Of stairs and ladders

Just bought this and having a ball with it. Until mining, and ladders… Lost a hearthling to being lost on a piece of clay beneath their foot so they could not mine beneath it… and ladders hard to place even IF you find the stranded hearthling.

Watched youtube, oh, Stairs, wonderful. Then watched them struggle with clicking and dragging 4-6 times for each level…

So my questions (suggestion if it does not exist, or mod request or something… I hope) are:

  1. Could the ai be made so if they are called to go somewhere, instead of seeing there is not path and stopping, could they not then just make a path by putting in ladders. I don’t mean selecting a tree on the other end of the map and off they go, but why not? But at least if they get stuck in a hole, would they die there if they could make a ladder and get out? I wouldn’t stay.

  2. IS there (or could there be) a way to mine out the stairs easier. As it is, you can do one BIG block, (and drag to select more) or one little block. Could there be a middle option where it leaves one row on the top, two on the second to top, and so on… So you click on stairs, select the block (the bigger unit, not the smaller one {joke here would be too easy… :wink:) } ) and click it and it selects the rows to be mined that everyone, except the new players, knows how to do.

Btw, All of this lead to a good stonehearth joke today at work. Talking to a fellow steam gamer fan (she is a fps gamer though, forgive her) and I told her about my struggles with stairs and how just today I learned about stairs. As I left she told me to go enjoy the game and I told her, unwittingly : “Oh, I will, I am going to step up my game!”

And on that note, time to start a new world and try using steps instead of ladders… If there is an easier way, be it ingame or in a mod, please let me know? The youtuber said he was kind of new to this game, so maybe we both are missing it.

And as always, happy hunting. :slight_smile:

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1 would be hard to develop, since you said yourself you want it to work in one situation, but not in another. That’s a lot of what-if’s in a code. Not to mention hearthlings taking the shortest route, building stairs anywhere. They’re cute, but simpleminded.

2 sounds good, a mining template that measures the height of a cliff and then calculates the height of the stair-cut-out. I second this idea.

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The first paragraph didn’t make entire sense to me in what had happened, but I think I got the gist of what you’re trying to say from the situation.

Stonehearth, being in Alpha, obviously the AI leaves much to be desired in many senses, it’s a work in progress. But the AI now compared to when they started, or even a year or two ago, till now, has improved phenomenally!
I’d say in time they’ll be able to work most of the bugs out to prevent these sorts of situations happening (i.e. Where a hearthling gets him/herself stuck unwittingly {it happens much less than it used to! :stuck_out_tongue: } )
It may just be me and a minority, Or it could be a majority, I don’t know. But personally I like how they use the physical resources (i.e. Wood) for creating ladders, even if it’s a temporary one for (example) building construction. It adds a factor of realism and immersion in to the game. Making temporary travel ladders a thing could ruin that, although, perhaps if it were set to only work at say… 2/3 blocks height maximum. It could perhaps work as a thing. Though (And I’m not certain on this) it could be a difficult thing for the staff to work with as a feature, but to me, I think it’s certainly worth being a suggestion to consider, especially for unforeseen circumstances that could ‘potentially’ even happen when the game is in full version.

Personally I think this topic would be better placed in the ‘Suggestions’ section and is definitely worth some consideration.

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Re 1: their would be no need to build a ladder if there was a path already. Only if they have no path. Maybe if no path then if very hungry, allow them to build place ladders to get to food? Without looking at the code, I am not sure if this could be done. If not, how about an alert when a hearthling becomes very hungry, at least?

Re 2: Even if it was just a template for block by block, (Can someone tell me what the blocks are called? you have large blocks made of smaller blocks, with one tooltip to select a small horizontal layer, and another to select the larger one… I am sure there is a name for it… :stuck_out_tongue: )

And thank you for your reply. :smile:

@Wuelfe In the first paragraph, I was talking about when you find the buried miner stuck on a ledge, you cant easily place the ladder if you are looking at layers, but you can’t easily place the ladder right if you are not either. :confused:

And I thought about putting it in suggestions, but as I mentioned, I was not sure if mods existed (esp for the stair side of it) and I really did not want to do 2 posts, but maybe I should have. Live and learn, I guess. I would not object to this being moved. :slight_smile: