More interactive stations for Thralls - lets get rid of lazy thralls

Please Funcom, create functional stations for Thralls. Similar to the workbenches they could open Gates (Gate station), draw bridges (bridge station), activate the tar boiler (boiler station) or occupy stations with arrow slits (wall with arrow slits - this also prevents that they are engaging enemy instead of shooting at themšŸ˜‡). They even could push a siege tower or a battery ram.
There could be so many possibilities and it would make the functionality of Thralls so much more interesting and more interactive.

10 Likes

Oh, great idea! I like it.

3 Likes

Actually I am supporting the Discord and a project of the Modder I-emerge for his Mod Glasconstructions and more

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=901911361

He is working on a portcullis which can be opened and closed by a Thrall using a wheel mechanism. The portcullis has a trigger which checks if the player or clanmate is entering the gates area. Then the thrall will use the wheel mechanism of the gate automatically to open and close the gate. For a foreign player the thrall wonā€™t react to open the gate.

But at least Mods are only for pc user. It would be needful that the Devs would develop such features also for Xbox and PlayStation.

So Exiles, what ideas do you have?

2 Likes

Let me begin with another suggestion:

The music instruments in Conan Exiles could also be Thrall stations

In example the drums. You can use it by yourself as it is now or ā€¦ let a Thrall occupy this instrument as a station and he will play the drums. The same with other instruments like the harp ā€¦

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dude yes !

1 Like

Yes.
Chairs, bed and cages too.
Not to mention the drying rack and grinder.

4 Likes

This would be great, currently I havenā€™t really seen a thrall, you knowā€¦ working

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gates, draw bridges

So basically instead of you clicking to open it yourself, you click the thrall to make them do it, or else there is some sort of proximity sensor to get them to auto-open it for you.

It might be nice, if it didnā€™t introduce any lag. Convenience if it has the proximity setup.

tar boiler

Is this a mod item? The only way you get tar in the normal game is to stick hides in the Tannery and itā€™s a byproduct. And there is already a Tanner thrall.

arrow slits

Had this idea and posted it a while back. You stick the thrall in and visually it patrols between 1-2 or 1-3 windows. The wall section fires the arrows while you have the illusion of the archer stationed there doing the firing.

music instruments

Perfect place to stick an Entertainer thrall and make them play a beat.

chairs, beds

Eh, this is just an RP thing, doesnā€™t really seem useful at all.

cages

More RP stuff, but this one is at least semi-useful as a means of decorating your base. The only problem I could see is lag in having too many thralls active in an area.

drying rack, grinder

Iā€™d like this, to get the Thrall bonuses.

For my part, I think we need a Beastmaster for Animal Pens, to speed up the taming of an animal, and I think to double the production output of dung and other items.

Add to this a Farmer thrall and a new Farm Plot building spot, where you can stick 5 seeds into a dedicated slot, and while they are in that slot, the farm will passively produce byproducts of that particular plant. Blossoms, leaves, fruit, etc.

The passive production is rather slow. You can speed up production with a dual burn mechanic. A way to generate Moist Compost (Water + Compost) which acts as fuel and doubles the production rate for as long as it is present.

Potent Moist Compost could then triple the yield of the farm.

4 Likes

Sorry not Tar Boiler - Siege cauldron :crazy_face:

Icon_siege_defence_cauldron

Place a trigger, which regognizes an enemy. Place the thrall in the station and he will activate the cauldron when the enemy climbs up the wall.

2 Likes

I think the problem here is that this is likely going to cause lag to the servers, so it wonā€™t be viable for online play.

To have a trigger for the siege cauldron, or sensors for gates/drawbridges, the scripting would have to be running a constantly firing check.

Basically:

8:35:00 PM ā€“ Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
8:35:02 PM ā€“ Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
8:35:04 PM ā€“ Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
8:35:06 PM ā€“ Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
8:35:08 PM ā€“ Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.

Doesnā€™t seem so bad in a solo player doing it. Then we get to a server with multiple clans all with gates, drawbridges, etc.

Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.
Anyone at the trigger? No, continue waiting.

You can see how quickly it gets out of hand. This is a problem they had with the Thrall Pots/Feed Boxes, I think. The thralls and pets were pinging back to the food source, and it generated lag. Which is why they shut that off.

Pretty much anything that can be placed like this by the player that has to constantly check for stuff could cause lag like that, I think.

Thralls, Pets, and enemies have something like this. To ping out at their line of sight, and/or radius around them, for potential targets to attack.

