Crafting Generic Building Chunks for Faster Construction

Suggestions
,
#1

I recently decided to try to do a big build and it just takes too long.
I really think things like pillars, floors, roof tiles, and walls could be an actual item that you must use the carpenter to craft so that they can be placed much faster. instead of placing the 102 blocks for a max length section of wall you could have it crafted by the carpenter for the discounted building cost of 2 blocks of wood (could adjust based on difficulty level, I would suggest 21 for hard mode). I imagine it doesnā€™t take as much wood because the walls are really hollow or something. anyway this would make building things 100 times faster, though the crafting time would probably be more than tripled, but still worth it imo, because you can stockpile building materials rather than raw materials. Think wood piles or stone piles, but with sheet-rock, and 2x4ā€™s.

To be clear, your design in the building editor will be the same, but instead of requiring blocks it could queue up the build sections that are required, and put in place. because measurements will sometimes be odd, this means it wonā€™t be 100% fit but even if it replaced 50% of a building with generic crafted building materials and the rest manually built block by block, this would speed things up.

Maybe include this as an alternative way to interact with the new building editor, to select pieces of the building that the game has designated as a generic chunk to maximize the use of the carpenter. Obviously some calculations would have to be done along lengths of walls and floors to figure out how many blocks we want to chunk together to create this generic crafted block. So 2x2 and 3x3 and 4x4 floor panels, 1x6 pillars, 1x2 and 1x3 shingles, 6x5 sheetrock (because doors require 5 blocks) etc.

This is actually more realistic in how buildings are put together today, because things are made in set sizes and buildings are unique, you have to figure out what fits best for your design, and this makes things come together in kind of a quirky way that could be interesting and give your buildings some charm.

2 Likes
Money sinks :money_with_wings:
Roads as terrain
Better Options for Low-Level Masons
#2

I had an idea month ago which is similar to yours but goes a few steps further.

The Carpenter or the Potter craft a crate/urn, in which every item and building material that is needed for the ā€˜houseā€™ will be stored.
The crate/urn will get transported to the building place and there a/some workers will build the ā€˜houseā€™ out of the crate.
They will only work with/on the crate, not with the building itself.

#3

That is similar to an idea I had a long time ago about having a wheel barrel or a cart for hearthlings to carry crates around, for longer distances. Making a spread out build, or gathering resources from the other side of the map, like trees or stone that you didnā€™t settle near.

Either way I think taking the idea that already exists, of the carpenter making doors and windows, to the next level to make sections of a building should be a relatively easy solution for reducing building times.
The only thing the AI would have to get right is the order that the building sections are placed. Bottom to Top, Floors to Pillars to Walls to Roofs and nothing should go wrong. Since they are already built in sections it should be impossible to screw up.

1 Like
#4

Both are some neat ideas; however, imo, both break the immersion compared to the current system.
They serve well for decreasing build-time, but to me it would also decrease the ā€œfunā€ in seeing my Hearthlings build houses, castles, etc.
Iā€™d rather se a revamp of the current building-system; a few logic-chances and priority-switches and Iā€™d be pleased.
I canā€™t wait to see what the ā€œnewā€ system will hold.

Instead, I could see these ideas be used to better effect in something similar to this other idea:

3 Likes
#5

Hey if you want to watch hearthlings carry around 500 blocks for a single building be my guest, but there should be a way to opt out, and that way imo is with this idea. You donā€™t have to be forced to build it- there could be an option in the crafting ui or the building editor to automatically queue the crafting of the materials. It can probably be balanced so that for smaller building its not worth putting in the crafting time, if you need it built, like now. The idea is to offload future building placement to times when your crafter isnā€™t doing anything else but crafting benches for the 1000th time to make that 18 gold when they are Fine.
I donā€™t mind building block by block for small builds, but I also sometimes donā€™t have over 8 hours to watch blocks move around just to build the vanilla buildings.
I would invest more time building things if 1) it didnā€™t take so long and 2) it can actually be built.
They are solving 2 right now, but I donā€™t know if they considered #1 especially when buildings are going to be much bigger because its so much easier to design them the way you want.

#6

The block-by-block construction technique was one of the main features displayed in the Kickstarter Video and thus one of the main reasons I backed this game in the first place.

Iā€™ve never been forced to wait over 8 hours to build the vanilla buildings; and rarly have I ever been forced to wait this long with my custom buildings - and this is when the waiting-time includes furniture-construction, hostile encounters, etc.
My buildings has to go rather big before I reach the 8 hour mark to complete them.

However, if you run into this problem more frequently than I do, I can see why youā€™d find the block-by-block placement more tedious than I do.

This sounds interesting, and would also keep the ā€œcute effectā€ for inefficient players like myself :slight_smile:

1 Like
#7

I mean you can watch real carpenters build things on youtube- it usually takes a lot longer to build the thing than it does to actually set it up


I guess my gripe is that less objects in the game feels like less content. I think they are going for more game mechanics rather than 3D models and leave that to the moders. It just seems a like a huge opportunity for an artist to help define the game. Blocks are just blocks, other than the awesome color pallet though, all we have is the 3d models to define the games look and my point is you give up that control by leaving it to mods anyway so either way it seems like a dodge

#8

Yes, I could watch them builds things - besides, Iā€™ve built small houses from the ground up with my bare hands, too.
Still, I fail to see how this adds to my thoughts regarding the block-by-block placement within a game. :thinking:

As far as I can recall, I never said anything about ā€œthis is not how you build real housesā€; I said that the cute block-by-block building technique was one of the main reasons Stonehearth grabbed my attention and approval to begin with.
To me, seeing the Hearthlings build houses using the block-by-block technique adds flavor and a touch I do not see in my other games - itā€™s part of the definition, the style - would it be removed completely it would, to me, break the immersion compared to the current system. I would start feeling less attached to my Hearthlings, if you will.

