Making Town Management Matter

Suggestions
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Hello,

I am a huge fan of Stonehearth but recently I was also playing Northgard (it doesnt mean anything I promise, Stonehearth is still my boo). It’s an okay game but one mechanics that I found really interesting is their winter + event. Let me explain.

In StoneHearth right now, once I have 2 farmers, 1 cook and 1 trapper I can basically feed 30 hearthtlings without ever having to worry about food or food diversity ever again. Same with making weapons and armor. My hearthlings weapons, clothing and amors never break or deteriorate. Basically what I mean is that the “town management” aspect of stonehearth is very limited.

What I think would make things interesting is a broader diversity of events + deterioration of consumables other than food. For example in Northgard, winter affects my villager’s ability to produce food. This means that I need to plan ahead to have food reserves. I know this seems simple just like that but it adds a whole new layer to the game. Add to this random events like blizzards, diseases outbreaks, need for fire wood and you start having some real town management mechanics for really little effort.

I am just saying, I love stonehearth and the direction the game is going. The periodic invasions and increase in their strength forces me to have my town constantly improving. But I feel like many other aspects of the town management are being underutilized.

I know seasons are on the roadmap. I hope they won’t just be aesthetic though. That they’ll really matter.

Cheers!

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The Frostfeast mod made summer crops more difficult to grow and added some winter crops. Unfortunately it’s currently out of order with all the changes that have been happening.

As far as deterioration goes, @sdee mentioned “durability” in a dev stream when talking about crafters. Stonehearth Dev Stream 265: Workshop UX around 19:35. Though she said they may revisit the issue now that everyone has had all their stuff destroyed in Zelda lol. Here’s hoping durability ends up making it in because it would make towns feel a more alive if the crafters needed to repair certain items like tools, armor, and weapons.

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I definitely agree with the feeling of alive. For example having to make sure you have a steady inflow of iron to supply your troops and cloth to keep everybody warm in the winter. To me these supply chain management would make for a much deeper gameplay.

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Yup, that’s the main reason why I don’t place a huge warehouse for item storage. I prefer to have each crafters storage within their shop so it seems like the other hearthlings are visiting the shop to purchase goods or sell what they’ve collected.

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