This is a really great thread, some of the best discussion we’ve had in weeks/ months.
Really liking what the team is thinking with buildings. At the moment @JonathanDB I’m definitely in agreement with @Avairian here:
I personally wouldn’t want all of my workshops housed in buildings, or at least, in buildings with walls
For a blacksmith for example, one game I might want it within a building, another I might want it within a half building/ half porch kinda setup, another game I might strictly want it outside, a la skyrim with the blacksmiths house attached, granted it’s still under cover … :
In terms of the benefits of housing workshops inside, it’s a tricky one and I’m not sure if it should be as direct as having to place the workshops inside otherwise there are serious ramifications… I mean so far buildings are combating other gameplay issues, and maybe this feeds into the happiness element?
Maybe your worker doesn’t like working outside, because it’s cold, or raining, or snowing. As such their happiness decreases and in the first instance negatively impacts your town, perhaps in the second instance it impacts the quality/ speed of produce?
Also combining workshops with storing materials inside so thieves can’t spot them and you’re gonna improve your efficiency by placing the workshop next to the relevant stockpiles needed.
I definitely think there will be incentives to having workshops inside, but I’m unsure if it will be as direct as “place workshop inside building otherwise meteors will rain down upon your people” :).
for me, it will be a delicate balance between the roleplaying element (having my burly blacksmith braving the elements with a portion of his workshop located outdoors, while his finished goods remain safely indoors) and the practicality and aesthetic elements…
but for the most part, I will likely err on the side of caution, and have most of my trade classes contained inside their respective buildings…
I might be a bit weird but I never liked the idea of “storage zones” really very much, frankly its a trend that I hope fades away very soon.
So I hoped that SH would do it differently and enable buildings to act like storerooms.
For example it could be set in such way that advanced resources can only be stored in certain furniture types and such furniture could only placed in buildings.
Different types of furniture could depend on certain other furniture or conflict with other furniture.
So for example you want to have a cold room to store meat to prevent it from spoiling before you can process it to more refined food, maybe salting it or using it in a regular kitchen to cook up some delicious meals.
Of course placing a forge in a building with a freezing unit (eh I guess we’ll need magic for that) will not be a good idea, so a magic freezing unit conflicts with the forge, but the meat hook storage requires the freezing unit before you can place it.
So in a nutshell these are my ideas:
advanced resources and items can only be stored within certain furniture types
most furniture requires a building (maybe even the workshop)
furniture may depend upon other furniture
furniture may exclude other furniture
This would make it a necessity to have buildings, because its really like this… if players don’t need to do something they won’t, even if it makes the little computer people unhappy!
So, a discussion about buildings? Looks like I’ll jump in! Reiterating Tom:
It seems that buildings are an important, but not integral part of building a town. What I mean is that it provides you with a lot of buffs when you have buildings, but having a nomadic lifestyle is still possible. (Which would be really cool). So, here are a few possibilities:
Grumpy nomad people
Happy settled people
Annoyed tent city people
A thing I don’t like about this system is that it puts people that have a nomadic playstyle (like Genghis Khan) at a disadvantage because it offers them so many debuffs. A possible solution to this is to have buffs for mobility and raids because that’s two driving factors that allowed Genghis to conquer like he did.
I see your point about the nomadic approach, but to be fair, isn’t that lifestyle just … inherently more difficult?
if you play that way, which you should absolutely be able to do, you’re trading off the savings in time spent gathering resources and constructing buildings, with the cost of a higher loss of the goods you create, and a lower percentage of new units/unit types…
Hmm. I think it’d be nice to be able to “tag” buildings as belonging to particular individual(s). So you have a blacksmith working out in the open, and decide to make him a house. Now, whilst making it, you could tag it as “his”, and then he’ll automatically gain ownership of everything inside - nobody else will be allowed to sleep in his bed, for example.
First, we’re making buildings a lot cheaper to build in terms of resources. Right now you need to chop down a whole grove of trees to build one house, which is way too expensive!
Also there are lots of ways we can “encourage” you to put workshops in buildings if need be, like crafting doesn’t work in the rain.
We definitely want you building a town and not a giant football field with all your stuff on it, and we’ll tune things to give you a healthy push in the right direction.
Ah, okay that explains a lot. With cheaper buildings, I’d be much more likely to use them for things which aren’t necessarily a huge benefit/necessity, but certainly still provide that positive incentive.
