This is the first SH build with combat in it! But… it’s incredibly un-tuned at the moment. We’d like your feedback on how to refine it! As you play, jot us a note with some of your thoughts on the following:
Thanks!
–Stephanie
What is the requirements for goblins to pillage your settlement? As they either come in there drones or don’t show up at all.
Well, not yet, but I already told you that.
Cannot comment yet, sample too small.
Only recruited a footman and had him walk around. He must have been too fearsome – nobody showed up to challenge him.
None as of yet.
not as much combat as i would like but its still good!
Specifically, how much combat would you like?
i like it 35% to 50% of the game on combat would be cool
Well, it’s OK, but the Footmen need to defend all the resources whether they are in a stockpile or not, or at least the ones in their sight. Also, it’s strange how all the settlers go over to where the Footmen are fighting.
If a footman on one side of your town started fighting and the rest heard him/her and helped him/her it would be good. I had on footman run off to go get some goblins, but ran into more goblins and… well, disappeared… but my footman had no help… Otherwise, fighting is a bit long, it looks good, and some sort of visual aspect to show the progress of combat would also be nice.
I feel that this would be way too much? I mean if the game was 50% combat then you’ve got 50% left to fit everything else in …
Well, I remember Tom saying in some livestream or other that the animations would kind of show the state of the citizens both inside and out of combat (e.g. slower movements in combat, limping out of combat), which I think would be a nice visual aspect. It’d be cooler, I think, than overt GUI elements (like health bars, which is not the direction they wanted to go anyway). Not sure what you had in mind, of course, your comment just made me remember this.
that"s true maybe more like 20%?
Thanks @Phagocytosis. Yea, I was thinking something along those lines.
this last round I had someone join my village fairly early on as I had made extra beds and a little extra food and walls surrounding it about 3/4 completed. then my footman promptly ran off chasing goblin after goblin till he was half way across the map and finally died. i then promoted another worker to footman had a couple fights in the village proper as goblins get to walk through the doors too (they don’t lock). then my new footman ran out of the village and started where my old footman left off and promptly died so I’m back down to 6 villagers.
what I would like to do is to be able to give my footman an area to patrol such as a gate entrance that they will return to rather than seeing another goblin at just sight limit and charging after them.
My game experience.
I personally would like to see:
Tethering of footmen (100 metres or so), so they don’t go off all John Rambo and single handedly try to kill the worlds goblin population - and die. Or perhaps a Defensive/Passive/Aggressive stance system?
A mechanic where footmen are downed, rather than killed. Their broken bodies should be carried back to an empty bed where they must rest for a day to be revived. Losing a footman in early game is a pain - he has to be replaced by one of your limited number of workers. Advanced Swordsmen units should still be killed though, as by that stage of the game you are actively building forces.
Barracks are a must as per the concept art. If you have built a choke point you need your forces there, and not near the fireplace. A rally point banner would do for now (and could double as a tether point).
Enemies should not be random. They should spawn from a number of various sized camps which you can actively try and secure to drive them out. An enemy ‘fireplace’/banner would do for now 
Enemies eventually secure enough resources of what they need, or take sufficient loses so that they retreat and regroup to attack later on. Not just pick at you until you have nothing left to give. Attacking enemy camps as per serial 4 would allow you to get back your stolen loot.
That seems rather strange lore-wise or even gameplay-wise. I would rather have it stay as is. But then, I am the kind of player who always plays hardcore if it’s available as an option in-game, and who fully assimilates Dwarf Fortress’s motto, “Losing is fun”.
I do like this idea. But the first part of it would seem to require that the enemies really do need the resources they take. I guess the goblins burn wood, and the rest of it could just be greed… so maybe the “enough resources of what they need” wouldn’t quite work for them. But I like the “sufficient losses” and “get back your stolen loot” parts.
They are using wooden swords. I would argue that a knocked out state is not strange at all. But each to their own.
If you are being constantly attacked by superior forces from the outset, and have to promote your workers, you will eventually have no workers. If there is no way to replace these loses, then it is a broken mechanic, regardless of your preferred difficulty settings.
Do the goblins also use wooden swords? In that case, I would agree with that, knock-out states make sense. But then it should be the same both for lowly footmen and more experienced fighters, and thus be a factor of the weapon used against them rather than their skill level per se.
Anyway, you make a good point at the end. I guess having not run into any goblins yet thus far, I just haven’t experienced this problem. If it is as you describe it, then of course I agree, that would be less than optimal. I just objected to the notion of early game footmen (who should by all accounts be weaker than the stronger kinds you may attain later in the game) being knocked unconscious in situations where late game fighters would be killed, for the purely gamey reason of it being acceptable to suffer losses later on in the game. But I’m sure a solution could be thought up that fixes the problem you describe without having to forego realism in that way.
Insofar as you would tend to run into weaker enemies fighting with wooden swords and various other non-lethal weapons early in the game, the knock-out mechanic seems like a good solution. I just don’t know if I would necessarily like any hard restrictions on that by itself. I’d rather have it be that you have to be careful to select a starting site where you are unlikely to run into overly dangerous enemies too quickly, and that you would feel some pressure to get defenses up ealry-ish. That probably couldn’t very well be done in this stage of the development of the game, though. But it’s fine, now that overly dangerous enemies aren’t in yet, as far as I know. (Although the numbers of the goblins may yet be a bit of an issue.)
I agree that my solution may be a bit restrictive, and my problem is most likely an early game balancing/location issue.
And you’re quite right: I’m sure the clever chaps and chapess at Radiant will delight us all with their solution 
They hunger for the blood, it’s quite boring out there after all.
in every game iv played iv had atleast 2 pairs of goblins attack the second day, usually i ignore them for the first bit as i concentrate on building and gathering as they have not attacked my workers… after a while i make 2 footmen, but this is where its annoying, most of the time one footman pursues the goblins and one stays to guard the storages… having a button to control the footmen would be very nice and a rallypoint for the footmen aswell…
after plying the game for 5hours (without out it even crashing) i had a city with walls and 1 entrance point, several houses and 2 guards in the back of the city guarding the stockpiles… at that point i had 20+goblins around my city, only 6-8 were stealing stuff while the rest were just idling… with no chance of pursuing the goblins they managed to lure one of my footmen out and then suddenly all goblins rushed him…
so… tl;dr
ps. is it possible to equip the footmen with shields yet?