted to make it clear that it was a mechanic in the game.
With regards to control, a couple things spring to mind. Button mapping is something I imagine most people would really enjoy, as it would take a lot of pressure out of having the ârightâ default keybinds for the game; if it doesnât work for someone, then they can fix it. That being said, the ability to drag out a zone over units, like in a traditional RTS, that only selects combat units (or provides preference for them) would be fantastic. Because I canât put one hearthling into two different parties, this would make the process of redirecting the attention of all my archers or footmen much less tedious, as currently I have to pick between having parties of effective combat units (tank, healer, and 3 DPS) or by role (tanks in one party, melee in another, etc). Being able to provide group instruction via AoE selection, like when dragging out a gathering zone, would make on the fly direction much smoother, in my opinion.
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Yes, Iâm all in for selecting units by dragging with the mouse
@ursapolaris I think you and I have very different understandings of what OP meant when he said âprogrammingâ. From the screenshots and suggestions he made, it seems quite obvious to me that he just wants a screen where he can set default behaviour and tactics for combat units, nothing to do with any code or pseudo-code.
From what Iâve read for the Clericâs AI along with the combat and healing mechanic/observer, Clerics will heal the highest injured person with their single big heal spell. Their aoe healing is constant but small.
Iâve had fights that seemed daunting and my guys get fairly low but I didnât lose anyone with one or two Clerics. For the want of a heal button, in these fighting examples, are we losing a hearthling or do we want to see full hearts all the time? If a hearthling isnât dead at the end of the battle, shouldnât we thank the healer for doing their job? The one shot cooldown could probably be shortened but maybe by a level 6 ability for end game or various gear that enables class customization like jewelry for higher spell healing/damage, shorter cd, etc.
For enabling players to better control their combat units, I liked Gnomoriaâs approach with the military window and the use of the formation mechanic applied to squads - choose a leader, assign a single primary trait to each person, indicate attackers/defenders and when/how to retreat. Thatâs a good set it and forget combat tweak. Iâd rather see this implemented over buttons to directly cast spells or range/melee skills. Alternatively really good AI would replace all this as learning to trust the AI being built is key here. So far Iâve seen my clerics keep all my guys alive except for when Iâm not there to move them which seems the intent and so far works as intended.
For shortcut keys, being able to use Ctrl+, Shift+ and Alt+ with the left side of the keyboard comboâs is very handy. Having those be configured through the in game menu; no need to think up defaults, let us do that. You could have the anonymous feedback tool to monitor our button settings to see if thereâs a common config we drift to.
For patrol groupings, Iâd love to have Archer Bob be in both groups 1 and 2 where group 1 is my heavy hitter mix of melee/range/cleric and group 2 is all ranged. This would allow a means to better combat kobolds where group 1 single targets the big guy while I intermittently have group 2 single target kobolds.
+1 for drag/select for combat units. If theyâre a valid combat target and we own it, allow the party control to come up with an ad-hoc group and the ad-hoc group config is destroyed after changing units.
Also, one big thing that might help everyone here as weâre all concerned about combat. Has there been a discussion about floating combat numbers? Red damage, green heals and such? Could that be added to the game? If we can see the damage and healing, it might alleviate some of our concerns about whoâs doing their job and whoâs peeling potatoes when the patrol returns to town.
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As someone who has a lot of experience with strategy games both micro and macro intensive, I see stonehearth as more of an issue a single order, let it play out and see what happens. As you the player are a bystander that doesnât have any control over what each hearthling actually does. While this system has itâs obvious flaws looking at it from a micromangement point of view, it is perfect for town simulation side of things and it works really well for what team radiant seem to have in mind. As the combatants donât need babysitting and the player can go off and do other stuff knowing the combat is going to play out ok.
From an RTS players perspective where the player is used to having complete control over which unit attacks who and the exact numbers on cooldown timers and what not, it is a bit lackluster and the flag system is clunky, it makes you feel like you canât effectively manage your troops.
For a start there are way to many clicks involved with microing combatants. To make it easier to manage combatants it would be great if once a combatant was selected right clicking the ground put down a move command, right clicking an enemy gave an attack command and maybe set attack move to alt right click. This would make micro far easier and more effective. You could set right clicking a friendly hearthling whilst a cleric is selected as focus heals on this hearthling.
As stonehearth lacks a click and drag mechanic to select multiple hearthings to issue an order to, many different selection hotkeys would be needed to compensate, there are the simple ones ie select group 1-4, and then there are ones like select all archers, knights, etc. It would be beneficial to go further still with select all archers,knight,etc in group x.
Another little mechanic that is used in other strategy games is the double clicking a combatant of a specific class selects all those of that class. e.g double clicking archer Bob in group 1 also selects archer Toby in group 2 and archers Bill and Ben in group 4.
Either way stonehearth is still great! Keep up the awesome work Team Radiant!!
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