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Nevermind it was just some random server error.
Thank you for the great mod.

Quick question, can you incorporate animal range attack framework into this ?
Reason I'm asking is because with animal range attack you can setup multiple attacks with separated chance, compare to using weapon which is limited to 1.

Maybe ppl think of it as just another generic animal mod where you simply catch them, train them and forget about them for the rest of the game (or until they lost a leg or something).
Animal mods that add customization and variety are actually quite popular, like giddy up or generic rim for example. Generic rim, while not heavily impact gameplay, give lots of customization with great visual; and Giddy up fundamental change the way ppl use animal allowing a lot of new strategy and problem to work with. This mod should build up on top of them, with huge variety (both in term of number of pokemons plus their abilities and the uncontrollable outcome during battle) and some customization (which pokemon to catch/use, which/when to evolve).

To add another mechanic for gameplay customization, you can limit the number of pokemons following 1 pawn (1 or 2), forcing players to decide and make tag teams instead of having 1 pokemon master roaming with 200 stunkachu. Some combinations would be great (like 100% accuracy pokemon with melee pawn for no chance of friendlyfire; or minigun pawn with rock pokemon which has like 95% sharp dmg reduction...), some would be bad, but players will have to work with what they got thus making interesting choices.

Another combat mechanic, if you can make attack spawn certain temporary objects at point of impact (spider's web from giant spider mod in particular), you can modify the code to make AoE crowd control attack with distinctive visual. Also the spinning web verb for giant spider can be use with pokemon with "walking something" suggestion above, as they can randomly make a temporary ice/fire/fertilize/light field which affects surrounding area for a few hours.

Each type of pokemon can have their own quirk. I can only list some here, but the possibility is vast (even better if you can ask for the code from Magic and Rim of Madness mod):
- Normal: haul. Generally has high movement speed but nothing else.
- Flying: haul + big flying pokemons can transport thru world map (like Hastur's beast in Cthulhu mod, but smaller range)
- Bug and grass: plant/harvest. Walking fertilizer totem (Cthulhu mod, might not possible)
- Fighting: high melee dps. Can repair/reload/... stuffs that you can use hands for except for haul.
- Electric: range attack can stun. Recharge battery (new stuff, save for later). Walking light source (new stuff, might not possible)
- Fire: range attack can lit fire. Refuel generator/kitchen (new stuff). Walking heater (new stuff, might not possible).
- Water/Ice: range attack can slow (might need new hediff to reduce movement/manipulation). Can fill water tank if you use along with "no water no life" mod or dub's hygiene mod (new stuffs). Walking air conditioner (new stuff, might not possible)
- Psychic: range attack (close to mid range) has 100% accuracy and 100% armor piecing. Raise mood (exactly like nuzzle, but with a different name for flavor).
- Ghost: range attack (very close) has 100% accuracy and 100% armor piecing and can build up insanity (like spawn of Cthulhu). Mood drop aura affects everyone (like the mistwalker - Cthulhu mod)
- Poison: range attack can build up toxic (like cobra mod). Toxic aura (new stuffs)
- Rock/Ground: Dig. Occasionally poop out rare ore (new stuff)
- Dragon: All of the abo... just kidding.

Mix and match those types and you can have a big variety, plus individual stat adjustments can open a lot of fun strategy. Moreover if you want it's not hard to add specific addition for certain pokemons for even more diversity - thus encourage getting different pokemons instead of only 1 each type.
Example: Charmander can use mid range attack, Charmeleon can use mid range attack which can lit the floor on fire, Charlizard can use mid range attack which lit 3x3 square on fire. Squirtle can use mid range attack, Wartortle can use long range attack, Blastose can rapid fire long range attack. Bulbasaus can use mid range attack, Ivysaus can use mid range attack with poison/paralyze, Venusaur can use extreme accurate long range attack (solarbeam).
For even more complexity, you can add more than 1 attack to a pokemon with separated chance of active; however this would be better to use only for high class pokemons to really set them apart and reduce workload.

