Looking at past updates, including the new Purge and Tavern systems, while good additions to the game, they still feel somewhat bare of features, especially involving thralls.
To keep things relatively short, I have a few suggestions for new thrall professions and a couple of mechanic additions that would greatly benefit animals and Bearer thralls:
New Professions:
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Siege Thralls
These thralls will help in the defense of your base during purges, helping you operate your siege weapons (controlled by the player through W,A,S,D keys, changing angles and rotating the platform), rearming traps, replenishing ammunition for archers, bandaging allies, positioning themselves on unused crenelated walls to throw rocks at the enemies below - causing low damage, but helping slow the invasion down for your fighters and archers. -
Constructor Thralls
These would repair your base’s defenses while it gets damaged, and even rebuild any broken walls to the way they were before, when the fighting stops - as long as you provide them with materials. They could also upgrade your base to the next tier, if you provide them the materials through a new work station - which could double down as bulk storage for building materials, something that is currently partly covered by the vault.
Similar to the Animal Pens, this new work station could have 3 - 5 workers, that would speed up any rebuilding or upgrade to your base, with higher tier thralls being able to build stronger walls.
These thralls could be given special equipment similar to the Bearer packs used on the head slots, like equipment pouches on jackets for the Siege Thralls, and pants with toolbelts for the Builder Thralls.
New Mechanics:
- Bearer Thralls can loot corpses and chests
Depending on a provided tool, Bearers could either harvest natural or animal resources - or simply gather valuables and equipment from dead enemies, if no tools are provided. - Animal followers can devour corpses
Probably a toggle on their inventory menu, since you could want predators to feed themselves - with all the meat and bones going into their inventory. Finisher attacks for animals could also be a good addition, which would give them a buff similar to player finishers.
Considering that next update is supposed to make thralls behave more alive, moving about in our bases, and that we already had a form of harvest implemented through Golems, these suggestions don’t seem to be game-breaking for neither PvE or PvP.
Hopefully, this can be considered by anyone on the dev team at least as inspiration for future additions to the game.