I’ve noticed as the game became way more playable lately, I have ventured farther from home.
Problem is that my hearthlings get hungry on long trips of 400 feet or more away when they go fighting. I’m not complaining about the duration of hunger, it all makes sense. I just feel that if the hearthling is given a job beyond a certain distance, he should pick up food to carry for one sitting so he/she can go out, eat, have lunch, finish up and come back.
As a double suggestion, I would make it a “packed lunch” a craftable item by the cook so farther distances are more efficient by means of upgrading to your town having a cook.
Ooh, I really like this idea. Hearthlings already have backpacks (with 5 slots by default), it would be nice if we could manage what they do with one or two of those slots. Then you could send your footman on a long adventure to scout the whole map, without worrying about them dying of hunger. And the “packed lunch” idea for the cook sounds really neat. Could be similar to the way @Froggy implemented offerings in Frostfeast. First craft the food item, then pack it up!
Alternatively, have an algorithm determine when a point is far away, treat it as a separate task that requires an item (just like crafting or building), and have them equip some food themselves?
On one hand: better fit with Stonehearth “spirit” of human non-interference.
On the other: it would indeed kind of be nice to have some manual control of items in your Hearthlings’ inventories. I’m thinking things like grenades, potions, etc.
I’m laughing really hard right now at the items you chose to list! Never thought I would see grenades right up next to potions on a topic about Stonehearth!
Pff. I was thinking something like Greek Fire. It was (or could have been) a grenade under some definitions! Or, you know, in general a thrown item. Like Holy Water (from the Cleric?! … somehow) against zombies!
Whatever comes of this suggestion, I would ask that it be semi-automatic. Not something you’d have to baby sit for each hearthling at first.
Like, say you have the list of your hearthlings defined by role. You select warriors, then, you’d have one slot to assign, extra arrorws, slowing oil, distraction dust, or various potions made by the herbalist. They then would use this at their own discretion.
Then, workers could be done the same, minus warrior stuff like arrows or slowing oil.
But for I would say end game allow an individual override so you can have warriors with different setups.
In saying this, I’d still like to see “packed lunch” as an automatic thing that takes up a slot that would normally be a standard backpack slot.
On my ideas of food, guards seem to go hungry if set to “guard”.
Could a hearthling bring them a snack?
Now, one could argue that, there should be a change of guards blah blah… i thought about this, then the epic amount of coding required, someone bringing them a snack would seem easier and quaint.
i suggested in this thread, to create a troop supporting function with a hauler class, so we could even setup little military camps, to keep up plundering crypts and innocent gobling camps
Let’s escalate! As before stated, the possibilities from packed lunch (or rations) could go wide. Not only potions, bandages and whatnot for some field first aid…
But javelins, rocks, secondary weaponry, tooting bugles for morale (or stat) boost, bolas, shurikens, rabbit as throwing items…
Ponder replied, that radiant try to avoid such 100% individual equipment, so rations, potions and other items won’t be a constant part of your hearthlings (aslong it’s not really necessary, like ammunition for ranged classes). So a Hauler who is part of a military/worker group, could function like a mobile stockpile, providing food, medical supply, ammunation and other consumables. Additionaly they could add a temporary camp function, so your hearthling would use this camp as safe zone, sleeping around a campfire and gathering the loot at this point.
With such mechanic, they could shorten long distances troops/workers have to walk, making the whole system more efficient. (no need to commute between town and working/looting/fighting areas)
That might work but it sounds even more ponderous then simply allowing individual hearthlings to bring food with them… if they are so opposed to the idea of having them carry anything with them like rations, then perhaps the solution is to have a craftable item that they eat before they leave on a long mission that prevents hunger for longer. Honestly though I’m not really sure how you get around some of the issues with the game without having hearthlings carry supplies with them since we are already seeing the herbalist make potions that are essentially useless if no one picks them up and takes them with them.
Personally I think the solution isn’t to take up backpack space but to actually give the hearthlings an additional storage capacity with a behavior based on class and maybe personality that they automatically use when convenient. All classes would have a slot to carry some personal food and would prefer to eat at a table/get food from the supply but only if it was within a certain distance based on their movement. And warriors would additionally have a spot to carry a potion.
Yeah I thought exactly the same when I read the reply, but I actually understand their struggle: its a lot of calculation for a small function and it makes the healing a bit too easy. That’s why I try too push the hauler/supporter class suggestion, it would solve several issues in an immersive way, using mainly basic ai mechanics.
I suppose if it is an upgraded version of the builder that could work, because then it could function to support both normal workers and martial classes and still build/haul etc. I just have issue of with the idea of continually adding more specialist classes that are integral to the game it starts to move to a place where you don’t have any hearthlings left to build things.
I think that both of your ideas have merit, but I wanted to point out that just because a Hearthling has a class doesn’t mean they can’t build. Each class can be set to allow or block functions like buildings. I know the carpenter can build, but I am not sure if anyone else can…
I really like all the ideas here and agree that for longer trips out and about, the hearthlings need a way to carry a meal and maybe some bandages in their inventory or backpacks. Tiny little rucksacks on their back that are crafted from leather would also be awesome and adorable!
This was coded into Rimworld (carrying a meal) and really made a big difference on sending parties far from the colony to haul supply pods that dropped valuable things at the furthest end of the map. For me, with Rayya’s children, I sometimes send them out to gather wood and as you know, there’s not a lot of that in the desert so they end up going quite far sometimes… I’d love to eventually see tiny little campfires (like the goblin ones but not green fire!) for them to put up as an ‘overnight’ camp with maybe a bedroll and meal they carry with them. This would of course be a problem with attackers but a chance you take sending workers out that far!
that was the original plan when they first added backpacks to all hearthlings, instead of just the trapper, but as you can tell it never came to fruition… maybe some day.’
edit: i guess i should clarify, hearthlings were going to still have their invisible starting backpack, but it was planned that you could craft an upgrade backpack with the weaver, and it would have double the space of the starter one.
Ah! This is a fantastic idea. I hope they’ll revisit the idea later. Right now it seems bug squashing and optimization are still the main focus and that’s to be expected while still in Alpha. Features like visible / upgraded backpacks would be more of a polish kind of feature added towards the end of development along with a lot more decorations and other ‘pretty’ items to make the gameplay more fun and varied.
well building is a really special task, it consumes time of workers and other classes, but you don’t actually build the whole time. So a builder class would idle or just function as normal workers.
I already complained in several topics about “business” of different classes, that we don’t need specialists for every tasks, some tasks should be shared by different classes (mining for mason and blacksmith) and other classes need more special tasks. ( like the trapper who is simply overfilling my stockpiles)
It causes huge imbalance of tasks among the classes and also imbalance on your economic system (we gather much more than we actually consume)
My personal issue was also the inefficient working, like looting up stuff of raided crypt or simply the resources i chopped/mined outside of my village. Like half of the village is running across the map just to pick up several items. Or my footman have to sleep, eat or heal, while they’re far away. They have to walk the the whole map, which is annoying and time consuming. In the worst case a new camp spawns near 'em and they have to fight again.
Another idea would be to create a building camp mechanic, so the supporter/hauler class creates a temporarily limited stockpile, which contains the building materials for the building (every building calculates all resources before you start to build it, right?). So the workers will only take the stuff from this special stockpile, it shortens the distance and the builders will be much faster.
Instead of interrupting all classes for easy tasks like gathering/looting items or long distance transport, one class will take care of them and the rest can keep up working. It also could save memory, because only a small area needs to be calculated.
