Personalizing Your Town

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(TL;DR at bottom)

While starting my newest A22.5 game, I came back to the same thought I always end up at while I’m playing Stonehearth: it’d be nice if we had a little more Hearthling personalization in the game. A big thing with the past couple of alpha builds has been just that - making the game more about a community of Hearthlings, each their own person. But I’m talking about something a little different.

Currently, with the addition of Hearthling ‘needs’ that affect their mood, like owning their own bed, having windows, ample living space, etc, there’s more of a push to letting each Hearthling have their own house. The only thing designating one house from another is who sleeps in it, and even then other villagers will wander in there to eat their meals. There’s also not a whole lot you can put in a house, so unless you want an excess of decorations there’s no point in having anything bigger than a shack for a bed, table, and chair.

I should probably get to my question, which is: are there any plans to do/add more to designate a certain building as a Hearthling’s house? A place where only they go to eat, where they can store a little bit of food that only they can grab from, etc? This could be achieved in a couple of ways, either through some tool or option that assigns a certain building or room to one Hearthling, like assigning them a bed. You could click on a door, and you have an option to give everything past that door (inside the house, of course) to a certain villager, or use a drag tool like plotting out a storage space/farm/trapping area.

In the case of giving them their own food, we could have a small fireplace/cookpot that allows the owning Hearthling to make their own basic recipes (limited to things like gruel, or grilled meats/vegetables) and a small storage bin that holds enough food for a week? They would stock that by themselves, pulling food from public crates and chests in their spare time, sort of like how villagers in Banished go to the marketplace or barn to grab food. I guess this would sort of also add a necessity to differentiate public/private storage containers, so maybe this isn’t really a simple system and would be one that would have to be micromanaged. Of course, though, you could choose to forgo this system entirely if you wanted to.

I hope to hear your thoughts on this, I think it would add a much more sophisticated/realistic and RPG feel to the game and could even have in-game benefits like more mood boosters.

TL;DR: Are there any plans on being able to give Hearthlings their own buildings (houses/rooms) that allows them to control where they get their food and who is able to eat in their space?

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Do you mean like marking an entire home to a specific hearthling? Cuz’ actually you can give a bed to a hearthling and the house will be pretty much only for him if it is the only bed inside the house.

Edit: I read the walloftext now and I agree with you, making a food storage for each hearthling in each house would be pretty awesome. No more taverns and shared food.

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as far as cooking goes, I do find it odd that a cook is required for hearthlings to cook anything at all. I mean for more complex stuff, sure I could see that being done by a chef only, but for vegetable soup and eggs? really? I think a lot more needs to be added to the basic hearthlings abilities, and the other more complex recipes would be the gourmet food that give a good mood boost.

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Yeah, totally agreed. E.g they all know how to warm their food just to not get a sickness from a raw meat, but if they want #datfood one of them would have to especialize on making it. And that #datfood would give a morale boost for troops, a mood boost for villagers, a production boost for craftsmans and etc…

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@datfisheko I still like the idea of taverns, and that would fulfill the social requirement of Hearthlings in the face of a little more personal time at home. But yes, you get the idea!

@genboom It makes it worse that some Hearthlings now spawn with a trait that gives them a negative modifier unless they have cooked, or gourmet food.

Overall, I think it could add some interesting gameplay elements into the equation, and there’s a possibility you could not align with the more personal way of going about stuff and not suffer any negative consequences. Of course, this would be a something we wouldn’t be able to see for a while, probably closer to A30 or something! It could also be a mod, that way we don’t have to worry about turning too many people off the idea if it’s too hard to fit in.

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I second…no, third…wait, I fourth this. I’ve recently gotten to a point in my game where I’ve defeated Ogo, and I’ve had plenty of Hearthlings who want cooked food (I currently have 25 people). It would be awesome to have Hearthlings eat and cook in their own homes; I have a shortage of chairs in my town and I frequently see people intruding on others’ property to eat. Also, I’d love to have my craftsmen eat closer to their workbench for maximum efficiency :slight_smile:

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@MyCoal417 I just don’t like the idea of they living in the tavern. I mean, imo it should be a place where they meet to talk and drink(eat) and a place for merchants or travellers to rest. But here I guess I’m going too far.

@epicdude312 Don’t you think it would be amazing if the craftsman put the food on/on the side of the workbench to fast switch between eating and working?

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It would be really cool if part of the evening’s idle period (the part where they sit around the campfire) could be spent cooking and eating basic foods. I’m thinking of roasting meat/veggies over the fire, nothing fancy like a proper cooked meal… although a basic stew might also work.

What I’d love to see is the hearthlings getting together to socialise over a cooked meal and a warm fire. In the early-game this would be in a camp-out situation, then there’s the communal dining hall phase, and eventually you get distinct homes (of course, you can assign a couple of hearthlings to each home and give them their own rooms, so you almost create families in that sense) where hearthlings can either live in a small group or on their own as their traits dictate. Even in that “late game” phase the tavern remains as a place for hearthlings who don’t have a permanent home yet, they can gather to eat at the tavern and chill out and socialise before they turn in for the night.

Currently, the evening period is basically “wasted”, most hearthlings just sit around doing nothing from the time they stop working to the time they head off to bed. I’d love to see that time be used for socialising, which would also allow the frequency of socialising throughout the day to be toned down – the hearthlings can therefore spend more time working and less time talking through the day, because they’ll get together in the evening to discuss how their days went. It would add a little more realism and narrative to handle things that way, IMO :merry:

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Ah, yes, I see what you mean now - and I agree with you, many times Hearthlings end up having to sleep in what would normally be a social space.

I’m really liking the ideas you guys are putting forth, especially in regard to the social aspect of things. I can’t imagine how happy it would look to have all the Hearthlings sharing their day around the campfire in the early days, relaxed and maybe chowin on some basic food; then later in the game, they all get together for a drink in a tavern and eat some cooked lamb, or something else fancy, prepared by their local cook! Maybe a big hog spit-roasted over a fire in the center, I think that would look neat!

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