Some thoughts/suggestions from Alpha8

[BrianNZ]

Hi all,

I’m a kickstarter backer, but have only dipped my toe in the game so far - I like to follow the progress but haven’t installed it since Alpha 1/2.

I broke down and installed Alpha 8 and have been having a ball. A few crashes etc, but that’s to be expected in an Alpha. It’s awesome fun, but a few things stick out to me that I want to suggest.

1. There’s not enough of a notification when one of my hearthlings is being attacked. I lost my trapper because he got cornered by some goblins, and the notification that he had died was clear enough, but there wasn’t a notification that he was being attacked. Once I have a bunch of guys, I can’t be following everyone around on the offchance they get attacked.

2. When digging a mine into a rock wall, the mine entrance is almost invisible. I have to lower the level just to see where it is. Mine entrances should have a border so you can see them.

3. Sometimes, one of my hearthlings stops doing stuff and just shows as “idle”. That’s ok, it’s an apha, I get that there will be bugs, but in one case it turned out to be because the hearthling was trapped on tpo of a roof and had turned invisible. There should be a way to find one of your guys. I have to keep clicking everyone to try to find the person I want, but if I could bring up the roster and click on someone’s name and have the camera move to them, that would have helped.

4. When I want to build something, it’s a major hassle having to bring up the inventory to count how much iron ore I have, and then go in and tell my blacksmnith to craft iron bars (or whatever). On the crafting screen, it would be REALLY helpful if it would tell you how much you have of each resource used in the creation of whatever you’re clicked on, instead of only telling you how much you need. If you don’t have enough resources, your craftsman just stops making anything. This is also true if you use the “keep X in inventory” thing, and it’s frustrating having to micromanage every tradesman.

5. Related to the previous point, if you have asked a craftsman to make something, and you don’t have enough of the right resources, the craftsman should move the request to the bottom of the current queue and start work on the next item in the list.

6. I really want to be able top set patrol routes for my footmen. Any chance we’ll be able to do that? Otherwise they spend a lot of time patrolling around my stockpiles hidden away inside my mine, where there’s absolutely no point in them being, and not being where the goblins keep showing up at the gates of my stronghold.

Any thoughts from others?

[BloodW0lf]

[quote=“BrianNZ, post:1, topic:10158”]
Any thoughts from others?
[/quote] Why sure!

[quote=“BrianNZ, post:1, topic:10158”]

1. There’s not enough of a notification when one of my hearthlings is being attacked. I lost my trapper because he got cornered by some goblins, and the notification that he had died was clear enough, but there wasn’t a notification that he was being attacked. Once I have a bunch of guys, I can’t be following everyone around on the offchance they get attacked.
   [/quote] So I do thank that would be nice to have a bit more of a notification some times but over all I like how it is.

[quote=“BrianNZ, post:1, topic:10158”]
2) When digging a mine into a rock wall, the mine entrance is almost invisible. I have to lower the level just to see where it is. Mine entrances should have a border so you can see them.
[/quote] What I would like to see at some point. You have to have supportes or the mine will cave in now that would be very cool so that would salve the prob with the Entrance

[quote=“BrianNZ, post:1, topic:10158”]
Sometimes, one of my hearthlings stops doing stuff and just shows as “idle”. That’s ok, it’s an apha, I get that there will be bugs
[/quote] Okay so the “idle” if I am right is not so much a bug but some thing your villagers just do, Take some time of to look about etc but hey could be a bug I have no clue

[quote=“BrianNZ, post:1, topic:10158”]
When I want to build something, it’s a major hassle having to bring up the inventory to count how much iron ore I have, and then go in and tell my blacksmnith to craft iron bars (or whatever). On the crafting screen, it would be REALLY helpful if it would tell you how much you have of each resource used in the creation of whatever you’re clicked on, instead of only telling you how much you need. If you don’t have enough resources, your craftsman just stops making anything.
[/quote] I am 100% with you on this

[quote=“BrianNZ, post:1, topic:10158”]
it’s frustrating having to micromanage every tradesman.
[/quote] Okay so the impression Stonehearth gives me is that you should micromanage a bit of stuff but not all. With the tradesman I like it very much.

[quote=“BrianNZ, post:1, topic:10158”]
5) Related to the previous point, if you have asked a craftsman to make something, and you don’t have enough of the right resources, the craftsman should move the request to the bottom of the current queue and start work on the next item in the list.
[/quote] This I some what like It would be helpful but not a necessity to me

[quote=“BrianNZ, post:1, topic:10158”]
set patrol routes for my footmen.
[/quote]I would love to set up patrols

[quote=“BrianNZ, post:1, topic:10158”]
they spend a lot of time patrolling around my stockpiles hidden away inside my mine, where there’s absolutely no point in them being, and not being where the goblins keep showing up at the gates of my stronghold.
[/quote] You can tell them to move you know . . .

