I expect not much? You’d fiddle with their equipment some and maybe manually set up a patrol route, but I don’t necessarily want to demand you to do any more than that.
No. League of Legends controls imply too much the form of APM requirements. I do think there’s space for characters to have a single ability on them that doesn’t require specific location targeting, however.
To add to @Brackhar on how i see the combat playing on
Is like you’re the general/commander of a bttle but not a god of it
As an example, You shout “shields up!” And all you’re knight/tankers rais their shield and stop attacking
You shout “archers!” And they all stop or reload to get ready to shoot in unison, but you don’t controll each unit individually
You’re controlling the broad stroke and the Hearthlings comply tje best they can
Hearthlings are going to have to be a lot smarter for that, though. Or they could use what seems like silly AI because it reacts to way too many intricate systems as a selling point like Dwarf Fortress.
I agree that APM is out of place in Stonehearth. I would never want it to turn into one of Blizzards X-craft games. The idea of siege weapons surprises ill admit since I can only assume they would have a heck of a range.
Some thoughts…
What if the combatgroups could earn some kind of combined experience? Maybe with the anchor on the knightclass?
And then this experience could be used to gain new combat formations? Then the whole micromannagement could be a bit more towards the macro, with the formations determin how well the combined groups tactic will fair in the given scenario?
Example…
Terrain could the be used aswell combined with theese diferent formations by each indiviual player, to come up with strategies, that would differ from each other, if combat in multiplayer comes to life at some point in the future? 
I think pretty muh everything i read in this thread would make combat worse >.<
To me its just a lack of scale nothing more…that being said the game probably won’t have the scale anyways…then combat might not really be something the game should focus a lot on? …that being said…it sortof brings me back to what exactly is stoneheart aiming to be ? a management game or an RPG ?..since most mix up games tempt to fail miserably.
So the solution in your view is to discard combat entirely? Or what is it you are saying? 
Im saying if you want good combat you need to figure out what the game is trying to be first…then you can polish combat for that type of game.
Since personally i really dont know what goal for this game is anymore! i thought it was a dwarf fortress clone 
This is all good and grand thought, and would work amazing…if this weren’t meant for a small town. @Brackhar has stated multiple times that he wishes for this to stay a small town simulator rather than a kingdom, so that you can get to know each Hearthling. So when you only have 20 Hearthlings total, after removing one for each job class, you’re only left with enough 'lings to have 3 in each category (3 Knights, 3 Archers, 3 Footmen, and 3 Clerics). That being said, @Psyduck couldn’t have said it better.
So in the end, how would this be any different than the current setup, except for the removal of the indiviual controls?
Small town can mean a lot of things. I have no idea yet what the max number of hearthlings we should aim on supporting is. It’s less than 200, but I feel that the number is also probably greater than 20 with the way the class system currently works.
This would be easy and you can use the locks which players already find and know.
On the equipment tab, just lock the item (with lock) and now the player has to or can change the item.
Without a locked lock the game will choose the equipment.
And when the class is changed the lock will automatically be unlocked.
The problem I have with combat in Stonehearth is that there’s not much tactical depth to it; it’s just blob vs blob and then a bit of a spammy clickfest getting your archers to prioritize.
I really like the idea of formations (my forts tend to go up to around 50 hearthlings, about half of which ends up being military and the other half dedicated crafters).
The main thing I’d like to see is more meaningful choices in how you outfit your squad. Like, ok, if I give everyone in a squad pikes, is that tactically different from giving everyone hammers, or is it just different numbers?
Just as an example – if pikes had a longer attack “reach”, and hammers (or maces) had “knockback”, you could make a lot of tactical choices about how you set up your squad (i.e., “my whole fort is on a set of cliff bridges, let’s go all-hammers”) (“the goblins are attacking with pikes, hammers won’t help as much, we’ll need archers and swords”), etc. That wouldn’t necessarily mean more micro management – it’d be all equipment decisions you made before the actual fight – but it would lend combat a little more depth that it doesn’t have right now.
That said I realize implementing that would require a fair bit of secondary work, just like the rescue mechanics did (i.e., if not falling damage, at least a falling and landing animation).
I think it’s important to have some degree of tactical depth in this sort of game because there’s a tower-defense element. Compare, e.g., Rimworld – it’s not hugely deep, but it has really robust cover mechanics (see: Steam Community :: Guide :: Colonist’s Handbook (Updated for Alpha 16)), and that’s enough to make for fun and engaging gameplay beyond just “go here and blob”, even if all you’re doing is telling them to “go here and take cover” instead; the need to consider cover leads to all kinds of other strategic choices too, including equipment crafting and fort design. The same sort of cover mechanics would have a hard time working in Stonehearth for obvious reasons – 2d vs 3d, etc. – , but a little more of a tactical model could still add a lot of gameplay (I suggest knockback and reach because they’re mechanics that could take advantage of Stonehearth’s 3d engine).
