40 hours in, got a feedback list

Farthest Frontier Ideas and Feedback
1

Hi Crate! FF has brought a welcome change to my gaming diet. Recently I have been diving into the town building for hours of what I’d describe as a zen experience. Having it played, I can totally see that “no victory objective” philosophy is in the heart of FF. I am enjoying the game a lot and from the first few hours it was clear to me - the core game holds up well. That being said, I have also been compiling a list of observations/suggestions which I’d like to share.

I have been playing on Trailblaizer difficulty, all maps are Lowland Lake.

Here are my notes.

  1. Wall building pattern - only perpendicular? You have the road pattern tool that works well, I can’t see a reason why it can’t be the same for walls. The walls deserve to look natural too (like on the FF’s main menu background). :slight_smile:

  2. Terrain flatten tool - make it sample-based: first you click on the terrain which height you need (pick sample), then you draw the terrain flatten area which will be worked on until the marked area matches the sample. This is a more sensible approach than what we currently have (ironing out for 50 times the same piece of land).

  3. Slight courage buff for the retreating hunters is needed - instead of finishing the animal they run away. It’s pretty comical, but it’s also quite a pain when the hunter starts a fight with a boar and then retreats allll the way to town center leaving the boar with 1 hit worth of HP while the hunter could survive at least two more blows from the boar.

  4. Wagon shop often remains idle - more clarity required. Sometimes the wagons start doing their work immediately, the other times they never leave the shop. No idea why. Tried placing near a mine / storehouse / in the middle of the distance and I just can not understand why sometimes they work and sometimes they remain idle. Maybe it’s a bug. Either way some in-game clarity (or fix) would be welcome.

  5. [insert any profession] remains idle - more clarity required. Admittedly I often can investigate and figure out the reason (lack of a resource needed for the task), but sometimes I fail to find any reason. Besides when there is a lot of them it becomes rather tedious. An in-game tooltip specifying the reason for idling is needed.

  6. Edit: a better idea: replace soldiers with militia.

Original point:
Idle soldiers could fill laborer roles during times of peace. I might be doing it wrong, but soldiers are rather too expensive commodity compared to what they provide, so instead I rely on a few towers at choke points and walls to defend against raiders. When raiders get inside, I ring the bell and watch the chaos. It’s not a pretty sight, but when looking at numbers - the losses aren’t as significant as if I had to pay salary to a bunch of soldiers, who can die during invasion anyway. Also crafting armor and weapons takes considerable resources adding to the soldiers’ cost. So at least they could do something useful at 99% of times being laborers, and to be honest even then I don’t think they are cost efficient.

  1. A new tool for resetting the current status and tasks/actions of anyone - so he/she can be assigned to another profession/building site/or any building in their vicinity. This would solve a number of cases, to name a few:
  • a building site would remain untouched with something small as 1 stone left from finishing for literally years while builders walk by all the time carrying stuff for their homes or other building sites on the other side of the town
  • same as above and the building site had priority checked, but still remained untouched for too long
  • I had a bakery burned to the ground in the middle of the town with a water well nearby only because it was autumn to winter transition and my citizen were busy carrying firewood and food to their homes. The bakery burned from full HP to zero. It was a slow (and painful) burn. Nobody stopped by and I couldn’t do anything. The baker lady and I were really upset.
  • People often travel miles to bring logs to a building site from a storehouse, while there are trees marked for harvesting right there. It’d make more sense to chop some logs.

I am not suggesting direct control as with a worker in an RTS (the current system makes sense on paper), but the mentioned kinds of situations happen way too often and it feels like more player agency is needed at times.

  1. Laborer vs builder system is not entirely clear. I mean it’s clear that I can add/remove the number of builders, but more often than not I have more building sites in progress than there are builders to fully cover them all, so it’s not clear how many builders I need at the moment and how many laborers. The way the other professions are presented is perfect (i.e. 4/4 fishermen).

  2. Crop disease prevention/cure is unclear. I understand that rotating different types of crops and keeping crop fields at some distance from each other are the intended way to prevent the spread of diseases, but is there anything else that can be done? Like assigning farmers to do maintenance in a certain pattern or specific crop rotation?

