Heroes, Inns, Guilds, Villager Population, FPV, Evil Fortress and more!

Some of this may have already been discussed in livestreams/this forum however i’d still like to throw some suggestions/ideas out there anyway :smiley:

Before i ramble on , I did want to make some concept art however I didn’t really want to use Qubicle because i’ve not thought of an actual design (aside from some interiors) for some of the ideas, and alot of it is just basically explanations. That being said I did attempt to draw a couple of things, so brace yourself for that. I also found some pics on the web.

Here we go!

Since New users can’t put pictures into new topics and I can only place in two links i’m not able to put the concept art in the various sections of the post. However i’ll post my imgur uploads folder which contains everything. I’m afriad you’ll have to go through it manually. You’ll see as you read where the pics were meant to be.

Here’s the album

Apologies.

1. Heroes

Implementation

  • I always thought that the module element of Stonehearth would lend itself well to Dungeons and Dragons style questing where you take a small party and send them on a “Quest” defeating monsters, exploring dungeons etc. Which leads you on to, who would you send on this quest? Why not have heroes!
  • I later discovered that I hadn’t been the only person who had thought of heroes in the game, and what we’d be looking at is, How would you implement them?
  • I’ve given it some thought and here are a few options for creating a hero.

a. Kill a titan. What this boils down to is one of two things happen. Either, on death, the unit responsibly for killing the titan automatically becomes a hero i.e. “levels up” or , on death, you recieve a token which you can use to create a hero. You trade in the token to start making your own custom hero.

[Kill a titan concept][2]

b. Kill an Elite Monster. Essentailly the same as kill a titan but with a champion monster. Of course this would lead to alot more heroes I’d imagine so it would probably be best to opt for the token system again and require a given number to trade in.

[Elite Monster Concept][2]

c. Hire from a Guild. This will tie in later on with new building ideas. Originally I toyed with the idea of having them be created from an Inn but I decided that if you were to want heroes, it’s only natural that they would have their own dedicated building. This opens up alot more possibilities. There’s 3 ways I could envision implementing this method. Firstly, you opt for the token system above which you use in the guild to create your chosen heroes. Secondly, you don’t use the token system but you are required to find a “blueprint” out in the wilderness before you can build one, thus still making you have to work for your heroes. Thirdly, you opt for neither but you make the building appear later on as an advanced development. All methods would work fine, and you could probably have a combination of all three. I’ll go into more detail in the Buildings section about what guilds would entail, the requirements and general layout. I lifted this picture from the web which is actually a pretty sweet looking building and better than any concept I could come up with. (Picture is a little big)

[Guild Concept][3]

Customisation

  • The next step, what happens after you make one
  • Custom armor/weapons. Once your hero is made you’ll want to equip him/her with only the best gear, so you’ll go straight to the blacksmith to see what’s on offer. However you’ll want to have some way to separate your hero from the crowd. That’s where custom armor and weapons come in. What would be greatly desired would be a catalogue of “hero only” armor and weapons , possibly requiring a certain class or level (If heroes are to go by a levelling system, which i would strongly be in favour of), and also the ability to customize any piece to make it personal to your hero. Custom made armor would involve selecting a piece from the catalogue then having the ability to smelt your own piece with the same stats. This would give people the ability to make your hero stand out, whether or not you actually want to create your own custom equipment.
  • Name. Pretty self explanatory, it would be great to give your hero a name, maybe they could even earn titles.
  • Stats? Obviously we want heroes to be stronger than the average soldier however personally i wouldn’t want to focuss on a stat point system like a standard rpg, where you level and must put stats into strength dexterity. I feel that would take away far too much from the game. Basic levelling is all that would be needed.
  • Classes. Classes for heroes would either be one of two things. Not going to go into great detail since i don’t know whats planned ahead class wise.
    • Custom classes, namely create completely new classes for heroes (Ranger, Paladin, Sorceror etc)
    • Better classes, have enhanced versions of already existing classes
  • Leadership/courage buff. Should heroes give off a slight buff to nearby units?