Best of all, unlike other mods with interesting new mechanic you won't be getting any control over all these variety, and this on its own can be a really nice mechanic. It's gonna be a much better story when your Zapdos decided to use its 1% chance lightning storm attack in the middle of a raid and save the day, compare to you ordering your op mage to use his op spell which you KNOW will save the day. With giddy up enemy can bring their pokemons and wreck havoc the same unpredictable way.

For evolution mechanic, as my previous post, it's fine to make it simple like throwing a specific stone at your pokemon, despawn it and spawn an evolution. It encourages ppl to incorporate their usual rimworld gameplay (buying rare stone from trader, mine rare ore vein, doing requests) instead of training days after days. You can make the new pokemon forget about all the training (as in, become arrogant after evolving) for flavour to make those +15 animal pawns feel useful, also to make evolving a choice instead of a no-brainer (an useful fully trained Charmeleon, vs a hard to train but powerful Charlizard; or a paralyze spore crowd control Ivysaus vs a solar sniper Venusaus).

Other not-so-mechanic stuffs would be limiting certain types of pokemon in certain biomes to encourage exploring; custom request to fight legendary pokemons in premade map (might be really hard to implement, but if possible you can have a lot of fun here); limit breeding for balance purpose (maybe make them birth corresponding elemental stone instead of egg); boss fight (drop a customized legendary pokemon with a bunch of AoE skills and permanent manhunter into your colony, gives stones when butchered).

If you want to experiment with new mechanic it would be awesome, but again it really depends on your schedule. Even after most of the mod is fleshed out, you can always come back to add more mechanic (mostly new special attacks, and maybe some new boss fights).

Well, that's why I suggested getting a "pokemon base" out and offload the rest to ppl who's willing to help (at least with xml, but not good enough to touch C#). Right now there's not much point in using the mod or discussing in a pokeball thread without pokemon.

For example, you can take minion's code as a base, add animal range attack code and release as editable xml. I believe it's already included options for all the jobs minion can do . Whoever wants to help can simply copy the base, change sprites, stats, sounds, picking specific job that type can do... prioritizing pokemon with simple mechanic first (1st or only 1 evolution, melee + physical). That would flesh out a big chunk of the mod already, and will start pulling more ppl in, both using and helping. Personally I think this mod has more potential than a LOTR mod, since we already have a lot of mods with similar theme out there like Magic, Medieval, Starwar, Cthulu... but not much for animal training/fighting (unless there's new mechanic like boss fight with a Balrog or special maps with specific condition to clear for quests).

When you have extra time again, you can come back and add hediff/dmg type to attack, thus helpers can start working toward pokemons with special attack/effect. Or you can add evolution mechanic some other days and ppl can start with 2nd and 3rd evolution pokemons. It's like a mini version of jesc's tool or hub's lib, you build up on the base while others use the base to flesh out the mod.

Sorry for necro, but I just wanna check if you plan to return to this mod anytime soon.
My pokeball has been collecting dust since forever with no pokemon around, and I feel like using them to tame normal animal is kind of immersion breaking.

I think while having attack power increased with level is nice, if it requires too much work for you to implement it's not worth the trouble. It's perfectly fine to use a simple system like charmander does 5 dmg, charmeleon does 8 dmg, charlizard does 12 dmg instead of charmander does 5 then 6 then 7 then evolve... It makes evolution feel much more significant. If implementing evolve thru kill counter or new training job is too much work, you can just add an option of throwing specific stone at your pokemon to evolve (stones which you can buy from exotic trader or mined - a new type of vein isn't too hard to make).
Either way, the main point is it's better if you can get some kind of "pokemon base" out so we leechers can help with other easier stuffs (sprites, balancing stats, find audio,..). That way you can keep working on more complicated stuffs like attack that gives effects or specific tasks for certain types and not getting boggled down by making tiny changes for 100 similar pokemons again and again.

I wonder why this topic doesn't get enough attention. This used to be such a huge limitation to animal/creature mods, and now it's finally be resolved.
@Walking Problem: do you plan to restart your pokemon mod with this ? The final piece is here.

