Hello! My name is Jake and I’m digging into the modding on Stonehearth a bit.
I’m still feeling things out, but there are a few ideas I have churning and it would be really nice to get some quick feedback on them (both in terms of player interest and from experienced Stonehearth modders on whether the ideas are even possible currently.) With this idea, I will give the gist of it and why it seems attractive to me, as well as what aspects of the game I would imagine would be affected by such a mod. Please do feel free to correct me or give feedback on these.
Merchant Profession
What it is, and why I think it would improve gameplay.
Currently, economy in the game is limited to collecting raw resources, refining them, using or selling the raw and refined items to the occasional traders, and purchasing items from those traders. This is rather limited, and I feel there’s a lot more mileage to be gotten from this sort of stuff.
What I’d like to do is to create a ‘merchant’ profession. You would assign an area (like you do with farms or trappers) which represents a shop. Similar to a stockpile, you would allow or disallow items to be stored there.
Some furniture (tables, counters, boxes, crates, barrels) provides space for items to stored and eventually sold. Other furniture (rugs, wall tapestries, decorative items) are placed to increase the appeal of the shop. High appeal increases the chances that an item is sold.
There are two ways that an item can possibly be sold. First, any non-merchants could have a new task they can do when they’d otherwise be idle: window-shopping. This both gives a small morale boost and can lead to purchases (and thus gold!) Second, as your settlement gains in value, peaceful travelers could pass through, stopping by your shops with a higher chance of making purchases than your regular citizens.
Technical Issues
Well, I can imagine the following would need making/editing for Merchants to become a reality:
- Merchant class
- Shop Zone (Repurpose stockpile? Redo entirely somehow?)
- Shop Furniture (decorative and additional storage types, likely created at the carpenter/mason/clothier)
- Better stockpile interface (seems like you’d need much better control so as to not sell all your food/equipment/etc accidentally. Both finer control and “Sell as long as we have more than X of this item/category.”)
- Alternatively, simply add in finer overall stockpile control, then be able to set all stockpile priority levels? This would allow the player to stay above a certain amount of certain items with proper stockpile planning, as well as allow production chain stockpiles.
- Travelers (‘Peaceful’ enemy spawns with custom behavior?)
- Window-shopping (New citizen behavior with priority just above idle?)
)