Any how all nice points!
Have a good day!

~Wolf

[PaulJ]

Pretty good. I’m guessing #2 is a lighting issue, we wouldn’t need a border highlight if the interior was darker. They need to refine the whole area selection thing anyway so I’m not too worried about this not being addressed.

I posted about #4 as well and someone did mention they have that in the pipeline, which is great.

As for #5 I propose that here the game should highlight the item in question as well - so we know why it’s not being worked on. Say perhaps using a different font colour: red = not enough materials, yellow = no crafter available (e.g. you changed your only carpenter to a different job).

[micheal_handy76_mh]

@BrianNZ

1. There’s not enough of a notification when one of my hearthlings is being attacked. I lost my trapper because he got cornered by some goblins, and the notification that he had died was clear enough, but there wasn’t a notification that he was being attacked. Once I have a bunch of guys, I can’t be following everyone around on the offchance they get attacked.

I brought up the fact, in last week stream a trapper shouldn’t fear and cower like normal villager. But attack when attacked from monster.

@BrianNZ

2. When digging a mine into a rock wall, the mine entrance is almost invisible. I have to lower the level just to see where it is. Mine entrances should have a border so you can see them.

For now the best thing you can do, is what I do, go to building screen and build a wall that can hold double doors on the out side of the mine. u marked it and its protected.

@BrianNZ

3. Sometimes, one of my hearthlings stops doing stuff and just shows as “idle”. That’s ok, it’s an apha, I get that there will be bugs, but in one case it turned out to be because the hearthling was trapped on tpo of a roof and had turned invisible. There should be a way to find one of your guys. I have to keep clicking everyone to try to find the person I want, but if I could bring up the roster and click on someone’s name and have the camera move to them, that would have helped.

This is already possible. Go to villagers tab, and double click their name. it pans to them

@BrianNZ

6. I really want to be able top set patrol routes for my footmen. Any chance we’ll be able to do that? Otherwise they spend a lot of time patrolling around my stockpiles hidden away inside my mine, where there’s absolutely no point in them being, and not being where the goblins keep showing up at the gates of my stronghold

This is still in the works, No one knows what they will put. Here is the best solution for now, and what I went to . Its a little micromanagement. put the footman in a party by themselves, then set an attack point (ie: your front gate) now they will guard that area till you tell them to stop. just remember 2 things, 1: when they are hungry. turn off attack point so they can eat, 2 when they get tired. let them sleep.

[BrianNZ]

@micheal_handy76_mh

I brought up the fact, in last week stream a trapper shouldn’t fear and cower like normal villager. But attack when attacked from monster.

Well, maybe, but all he has is a knife. And in this case he had 3 armed goblins attacking him (who cornered him against a wall). It was ages away from my camp, so there may not have been much I could do but I should have even known about it…

@micheal_handy76_mh

This is already possible. Go to villagers tab, and double click their name. it pans to them

Hmm, I thought I had tried that, but it didn’t seem to work. I’ll try again. Possibly it didn’t work because the worker wasn’t visible? (She was trapped on a roof and had turned invisible. I only worked out she was up there when I changed her job back to “worker” and she dropped the weavers spindle where she was standing on the roof. She was still invisible, but the spindle wasn’t).

@micheal_handy76_mh

This is still in the works, No one knows what they will put

It would seem to make the most sense as a third option in the party screen. Drag out an area and the party will patrol that area. If they get hungry or tired they should go and take care of it, but ideally if you have multiple units in the party they will only go off one at a time so someone is always patrooling the zone. Just IMO. In fact, they could sleep in that area too, soldiers shouldn’t mind sleeping rough on the floor

[thorbjorn42gbf]

Nice ideas

@BrianNZ

I really want to be able top set patrol routes for my footmen.

If you want your opinion heard on this join the discussion at.

Soldier Behaviours and Patrol Routes

i believe we will be seeing a fog of war… yup, here’s the quote: Will you be able to see the whole of the map at once and everything that happens on it or will you be forced to like send villagers/soldiers to investigate certain parts of the map (fog of war)? “We are planning on fog of war.” i really like this approach to drawing the player outside their defenses (and encouraging exploration)…

And

Let's talk military!

The biggest topic of disagreement in my previous suggestion thread… … was on the subject of controlling your military units, and how best to go about that without making it too similar to an RTS. As such, I thought I’d make a new topic to discuss this in detail. I should point out that, unlike the above topic, I have no firm ideas on how best to go about this. 1. Unlimited Map Size Unlike Dwarf Fortress or Gnomoria, Stonehearth is planned to have maps that are effectively infinite in size. …

The ideas about this has been discussed for a while.