Btw anyone know the correct way to tag someone ?

And that's exactly what makes the game more fun. Instead of "randy suddenly has an urge for murder" situation which nobody called for, now we have "let's try taking down this elephant for the sweet meats and trunks - Oh sheet did he just charged through my wall !?!?!" situation.

More player interaction doesn't always mean more micromanagement. Making a logical system and let the players design their own solution (either good or bad) is good interaction, but making a premade perfect solution with multiple passes which require players to repeatedly follow the path (because AI can't handle it) is bad interaction.

Tbh I don't think an automated system like the one above would work. It involves a lot of checks for both the pack animal and the build frame, and exponentially increases with the number of animals and frames available; or your will have to write a whole new logistic system to accommodate it. It will task performance way too much, still won't work perfectly, and won't be used that much in the first place.
It's better to just pack the animal with materials yourself, then bring them to the far away blue print and unload. If you don't want other pawns to run off delivering materials before you finish packing, just use zone limit.

Oh cool.
If you wanna focus more on mounting stuffs there's a few other ideas:
1. You can give abilities for rider after getting on mount.
Stuffs like Charge - boosting movement speed for 2s (you can teach the AI to use them when in set distance - x1.5 shooting range or something) or able to jump through walls (w/o roof) would be really fun to play with. Or heavy cavalry style - ability that moves mounted pawn in a straight line for a set distance (ignoring melee slow down) and push everything out of the way (like Rim of Darkness's psychic probe) with chance of stun. Raider can wreck some real havoc if they can use those abilities. 
Jesc's tools might help, and also there's dub's rimkit.
2. Make it possible to pack animal with items in any map without making a caravan and use them as a portable storage for extra ammo/medicine for drawn out fight/quick rescue. Currently you can do this in temporary map but cannot do it in your main colony for some reasons. There's already a movement and manipulation penalty for packing up stuff so you don't have to try to balance it again.

Btw just ignore those until you finish your caravan mod if you don't have time.

Most of the fun part of Rimworld (and a few other similar colony builder games like DF, Factorio or Oxygen not included) revolve around making creative solutions for our problems, thus I would prefer a more interactive way to deal with the stable. Just building a premade miracle feeding machine feels lazy and boring.

I'm seeing another potential problem with the idea of pawn getting on mount to get to somewhere else on the same map though. It might really hammer the game performance depend on how you're gonna implement the check, just like how we still can't have pawn check for things to haul before moving from 1 spot to another (we do have a mod for that, but performance is the main problem, not simply making it works). Imho, it's better to just limit mounting to warfare and caravan where it really shines, getting from 1 side of the map to another isn't something we do everyday anyway.

I have a few idea for abusing making use of those cute wags if you need some:
1. Wagon. Craftable item which, when used on a trained animal, would strap them (graphically) and increase hauling amount/weight but decrease movement speed. Maybe make it give timed hediff directly like the pulse artifact to avoid the surgery path, and respawn the artifact after the hediff ran out (let's pretend those animal shook off their shackles after a while).
You can also make one for pawn and dub it "cart".
2. Vehicles. Just craftable animal pawns. No food needed (or you can feed it chem fuel), no bleeding, no dmg, bigger size (to prevent wild animal hunting), always doing 1 single specified action "stay still" (to prevent "wandering" action) thus only "moveable" when a pawn mounts it, no berserk break (also prevent running around when catching fire). Good movement speed and carry weight.
3. This maybe hard to implement, but how about making your own fire dragon that actually breaths fire.
I'm assuming the way you make animal mountable was giving bonus to pawn, setting the animal to release so they can also attack if enemy gets into melee range and forcing the animal position overlap the pawn. If that's the case you can make an invisible friendly pawn (untargetable with some vehicle-type spec above so we can forget it exist) equipped with inferno cannon and force position overlapping your melee dragon. When there's enemy in range it will automatically fire at them (regardless of your actual dragon's action, but until Tynan release more codes it's the only way around giving friendly animal range attack). Reduce the weapon range to make them more realistic.

