So I bought Stonehearth the other day, and played 15 hours over the course of two days. It’s a great RTS/RPG Town building survival game and although I’ve never played Dwarf Fortress (which I think I heard was somewhat an inspiration) I can loosely compare it to:
Below are my suggestions for improvements and/or features:
Game Tweaks
The pivot point of the camera is centred on whatever the centre of the camera is facing. Which includes trees and they can get in the way and mess up the angle of the camera when you’re looking around. Perhaps they could be ignored somehow?
The large 4x4x4 blocks when mining snap to a grid spacing spaced by 4 blocks.
Wondering if this could change to allow the player to snap it to individual blocks. I realise their is a tool that mines by individual blocks, but it doesn’t select large mines as quickly as this one does.
Trade offers are lacking incentive (I don’t want to trade 6 chairs for 2 curtains) They need to offer products of greater or equal value.
Villagers should only open doors when they need to. Also, animals shouldn’t be able to open doors/gates.
Stockpile radiuses
e.g. Only stockpile resources if they are within range
Stock piles and pastures can be resized
Consider adjusting villager pathfinding to prefer using roads over going around buildings, over grass, etc (Should just value road squares over other squares)
Can choose to destroy (non construction related) ladders from the top
Wool can be more than just a trade good?
Stackable products (Mainly wood)
Things on the ground only orientate one way, if a villager places something down, it should keep facing that way instead of whatever generic direction it usually faces
Farms could also be orientated
Aesthetics
The concept art looks unique, pleasant, and pretty cool. So I was wondering if the in game character/enemy models will reflect this at some point, or will they remain as pixel blocks?
Add grass,(Things are rather bare)
Add wind and/or weather
UI Stuff
Quick crafting menus : A sidebar with the current work tables built available for quick selection. Because It’s a hassle to split the houses so I can find the one with my smiths anvil.
Sort villagers by jobs
Villager Related Dongles
The ability to set manual patrol routes/guard stations for the village footmen, instead of letting them roam around willy nilly. Because sometimes they take a while to get to a fight, and this costs lives.
Rival/Allied settlements (Might already be planned, but still, the map is HUGE)
Set retreat/panic point for villagers if they see and run away from enemies. They alert nearby guards.
Garrisons/retreat points could have assigned patrols that call all the guards to retreat and defend villagers sheltered there
Villager mounts / packmules / carts
Treasure chests for the villagers
Profession/Crafting Related Dongles
Farming irrigation:
Water sources provide crop benefits (depending on distance from water source)
Farmers can create little rivers/irrigation channels when provided with a water source
Upgradable benches
More work benches (e.g. Forge to smelt ores, instead of anvil)
Gatherer class, gathers from zones whenever available, similar to trapper (can choose what to gather in the zone, kind of like stock piling)
Building
A road tool. At the moment creating pathways is just like a custom building. (It just ‘feels’ awkward)
When in RPG vision mode, it’d be nice if doors were eliminated too, similar to X-ray vision.
Lamp posts, brazier stands, just long thick rods in general that stand up straight and can have stuff jammed on them
Hey, welcome to the game and the community! I agree with most of your points. Let me address them individually.
I agree. For further discussion, see this topic (although your suggestion was a bit more general).
I was thinking about that too. Perhaps the problem is that, if you can do individual blocks, the citizens are unable to fit through the holes they themselves create, and they might attempt to mine designations deeper into the cliff face that they can’t reach, or some such. But you say there’s already a tool that mines by individual blocks anyway… is that true? I don’t think I even knew about that one. In which case the above-mentioned issue should already be a problem or already be dealt with, and there’s no reason for it not to be allowed with the general mining tool
Hmm… I don’t entirely agree with that one; it makes sense that the trader will want to get something good out of it as well, after all. I guess (approximately) equal value could work, but even then it doesn’t seem very lucrative for the trader. They should get something for their trouble, after all. And sometimes the trades where you lose some value can still be good, if you get something that is a limited resource where you are, or just something you cannot get easily (i.e. you don’t have to craft all these fur rugs yourself, etc.)
Agreed! The latter point was addressed here, but I think if the former point is addressed, the second thing can be implemented at the same time.
Interesting… could make sense, although perhaps you do eventually want your Stonehearthians to get the more distant goods as well… perhaps it could be a setting somewhere, so that you can focus your citizens’ efforts. I think this sort of thing will probably be implemented once you get more management options in the game.
Isn’t that already slightly the case? I seem to remember… hang on, let me check. Yes, look here at 1:07:20, in the test Tom is running. It looks like the citizen prefers to follow the road.