Death:

  • Lineage. The basic idea for this would be that if your hero was able to make it to an old age and “retire”, the family legacy would continue on and you’d be able to create a new hero as a “next in line” to a previously retired hero. This would mean that he/she would be stronger than a regular hero. Of course this would not apply to heroes who die in battle.
  • Custom Statue (More kills = larger statue). On death, it would be nice to find a way to commemorate your hero, the ability to create a statue of a fallen hero to place in your city would be pretty nice. The greater the feats of the hero, the bigger the statue you can build.
  • Encourage invasion. It would only make sense that if monster or enemy factions were to see or hear about the death of your hero, they would sense the weakness in your forces and use this as an opportunity to attack your settlement
  • Panic buff. Units surrounding the hero when he/she dies may be tempted to flee/panic.

Quests:

  • Given the implementation it would be pretty cool to see Hero only quests/modules where you could potentially obtain a powerful artifact or blueprints etc
  • Group party quests could also be a cool option too.

2 . Increasing Villager Count

  • I’m not sure if this has been figured out but i’ll keep it brief.
  • Also will building houses increase population limit? (Think age of empires)

Implementation:

  • Babies, personally not a favorite idea, alot of work to properly implement and not really going to streamline the process.
  • Convoy, Favorite idea.
    • Either a convoy will appear from the edge of the map, from within “fog of war” if that exists, or just a certain distance away where you’re not looking with a message appearing “scouts have just reported sight of approaching convoy etc”
    • Early on in the game they can make it to the base without an escort but as your population grows it’ll get raided by monsters requiring an escort.

[Convoy Concept][4]

These are the only other ways i could see this being implented;

  • Appearing from castle or main settlement building
  • Appearring out of a random house
  • Appearring out of thin air

Villager Customisation

  • Keeping it brief again
  • At a basic level, names and hairstyles would be a great start, maybe the faces too (Scars, Skin color, Eye type, make-up, eye patches, masks).
  • Custom clothing you create which gets added to a pool of potential outfits your villages will take from (of course it would be in the same color scheme).
  • Accessories like hats, jewellry, undergarnments like basic gloves and boots (Which armors would sit over), bandages, Scarves (Minor Alterations you could make to the character without them completely losing their identity in their class or kingdom) would be pretty nice

Moving swiftly on :smiley:


3 . New Classes

  • Keeping this super brief as i’ve not really fleshed them out other than to be the NPC required for the buildings mentioned later
  • Carpenter + scroll = Innkeeper.
  • Innkeeper + Tome = Guildmaster

Here’s a cool picture I found of what i’d picture a guildmaster to look like (Though this would be for a dwarf)

[GuildMaster Concept][5]


4 . New Buildings

Inn

  • Implementation

    • Requires an innkeeper, check-in desk, tables and chairs, beds.
    • Once assigned the inkeeper will stand behind the desk infront of a check in book
    • Can be used to “rest” units/heroes, healing them.
    • Will create “guest” npcs which can’t be used but are there to provide atmosphere like the inn is being used (Sleeping in beds, sitting downstairs etc)

[Inn Concept][6]

Guild

  • Implementation

    • Used for hiring heroes
    • Needs guildmaster, desk, tables and chairs, request board.
    • Heroes not in use will wander around guild, sit at tables and chairs drinking, laughing.
    • You can make up to 15 heroes [Optional limit, but maybe limit it depending on size of guild/chairs avaliable]
    • Heroes need to be “hired” for a small fee.
    • Heroes that are not “hired” may or may not assist the town if attacked by a titan however definetly if guild attacked [up to you guys :P]

[Guild Concept interior][7]

Other potential ideas:

  • Speciality guilds, warrior, wizard, ranger. Specific design that would make them stand out also provides bonuses for the heroes.[Maybe special skills, weapon/armors options in blacksmith, buffs, etc]

  • The ability to design a sign for the guild to give it its own name, which could sit atop it would be a nice little detail that could be added.

