For everything related to the gameplay experience of Stonehearth, be it queries, questions, discussion, or just a great story you wish to share with the community.
Hi!
Any gameplay ideas for unique AI behavior of settlers or such? Or are they in RTS style where you have to tell them what to do? I figure it could add a challenge to the player if there are some discourse and unpredictability of your workers depending on how well you manage your settlement (warding off attacks and etc).
Just a thought
Itâs a good thought! In our current plan, each settler will behave according to some basic motivations so you donât have to micromanage everyone. Of course, you should be able to step in and tell them what to do.
The castles shown in the Kickstarter video made me wonder: has there been any thought about implementing some sort of siege mechanics to the game?
Could range from as simple as posting archers on the towers and bottlenecking fights to actually having to knock down walls and âciviliansâ taking shelter inside the keep during raids.
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Here Are my questions:
How far do you plan for technology to go? While Iâm not thinking cars or jets but I would like to have cannons and musket (proper balance as to not completely roll over mele)
Will mining be a building (construct-able mine shaft) that miners enter and bring out ores without changing the geography. Or are we going to have miners actually chip away at the ground (like Castle Story) and eventually have a gaping hole?
Building specialization: will there be building that crafters enter to do their work or will they just do work in their home?
âHeroâ classes: are you planning to have a top tier class for all profession that are limited in number? (Say⌠proportional to population) ie: Master Blacksmith, Sword Master etcâŚ
Hope I didnt get ahead of myself but I really see the potential for this game. First game in a while that will offer near endless playtime.
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AI Towns
Settlements controlled by the AI, progressing like your own town and getting attacked like your own.
Diplomacy & Warfare: The option to enter diplomacy with other towns and set up trade routes and such, or razing their city to the ground and taking their wealth.
Monarcy: If you have the most allies among the towns or have done hostile takeovers on enough you can be chosen or elect yourself as King. The town with the king get some sort of bonuses.
Magic
Either through knowledge or sacrifice you can learn magic, magic is a voletile force and can end up backfiring and set off natrual disasters or attract titans.
Different Civilizations
At the beginning at the game, chose from a variety of Civilizations, Vikings, Eastern, Western etc.
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Thats all I could think of for now, please excuse my bad grammar, english is my second language. 
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Modding On The Fly
Have a clickable option like The Sims 3 to make small visual changes.
In The Sims 3, you can click on an item, then click the âpalletâ button which brings up a small bubble window to change the color of any item.
In this game, it would be amazing to be able to click on a settler and âbox inâ a hat, or change their shirt color. Or, click on a building and change box colors to make designs on the houses (like wood supports throughout the house).
The less I have to bounce in and out of the game to make small changes the better.
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I believe the Steam Greenlight description says, âOur goal is to have a tech tree thatâs both very wide and very deep.â The example provided is tan-ta-li-zingâŚ!
Can you give us a sense of how deep? This deep? So wide? Millers and bakers? Clerics and scholars? Fishers, miners, thatchers and minstrels? Jewelers?
(As a noob, I canât post pics so a skill tree is at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26269189/Skill%20Tree.jpg )
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Just to let you know, I love the picture for Savant.
I saw that multiplayer/co-op is on your kickstarter page as a possible future stretch goal.
Iâd love to play this with friends, but what form of multiplayer are you going for? could we have a server that friends can connect to, like minecraft, or would it be a normal LAN game, and need to be loaded each time we want to play together?
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Wow, thatâs exactly what we were thinking when we said âbroad and deepâ, in the literal sense of the word. The Tinker/Jeweler/Engineer sub tree is actually identical to the one we have internally, where the Engineer unlocks tech like lava forges, powerful projectile weapons, etc. Player created classes are also something we want to do, though it would take a lot of scripting!
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Are there plans to include families, babies that grow into adults, old age and proper burial for fallen comrades? I know it might not be possible to do, at first, but it would be great to have generation cycles eventually.
wow⌠and that is just the civilian crafting jobs if SH have this in mind when they say âdeepâ Iâm going to go crazy trying to fill all the condition for combat units.
And you stirred my interest when you say powerful projectile weapons⌠Iâm really hoping for some static defense like wall mountable turrets that can keep an army at bay and firing lines and carefully crafted âkill zonesâ
Wow, very awesome!!
You should add another branch of professions which includes something like:
Adventurer: seeks out ruins and interesting points of interest (i.e. modules) in the world
Scout: collects intelligence on nearby monster populations and will alert you if an invasion is imminent!
Cartographer: Uses information gathered by Adventurers and Scouts to create maps which can be used by the player as well as Scouts and Adventurers to further extend their exploration range.
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I love the Scout, Adventurer and Cartographer ideas! They could not only provide information on monsters but also on resources nearby. Great thinking, love the imagination!
I posted elsewhere about an Artistry Class chain; maybe I could elaborate on here. One of three class chains I would love to see would be an Artistry class that begins with an Artist who can paint textures and designs to make your city look more interesting but can be upgraded to a musician who could play music and increase worker speed within a certain radius. Get together more Musicians, each with a different instrument (drum, violin, guitar, harp, flute, etc) and they will become a âbandâ whose radius increases substantially. With a big enough band on a stage/park in the centre of the city, it could boost worker speeds by say 2-5% and help the city become more vibrant with different artists in different places. This could also tie into the Cartographer class.
The idea of holding a festival could bring in randomly generated and temporary NPCâs who help bring in trade and boost the economy. Likewise, a class of Shopkeepers who can upgrade from Restaurant Owners to Innkeepers to Bartenders for taverns. Between artists and shopkeeps, it could open up a whole area of trade for not only randomly generated NPCâs but also Travellers.