Ooh, I was just thinking about that yesterday! Yes, I think you should be able to specify whether they destroy it from above or below (although by default they should probably just do whichever is convenient). That way, you can prevent them from getting stuck after breaking down a ladder.
I don’t remember if it has a function at the moment… but I’ll take it from you that it doesn’t. (Not even for making fancy beds and such?) If that is the case, I’m sure it’ll get some love soon
Well, we are getting crates in the next alpha that allow us to store multiple items in one tile, which is sorta similar. And I think the crates themselves do stack on a single tile, to boot! But it would be cool if certain individual items would be able to behave that way too, it’s true.
Hm, that’s a pretty good one. Of course, for certain things that you manually place in the world, like furniture, you can choose their orientation, but I guess you mean other things that aren’t placed down by hitting them with a hammer (“built”, in Dwarf Fortress terms), but just dropped. I agree, it would be nice if the game had more fidelity toward how the animations were done, sometimes.
Agreed again. Sometimes I make a farm four wide because I want it to be two planted rows, each with a non-planted row next to it, only to realize the orientation of the rows in the farm is in the other dimension, and it doesn’t work out.
I think the voxel 16-bit style is pretty core to the game for the developers, so I doubt that will be changed. I do agree that the concept art looks really good as well, though.
I think the green of the ground is meant to represent grass… but I guess you mean things like occasional patches of tall grass and the like (like in Minecraft). I agree it would be good to have some more things to break the monotony of the landscape. You know, other than the occasional flower or weed. Even if it’s just aesthetic, like the clumps of tall grass might be, or like the various symbols used for the ground in Dwarf Fortress (if you don’t disable that option).
Is on the planned features list, I believe
We used to have a management dialog for just crafters, but now they’re just incorporated into the citizens management dialog. You can at least use that to find their workbenches, I believe (at least you can select them and then open their workbench from the bar in the bottom left), so that you don’t have to break open houses like you said.
However, it might be nice if we could define hotkeys for certain locations, units, or items (including workbenches). I keep referring to Dwarf Fortress—you can set hotkeys for locations, there, at least. That sort of thing might be nice for Stonehearth, too.
Yes, various sorting options might be good. I seem to remember this being discussed at some point, but I can’t find the topic in question.
Yes, more options to control your footmen might be nice. Another one that I think might be nice is if you could give them a move/attack order without having them stay there after they arrive. (Especially because they seem to have a smaller aggro range when on such an order than if they’re just there… which means you have to remove the order for them to even attack an enemy that is nearby, but not nearby enough.) I think Tom mentioned planning to work on such things soon in the same stream I linked earlier, although I don’t remember where in the stream exactly.
There is going to be a bunny faction, at least, which is more or less allied (at least not hostile). I think some others were planned as well
You can kind of do this already if you make a party with your civilians (non-footman units) and set a defense flag for them at a certain point. Of course, this does mean that you need to enable defense mode before they actually go there, so it’s not quite as good as what you are suggesting. There’s also no alerting of guards. That sort of AI would be beautiful to see, I think. I hope we’ll get it at some point!
Would be fantastic. You could also have guardtowers in which you station lookouts that ring a bell when they see trouble, or something. I think these sorts of things were mentioned somewhere before… let me see if I can track that down. Yep, examples: here and here.
Sounds cool! Mounting was mentioned by the developers, at least, I think in a recent stream in response to a question from the chat. Again, don’t remember when exactly.
Sweet
Uses for water are already planned, and farming is one of them. See the Trello, under “Core Engine”.
Would be interesting. I imagine that might be a bit lower priority for the developers than some of the other things, more core elements of gameplay… but I also imagine this sort of thing will happen eventually.
Wasn’t the forge in now? Pandemic mentioned this in their recent spotlight (the text by the “Blacksmith” image). I think more should follow with new jobs, and eventually probably for existing jobs as well.
Interesting. Perhaps could be just a regular citizen set on a specific duty, rather than a specialized class.
I would agree there. Also when you mouse over your roads, sections that you built individually light up for selection. It’s all just sorta strange.
Yes, I think so too. Certainly external doors. Perhaps it could be a toggle, so that you can decide depending on what you want to do exactly.
Ah, I was thinking about lamp posts too, a few days ago! Good suggestions. I think we have a good chance of seeing these in the game.
Very nice post! Quite a number of good suggestions in here
There’s a purpose for this… it was discussed a while back in one of the streams, maybe?