  3. Log value for the planted trees interface. Like oak starts at 3, then on the 3rd year it grows to 4, on 10th year to 5 etc…

  4. Visual transition from winter to spring looks like winter to summer. The foliage is immediately tall and green after snow melts. This gives intuitively wrong impression to the player. Suggestion for the spring to make the snow melt only partial, the trees to remain naked and grass/foliage not to be immediately as lush. (easier said than done, I know :slight_smile: )

  5. Trading post inventory refill lag is often too long. I have this issue often when the merchant leaves before the goods are delivered to the trading post’s inventory. Even when I order the delivery (like 20 baskets) when the merchant still has 50+ days. Just doesn’t feel right.

  6. Guard towers and barracks to have weapons and armor stored in them. So once the raid is over, the player can disable the building (toggle production off) and free the human resource. Once the raid is sighted - toggle production on and folks who take the spots would immediately have the weapons at hand.

  7. Bigger impact for adding compost to crop fields. As it is right now, I honestly can’t notice a difference. My crop rotation routine works like clock, keeping fertility at 70+ and weed level with rockiness close to zero, but when I add compost I would expect to see fertility go up for at least 20%, so it would be noticeable…?

  8. The heavy tools soft lock for some buildings had strange results. I understand the concept that you need to buy the heavy tools from the traders in order to unlock production of heavy tools. However I’ve had a furniture shop stuck at 1x heavy tools building progress for numerous years, even after I specifically purchased extra heavy tools. I think it’s a mixture of builders being busy at other building sites, heavy tools being stored and not delivered to the furniture shop site and starting building furniture shop when I did not have any heavy tools. And also inability to reset the builder’s task who’s passing by. I can get behind the idea of the purchasing your first heavy tools from the merchant. It just sometimes seemingly snowballs with other factors into a frozen production with no clear way of resolving the issue.

  9. Healer’s house feels like an economic parasite. The monthly gold fee is just too much for the services the healer provides. I am pretty sure you can turn on your dictator approach and calculate what are the actual losses of not having a healer and they’d be less than the healer’s salary. Besides, it’s often when healer is needed the most (epidemies, raid victims) single healer is not enough to stop the problem. Maybe healer should pay tax for selling snake oil? :slight_smile:

  10. Overall gold economy feels off. In my mind, the main income should come from houses and markets, also to a lesser degree from pubs and other manufactures. On top of that the occasional income spikes from trading with traders. In the game, however, the trading seems to be the absolute king here. The taxes and marketplace can barely sustain just guard and theatre in a 200 pop town with good everything. I feel like bigger income from taxes would feel more natural in the current balance of things.

  11. The education system is, ehm, very basic? I feel like you have a plan to expand it, but at the moment I don’t notice any effect of educating people. And why only basic education is the limit? I would suggest to make the benefits of education more clear to the player (in numbers).

  12. The search bar would be much welcome. I get it, it’s a major UI overhaul and a ton of work. Grim Dawn didn’t have any at first as well. But it’s such a big quality of life changer.

  13. Bug report: for some reason I was able to extend a crop field to what I guess is many times beyond the allowed limit. It just allowed me to drag, so I did. :slight_smile:

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If needed, I can provide the save file (but please provide instructions how do I find one)

Edit: a bit more suggestions:

  1. Make planting trees area based instead of single clicking.

  2. In the mentioned area based planting trees - allow to pick a mixture of trees player wants to plant. They all cost the same so it wouldn’t cause balance issues, but it will make planting trees a lot faster, natural and enjoyable. Same solution would fit nicely to Arborist too.

  3. Loyalist DLC item idea - crate of entertainment. Alternative skin for shrine. A magnificent statue of crate. :smiley:

That’s the end of my list. I hope this data is useful and honestly, I enjoy the game a lot and the pros very much outweigh the cons.

You cultivate your games like no other (GD) and I have no doubt FF will be recognized as one of the best town builders, just like GD belongs to the top ARPGs.