Regarding the sprite, I can help if needed. Artist MSPaint drawer by trade.

In rimworld it's rather hard to level up pokemon through combat since there're limited numbers of enemy/wild animals in some biomes. You might want to take this into consideration when balancing xp amount to evolve, as well as the amount of xp every other enemies give when killed (or per attacking action).
Or you can be lazy and make a new training job (like release/haul...) which increases the pokemon's stats (per trained level, if possible) and makes pokemon involve when finished. Not very exciting to look at compare to a pokemon involves in the middle of a fight, but it would reduce the workload by a lot.

Congratulation on the release.

Still, it feels kind of weird not having any pokemon at all. How about adding a few pokemons (1st evolution, no special type with only melee attack) next to test out general balance within the game ?
I can think of a few typical ones for testing purpose:
- Rattata: most basic pokemon, just to serve as a base to compare. Estimate to have around husky's stats (yes, pokemon should be much stronger than their real animal counterpart).
- Mankey: for basic combat test. Should be equal to a colonist with lv 10 melee and bionic arms. 2nd base to compare.
- Rhyhorn: for basic combat test. Should be around megaspider in term of hp, dmg and defense (if not counting the rock type), but fall short on speed. 3rd base.
Also can be use to make a base for rock type: high sharp armor, low speed, and to test if using high defense pokemon to act as bullet magnet is too op and imbalance for vanilla raids. Iirc vanilla behaviors is to focus bigger threat rather than first target, but not sure how it's calculated so it's better to check.
- Snorlax or Kangaskhan: for basic combat test. I estimate they should be quite close to Thrumbo with huge pool of hp, great attack, decent defense and meh speed. 4th base.

With the 4 bases it should be possible to balance other pokemons (combat-wise) around without a lot of eyeballing.
You've already familiar with adding ability to haul/nuzzle/fix/harvest... so there's probably no point to test them here again.

Lol the random ingredient was just my way of saying you should limit the availability of them based on in-game progression (pokeball for early game with early tech and easy to find ingredients, then better balls for later with higher tech and rarer ingredient). Throwing a ball made of rock at a rattata would effectively give you a dead rat in realistic scenario probably. If pokeball is 1-use item now there's no need for that limitation anymore.

Wow, you're progressing so fast. It's Thanksgiving weekend over here so I'm just chilling out and didn't look around the forum much. At this speed we might as well discuss about actual pokemon combat and balance (151 is quite a big number after all).

A small note for capturing part still: I think you should try to limit being able to capture a lot of creatures early game since it would be quite a big advantage. Remember you will only lose the ball if you successfully tame the creature (if you're still doing it this way). Maybe increase the cost of pokeball and gate stronger balls behind tech or rare resource, ex: pokeball can be crafted in crafting spot with iron/wood/stone block, great ball can only be crafted in smithy with plasteel/chemfuel/silver, ultra ball can be crafted in machining table with gold/jade/uranium, and master ball is from special event only. Pokemon will be able to help out your colony a lot depend on types, so it should cost accordingly.

Also I think there's no need for a big event notice (having to click and close) since there's no automatic "tell someone to capture this" button and you will always know right away if you success or fail. It can be simplified into small notice on top of the screen. Just QoL thing.

For pokemon combat power, you can reference this chart: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_by_base_stats_(Generation_I).
Just think how a Thrumbo (600 in rimworld) would fare against a Dragonair (500 in pokemon) and scale them up accordingly. Depend on how faithful you want to follow the original we can talk more about each pokemon's individual stats to adjust.

For sprites, good news is we have all the overworld (full view: front/left/right/back) sprites from HeartGold - SoulSilver. Bad news is they're from a DSi game so the resolution is rather low.
https://www.spriters-resource.com/fullview/26794/
This is ripped from the game itself so you only have to credit Nintendo as usual (and hope they won't go after you if this mod get popular). Maybe the ripper too, but not mandatory since he said so.

Opps, forgot the separated sprites: https://veekun.com/static/pokedex/downloads/overworld.tar.gz
You can use 7z to unzip.