1 Like
#9

Iā€™m just saying do whats appropriate for what you are building. block by block is fine for things built in stone and it actually makes sense, but not for wood (in my opinion anyway). I really donā€™t see it as taking away from the game at all.

wood doesnā€™t even need to be cut down in normal 1x1 blocks but could be in a wide range of sizes so that you actually have to stockpile the pieces you need, like a real wood worker does. this would actually encourage more tree farms and make some items inherently more valuable because they require special pieces of wood that are a certain length and width. putting a lot more value on bigger trees

#10

It may of course not take away from the game, per say - but, as Iā€™ve said, the block-by-block house-construciton process was one of the main selling-points in the Kickstarter Video; ergo, in my opinion, removing it would indeed remove something from the style of the game.

This would indeed add some interesting resource-handling though.

1 Like
#11

placing things block by block is sometimes interesting to watch, especially in a timelapse, but its definitely not a style of game and definitely not unique except in the fact that it happens without input and its somewhat randomly done which is meant to give the hearthlings world a sense of realism.
however I would still feel great satisfaction from watching them do the same thing with building materials that I spent time on gathering the perfect materials for its construction and I think it would give an even more realistic feel to the game to some extent.
For instance, for building materials only they could be 1:1 size requiring a massive carpenter workshop and that would be how you balance it. watching it be put together and crafted block by block in a workshop like a puzzle piece. the stone smith can do everything with bricks, or pouring it like concrete so space isnā€™t an issue nearly as much beyond just storing the blocks. also in carpentry there is a lot of wasted materials, so it could be more expensive than the blocks you see in the end product.
just saying carpentry is really cool and I wish the game took advantage of a few of its core complexities and added it as an element to the game to reflect the craft

#12

Technically, you dont need a wheel barrow due to the fact that you can move a chest like a wheel barrow. For instance; fill chest with wood, brick and stone and have hearthling carry it next to build site. Works just the same.

#13

well the wheel barrow had something that made it more useful than a crate. it could be used by multiple hearthlings at the same time or the contents could be dumped onto the map instantly and collected and moved later. great for mining. also the carrying capacity would be much higher than a hearthling could normally carry. I think it would probably be best used in hard mode if items had forced size limits for storing them in a more realistic way. so bigger items would require a reasonably close approximation during storage than they do now.

for example a crate is 2x2x2 so you could store 8 blocks of dense material with some variance for items of different shapes. lets just say if they were liquid how much space would they take up? some easy method like that

#14

are they really planning on changing storage that way? It doesnā€™t seem like it fits this game. As of right now the stone chest can hold 64 items and be moved retaining its contents. Seems like a wheelbarrow to me. Just without the model and the intuitve AI function of ā€œoh this contains 5x what i could carry on my own i should just grab thatā€

#15

no its just an idea I had. its completely different than a crate. I just donā€™t know how well it would work because the world is blocks. it would require some other tool to siphon rocks, like a chute but for items instead of water (similar to the mincraft hopper but using physics), into the barrel so that they donā€™t have to spend time colelcting them. thats really the goal of it, faster item collection so that you dont have to pick up 64 things

1 Like
#16

Neat, would you mind if I looked at it as an opportunity for a mod?

1 Like
#17

by all means someone please make this. Iā€™m playing a game right now trying to carve a city out of a mountain and let me tell you. paint dries faster.

#18

in the meantime you should do as I suggested. Thats what I do for mining. Place chest designated for mingnig materials next to mine. once full have it moved to city. boom 64 items in one move.

#19

this is with me already doing that. like I said it doesnā€™t really speed it up that much, you still have to stop what you are doing for every single block you mine. I am mining an area that is over a few hundred blocks its about 230,000 stone that I will likely end up moving by the end of the build. even if each block only took 5 seconds and I did nothing else, no planning, or playing the game, or hearthings eating it would be about 320 hours (of a single hearthling) moving blocks, thou I do play on speed 3, it still takes longer because of other things

edit: my math was way off, forgot to cube it left out the height of the area
also my measurements were not exact but you get the point, it takes a long long time

#20

Oh I know the wheel barrow is not needed - it just sounded as a neat idea to me, as I pictured logic such as:

A Hearthling is about to move out to collect some kind of loot (wood, baskets of food, weapons, etc); first, it ask itself two questions

  • Is it a long way to go for this loot?
  • Is there more loot in this vicinity than I can hold in my backpack?
    If yes to the above, the Hearthling will - automatically - bring the wheel barrow.

But I didnā€™t think of the idea in the first place, I just found it a somwhat interesting idea.
I already do it the way you suggest - thanks though :slight_smile:

2 Likes