  • Option to import heroes from a friend?


5 . Smaller ideas and a couple of questions.

Enemy/Evil fortresses

  • It would be really cool to see enemy factions either build up their own bases which you can lay siege to later on in the game, or have evil fortresses spawn in with the world, full of monsters and a dark overlord.

Rare Creatures:

  • This has probably been suggested countless times and no doubt will be modded in eventually (heck i’d even do it myself :wink:) But having rare creatures wander the landscape which you could hunt/train/breed etc [Unicorns/Dragons/Centaurs/Werewolf pack/Vampire plague/Witches/Sirens]

  • In respect of Werewolfs, Witches, Vampires and Dragons, it would be pretty cool to see them attack your settlement at some point i.e werewolves would attack in a pack, dragons would torch from the skies, vampires would sneak into homes and turn unsuspecting villagers, and witches would cast spells (maybe turn villagers into livestock)

  • Incredibly rare one off monsters from Folklore/cryptozoology would be a nice bonus where you’re not all that sure they are in the game but very very rarely someone might see one and deperately try to hunt it or track it down. i.e.

    • Chupacabra
    • Spring-heeled Jack
    • Headless horseman

[Spring-heeled Jack][8]

Festival based monster invasions

  • This is only based on one idea but that would be a scarecrow attack during halloween celebration, where out of no where the scarecrows come alive and attack your villagers

[Pumpkin][9]

Custom Modules:

  • I think a requirement whereby you must be able to complete the module before you share it should be implemented so that there aren’t these impossible modules no one can beat floating around.
  • Custom cinematics?

First Person view

  • It would be pretty cool if you could walk around your settlement from a villagers perspective. Just so you can have a look at it and explore it as one of them.

Music Box

  • Custom music for houses?

Player journal in the options menu

  • Documents enemies, titans, biomes, alternate planes, buildings etc

6 . Questions:

  • Will there be a Day/Night cycle?
  • Will there be weather outside of seasons?
  • In regards to moddability. How possible would it be to do an complete overhaul? (Not that i’d want to immediately, i’m talking a long way down the road)
  • Will it be possible to put your own music in the game?

Sorry for the massive wall o’ text but i had a bunch of ideas i wanted to throw out there see what people think :ghost:

3 Likes

that is an impressive wall-o-test @Lycandar:smiley:

just a personal observation from other forums, it is typically difficult to engage people with so many varying topics in one thread… and is much easier to draw in feedback when you break them up into separate threads… having said that… :stuck_out_tongue:

  1. yes
  2. yes
  3. completely possible… we’ll have access to all the tools the team has (with the exception of low level engine “stuff”)
  4. absolutely

I haven’t read through the text but I see you have some questions!

  • Day/night cycle - yes.

  • Weather outside of seasons - They want weather, but whether it is purely cosmetic or has effects, is still up in the air.

  • Overhaul - Definitely possible, all it would take is time and ability. At the beginning of the kickstarter someone asked if they could do a sci-fi overhaul, and yes you can.

  • Own music - I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to, modding is so core to the game, music wouldn’t seem too difficult to implement.

1 Like

Lots of ideas, but many are too in depth for the direction SH is going. The game is more about building your settlement and growing it to a prosperous city (and fighting growing odds) than about single units.

I like the idea that the solider (and it will be soliders that fight titans, civilians will be running for the hills) gets something special. Maybe like a medal ‘Titan killer’ that gives him better attributes. He can be a hero in your heart then, because you’ll know he saved your city from a great menace.

Other than that, the closest we’ll get to heroes will probably be the prestige classes like the geomancer or magma smith.
As for population growth, Tom has stated he wants to keep it simple, maybe Civilisation style. Get enough surplus of food, you get another villager.