I find it convenient enough as is…
THe point of this is to keep you alert as to what you’re trading. Not all trades should be fair. I think it’ll have more significance later when you need to find out if, for example, your one item costing 2 steel, 1 coal, 1 wood is worth the 12 items costing 1 wood, 1 cloth each
I think this is already in effect. There’s a speed bonus on roads and the pathfinder takes that into account. If its quicker to run across the grass, that’s the path they’ll choose!
Currently only required for winter coats, but it might also be (wastefully) used to make cloth items?
+1!!!
In time! I can’t wait for weather/seasons
+1!!!
This is in the works… check the trello roadmap
This is also in the works, hopefully we’ll see some of it in the next two or three alphas
Well I just made a MOD yesterday that adds braziers if you want
I totally forgot about the Trello board when I was making this. I’m new to this, so I’ll make sure to check it next time I suggest things.
With regard to the snapping of the mining grid :
I didn’t mean to mine individual blocks, sorry if I confused you. I meant the snapping of the 4xBlock doesn’t snap to the grid normally, but by segments as large as itself. The picture was meant to illustrate that point, I didn’t do a good job of cropping, but those two grids are meant to be right next to each other, and that’s how the snap looks when you try to move in between those two points. You can’t snap to anywhere else in between. @phector2004 says there’s a purpose, so if that’s the case that’s fine. I was just a little upset because the snap didn’t align with the road I had built
@Phagocytosis & @phector2004 : You both make good points about the trading, I understand now how this can be useful. I was just so sick of being asked to trade 6-8 of something like fences and beds for a couple of carpets or curtains haha.
I think to get more distant goods, a player could tell their villagers to retrieve it using a tool similar to how they harvest trees and bushes, if not the same tool, just tweaked to allow it to tell villagers to pick up goods.
& @phector2004 Ah I see, yeah I noticed how they were cutting corners so I was suspecting they weren’t actually using the pathway. In my head it was more strict but this is actually better.
On the case about the wool : @Phagocytosis & @phector2004, I was thinking that wool could be an alternate material to create thread. Like how all the different pelts can be made into a bolt of leather.
I noticed the geomancer concept art, and it kept the voxel block terrain look, but the entities were drawn… not voxel. I was thinking a blend of the two could look pretty awesome.
Yeah I was thinking about Minecraft as an example. When they added the grass, it was like “a whole new game”. Aesthetically.
The way they have it right now might work fine, if we were to consider the scenario where you end up having multiple crafters of the same discipline, then choosing the specific worker who is closer to whatever you need done could work out better. Although on that note, with a quick crafting menu, you could name workstations (Taking some inspiration from your hotkey idea) and quickly move between each one if you already have it in your head where each one is.
Thanks for those, that was an awesome read. I hadn’t given much thought about organising formations and battle plans. I just want to keep my little dudes alive
But I would love that added level of depth and preparation, especially since it’s the military side of Stonehearth, where it doesn’t seem feasible to just let your Hearthling warriors ‘figure it out for themselves’. There’s always a general, and for a good reason.
But I don’t really want to throw away the autonomy just because it’s the important military side of Stonehearth either. Which is why I think perhaps it would be cool to have a Commander type class, that organises and boosts your troops and uses the best strategies and formations you create depending on the situation. So if you’re effective in your plans, the Commander will be efficient in their execution.
I have not discovered this yet. Weird. I will have to look harder haha
Thanks for actually reading through all of that, feedback for my feedback has given me more to think about
You can already use it as a “Bundle of Fiber” to make a Spool of Thread with the Weaver! It’s really easy to miss that detail because the image looks like silkweed and fakes you out.
This is not in yet. Smelting is still done on the anvil. One of the twins mentioned it as coming soon though. It’s on the Trello board as something they are working on now.
He meant in the recent spotlight of your “Awesome City Renderings” you mentioned that the forge is in the game.
Which probably meant it has been implemented, but not pushed into the game just yet. Maybe you could clarify this.
wait, the ent is implemented in-game, and not just sitting waiting in the files? and by that i mean, can you actually find ents in a alpha 10 playthrough?
Go into your stonehearth install folder. Inside the mods folder you’ll find radiant.smod and stonehearth.smod. Make a copy of them and change the extension from .smod to .zip. Now extract the zip files. You now have access to all the files Pandemic was talking about. You just have to dig through the folders to find them
Note: Probably best to make those copies and extract those files to somewhere that isn’t in the mod folder. Otherwise they may override the smod files and when the game patches it will run the old files instead of the new ones.
Yup!
Make sure to delete an unzipped stonehearth.smod whenever the game updates, or else you continue to play the previous version… or in my case, a hybrid, extra buggy version if you unzip random bits and pieces
