Oh come on now… they’ve got… you know… Fences! And… Bird…baths… But yes, Fences!
and so does the carpenter…
But I prefer the stone works~ I was a sucker for Cobblestone structures/roads on Minecraft. But now I’m getting way off topic.
To be back on topic… I really hope the Archers have a Robinhood-esque look to them. Green hats, with a red feather are a must!
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Well, I’m quite okay with that design as well. That one Archer is up pretty high without any other form to get up there. I wonder if he is a magical Hearthling that can JUMP!
either that, or its a render and doesn’t have to be 100% accurate to in-game mechanics 
Those archers on a perch are from later in the game after the blacksmith has been upgraded enough to build hookshots - the green gear is legendary hero wear, not Robin Hood. Haven’t you been following the hints in the sample mods?
simple - they built a 2-block ladder to climb up there, then once up there they tore the ladder town from the top. sneaky b**tards
fletching are just feathers put on the shafts of arrows. we don’t need an entirely new class just to put feathers on sticks. also, war games typically didn’t have the “fletcher”, but they did have a bowyer, especially the stronghold series. now, in the stronghold series there were no craftable arrows, but you get my point. the bowyer can make the arrows too.
I feel arrows should be craftable, but (just like in real life) are also reclaimable, and maybe can even be used on the fly (2 armies of archers firing at each other, an archer can grab an arrow that missed him, pull it out of the ground, and fire it back at them), however that level of realism is probably unnecessary. even so, I do feel arrows should be craftable. not only arrows, but also arrow depots. for example, the mason/smith would make the stone/iron arrowheads, and then the bowyer would craft the arrows. the arrows would be made in bulk, rather than 1-by-1. basically, the mason makes a “box of stone arrowheads”, and then the bowyer takes that 1 box and 1 block of wood and turns it into a set of 50 arrows (quiver is unnecessary to make its own object, just say it came free with the arrows due to a generous god). hearthlings will have a max amount of arrows they can carry at once. higher-level archers can carry more at once (a decent trait). however, the archers on the wall will not be using arrows from a quiver. instead, the carpenter will craft something akin to a tool rack, while holds a bunch of arrows at once - say, 5000. it probably won’t get filled that much, but hey. it’ll take up a bunch of space, and is stationary, but it gives the benefit of archers who are stationed nearby draw their arrows from that reserve rather than pulling from their own quiver. or, alternatively, simply filling up their quiver with the arrows from the arrow rack and then returning to their post to fire arrows again.
downside to that is that it would require partial-block information. just like the “chests of money”, some of which hold 100 gold, some of which hold only 4, and both blocks taking up an entire space (which is just silly, they should be combined, but whatever), the “bundle of arrows” will be a single “block” that represents 50 entities, and is not depleted from using it once or twice.
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i like your ideas, even if it werent to end up being you have to craft every bundle of arrows, it would be nice to have unlock-able arrows, starting with plain wood arrows by default (a sharp stick with flecthing) and then once you have a mason you could “unlock” the stone arrow heads, then when you get a blacksmith you can unlock the bronze, then the iron, so on so forth.
though this wouldnt be quite as good as having to craft “bundles” it would still be better then them just magically getting having iron arrows.
I like your ideas here. IMO consumable ammo could work as long as the yields per craft are reasonable, maybe 150ish or so for one set of materials (whatever those are), especially if it would require one or more completed items from other crafters.
Of course now you’d need not only a new storage category for ammo (maybe it would just go under weapons) but also each Hearthling’s backpack need to be able to act as a quiver as necessary. There would also need to be some mechanic for refilling ammo, potentially while in combat.
It might be easier to implement something like craftable quivers that required more extensive materials as well as a certain level to craft/equip, but also granted infinite ammo of that type to the archer using it.
Ammo types/damage could also increase as a factor of the archer’s level as well as the weapon used.
the reason I said to forget quivers is because the only hearthlings who would use arrows to begin with are archers and rangers (upgraded hunters). regular citizens won’t carry bows. this isn’t england where everyone is taught to be a longbowman since birth (tch). throwing quivers into the mix would just add ANOTHER craftable item that serves next to no purpose, and can easily just be skipped. unless, of course, quivers have unlimited arrows and there are different quivers for the different arrow types, but I wouldn’t be too happy about that.