You might want to break down that into more posts as it’s difficult to discuss such a wall of text.

I’ll be jumping out for a short while, but i’ll definetly break it down when it get back :smile:

Thanks for answering the questions at the bottom!

I think that having a hero shouldn’t be a matter of resources–>hero conversion, but rather one would attract heroes to the city and keep them happy by building a certain structure, or completing certain tasks, such as building a statue of him, or killing 100 goblins, or a Cthulhu or something.

  1. Heroes - I am not sure if what you described would work well with what they have with the heroic or prestige classes. The geomancer etc will be very hard to get an be like a advanced style of class stronger than your general class. What may work excellent with your system in mind is to design your own modded classes and make your own requirements for getting them and include among them killing a titan or X bosses to unlock your epic or heroic classes you designed. Maybe these classes among other abilities even have things that enhance their abilities against Titans like a titan hunter of some variety?

  2. Guild - I do like this guild idea and the inn/tavern idea with mercenaries as well. That all seems like a pretty solid idea. Maybe you could instead of have your swordsmen train in a warrior guild and get some sort of permanent bonus to damage or something? This kinda of hinges on what goes into the vanilla game though we have very little info about combat classes yet or if some kind of a guild or barracks building will be in there that you can expand on.

  3. Lineage - This seems like a really cool idea but it seems like something that would be crazy to implement as a mod. That is a really complex type of idea but I’d imagine it would be doable. I don’t know if permadeath + lineage mixes well with survival + base death.

  4. Getting more people - I don’t think they said yet so i dunno.

  5. inn - I think you can just make these in the vanilla?

  6. Enemy fortresses - Would absolutely be awesome. They discussed this in Q+A having enemies build up bases would be too complex and not add enough to the game or something along those lines? However you can use a module to spawn a ready-made fortress with monsters and a dark overlord absolutely.

  7. Rare monsters and festival invasions - would be cool like everything there.

1. HEROES: The only thing I could imagine a hero being used for is stat buffs for groups of villagers or squadrons. I have a couple ideas about this. One being that perhaps if a character is evolved through the pinnacle of its class tree it would have several type of “hero buffs” that it could obtain. Let’s assume each class has a maximum of 10 levels. Also, let’s say that around the 5th level you’ll have the option to rank upwards to the next class tier or continue leveling the same class.

Ex: Carpenter > Farmer > Brewer > Brewmaster > Physician (current up to date highest tier class) (one of them - other being Beastmaster)

In the above example, let’s say when your Physician is created and maxes out to level 10, that it has an option of acquiring a “Hero Buff” and an exclusive “Hero Title”. You’d pick a buff for your hero to project across other villagers just by being near by them. So let’s say your Physician hits level 10 and you get to pick 1 of 3 different buffs. Maybe 1 buff just constantly slowly regenerates nearby units, another increases the maximum HP of nearby units by 15% and another makes nearby units immune to certain poisons or diseases. You can only pick 1 and it’s permanent. No redos.

That’s my first take on Heroes.

Also, besides leveling up classes to make a hero, I’m also pretty fond of hiring them from a Guild. If anyone’s played “Towns” before, heroes kind of show up randomly based on the population of your town. I could see this being a usable model for Stonehearth too. Maybe after a certain amount of villagers, a hero or two will arrive at a guild but to use them you’d have to buy their services, or something like that.

I’m not really a fan of the statues and exultation of dead heroes, or at least all of them. I could imagine that after you get your first Hero, you would be able to then build statues in a heroes name, but not any particular hero. I say this just because I imagine that eventually having a hero won’t be an uncommon thing and as far as an RTS can go, they come and go all the time and that’s a lot of pointless statues laying around.

2. INCREASING VILLAGER COUNT: I don’t like the babies idea. I’m not a big fan of convoys alone or setting a standard for the number of homes determine villager spawns alone.

