@sdee asked in the latest video I watched, “What is missing? What should we add to make Stonehearth your ideal game?”.
I think that is so broad a question - almost too broad to answer but… I’m willing to take a whack at it. I can only think that I’ll need to edit this post frequently.
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The trader. Keeps offering me things I can make. He needs to bring me things I can’t make. Maybe a list of things, " I can bring this or this or this, which one do you want?" Then ask me what I’d be willing to give = haggle. It so one dimensional, frankly in its current form (A16) I would axe it from final release.
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Inventory. What actually counts against my inventory? I can find no screen that shows that. If the “town” inventory screen does, then does that mean what people are armed with counts against me? It seems like there are things showing there (like workbenches) which should not be showing. Inventory seems way too low in total items I can keep for my style of play. Quadruple it if possible.
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Loot should be prioritized. My Hearthlings do not go get the loot we have won from battle. Even when I designate “loot this” they just leave it. It’s always going to be the furthest away jobs but it must be priority.
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Town Alert Mode. When sounded fighters should attack monsters nearby and run to any monster that can be seen by any hearthling. Currently (A16) they don’t do this.
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Moat. Currently the only way to not get torn up by frequent combat is to build a moat so monsters cannot path to you. There has to be better game mechanics than this. Better walls, castle like formations, rope bridges (monsters don’t have dexterity or intelligence to cross) (of course, your trusty python could and that is a GOOD THING for game play).
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You can’t get stuff out of crates/boxes that doesn’t show up on the “place an item” screen.
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Automation. This is a big issue. I want to build cities, not villages. To do that, when the cook runs out of poyo and my poyo pen is full, one will automatically be queued for slaughter. Also any building I put down auto-queues all its components. A door that gets destroyed is queued to be rebuilt. Its all about the scale - epic towns and battles - as is, I have to manage way too much to ever play at the epic level.
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Plain jane civilization. No Ascendency or Children just plain Hearthlings.
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Mining. You can’t mine up. Should be able to mine up.
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Co-op. Planetary Annihilation in one of it’s Betas hit the sweet spot for multiplayer co-op. Every player had control of every unit (even commanders). So both players have the same town interface and queue items just as we do now. Direct control of the military works as now.
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Mod store. Eclipse (the IBM IDE for developing applications in Java and other languages) has and interesting plugin/resource architecture. From the Kickstarter, we know we’re supposed to get a Mod store where we can install mods via point and click. I hope Radiant makes the format to be a Mod store open so anyone can host one. Like Eclipse if I want things I type in a name and a URL and can see a list of resources available from that site. I can even check for updates. If Radiant does this, like Eclipse, if IBM/Radiant stops hosting the Mod store others will be able to and the game has a chance of not dying. Also then you can get mods from any named resource not just the Radiant store, this has proved to be huge for the Eclipse community’s diversity and resources available.