I have had a few days now to play and experiment with the engineer and now have some ideas to pitch to the community.
Not just defence
The engineer should not just be used for defence when i think of a engineer i don’t always think weapons of mass destruction or turrets they also create machine that make tedious chores less tedious and their purpose is to make our life more peaceful.
crops and berry bushes
When i start a town i usually gather all the nearby berry bushes, wild silk weeds and herbs and put them all together so my crafters have access to these materials.the engineer could make a basic and advanced version of a harvester to collect these materials without you having to do anything.
*the device would act like this. You would craft and place the device anywhere on a flat surface then you would uproot the wild plants to surround the automatic harvester it would have a range of effectiveness means thing far away would not be harvested but things close would.
-
the advanced version would do the same but have wider range to harvest,faster harvesting a backpack to hold the crafted goods instead of harvesting and dropping the materials like the basic device would and would need less maintenance.
farm harvester
This device would be placed on one of the farm zones and would automatically plant and harvest what you had already set for the zone.
-
The basic version would plant and harvest the zone dropping the goods for the hearthlings to pick up.
-
The advanced version would be faster,stronger and have its own backpack to store the goods for the cook or hearthings to collect.It would have more uses then the basic version.
Why farm when you can mine
This device would be a drill and would also have a basic and advanced version.
-
the basic version would drill a 4x4 tunnel and would not be able to drill a mining zone with turns on its own it would be slow and would drop the items behind it.
-
the advanced version would be able to drill a mining zone no matter if it had turns or not,it would have a large backpack which could be connected to a conveyor to the surface, it would be faster , be able to mine for longer and be able to mine 5x5 or 4x4 tunnels.
If the enemy is too strong you need bigger guns
The engineer i believe has potential to be a way of fighting invaders with out hearthlings filling the job of footman,archer or knight.I believe the limit for turrets and traps should be raised or removed if it is to be expected of being able to protect your village on its own. here are a few ideas for defence in your town.
more! Turrets!
More turrets would allow for more strategy in your game.The turrets right now feel like they are too short ranged and too weak to take on a goblin pack let alone the darker evils so having more turrets would allow for their destruction
-
A short ranged turret that would have many uses for its fire rate would be extremely fast and would have a stun effect because the enemy would be under constant fire. The ammo would be weak but the fast speeds would make up for it.
-
a long range turret would work by having a high damage each shot and long range but it would have a long reload speed and could not shot enemies if they are too close.
-
this turret would be one that could be placed on a sheep making it mobile. it would be used for offensive and defensive operations. the sheep would be like another until the town defence bell went off or the enemy got too close.It would have a high amount of uses since the engineer would possibly die if trying to repair the turret i the middle of a battle with a group of kobolds.
more turrets more ammo
Different ammo types like different quiver types would allow for stronger defence in your city.
rocks,wood,metal and the skulls of your enemies(to make the enemy flee) would add a depth to the turret warfare.
Some of these ideas i have already said in other discussions but wanted to put all my options and thoughts on the engineer in one place.
I still like the engineer i just think these ideas would make it a more fun profession to use.
3 Likes
I think the whole “automatic” harvest,farm etc stuff won’t happen, since it would replace the content of other classes. I mean having 1 engineer (or even several) would take the jobs of several other classes. He should take the role of a supportive nature, like building irrigation, transport system like lore or elevators, draw bridges and working castle gates. For an engineer there is tons of possible content, but you need to see the whole concept of a game…
For the turrets is say yes, but with some funny style, like an eggapult, stinky mushroom traps (just like teemo but a bit less deadly), maybe also a typical cartoon trap, with an xmarking the spot and if an enemy trespasses a beehive drops and creates a stingy cloud…
5 Likes
Honestly, an auto-gather command zone is something we’re missing. And given that you’re relying on berries and wild plants primarily in the early game, it’s not exactly intuitive to tech your way up through tons of metal to get berries more efficiently…
As for the drill, I suspect the Geomancer/Magma Smith will be the big movers and shakers in terms of late-game landscaping.
3 Likes
Keep in mind the engineer is brand new to the game. The Team is still working on the role of the engineer. But like someone else said, something that gathers berries and farms and mines for you wont happen. Because that is why you have a farmer and normal working hearthlings.
However, you are right that the engineer should not just be for turrets and and combat. I’m almost 100% sure that the developers have other things in mind for the engineer. Besides it is a late game class because you will need lvl 2 blacksmith.
I would recommend we just wait to see when they are done working on the engineer probably in alpha 18.
1 Like
Had a second thought. Short of aqueduct/pipe type items to interact with water, what about mechanical decorations?
A cuckoo clock made with some wood and gears that animates at dawn/dusk would be incredible, for example, as might grandfather clocks… you could even have bells crafted by the Blacksmith that the Engineer can move with gear-related bits.
while we talking about mechanism, how about mechanical power as requirement? like hamster wheels powering, a big mill, an elevator, or a big gate/draw bridge?
Power requirements for milling grain would be a good start. Using a worker to power the mill to start with, then water or wind power later on through the Engineer.
Also a big +1 to the idea of water pipes for irrigating farms and the like. Even if it’s not using the water physics or modifying terrain to do so.
I was playing around with the updated turret and I still don’t feel the difference in improvements.
To kill 1 small ogre (those basic ogre units), I spent around 4 to 5 Turret (not turnip shooters) shots to even bring it’s health down to 3/4 and by then my knights, footmen and archers arrived. I also noticed that Turrets placed on top of short elevated towers (acting as remote defensive outpost) only open fires when it is really close up (20+ blocks away from elevated position). Turrets are suppose to be able to pick off small invaders at a distance to discourage them from wandering too close but 20+ blocks of distance as a requirement to open fire is simply too short of a distance. The height of the Turret being elevated is 7 blocks height.
The Turret should also have skills of it’s own including higher intensity rate of fire, fire and froze projectiles by having the Engineer craft different type of ammunition that can be loaded onto each Turret. just like the Archer. One example is allowing Engineer to craft Lightweight Projectile for faster firing rates, Spiky Projectile for slow effects and Fire Projectile for burn effects. It would be useful for remote output to have 1 Turret on Spiky Projectile to slow an incoming wave and the other Turrets to have either Fire or Lightweight projectile to due DPS damages.
For the turrets we have now, the files/directories are called “turnip shooter” and “small turret”. This naming makes me suspect that Radiant are planning to add a “large turret” later - otherwise the name “small turret” seems an unusual choice for the largest turret in the game.
If Radiant are planning some kind of larger turret later; then the range and damage of the current turrets makes sense (because you’d want the future “large turret” to be better than turrets we have now without being over-powered).
Of course “directory name soothsaying” isn’t an exact science… 
In any case; if you want try some experimenting, (after unpacking “stonehearth.smod”) you can change various turret attributes to whatever you like:
-
Turrent range and damage is in “mods/stonehearth/entities/gizmos/small_turret/small_turret_weapon…json”.
-
Turrent sensor range (how far the turret can see) and how many uses it has is in “mods/stonehearth/entities/gizmos/small_turret/small_turret.json”.
It probably wouldn’t take more than 2 minutes to turn the turrets into insanely over-powered killing machines of doom! 
1 Like
