"Passionate Class" suggestion

Suggestions
1

Currently we have these traits that give happiness boost when the hearthling with that specific class trait fulfills a role in the specified class. As such, a hearthling with the Passionate Carpenter trait would be happy while he/she works as a carpenter. This is all fine and dandy, of course.

But what is the problem then?

The thing is, these traits are far too specific. Most of the time a passionate XY arrives to town, chances are that there already is someone with XY class, and no second one is needed. Especially if the newcomer has worse stats than the first.

Furthermore, there’s also the min-maxing when starting a new game, which I’m sure a lot of us players do. A lot of time can be wasted in the Hearthling selection re-rolling and re-rolling and re-rolling until we finally get that one guy/gal with “Passionate Footman” with just the perfect stats.

What should be done?

I suggest sorting the existing classes into three “schools” based on the roles they fulfill. So there would be Field-Worker, Crafters, and Combatants.

“Passionate Field-Worker” would gain happiness while fulfilling the roles of any class that works “outside” or “on-the-field”, such as Farmer, Trapper, Shepherd, and any non-crafting, non-combat class added in the future. “Classless” workers could be included here too, but perhaps there are so many of them that they deserve to keep their own specific trait.

“Passionate Crafter,” as the name suggests, would gain happiness for fulfilling the role of any crafter class (those with workbenches)

“Passionate Combatant” then would obviusly be happy to be whacking goblins and whatnot.

Alternative/Additional suggestion

As it stands, most of the traits slightly change the way Hearthlings behave and react to their surroundings. “Featherweight” people are quicker, “Vegetarians” don’t eat meat, etc… Then we have have Passionate Carpenter/any other class, which doesn’t change anything at all unless the specific role is fulfilled. This is super uninteresting, and I as a player feel “somewhat forced” to steer the hearthling with this trait to have that role, or else, get rid of them.

So perhaps, even though, some of those Passionate Potters will never become Potters themselves, they could perhaps appreciate potters/pottery in their surroundings, and would feel down when there is a lack of them. They would seek out and admire stuff created by potters, and would try their best to help them or interact with the potters.

Any feedback and further suggestions are welcome below.

4 Likes
2

Yeah, the passionate traits are a bit awkward to play with. They can potentially be very strong, but because of the difficulty of fulfilling some of them they also can’t have a down-side to balance them out; so either they give you an “overpowered” happiness boost (if you can snag a charismatic hearthling with a passionate class, you can counteract a looooooooooooot of minor gripes) or they have no impact.

I can see the viability of broadening passion traits so that they’re less specific; but honestly I like the specificity – it can really help to add to roleplay/storytelling. So, I’d prefer to see some option where hearthlings can become better at their desired job, rather than an initial dice-roll determining whether they’ll be any good at it. That probably means some form of stat training, though, which we’re not likely to see…

1 Like
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I was going to fully agree with your suggestion, but then I remembered that we already have something like that, the heart of crafter and courageous traits, so it would be kinda redundant. So the alternative suggestion you offered, which is also very interesting, would be my choice

4 Likes
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Yup. The fact that it gives such a huge boost is the very reason I spend a ton of time rerolling at the start of the game. After the game begins, chances are that any new hearthling who comes with this trait comes way too late, or comes with such bad stats that it just doesn’t worth promoting them to that class.

I am so very glad that you’ve mentioned Heart of a Crafter. I hate that abomination with passion. It’s basically a permanent -4 happiness for anyone who isn’t a crafter. Plus it seems to be absurdly common, thus it’s almost guaranteed that some unfortunate fellow is going to be stuck with the permanent gripe of not being able to craft. In hindsight, I should have mentioned this in the OP.

Courageous and Heart of a Crafter are also very uninteresting traits on their own, and I feel like Green Thumb deserves an honorable mention here. Basically, they are just passive rewards for Hearthlings doing their job. (And punishment for those with Heart of a Crafter who are not crafters.) Perhaps these also deserve a rewamp of some sort.

Courageous would perhaps make non-combat Hearthlings help defending the town, and would have increased courage stat. (It sort of always baffled me that “Courageous” hearthlings don’t get bonus to Courage). Additionally, when it comes to rescuing downed hearthlings, they would not drop them and run away when an enemy comes nearby.

Green Thumb hearthlings would be happy to be near plants, would randomly pick flowers and berry bushes. Perhaps they would even water harvested plants to make them regrow slightly faster.

Heart of a Crafter well, I don’t have an idea at the moment, but the way it is now, is horrible. The negative part must go, since neither of the other two similar traits have that. It really just sucks to have a person not fit to be a crafter have a permanent gripe of not being able to craft…

3 Likes
5

I immediately thought this too, but I also believe that @CrazyCandy has such a good point that I’d rather have a solution for both. Is it maybe possible to have both broad ones and specific ones, but such that the specific ones are so rare that there are only probably gong to be one or two of them in your entire playthrough.

If you make sure they look just like the specific passion traits, you will make sure that will players handle the broad passions the same. The dynamic I’m going for is players being used to broad passion traits, and once in a while you’ll have the situation: “ooh, so miss likes to be a blacksmith, interesting. Maybe we can do something about that.”

6

When I was reading this earlier, the first thing I thought of was someone carving a wooden horse with a pocket knife. :merry:

I could see this creating a sort of mechanic close to the social meter that hearthlings currently have. As an example once every few days if the hearthling hasn’t crafted something they will stop working and spend some time in a carving animation.

This would give you a slight decrease in productivity as the negative effect instead of having a constant gripe. (Also the added bonus of being a cute way to add life to these hearthlings :jubilant:)

Time to get to work @malley, this idea is just too cute to not be a thing :wink:

7

-talks often to the engineer
-knows where the turrets are and how to mann them
-knows other tricks to damage the enimies plans, without necessarily having to go into the fray (which you don’t want to as player, given the lack of training.)

-often talks to crafters
-can appreciate complex craftswork that other hearthlings can’t
-will more than happily help crafters as apprentice by restocking supply bins and handing tools.

1 Like
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Hehe, that does sound cute. There are a lot of steps between the idea and the animation though ; ), would first need to implement the back-end tech to make something like this possible. Plus what would happen with the wooden horse? This would actually open up quite a few questions and tech requirements to achieve it. Could be cool in a mod though ; ).

1 Like
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Proposed by the author I like, but if I do not reinvent the wheel again, I can advise my method. If a newcomer likes a profession that already exists in the city, it is still necessary to assign him to this profession, but to leave in action only carrying