also, an archer’s skill only determines their accuracy and their speed at locking onto a target. an archers strength only determines their draw speed (to an extent) and what bow they can use (longbows require massive strength to pull. good luck arm wrestling a longbowman). the actual damage of firing the arrow is completely unrelated to the archer (again, assuming a weakling isn’t using a longbow, but rather than considering higher levels giving bonus damage for longbows, it’d be more accurate to say low levels give a penalty to using it), aside from the archer hitting the head. the only thing that dictates the deadliness of the bow and arrow is, well, the bow and arrow themselves. a good bow will launch the arrow at a very high velocity, and a sharp, firm arrowhead will ensure it makes it through the armour (and dirt/spit and barbs will make it so your target gets gang green and can’t pull the arrow out. fun times). I’ve never liked how some games make it that when you level up somehow your bow does more damage. it makes no sense at all. swords, sure, but bows? no. levels should dictate fire-speed, equipable bows, and increases in crit rates (headshots), but leave damage to the bow and arrows.
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wow I don’t know how I missed this.
if crossbowmen get added (which they likely will), crossbowmen might end up running away like bowmen, however I think they should not run away from nearby enemies. the reason being that, while they are ranged, they are actually no different from a regular footman, with the exception of the fact that they are holding a large chunk of wood.
bowmen had to train a lot in order to fire accurately and on the move (unlike what people think, bowmen actually move a lot. it wasn’t until archery stopped being a war method and started being a sport that people adopted still stances and such), and bows were far more lethal than swords, and can be fired quickly. as a lot of time and money went to training their skills in archery, their skills in melee were basic at best, and were considered goners if the enemy closed onto their position. as such, they weren’t well armoured or well equipped, as the valuable iron was better spent given to the footsoldiers and knights who trained in melee and would allow such equipment to see more use, and with much less risk of it being lost. so, naturally, it makes sense that archers, who are well trained in ranged combat, are about as armoured as a typical peasant, and have the melee skills of said peasant to run away when enemies get close, so that they may fire at them while on the run without running the risk of getting hit.
crossbowmen, however, have a different situation. crossbows were the first point-and-click weapon, and required minimal training to use. crossbows are also very slow to fire. chances are, after a couple of shots, if the enemy isn’t dead, they will have reached the crossbowmen. however, the crossbowmen did not spend all their time training for ranged combat, as their weapon is much easier to use. rather, the crossbowmen spent their time fighting up close, just like regular footmen. they are almost as skilled with a sword as a regular footman. while carrying their crossbow they may be weighed down (certain kinds of crossbows were extremely heavy, and some of the most powerful crossbows were not meant to be carried like a regular weapon, and were treated more like how modern-day machine guns are treated - carried to a spot and then set up for use), but the crossbows could just as easily be set down/tossed aside, and they would be able to fight toe-to-toe with regular footmen. while the lighter crossbows could be used while on the move, they were also much weaker. the heavier crossbows could not be realistically used whilst moving, and you couldn’t move while reloading the crossbow either. with all that time spent stationary, enemies will easily be able to reach their position. crossbowmen had an actual need for armour and weapons, and the armour and weapons would not be wasted upon them for the skills they had gained during training. so unlike bowmen who are a lost cause at sword distance, the crossbowmen were able to hold their own.
now again this is history, and stonehearth is a game (a fantasy game, at that), but I would personally love to see historical accuracy in a game for once, especially a game with so much strategic potential, and so far they’ve managed to maintain accuracy pretty well. I mean, sure, corn takes forever to grow and wheat grows like weeds, but aside from that, stonehearth’s doing pretty well on not following typical gaming cliches.
so while the bowman should run if the enemy is, say, between 5 and 15 blocks away (any close and I’d rather they actually attacked the enemy instead of run around getting hit), the crossbowmen have no valid reason to run, and should actually stand their ground and fight like a regular footman.
now, of course, I also asked in some other posts if they would make it so armour was realistic and to not limit classes to armour types (light armour had practically no advantage over heavy armour, and heavy armour has been proven to restrict the range of movement less than light armour, unlike what people nowadays seem to believe. compare chainmail and plate mail, and plate mail is easier to move in. it just weighs a bit more and has a LOT more iron in it. and iron, during the middle ages, was scarce and very valuable, which is why archers did not walk around in plate mail - not because they couldn’t, or that it’d slow them down, or that it’d make it harder to fire a bow, but because the metal was simply too valuable to give it to someone who doesn’t need it and generally wouldn’t use it properly. as this game is fictional, it’s entirely likely that someone will be sitting on a gold mine - that contains absolutely nothing but iron and coal. with so much steel at their disposal, they have no valid reason for not equipping their archers with steel), and so if they do that and I can make an archer with a long bow with a longsword and plate mail, technically my archer should be able to hold off perfectly fine if going up against something like a goblin, and so shouldn’t run away when faced with a mob they could easily best in melee without taking a scratch. but unlike crossbowmen (who i feel should branch off of footman, NOT bowman), archers will not have much melee training, and should do much less damage with the same sword as a typical footman.
what I’m thinking of is something akin to weapon skills there, where the tier 1 bowman class will have, say, 2 in bows and 1 in swords, the tier 1 footman class would have a 2 in all melee weapons, and the tier 2 crossbowman class (as they branch off of footman) would have a base of 2 in melee weapons, and 3 in swords and crossbows. and while the tier 2 footman class would require, say, level 5 in tier 1 footman, the crossbow class would only require level 2 in footman. the tier 3 crossbow class would have weapon skills comparable to tier 2 footman and bowman classes. the footman and crossbowman are better at melee than the bowman, and that discrepency would continue into the higher tiers (except for other branches, such as sharpshooter, who will have minimal melee skills but very high crossbow skills, but that’s getting more complex than I need to talk about right now). this might seem like I’m making crossbowmen OP, but remember, bowmen shoot at the same damage, but much, much faster, can shoot at larger distances, and can use indirect fire/arrow volley. muscle-brains are better off using legendary weapons, and their damage scales with their strength more than the type of weapon, unlike the ranged counterparts whose only increase caused by stats would be fire-rate/reloading. so melee character’s aren’t obsolete with crossbowmen either. a high-tier footman will have better melee weapon skills than a high-tier crossbowman, as at those tiers the crossbowmen would instead be siege soldiers, using large shields and large crossbows - they won’t be moving around much during combat, making them less useful where mobility is key, but invaluable when on defense/offense. footmen and archers would be used on a battlefield, but crossbowmen would be used on the walls.
man I should stop talking about history when I’m skipping sleep. sorry for the wall of text.
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Considering Stonehearth is intended to be a defense-oriented game, this would actually work quite well into the gameplay. Mount a few of these on top of your walls, and try to keep the enemy forces at bay.
As far as ammunition goes for ranged units, I’m still sort of torn even to today. I suppose my current stance on it is that there should be a basic, inexhaustible type of ammunition that does very limited damage (crude, wooden bolts), and eventually other types of ammunition are unlocked and available for production, such as copper/bronze, iron/steel, fire arrows, heavy bolts (possibly limited to certain bow types), and eventually arcane or tech-based bolts (which would be rare, powerful, and potentially dangerous).
There’s two things I see that currently restrict the game from going the limited ammunition route: the first is resource issues (the inability or trees to regrow and the taxation of mining on the players’ computers). If this get resolved, I’d actually be interested in seeing such a concept implemented. The other issue is that arrows would likely need a unique container for storage, as I can’t see having dozens of large crates holding only 32 arrows each being feasible or fun.
as for the first thing, eventually trees will be growable (it seems hard to believe that they wouldn’t anyway). it’s impossible to get rid of the taxation from mining ENTIRELY (even in minecraft you’ll eventually need to restart the map due to how much you changed it), but it’ll definitely be far better than it currently is. the game’s still in early alpha, they’re still trying to set everything up. it’d be pretty bad if the final release behaved like the early alpha did lol
the other thing I already brought up higher up in my post - crafters would make bundles of arrows, not individual arrows. I arbitrarily picked 50 because it seems right, and 1 large crate would then store 1600 arrows (32 bundles of 50). I also mentioned arrow racks for the sole purpose of being a supply depot for rangers on the wall (could hold either arrows or bolts, or even both, or alternatively you could set it up to have 2 separate racks, 1 for each ranged type). they would be large and immobile, unlike crates, but would have a massive storage capacity of munitions.
if the crafter only made 1 arrow at a time with each stone/ingot/wood, then yea, it’d be insane maintenance, as well as take forever, to make arrows. but if they made boxes of arrowheads and bundles of arrows/bolts at once, one tree and a bunny statue could easily supply a great number of arrows
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despite the fact that archers can fire quickly, I think a bundle of 50 arrows would last too long. maybe 25-30.
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I figured that at low levels, archers aren’t gonna be very accurate, and to use them properly you would need a group of them firing. 50 arrows won’t last long at all then. but I’ll admit that if all you needed to defend yourself every day was a single bundle, that might be a bit too much. my number was picked with the future of combat in mind, but it is an arbitrary number in the end.
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