8 Likes
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I’ve had some idle wagons but for me they are normally always working but you have to have a active clay pit/sand pile/various mines/work camps and all the wagons do is just go to that camp pick up the stuff in the storage(in the camp screen) and takes it to your actual storage… Now if the mines/camps/etc are so close that the villagers are walking to the storage with the goods the wagons won’t move

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This is a big one to me and it’s probably just a symptom of early access. You have education but you really don’t notice a big difference between educated and non. I thought it said educated workers would be needed for certain jobs but maybe that isn’t implemented yet or I misunderstood.

Right now the game is largely built around upgrading everything, educating everyone, building everything. I’d like to see reasons to have a more diverse town outside of aesthetics. For instance there’s no reason/trade off to not upgrade every house and the end result is every town kind of ends up looking the same. In theory you should have pockets of uneducated for some jobs, pockets of educated for some jobs and various tiers of housing spread throughout to cover all your bases.

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Thank you for explaining this… It makes sense the way you’ve put it… but my in-game experience is quite different. I’ve built two wagon shops and one started delivering immediately, the other remained idle. So I’ve moved the idle one to other spot, still it just does nothing. I’ve moved it again, for five times. Close to pits and mines, close to storehouses and in between. The thing just doesn’t work. As if it’s a bug, or a realistic behavior (AI imitates embodiment of laziness) - I was specifically trying to find some logic when was placing the wagon shop on different spots, but I failed to do so. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

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I think only the healer and the teacher require education right now?

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I made an account just to post my thoughts on what could be improved, but this pretty much covers it.

I absolutely love this game and have put more than 60 hours into it already but there’s definitely room for improvement.

I’d also like to add running out of wood & stone happens WAY too fast in most maps. I feel like increasing the amount of wood a tree gives would be very helpful. Every town I’ve built clear cuts the area miles around my town by year 30-40 and a few hundred population. I constantly need to move the work area of my work camps because they decimate resources so fast.

And tree planting is a good option but take forever to grow and yield VERY little compared to the effort. Maybe a tree planting job site that has a work area to plant in that you can place work camps around for a replenishing supply?

Stone deposits should have significantly more stone, or perhaps an addition of stone mines for large scale operations. I run out of stone in a couple decades every time and it’s a struggle to upgrade stuff.

Traders are a good option for these items but they seem really rare to be sold. In my current game I haven’t seen a trader sell stone in the past 7 years and only one of them sold logs.

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Yeah and apothecary. So 3 jobs which explains why we really don’t feel educated/non educated very much. Could be a big emphasis though with tier 4 and 5 being more developed. Having more jobs require education + educated workers only really wanting those jobs would greatly address those issues. You may not want a school in every neighborhood because then you won’t have enough people happy to work in the farms or wheel a cart of poop up a mountain. Something along those lines

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  1. Totally need that stuff. And best would be if the i can rotate buildings freely to aline it to the roads better
  2. Yes, sometimes i dont see any change after flattening at all, and i can decide which high this flattened groudn should be. Going way above/under the current level maybe should restricted (e.g. (heavy) tools needed, exponential cost ect)
  3. I dont like the idea, that Soldiers are just armed laborers, but they should have some benefit while idling. Maybe set Patrol which increase attractivity along their ways or stop Bar-fight. At least they should be a bit more effective in battle, like increased bow-fireing rate and higher movement speed. Right now, if bandits attack from teh false direction, my soldiers are pretty much useless, because they arrive to late. Thats why i build three barracks around town with only few soldiers. Let them run please
    6.1 give the normal people a battle modus please (witch can be toggles on/off), so they attack automatically. Now i have to chose every attack for themself. And its a tedious work to do That in a battle with dozens of targets
    6.2 Can we loot dead bandits/enemies for some stuff?, i doubt their isnt anything left of value.
  4. Thought so too at first, but after some upgrades and more income, it doesnt matter anymore. Health should be cost something and i at least think that my healers stopped some epidemics and rescued some wounded after raids.
    17 Gold economy is nearly not existent. I dont know where it comes froms. Just build a market and you get godl from nowhere. But i disagree would the finding of the poststarter. Market and co ARE the mainincome, unless you sell all stuff at market and dont buy anything.
    At market i mostly trade items effectivly and never move gold between town and market, after i reached a solid sum in both. (but i had plenty of gold mines, so maybe thats a bit unfair comparison.) Roughly spoken above 50% of my regular income for me are taxes and 50% produced (melted). That wouldnt be enough for most of the time, due to high expensed for soldiers and citybuilding. I would like a bit more authentic money/economy system, but this is just fine.
  5. Education system is a blunder rigth now. Not only isnt it noticable at all and has no impact, but why can a school support all my town (1 teacher!), i assume? I want to see how many people are attenting as well.