1 Like

:thinking: So Funcom can use such a system for this, thatā€™s great news. This game has so much potential! It could give us so many possibilities- letā€™s use them.

BTW - the issue with the Thrall pots was definitely not Server lags - this feature was buggy like hell. And for every action it depends if it has to happen on the client or on the server.
Also there are so many other, even older games working with the Unreal engine which can handle such features. To fear something should not be a reason not to do it.

2 Likes

Iā€™m just assuming that is how it works. Since it seems like the logical way it is done. No idea if that is the way it is.

As for thrall pots, honestly when I was playing my previous game and feeding thralls and pets, I just dumped 40-50 fish into the thrallā€™s inventory and put my excess fish/meat into the thrall pot.

I had a couple Greater Hyenas with full stacks of human flesh. And honestly with the settings I had, they had about a monthā€™s worth of food.

Neither ever came close to running empty.

1 Like

This is a good idea BiJay. I have noticed over the course of time that you and myself are usually quite similar in our styles of thought. Having a thrall fan my character with a palm leaf while he is seated on his throne would be nice. As would the often requested Musician thralls. I would also like to suggest a minor extension of your idea, however I am thinking smaller for mine. I would like to see the animation routines for existing thralls who man crafting stations expanded upon a little. An exampleā€¦? Ok.

Think of a Carpenter at the carpenters bench. All they currently do is saw a log. On my game, poor Pascoe Nimblefingers has been trying to saw through the same beam for almost a year now! I would like to see his routine expanded. For example, he could cut the beam, then hammer a nail or plane a piece of wood, then pick up and examine an object, etc. Then return to sawing and repeat the process. Similarly my Smelter Fingal Firetender only sits there and lazily pokes at the fire. That is fine. But how about he stokes the fire, then shovels some ore into the furnace, then gives it a blast or two from a bellows, before returning to sitting and stoking. And the same with other craftsmen thralls. Do you all know what I am trying to get at hereā€¦!?

Essentially instead of having a 2 second routine play on loop, why not expand it to a 10-15 second one (the time itself is not important), to make the thralls appear more interesting, more realistic and more immersive, instead of just endlessly sawing the one beam.

4 Likes

Indeed a fine idea. Ideally it would not be one fixed sequence, but a list of animations/actions that would randomly/periodically play, in addition to whatever the ā€œidleā€ loop (their current behavior) is.

Some randomness in timing would be paramount as weā€™d otherwise get synchronized teams doing the same thing at the same time, which would probably be even worse than the current subtle idle loop.

1 Like

These are really great ideas from Croms_Faithful and Mikey. Sequels of randomly periodic sequences of animations. This would give the game a huge immersive boost and could be part of a future settlement system.
In EA Times I remember there was once a very famous mod named populus. The Modder Lenny isnā€™t active anymore. He created in EA times very popular mods like gardener and other mods.
In populus the player could create a thrall station that make the inserted thrall perform an emote. Why not creating such station for animation sequences.?
Cool ideas :+1:

Link to the mod which isnā€™t supported anymore
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=953802094

2 Likes

The mod City Life allows creation of a few thrall stations and allows you to create npcs you can give certain emotes.

1 Like

Wellā€¦yeah sure I guess. I do like the idea. And it would be more interesting to behold if the sequence was randomised as opposed to uniform. I guess it depends on just how difficult it would actually be to implement. Im not so good with the technical side of the game.

2 Likes

If it were me, Iā€™d make it so game-wise the animations were completely inconsequential. Pure fluff/immersion pieces. So they could let the clients keep track of them, ie the server doesnā€™t care which animation the thrall is playing or not playing at any given time. This means thereā€™s no additional load on the servers - the thrall provides his effect all the time heā€™s present in the workstation, same as today, and thatā€™s all the server cares about.

If done like that, then it shouldnā€™t be too difficult really. But obviously thereā€™d be a fair amount of work involved in producing the animations themselves. Of course that would mean that the animations were not synchronized between cilents, so I could see a thrall cutting lumber while on your screen heā€™s hammering a nail. But does it matter? IMO not. Itā€™s not like they even have a physics body to collide with (which is fine) even today. Not that I think keeping them in sync would be a massive amount of data by any means, but servers do often seem to be struggling as-is.

2 Likes

I think animations are already client side for thralls? Two dancers near eachother tend to start dancing in sync when you show up

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