Passive classes: Beggars, Nobility and Royalty

Suggestions
#1

Three new types of classes that have one thing in common: You don’t get them by promoting Hearthlings, they are accessible via immigration only, a passive class if you will. The chance of that happening occurs only after your village has reached a certain (biggish) size.

They also have one more thing in common: You don’t get to tell 'em what to do. Beggars are as unwilling to work as nobles and royals. Beggars eat food and function as some kind of food sink. The rich ones do, too, only they actually pay for services by ordering certain amounts of food or special kind of furniture. Before a noble moves to your village they order a mansion to be built, maybe a certain special template you only have access to under these circumstances or just a building with enough space.

By not being able to command the new classes they act as quasi-npcs that populate the village without straining the CPU too much by difficuly AI calculations thus allowing for larger towns than what we have now. After a certain number of nobles and royals have moved to your city even the king might consider moving his seat into your city. Before he does so, he might order a summer residence to be built. Whenever the king is in town, morale goes up, traders are more frequent while the likelyhood of attacks rises as well.

17 Likes
#2

Normally I’m against leadership or classes that don’t do much, but I like this suggestion. I’m all for more bustling towns that don’t kill my computer quite as much, and I think these have just enough impact on your town to be worth it.

5 Likes
#3

i like this. however i’d tweak the requirements for the rich folk to move in to either as you said be a specific template only unlocked when said noble is requesting it in order to full fill their needs prior to moving in. OR build a home WORTH a specific amount not so much having the needed space. i feel it would be too difficult to code a requirement of space vs total value of the property being constructed. but beyond that tweak yes i love this idea.

5 Likes
#4

I see the foundation behind this suggestion. And the idea on its own seems like a fair way to add more interesting late game mechanics.
Personally i would not be thrilled to have my heartlings divided up in these tiers. Or at least i would like to have a choice to play the game without it being forced upon the late game.
Maybe the idea with hidding the king and all the nobels away in a cave deep under ground would be the way i prefered to handle the situation? :smiley:
In other words, i like the idea of my hearthlings being a free folk, that i help to overcome their struggles from the other side of the screen.

3 Likes
#5

Haha, I was thinking about adding a paragraph outlining mechanics that prevent the player from burying noblemen alive. I do agree, though, that the new classes might change the feel of the game somewhat. Well, there’s still modding, I guess. Wonder if it’s doable.

4 Likes
#6

Now that future features seem more or less set, I was wondering how possible it actually is to mod in some sort of ambient citizens for cities to appear more bustling with only limited AI so they’re not using up too many CPU resources. I know jack about coding so maybe @max99x and/or the modders on here can share some insights? As jobs or automated?

#7

Absolutely possible and very easy. A pet with a human model is an ambient citizen. And you can spawn neutral entities willy-nilly - we do that all the time in the various encounters.

7 Likes
#8

I like this and have commented about similar things recently.
I would advice you to rethink the beggar though. Someone who refuses to work sounds more like a freeloader, which you shouldn’t have to feel too bad about “motivating” to leave town. Assign them to mean beds in small rooms, decorated with things they hate and they soon remember that they had things to do elsewhere. Or let some of your hearthlings dress up in white sheets and make spooky sounds to scare them away. :ghost: :stuck_out_tongue:
Freeloaders doesn’t have to be all negative though. They can be good at having pleasant conversations. In some cases it might be a relative to one of your hearthlings, giving an extra mood boost to that one. Eventually they overstay their welcome though and people start to get annoyed instead.

A version of the freeloader could be the charmer. Giving a big mood boost to the half of the population that they are charming and being more and more annoying to the other half. Charmed workers sometimes gets distracted though, ignoring their work to go talk to the charmer instead. When the charmer leaves town the charmed workers gets sad for a while.

A nicer version of the freeloader could be the retired hearthling. Again, it could be a relative to one of your workers, giving them an extra mood boost, but since they are old and no one expects them to work they don’t get annoying over time. They can be good at telling stories by the hearth, giving all the hearthlings there a mood boost. They can also be retired from a specific job, making it so that if someone having that job talks to them they get a bit of XP. The retired hearthling might even be drawn to that work station so that there is a higher chance for the worker to talk to them when they are not working.

There can also be many other types of people who don’t work for you but who are still working and contributing in different ways. Bards who sing and play to cheering people up. Writers who write or copy books that others can read for various buffs, XP or that you sell. Religious workers and scholars that add value to you town. And so on. Some require special work stations, resources and a certain living standard. Some might give you quests.

TL;DR There’s a lot of possibilities with this. :smiley:

4 Likes
#9

Just read this…and now I know how to achieve a really old idea.

6 Likes
#10

To add my two cents, I must say this idea feels really “meh” to me.
I do like to have one of my hearthlings designated to be the queen, even without mods, by just turning their jobs off, and RP with them. That being said, I still know I have my queen and have fun with the gameplay, but I feel having many hearthlings that do nothing in my town, especially something negative like beggars, makes the game a lot more impersonal. Like, I still have my hearthlings that cried blood and sweat tears (in that order :jubilant:) but there would also be these bland immigrants just destroying my town’s balance. I see the part of the idea that acquiring higher populations would still make it easy on the CPU, but it would stop feeling like Stonehearth to me and become just another city builder. :woman_shrugging:

2 Likes
#11

I get your point, but even if those changes would get implemented it seems disingenious to call Stonehearth “just another city builder” because it would still be pretty much unique with its building features. Maybe Colony Survival fits the bill, but it looks like the release is really far off still. Good thing for you: An official implementation seems out of the question so it would be just a mod anyway.

As for myself, I find it really hard to form a relationship with any Hearthlings other than maybe the first seven. In my mind, having passive citizens would make the “real” Hearthlings stand out more. Like “hey, that one’s part of the Core 20™” instead of just “oh, it’s one of those newcomers”.

Other than that, further mod idea: Baracks with expendable soldiers. Plop it down and the Ascendancy will send you troops that do nothing else but standing guard, patrolling the city and decimating rations. If they die they will be replaced but not before several days have passed. Could be embedded into a quest revolving around reports about increased Orc activity in the region.

3 Likes
#12

That’s alright. I just felt like there should be a post as a vessel for similarly minded people. And with those core 20 you’ve got a point. I guess I’m just way too much of a pessimist and get too focused on the negative things around town.

But the barracks sounds cool. They could even be mercenaries from a different race. Like goblins or bunnies.

2 Likes
#13

Ah, hehe. I know that feeling when something seems imbalanced and you have to make up for it. Mercenaries sound cool as well. On a side note: I’m trying to recruit a programmer friend of mine for the baracks mod. Wish me luck.

Speaking of which: I wonder how CPU heavy a regular soldier Hearthling is in the vanilla game compared to other professions and if there is a difference already.

2 Likes