Monster Factions

Suggestions
1

The humanoid enemies in Stonehearth already have classes, so I figured why not have full blown factions, with their own mechanics?

Goblins center around their chiefs and camps. They steal and pillage to get by, but never seem to be able to stray too far from a given site. So double down on that.
Instead of being centered around your hearth, your town is centered around your chief. Your tribe can only wander so far away from your chief before losing morale, but goblin campsites can be used to restore morale, chaining them along to reach targets from your main camp.
Your main camp is less about gathering resources and farming than it is about building a force and pillaging enough to get by, whether it be from Hearthling settlements or trade caravans. Plant foraging might be a prominent system instead of farming. Or maybe trappers and shepherds?
Instead of architecture like castles, you mostly build placed objects like huts and firepits, fences. things that can easily be packed up and moved from location to location. Nomadic raiders ready to relocate at a moments notice.

The other faction I was thinking of was the Undead.
Aggressive expansionist. Where the goblins are nomadic, the undead would fortify, solidify their hold on a territory, and then strike out at night to expand both their borders and their population. Killing hearthlings and orcs and goblins would enable population growth, loot could be converted to resources for new crypts, or perhaps used to lure in more adventurous or greedy denizens of Hearth?

Once set up, you could give these factions a place in the world generation, and a pattern to their behavior instead of having camps spawn out of thin air every couple days. Goblin demands could be based on things they need to expand their base at that moment.

Edit: LISTS! lists in need of editing and touchups, but lists.

Here there be Gerblins

Goblins:
Theme: Weak and numerous, mobile, able to pack up and move quickly.
Primary resources: Wood and Furs
Style: Roaming fighters and raiders, gradually sweeping up all resources on the map. Mobile Camps
Starting tools: Banner, Weaver’s Spindle

Start choices: Item sets to choose from
Self Sufficient:
Pillage Then Burn:
Settling In:

Buffs and Hearths: Banner and Hearth choices for progression
Buffs: Survivors: morale depletes 50% slower, running away from combat does not reduce mood.
Implacable Foe: Hearthtenders can build just like workers can, and you gain access to traditional Item trees at higher class levels.
Endless Hordes: Each hut spawns 2 hearthtenders each day instead of 1, though you still need to meed their requirements.

Class Roles:
Hearthtender: Default. Carries items, gathers, follows chief, tends camps, place objects. Smaller inventory. Cannot dig or build terrain. -10 speed.
-Chieftain: Created from Banner. Limit One. Provides a passive health, speed, and damage buff to nearby goblins. Can equip Warrior gear. Provides Morale to goblins. Becomes unhappy from long periods away from his hut and hearths. Mood influences the rest of your Camp.
-Worker: Upgraded from 1 wood and 1 stone. Provides digging and construction
–Potter: Created from Potter’s Cutter + Worker. Works clay and provides construction access.
–Mason: Created from Mason’s chisel + Worker. Works stone and provides construction access.
-Carpenter: Created from carpenter’s Saw.
-Hunter: Created from Hunter’s Hatchet. Similar to the Trapper, but seeks out animals and returns the food and skins rather than setting out trap areas. Can also tame wolves as well as small critters.
–Archer: Archer things.
–Shepherd: keeps smaller herds than hearthlings, but herd follows and grazes rather than needing to craft and maintain feed.
-Cook: Same as hearthlings, but less about vegetables.
-Weaver: Makes goblin structures from sets of tools and furs. also quivers.
-Blacksmith: Uhh, blacksmith stuff I guess?
–Engineer: Makes mobile offense/defense units via animals. Like the sheepapult. Mobile ranged siege.
-Herbalist: Same as hearthlings
–Farmer: Requires wooden Hoe. takes the seed lore of the herbalist and settles in.
–Shaman: Similar to cleric, but less focus on direct healing and more focus on auras (buffs and curses).
-Thief: Created from Thief’s Pack. gathering class that units notice less. Visually indistinct, and reduced detection/alert radius. Double inventory size of normal workers. +20% move speed
-Warrior: Requires Wooden Sword. Can equip two-handed weapons as one hand weapons. Can use shields.
–Raider: Requires: Tamed wolf. Rides a tamed wolf. fast movement, increased carry capacity. Cannot use shields. Deals bonus damage to structures and causes them to drop more items on death.

Strengths: lots of numbers, lower food requirements
Weaknesses: overall weak combatants
Unique features:
Half negative aesthetic penalties.
Workers have limited build capacity
unique residential and spawning structures
class crafting structures
Hearthtenders, Workers, Thieves, Warriors, and Raiders can steal from unowned stockpiles and have increased movement speed.
towns are based around your chieftain, who is carrying your banner.
Goblins have a limited range they can travel from the chief before their morale runs out and they break ranks. Goblin hearths act as morale beacons.
Growth is based on gathered food and hoarded treasures
non-combat goblins consume much less food than most units

Tools:
Structures:
Skullhearth: 1 wood 2 stone. Crafted by Chieftain. Provides morale and a resting/eating area for a small number of units. Must be tended by a hearthtender.

Chieftain’s Hut: Gains appeal based on how many treasures and trophies are stored within it, as well as contributing them toward your daily update total. 16 slot stockpile storage, treasure and trophy only. Also a bed for your Chieftain.
Built at start. Cost: 4 wood, 4 leather

Bunkhouse: Beds for 4 goblins. At the beginning of each day, each bunkhouse spawns one hearthtender if your camp can support it. (daily update check of food, treasure value, and classed goblins.)
Cost: 1 wood, 3 furs

Mess Hall: Eating area that can support up to 8 meals. possibly mixed meal benefits from provided foods?
Cost: 1 wood, 2 furs

Craftsman’s Huts: 1 12 slot request bench, 1 6 slot output bench, 8 stockpile slots. acts as all workbenches for a single crafting class. (So you could make a Caprenter’s hut or a Mason’s hut, and more importantly pick it up with the camp easily)
Cost: ‘crafting class’ worktables (1 of each), 4 wood, 2 leather, 2 furs.

Kennel: Provides an area to keep and feed wolves. Wolves can be used to defend your camp passively, or promote a warrior to a Raider. (wolves eat meats and cooked foods with meats)
3 wood, 1 leather.

Tech Tree Loop:
Weaver: primary crafter.
carpenter: Progression Crafter: Bottleneck of Getting Tools for Everything Else.
Potter: alternative Progression crafter. Same bottleneck, different loop.

Crafting changes: Construction/decor/tool recipes require +2 levels from default recipes (max level req. 6), with the exception of Wooden Sword, Herbalist Staff, and Potters Cutter.

Undead of the Phoenix Empire

(Still very WIP)

Undead:
Theme: Crypts, undead, necromancers, fallen empires, aggressive magics.
Style: Nocturnal Expansionists with disposable troops but low growth.
Primary design resources: Stone and Iron
Strengths: Strong fighters, little reliance on food supplies or morale.
Weaknesses: Growth is slow and requires some level of military.
Class Roles: WIP
Unique features:
Soldier units respawn each night, but die at sunrise. What types of combat units you get depends on what classes your crypt residents have.
Population growth comes from stealing downed targets, raising dead hearthlings from stolen remains (with stat loss), or from components from kills (maybe a ‘build a monstrosity’ system? or stat influencing?).
skeletons and zombies do not eat or receive morale bonuses or penalties.

Possible systems: Undead underground do not get destroyed by dawn/sunlight? Allowing a tunnel network empire with crypts as entry points?

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2

I think the main reason they have not added them yet was because of the animation requirements for such a venture. It’d take a lot of time to rig a monster civ to work as hearthlings do.

3

I feel like the bigger bottleneck would be the secondary systems needed to make it work well. Mainly things like the existing or AI run Hearthling towns (something that is already planned to have friendly factions on the map with you?), and a trade/demand system (which I guess is partially under construction already for multiplayer). Maybe better combat/patrol controls and harvesting management and vastly different growth/trade/quest systems for their GM code to manage.

Also maybe the break away from the cooperative paradigm Hearthstone is building at the moment.

None of which stops me from quietly designing and speculating in the background. :merry:

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4

So I may have gotten bored and decided to map out monster factions with classes and tech trees and mechanics. Whoops.

Focusing on goblins right now. I’ve mostly figured out their custom design themes, unique classes, their gameplay quirks, some of their progression loops, and possible approaches to things like growth and sustainability for nomadic raiders.

My biggest bottleneck I’m hitting is figuring out their order of tool progression for non-aggressive playstyles without just starting them with mason, potter, or carpenter. (aggressive play would probably end up stealing said tools)
Their current starting classes are Weaver (which builds most of their unique carryable structures with wood and furs), and with a slightly militarized trapper variant for food. (hunts nearby wandering animals instead of putting down trapping zones. upgrades to a shepherd or an archer)

(I would probably post the whole design speculation document if I knew how to do a collapsible text box)
(I’m also not sure if this is still suggestions, or if it’s just me rambling to myself where the rest of the internet can see me)

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5

To make collapsed text, in your message reply, there is a set of icons, the last one is a gear, you can click it and it will have an option for that.

Don’t worry, we are reading it :slight_smile: I’m actually interested as I’m part of a modded group that is making playable goblins, and your ideas are very close to what we are doing.

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6

Please let us see what you have come up with @Khend. Any post with the word “Goblin” in it, is always read!

Thanks. :merry:

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7

Ohh, neat.
I’m gonna hide an edit/update version on the first post then. …though I’ll probably have to clean them up for clarity since its not just me looking through them.
Edit: Goblins Added, Undead next (And way less developed)

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8

Great ideas, some of them are already in the Firefly Clan project. but there was certainly some new and interesting ones aswell! If we use some of them, would that be okay with you?

Thanks :sunny:

1 Like
9

I am absolutely okay with this being pilfered and implemented. It is the goblin way after all. Though I am curious which parts you’re looking to loot.

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10

We already have the chieftan class planned as a one per game only kind a thing, but the idea with the townbanner being mobile and attached to the chieftan, seems pretty sweet :slight_smile:

Fortunately there is some skilled people in the team, so i hope that such a thing might be possible.

Also the ideas for hearths and buffs could be something we wanted to take a closer look at.

If you want to see what there is of public material on the mod, take a look at the swamp biome here:

Thanks :merry:

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