Hearthling Property Designation Zones and Item Designation

Suggestions
1

I find it rather frustration that I can build a home, have a single hearthling live in that space, but hearthling can wander into their private home, use their table, use their storage space, and in some bugged moments even sleep in their bed (STILL find that bit funny lol maybe make that a personality trait? haha)

So i’ suggest much like how we set up Hunting and Farming and even Defense zones we can set up hearthling ownership zones. Allow us to drag out sections of land, maybe make anything inside of the zone "owned by - select hearthling (like how you do with a bed) " And then you can apply that to everything with in the zone. And then even put a “owned” option for other things like individual pieces of furniture so only selected hearthlings can use that piece of furniture maybe even allow multiple hearthlings to own a single piece of furniture if you’re having 2 hearthlings stay in the same home.

Maybe it’s just me, but i bug out when i see a random hearthling running into a knights private property using their table to eat their meal hahah

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2

Oh I really like the idea of the zones! Very clever

3

I’ve just found a similar idea of assigning houses to hearthlings using beds. Both are good ways to assign personal zones. We’ll have to see if and how the team decides to implement this mechanic into the game.

https://discourse.stonehearth.net/t/a-simple-property-system/29934

4

If we’re making a list, I’d like to add my “set building owner” idea to it – in fact, I’m debating whether to create a new thread for that idea, or just keep bringing it up in the discussion… not sure which would be less confusing and more constructive; multiple threads for similar ideas or linking the same idea to a few threads… :confused:

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yeah i saw the suggestion come up shortly after i made my post. i think when a suggestion is made others follows suite to make their own version of that suggestion. I’ve never seen this kind of suggestion prior to me posting it lol.

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and my suggestion is an overall “owned by” zone which means buildings with in the zone are included, doors, windows, etc. any object with in the zone you create is owned by the hearthling selected. but i also suggested individual object owned beyond beds so that could include buildings, tho because buildings aren’t objects in of themselves i’m not sure how selecting an owner for the building itself on it’s own would necessarily work.

7

I’m pretty sure I saw several posts about property back in the day, but I don’t think anyone suggested ways to assign in. I’m not sure which method I prefer, honestly. Zones work in caves; my suggestion only works in buildings. Zones might not work as well for complicated shapes (say, an L-shaped house with someone else’s in the corner) unless multiple touching zones for one person are treated properly. My suggestion is more automatic, but zones allow for more flexibility.

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the L Shape bit is a problem most certainly because the game doesn’t allow you to presently edit zones already placed down which is very frustrating BUT a zone in this case would work in an L shape because upon placing the zone it asks who owns what ever is in the zone, every block, every object placed with in the zone is then owned by the hearthling you desire. The only problem with this is it would effect everything above and below. But a simple solution to this would be just make it so that upon putting another zone on a higher or lower elevation in the same X and Y coordinates would act as a barrier between one hearthlings property and the hearthling living above. in the case of having apartments or something. So then you could designate not only what is owned by who, but also cut up sections of a building to assign individual hearthlings to those sections of the building. I got the idea kind of from a mod for Minecraft server i play on from time to time which lets you use a golden shovel to designate areas above and below as owned by you or someone else. it’s not perfect, but it’s a solution.

9

Yeah, I’m aware of how the zone idea works and it’s what I originally thought of when I began thinking about personal spaces – coming from Towns I’ve used exactly the same system and it works pretty well!

Unfortunately, it is still open to some… “interesting” edge-cases. Many players would probably think they’re fair, but some might consider them abuse; and either way they can just look downright weird. A perfect example: if you make a massive room you can put heaps of personal zones next to each other and create a public dormitory, but since each occupant has their own “full” personal space (i.e. you can include a minimum size, furniture requirement, or whatever else as a balancing factor) they act like they have proper individual rooms rather than a massive shared space. Now, that might not be a problem for some players since there’s still a cost to balance things; but it’s not quite the spirit/intention of the feature.

What I’m suggesting is to assign the whole building, using the building GUI, rather than adding a new system. The reason I suggest this is that buildings already know which furniture items are attached to them, so it’s easier to make them “propagate” that ownership than it would be to make a zone do the same thing. Of course it’s probably not hard for the team to make a zone do it; but when I come up with suggestions I like to make them work as much as possible with existing systems because I know that games always have a long to-do list and anything to help with that makes it easier to get the suggestion accepted hahah.

The reason I’m supporting buildings rather than zones is that, overall, I think it’s simpler for players to use; and actually a little more flexible than zones, while being the easiest option to implement AFAIK (but then I’m no expert lol.) By having a singe button in the building’s individual menu/GUI, just like how we currently assign beds to hearthlings, it becomes easier to build a hearthling’s whole home. It also allows us to bend the system a little, building rooms individually (rather than the whole building at once) so that we can “break up” the building into multiple personal spaces – great for inns, barracks, family homes and so on!

The major down-side of using buildings rather than zones is that zones are more intuitive while using the buildings for the same effect requires the player to learn the system more. It’s still possible to break up the building into several parts/rooms, but you have to do that when it’s being constructed. Using zones, it’s very clear how the whole system works.

Still, it’s great that we’ve got options on the table and I don’t think any of them are bad options – I’ll be happy with any. I’m just most interested in getting personal spaces right; and hence why I reckon it’s a good idea to explore all the different options :merry:

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10

Well actually that isn’t an easily abused thing, because currently hearthlings know when they are sleeping in a shared space with another hearthling. even if you set it up to have their own personal area of the space to be their own hearthlings in the game specifically look for walls, windows, doors, etc to determine if theyr’e outside or inside, if they’re alone, or if theyr’e with someone else. Even if the zones gave them a private space with in a space, the lack of walls surrounding that specific area of the space, the fact that there is another owned by with in the same room even if not with in their private space, they’d still know they’re in a room with another hearthling or more and in turn would reflect negatively in their moral. Now if there were a perk that specifically said they liked shared spaces then YES that could be possibly easily abused. But that would require a luck of the dice to get that perk every single time you got a new hearthling since you can’t reroll personality traits.

and the problem with assigning the whole building to a single hearthling is if you did build an apartment building for your hearthlings but you could only assign a single hearthling to said building, the rest of the apartments with in the structure would be pointless. You’d be FORCED to build individual rooms as their own “building” like building blocks or Lego’s to work around that. With the zone option you’d be able to map out fully built structures after being built rather than having to build individual spaces one after another and assigning those spaces individually as you build them.

but i see why you’d prefer your solution over mine to some extent. i wish they’d give both as an option but given that just wouldn’t be possible maybe if they came out with one option as a solution officially, someone else could expand on it to make a mod based on the other solution.

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