Perfect, sounds like we are on the same page. Obviously you guys are doing a good job at thinking things through, but with the close customer-developer interaction it never hurts to make sure!
Thanks for taking the time to quell my fears and for you and the team just being awesome in general.
This was an interesting point to me, considering all of the discussion that’s gone on regarding the concept of permanent and temporary residences in Stonehearth.
Until we get farther along in the alpha and beta playable builds, there likely won’t be too many incentives or perks for nomadic people–after all, the primary focus right now has been the creation of a central city in a fixed location, which directly opposes a travelling civilization playstyle. The game would probably interpret it as “negative conditions”, rather than a purposeful, logical choice by the player.
However, with the discussion of having your main city, numerous people pointed out the need for searching out more resources as your town grows in size. To me, this sounds like an excellent chance to compromise between the two playstyles: the main city represents a stable power that requires imported resources, while the scouting and production teams searching for these resources will likely need to move from location to location. Since these settlers are not technically “settled”, compared to their home city, I feel that they essentially require a different rule book to play by in terms of achieving happiness and productivity.
Like the way a regular city can be upgraded, so could the temporary houses and tents the teams use improve as well. Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were both very mobile generals, yet the tents they used were actually very elaborate and comfortable–essentially mobile castles or estates. While tents might be initially only good due to quicker construction or less weight/space (if they are to be added), I could see later versions becoming fancier and more accommodating for your mobile workers, combined with more convenient modes of travel, from foot to horseback to wagons.
And the buildings will serve to defend our citizen or serve as a barrier =P I can’t wait to make some big castles and towers with a long wall and post bowmen on the top of each =P
Could we do a garden in a building ? Maybe it will be the best idea to protect our vegetables or fruits=P
And could we make arrow slits on our castle?
cosmetically? sure, that would probably be relatively simple… making them functional (as in, being able to shoot through them) would be a little more difficult…
Well it’d obviously require more coding, but “unit inside can fire on units outside, assume the entire block(s) is see-through for unit inside” might work…?
Maybe we could make a box which delete a part of the wall’s collision box.
A Negative collision box so a pass through box =P
Because it will be super to fire on goblins who can’t reach our citizens^^
I hope the traps and buildings to defend us will be available soon because with this goblins we can’t hold our city any longer.
Here are a few brain storming ideas from reading through the thread:
Crafters working in workshops outside are more likely to get sick, getting a debuff to their work.
I can conceive of a scenario where you encounter a goblin thief. You can choose to kill him, or if you have a Jail building designated, you can choose to imprison him. Killing the thief incurs a lot of goblin wrath and increases the chance of a Goblin Titan attack, while imprisoning the thief causes the goblins to give you some fabulous treasure or point the way to some rare resource in order to get the thief back.
I’ll keep thinking, but a lot of possibilities depend on if buildings can receive designations that can be used as scenario triggers. Without those designations, you become limited to numerical things. (e.g. Lots of resources outside a building generate thieves, etc.)
we’ve heard references to the flip side of this (attacking the goblin will bring about a larger attack), but i really like your alternative path suggestion…
Wow, I love the idea of capturing thieves and hostile units!
You wouldn’t have to have building designations in order to make a jail. If there was an option to build a “cell” that you could place inside buildings made out of like iron bars (and a weak wooden bar one for before you get to iron and a blacksmith, perhaps), then you would only need functional cells within a building. This would also allow you to make a castle with a dungeon room, or a “police station” barracks building with cells in it.
Also, I’m sure that arrow slits will be a thing. I can’t imagine a fortification without them! (Well… I guess I could, your soldiers could only throw things from the roof / top of the walls… but that wouldn’t be as cool!)
This is just me speaking my mind, you’re free to disagree, but not building buildings would be like playing the Sims and not putting down decorations in the house, if that makes sense?
It’s just an optional play style, Genghis Khan would disagree. And by disagree I mean impale your head on a pole and burn down the surrounding area :P.
As has already been mentioned, the easiest way to give buildings a function is to extend the existing functionality of beds, chairs, etc. If sleeping in a bed is 20% (or whatever) more restful than sleeping on the cold, unforgiving earth, then sleeping in a house (with a roof) could be another 20% better; ergo, to maximize the rest your citizens get, you’ll want to build them houses. Crafting and other activities could also benefit from being ‘indoors’, (though farming should be penalized if the field is inside!), with some suitable bonus to encourage the construction of workshop buildings.
