Community Combat Overhaul

Modding
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I have no business posting this here, as I’m not a coder and I just don’t have the temperament for that work.

I wonder though, now that the future is clear for SH, and we have a solid understanding of what will and won’t be delivered officially, does the community want to work together to develop a proper combat overhaul mod?

If so, I advocate for us organizing and attempting this work sooner vs later, because right now there are dev team resources to tweak APIs, fix modding-related bugs, advise on design, and so on.

If we wait long, fixing combat ourselves just gets harder, and depending on the bugs we encounter, potentially impossible.

I may not be a coder, but I can act as a BA/PM, if that would be valuable to our intrepid community dev team. I can organize functional requirements, help people break down the work into manageable chunks, report on progress, facilitate QA testing of unstable builds, and so on.

I offer this purely because, aside from bugs, the relative lack of a robust AI, especially as it relates to combat, is a huge reason the game feels unfinished to me. It’s unfinished because combat in the later game is simply not good enough for the game to really be playable without extremely granular micro-management, and sometimes even that isn’t enough.

Ironing out the game loop, by comparison, isn’t likely as complicated. That’s mostly a balance issue, and just adding more game content. That’s modding bread and butter which I’m confident the community will churn out in droves.

Focusing on fixing core gameplay mechanics like combat will be universally beneficial to all content mods that involve combat, as well as the core game itself.

So, community devs, what do you think? Can it be done? Is it less work than I’m expecting, something that doesn’t need a bunch of management help? Does anyone even know where to start?

7 Likes
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It would be nice to a combat over haul mod as plan to make my own kingdom mod based around a militaristic style.

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That would be a great idea. I’m still partial to the idea that each hearthling should have their own equipment choices and opt to “TECH” into whatever job class they wish. Removing knight and archer and give the basic footman the option to go range, heavy, or some hybrid in between. Also, being able to individually equip your hearthlings. Like a traditional tactics or rpg style game. Instead of the hearthlings randomly choosing the best equipment regardless of stats or item

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Agreed on the option to manually equip items, it’ll go a long way to more interesting decisions.

As well as Hearthling dress up, of course. Gotta have the cosmetic mods.

5 Likes
5

Zooming right in on the “BA/PM” statment: Dude, if you are willing to BA/PM, then you need to get in contact with some of the bigger modders around here and let’s all start chatting. I’m not sure I have the time, sadly, to really throw myself into helping out with this. But I am a programmer, and I have been a BA/PM (well, BSA, but whatever). We really need to start whipping up some organization if we want to have a smooth handover from the devs, ya know?

4 Likes
6

The combat has always felt lacking for me and I always assumed it would be worked on in the future. This is no longer within the realm of possibilities for official development but if it remains as is I’ll be wholly disappointed. I would love to see a combat overhaul mod. The only skills I have are potential voxel modeling but if I can be of any assistance I’d gladly help out.

1 Like
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Combat AI improvement is on ACE mod’s roadmap.

1 Like
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After seeing this thread I found my way there, which I will link for easy navigation should others find this thread before that one.

ACE - Authorized Community Expansion Project

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for ACE at least one/two handed selection toggle is on the to do list (and i think has someone lookign into it already last i checked)
for other combat improvements, they mainly have to be worked out. it doesnt matter if you cant code it if you can, think it out in relatively high detail.
the more it deviates from how stonehearth works now, the less likely its going to be in ACE. so radical re-works are still going to be their own mod. at least for now.

2 Likes