The keyword here is maps. I think if you play in the highlands you will find stone quite enough. I play here and have no problems so far to get all the stones i need without going to far (maybe around 50 tiles away from my town). I cant effort stone walls though, but thatis mostly asthetic. I think thats wuite good, because each map has its adventages and disadventages as it should have. For example i cant to baskets at all, because i have no ressources for that. I expect in a plain, waterfull field i found more.

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I agree, the idea of armed soldiers laboring isn’t the best one in the sense of realism. Setting patrols for bar fights moderation and increasing desirability is a cool idea. Although, from my experience I’ve never had a noteworthy bad outcome out of a bar fight, really minor things.

I think the real issue with soldiers is in the unit design. The game is not an RTS, you don’t need soldiers to control the map, attack and defend from opponents all the time. There are no raider camps to attack and you can clear wolf dens with hunters. You only really need soldiers to defend against raids (but honestly not even for that, as you can defend with towers and town center, lose a bunch of lives, buildings and resources, but recovery will still be cheaper than having full-time soldiers). And soldiers indeed might even be late for the fight since raiders come from random directions.

Frankly, soldiers don’t have much to do most of time, they take payment and population which otherwise would work elsewhere and during the raids, they aren’t even that good all things considered.

In my opinion, FF would work better if soldiers would be replaced with militia. You build militia quarters where weapons and armor get stored. When raiders attack, you activate militia bell and people abandon their duties (like with burning building) and run to the militia quarters, arm themselves and ready to fight the invaders. When the fight is over, turn off the militia bell and everyone returns to their duties. This gives a better incentive for accumulating armor and weapons too. Right now I turn off the production to save iron which is better used elsewhere.

This came from a game where I had no gold deposits and had soldiers on salary. So basically the “default” setup. I’ve had 5 markets in a 300 pop town and it was just enough not to have negative gold income. Here is a screenshot with numbers.

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5 markets provided 190 gold per month. In comparison selling 500 Logs to a merchant gives you about 2000 gold (I think average rate is 4gold per piece). This is roughly equal to what 5 markets will earn in 10 months. That’s only one common resource, but I usually sell candles, pottery, furniture and other leftovers. I also resell stuff between traders if there’s a cheap supply and more expensive demand. I earn times more from trading than from my town’s economy. Maybe I don’t have enough markets, but 5 is more than enough to cover all living houses, so it feels like the right amount.

On the other hand, I’ve had another town with gold mine and I did not build barracks. That economy did much better. Like 550 gold per month better (with 4 markets and around 300 pop town). Here’s how it looked:

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So yeah, in my experience either smelting gold or trading makes you rich, markets that cover your living districts and taxes will only keep the economy just above the water, no big money.

I didn’t try to break down the numbers. It would be nice if the game provided them. Maybe immersion would suffer a bit, but I find the economy pretty counter-intuitive, at least to me.

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I like the militia idea honestly. I kept an army of 6 men, with hauberks & swords, and if any raiders broke through my walls, a group of more than 6 raiders would easily destroy my entire army I spent 50-60 gold a month on while they just stood around and did nothing, wasting my money, awaiting their inevitable doom so I stopped training them

3 Likes
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Ideally we will have more stuff than bar fights down the line, like thieves and other crime makes a lot more sense as you leave tier 3 and some people live in mansions

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The soldiers in this game kind are a militia in all but name. I really don’t like the combat in this game and don’t turn it on most of the time so I might be misreading it but I don’t really understand why you’d invest heavily in a small and largely untrained infantry force to defend a stationary city. It feels like playing Stronghold but you’re only allowed villagers. Not to say that it isn’t functional it’s just not something I’m into.