I prefer to have a mix of convoy, village space and resources. If you have enough resources (IE. Food), space in your village for more people (IE. Homes or some amount of floor space) and also convoy (appearing out of thin air either by a designated village spawn (town center) or map edge (if there will be map edges))

3. NEW CLASSES I’m not even going to bother trying to suggest classes with so little known about them. Devs have mentioned that they are going to have A LOT more than they have shown (which currently isn’t much), so likely we’d be mentioning things they’re already going to add. I’d rather wait to see more of what they come up with to catch an idea of how they expect things to roll and then come up with classes based on what’s existing or useful to the game.

4. NEW BUILDINGS: Devs have already mentioned that buildings aren’t specific. You don’t just choose to build an Inn or a Tavern or a House or a Blacksmith. You build a building then it becomes what you want it to be based on what you place in its interior. Ex. You want a blacksmith, so you build a generic building of some sort and place a forge, anvil and maybe some armor stands in there. Now it is a blacksmith. To make an Inn, you build a generic building of some sort and place a bunch of beds.

I understand the idea of this, but think more along the lines of an RTS. The function of an Inn is fairly insignificant unless coupled with something like the attraction of Heroes if my above statements about heroes made any sense.

5. MISC: Devs have said that enemy factions will build some of their own stuff, but don’t expect to have them build a solid town how a player would be expected to build one. My take on that is that you can expect to have enemy factions building towers and maybe low level type of buildings like maybe small houses or essential items like an enemy blacksmith or farming areas. I wouldn’t expect large fortresses and such. However, I think it would be a neat module to have an existing giant evil fortress spawn and the player’s quest would be to conquer it. That module with the fortress could force spawn an infinite amount of enemies over time until it is destroyed. I do like that idea.

Rare creatures, totally to be expected. Well, I certainly hope so anyway.

6. QUESTIONS:

  • Day/Night Cycle? Yes. They said there is one.
  • Weather? They want it and they said that it will have an effect on your surroundings slightly. The example given by one Dev is that if it rains, you can expect that it will have an impact on your farms. Crops would obviously be getting watered by this event.
  • Mod-ability? Massively from what the Devs keep saying.
  • Custom Music? Not that I think I would need this based on all the music I’ve been hearing with Stonehearth, but I imagine this would definitely be a possibility based on the mod-ability of the whole game.

I do like the hero idea, but doubt that it will find its way in the game before the full release. About the guild, I believe it was stated in a live-stream, maybe multiple, that they don’t want to have “preset” buildings. Every building can be whatever you want.

For example, you have two identical buildings… But one is a blacksmith’s workplace/house and the other a mini barracks. It depends on what you put in the building, that will define it’s purpose. So your guildhouse could be as big or small as you want :slight_smile:

I really like the first person view feature, that you can walk around your town. It reminds me of this theme park game (not RC3) where you could walk around as well… It was really old school and I loved it.

Oh, I was going to answer your questions, but is has already been done :smiley:

Hey all!

I must admit i haven’t been keeping up with the dev so far but i remember there was talk about having an in game avatar? well i was wondering if there was a plan to have hero’s in he game that would bestow certain benefits etc to your game. increased damage, crops grow faster etc…

much like you would see on age of empires. I think it would add some nice character to the game and have some real potential for modding and story lines.

hey there @jollins… i’ve merged your thread here, as the OP starts off with some fairly detailed discussion points on potential hero ideas…

1 Like

nice thanks! i see the OP have put some real thought into this! would be awesome to see in the game. if not then a hero’s of Stonehearth mod will defiantly be in order!

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Suggestion

Inn

Build a Vineyard >>> Vinegrapes
Build a Winer >>> Wine

Build a Beekeeper’s Hut >>> Honey
Build a Mead Maker’s Hut >>> Mead

Scars should be earned in battle maybe this can be a thing added to go with heroes.

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having our units “evolve” over time would be interesting… we’ll obviously have class progression, but the units features actually changing would be… well, interesting… :wink:

1 Like