As it is now, once you build your fort, you’re kinda finished; it needs the other half, where things come to try to tear it down and you fight them off.
One of the things that i think would help… would be to remove the speed boost that footmen get… and instead make it a charge skill where they charge at an enemy… this way they stay with the group instead of running off by themselves and dieing… only charging when they get close enough…
archers could also have a skill to evade backwards if an enemy gets in their face… of course there would be cooldowns on these abilities… but they could use them on their own under certain circumstances which would help alot… oh… and make cleric a ranged class instead of melee… i mean its funny at first… but its far from effective.
For me the settlement building side of stonehearth has always been more ‘ant colony’ focused to me. Outside of designing object placement, I feel like the idea has always been to mostly watch events play out with only macro level intervention possible from the player.
The thing is, this only really works for games like godus, populous, black and white, supreme commander and planetary annihilation, where the granularity of the game is coarse and things like individuals are not a concern. A game like dwarf fortress or stonehearth needs to dial it back a bit and allow finer control, due to the focus on not only watching the civilization but also its citizens grow and interact.
To be honest I feel like stonehearth has a pretty good handle on combat as it is. The thing is players naturally want finer controls, and the best thing to do is to work with that rather than against.
To achieve this there should be redundancy between the two styles of play. One might want to sit back and watch a fight play out, where as another might want to have their minions do exactly what they’re told when they’re told. There needs to be dynamic AI to mostly know when to have which behavior, and recognize what kind of player is controlling it.
For example, I’m the kind of guy that likes to send a party of hearthlings to attack a group of enemies and then just watch the fight play out, but step in when something dumb looks like it’s about to happen. I want my hearthlings to fight intelligently on their own, and I believe this is something that the team can achieve later on down the line, but If I were to see my cleric fail to heal someone on low health, I as a player want to step in. This is when the cleric needs to become docile and prioritize the player’s commands over it’s own AI. The trick is knowing when to change back again, and this can vary from different classes and conditions.
Going back to my point about redundancy, It may not be optimal but it should be fine to simply let the combat and other hazardous situations play out on their own rather than micro it. the point is you can micro if you want to, but the need should hardly ever arise. Achieving this balance allows for both styles of play to be valid, and also allows for situations where micro may not be feasible, like larger scale combats.
These two things can be combined, by ripping off the balance tactics from the building system. There too, there is this rift between different playstyles, so redundancy is needed. And to accommodate for it, you either can design building templates yourself, or you can use will-do prefab building templates which are already in the game.
Something similar could happen with combat as well: You get the ability to design formations templates yourself in the game, or, for those who just want to send out a party and watch things work out, you can just plomp down a will-do prefab formation template. Then you add the tactical stuff like pikes have more reach, to make formations useful.
Yup. I’m kinda riffing off of Battle Brothers here (see: Melee Weapons | Battle Brothers Wikia | FANDOM powered by Wikia) – idea being, given every weapon type a “role”, like reach or stun or knockback or extra damage; then you have an extra equipment layer on top of the class layer, so players can choose to have, say, a squad of pike footmen vs a squad of sword footmen, and one will have extra reach while the other will have (for example) better DPS, etc. And then enemies have the same, so a squad of attacking sword goblins will be a different kind of challenge than a squad of attacking pike goblins, so forth.
It would take some extra work – more animations, more weapon art, a weapon-choice interface – but it shouldn’t be anything engine-breaking. And, importantly, it wouldn’t require any additional micro-management of combat at all, at least not necessarily: just make a bunch of hammers and set your squad to use them, and next fight they’ll send goblins flying around without any extra work on the player’s part. On the other hand, though, for players who wanted a little more tactical gameplay, it would open up a lot of options – mixed squads of hammer knockback and pike reach, for example, or maces for stunning and greatswords for big damage, etc.
Then make some monsters immune or resistant to different bonuses – maybe Ogres are knockback-immune and/or have Reach themselves, maybe you can’t stun an elemental. All sorts of room for different kinds of challenges.
[FWIW, I’d also change the “combat triangle” by removing footmen’s speed bonus – it only gets them alpha-striked vs. archer squads – and instead giving knights a “shield’s up” arrow block. Then groups of knights beat archers, groups of archers beat footmen, groups of footmen beat knights (by focus firing etc). It’s probably also worth considering giving archers added range when at higher elevations, and possibly even some kind of cover mechanic,but both of those interact with the building system and so would require more thought).