Travellers would be a class of people you could create who would travel to other peopleâs games and come back with new items. You would give them an item to trade (maybe a resource or certain amount of money or something new youâve created) and they would take it away randomly to a different playerâs game where they would trade it. This class would tie in with Shopkeepers and they could stand in taverns and festivals with a bubble over their head suggesting they have something to trade.
These Travellers could also be upgraded to Seafarerâs who would be equipped with a treasure map that would send them out to sea to bring back either jewels, resources, armour, nothing, or die trying. On the other side, they could be upgraded to Thieves who could steal from other playerâs games but would not be able to do so in a city that was well patrolled and protected.
Three very intertwined class trees I think but as usual, I think Iâm getting carried away hereâŚ
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This game 100% need coop as a stretch goal! when i look at this game potential it obviously lies in the realms of minecraft terraria etc, coop is gna b essential to the experience. it shldnt b required, 100% shld b an option tho
Not to say that the this is what your or any other game needs but I would love to see the âBasic Needsâ a driving point to the goals of the game.
Minecraftâs early game has a slight feeling of what I am talking about,
The base of âBasic Needsâ I would define is: Food, Shelter and Purpose. Shelter already being shown off in early videos and the purpose is in the hands of the player and what narrative is told. So, with food that leaves a nice niche for early tech tree spot of Forager. Basic Needs growing along side your town as it makes itâs way into a city. Soon, wanting better living with Education, Safety and Healthcare and so on.
Now, I could understand why this would be a bad idea or wrong for your game that has a driving force to freedom. Having needs you HAVE to cover sounds troubling to reach those claims. That said, I am a big believer in flavor giving uniqueness. An example being: Does your town use physicians and doctors to mend broken bone? Or did you find medicine men and shamans better to cure the ill? Could be as simple as what better suits the theme you are giving your world.
Hereâs a good point to think about. Keeping your town safe is a big deal I would assume, is there an active standing army or do you have a call to arms for all farm workers and blacksmiths with there is trouble? Having an army will make sure your men are well equipped and well trained but in non-active times what do they do when they donât know any other trade? The other way around letâs you use your followers more efficiently but maybe could leave you possibly picked on more often Do you make a small but powerful squad? A legion of troops? Do you put off forming a outfit or rush to having soldiers just in case? Seeing what you do could randomly change your neighbors motives. Seeing a group arming themselves quickly could be an cause of alarm, they might move or preemptively attack OR being so impressed with your warrior spirit join you.
That got long quickly, and Iâm sorry for those that read all of this. In short - basic needs as a driving point is rare and done by mistake most of the time. It would be nice to see it worked into the game.
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Just to add something to @StephenFreer, I would love it if, instead of say having a single merchant/caravan come to your city, you could create a marketplace, or festival ground, and if youâre town is large enough and âpopularâ enough, loads of merchants would arrive and set up a giant market.
This could work in conjunction with Artists and Musicians etc. To provide certain bonuses during the market/ festival time.
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One thing I will say is I hope age, time and decay is not a factor. Other than morning/afternoon/evening/night and seasonal changes, I agree with many others not to turn this game into a God simulator kind of game and worry about the age of my citizens. If my blacksmith dies in combat or due to a plague or starvation or whatever you have planned, fine, but if I keep him in good shape, let him live forever. Make the adventures episodic. I would love to focus on adventuring, city-planning/building, expanding and growing without having to focus on appeasing generations.
That said, graphically, having age diversity would be very cool. For example, switching to a particular class for scholars or teacher or high ranking general in the army could grey-out or white hair accompany the look change. As well, every citizen who grows from inside the town for their first 3 levels would be a child who has weaker HP and defence and once theyâve built up their level past three, changes to an adult.
Graphical/cosmetic changes for diversity sake but nothing I have to worry about. What do you guys think?
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And I know Iâm taking up too much space in these forums already but for the Traveller style characters who travel to different peopleâs games (if they have that feature switched on), it would be a great way to establish the trade of mods! Instead of making it a thing to download and install, bring it into context with the game.
If youâve created a new armour or weapon, then the blueprints or schematics would be available in your world to purchase by Travellers from other games. Similarly, your travellers can be sent off with schematics or money to trade for more schematics. Once brought back to your Blacksmith, they can then build the item (if it requires defeating a certain monster than they would come with the mod and automatically populate the world).
Events could work the same way with event mods coming in the form of Treasure Maps or Books. Bring one back with your traveller and it will have a clue in terms of where to go or what to do when the mod installs. That way thereâs an element of surprise. Will this treasure be good? Will this event be exciting? Similarly, you could have a Storyteller Class (maybe in the Artistry Class or Scholar Class) who could create Treasure Maps or Books. First you create a mod, then you have your adventurers beat it in order to prove it can be done. Then the adventurers meet the Storyteller or Scribe or Scholar or whatever (maybe they would have to accompany the adventurers?) who would document it and make it accessible to other players when they send their travellers and merchants over.
Finally, once a treasure map, book, schematic or blueprint youâve created is completed by someone else, the player can rate it and it could rank your kingdomâs items and adventures accordingly. It would encourage players to make mods exciting and interesting and rewarding because higher rated kingdoms would be at the top of the list for the traveller lobby (when deciding where to send your traveller).
Aaaaaaaaaand finally finally! All the mods, treasure maps, books and schematics youâve collected and completed could go into a library building you could use to store all yours stats!
Okay, okay, I promise, no more posting. You can have your forums back! 
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