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I used term “militia” mainly to describe a game mechanic (like Humans can arm their workers in Warcraft 3). The idea of militia was exactly to do the opposite of “investing heavy in a small and largely untrained infantry force” - the point is NOT to invest in defensive forces, but rather activate militia mode only when it’s needed. You invest only in weapons and armor if you choose to. If not - your militia will have to fight with bare hands, only in organized approach and not randomly retreating like ants.
I know I’d prefer that to the current soldier design, given the usefulness and the costs of the unit.

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Oh I see what you mean, also I have definitely phrased my post wrong, I was agreeing with you that the cost of the military is really weird considering what you end up with is an overdressed, undertrained militia. I was saying that I don’t understand the choice to provide you with an infantry in what is essentially a tower defense game. Like plants vs zombies (disclaimer: I have never played plants vs zombies)

I haven’t played Warcraft but you are talking about having a functional, low investment militia like using villagers to swarm towers in AoE? Doesn’t this game have crossbows? That is a good weapon for milita, way better than swords and plate armour. Can the soldiers even use crossbows? Like properly, from elevation and in volleys?

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No worries :slight_smile: . Here’s how milita works in Warcraft 3:

You basically turn a regular worker into a militia increasing his fighting capabilities. You don’t pay anything to do that, it’s like call to arms to defend your homes. I wasn’t thinking into smaller details, like what equipment militia can or cannot use and what the balancing for activation would be (like available slots per militia quarters). The basic idea is call up everyone to defend the place when it’s needed instead of having idling soldiers for 99% of time.

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Ohhhhhhhh, I get it. That’s a great idea!

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I like the idea of militia-barracks, but i my sense military is always an investment for special occasions which is dead weight in civil way.

In this regards i treat Watchtowers as militia and barracks and “standing army” in my head. And the problem isnt really the price we have to pay, but the stuff we getting for it.

The militia idea reduce the price, because now just normal villagers with no payment will do the job.

I would like an improvement in the outcome.
In my eye, the problems are the following:
1.Soldiers are just to stationary, not suited for large cities. But exactly for this kind of lategame they should be the nessasary choice (as i understand this game correctly).
o the pther hand, the baracks are realy great defending building, if manned and attack, but the later is not ours to choose
2. They are far to weak, nothing more than a better hunter. To be honest, i think if i could call all hunters into one space like i can with with soldiers, they would do nearly the same job.

To change this, give them more movement (when running), higher stats as rate of fire, melee, armorhitpoints. Or let the enemies flee earlier if fighting against a trained soldier.
Or add some sort sort of gate-defense, which soldiers can use, when placed nearby.

People can die in a bar fight. Especially after an attack when some are already hurt.

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Good points. Regarding your defined 2 problems - I agree, soldiers definitely could use some buffs. At the same time I still think that their biggest problem is that they are idle most of times. Stats can be tweaked, but they will still be the one unit that deliberately wastes human resource. Militia would put all these people to use. Building a town is limited by size of the population, there’s always more things to do than free workers. The game puts a lot of emphasis on the optimization (layout, logistics, crop rotation, synergies between different buildings), which is why idle soldiers feel out of place. You’re putting a lot of attention not to waste potential, yet soldiers just waste it. Even if their monthly cost is reduced to 1 gold, they are still wasting potential when there’s always shortage of free hands.

I’ve been thinking about soldier unit design lately and it seems to me that Crate has bigger plans for them. Otherwise, I find the unit design not fitting the game in the current state.

Yes, military professions are dead weight in civil times, but the game IS about civil times. Raids are occasional and need an occasional solution, not a full time one, in my opinion.

And I like your idea of soldiers being able to scare off raids, that’d be pretty cool :smiley: .

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