Small Animal Trap

[schizmo]

There's another topic in the suggestions board about capturing animals for trade, and it gave me an idea for something related but different regarding trapping small animals

The current hunting mechanics are notoriously inefficient for hunting small animals thanks to the aim penalty for target size and also the hunting AI keeping targets at the absolute maximum possible distance, and when left on their own even skilled hunters will often spend a ridiculous amount of time shooting at (and missing) small hunting targets. Combine this with the very small meat yield and it makes it almost pointless to hunt small animals unless you absolutely have to, but I'm of the opinion that game elements should not be ignored simply because they're poorly designed, quite the opposite in fact I believe bad elements should be redesigned or improved to make themselves viable.

For that I propose the Animal Trap, a small, non lethal cage made of steel that can be used to trap any animal that can fit inside of a wooden animal sleeping box. The player would build the trap from within the Furniture menu and wait until a small animal stumbles inside of it, and then a notification would alert the player to animals caged in traps. It would be up to the player to designate whether to slaughter or release the animal (mostly for releasing boomrats), at which point it would be a hunters responsibility to deal with the animal and re-arm the trap.

In order for this to be a viable but not overly reliable method of acquiring meat and fur, traps would have to be entirely passive and free from player influence. The only thing that would increase the chances of trapping an animal would be the number of traps on the map, as more traps mean more chances for animals to become trapped.

I think this would be a better use of small animals as a meat and fur resource, and it would also allow the player a secondary source of meat without having to stop and check the map every few minutes to see if any animals are worth hunting.

The one flaw I see for something like this is trapping an animal would have 0 influence from a colonists shooting skill, and also trapping an animal would not increase the relevant skills in any way, so its possible that animal trapping could be something completely unrelated to hunting all together. Either way I think a better option for trapping small animals is needed, most of the time they just end up being food for larger animals anyway.

[deepSeaKing]

hey i'm here from the "capture wild animals for trading" post.  as i understood form your post animal traps you are mentioning are only for the small animals. what about the bigger ones. it may do some damage to them also,  that wold be more realistic cause a bear trap is just going to hurt or incapacitate  big animals while kill those smaller one efficiently.

and the trap building resource should be same as the normal dead fall trap this will prevent players from covering the whole map with enormous amount of traps.

anyway your idea is very nice, and more realistic to hunt those small animals. like rabbit. hare, squirrel, tortoise, ets   

[Thyme]

As of now, I don't bother with hunting small animals for above reasons. I like the idea of animal traps tho, except for the notification part. Animals of starve in rl because of bad "trap maintenance". Probably place kibble inside to lure them inside, at the risk of bigger animals eating it.

[schizmo]

hey i'm here from the "capture wild animals for trading" post.  as i understood form your post animal traps you are mentioning are only for the small animals. what about the bigger ones. it may do some damage to them also,  that wold be more realistic cause a bear trap is just going to hurt or incapacitate  big animals while kill those smaller one efficiently.

and the trap building resource should be same as the normal dead fall trap this will prevent players from covering the whole map with enormous amount of traps.

anyway your idea is very nice, and more realistic to hunt those small animals. like rabbit. hare, squirrel, tortoise, ets

I'm more talking about small non lethal cage type traps used for capturing racoons and badgers and rats and animals like that. I wasn't referring to bear traps, but I didn't make that clear in my post. I'll edit it

[endders2]

This is a great Idea. But to help you with the problem short term if you really need to, equip one of your brawlers or good people at melee with a long sword, and let them go to town. They're super effective against things like that. I only hunt big game with guns since its more efficient and would be dangerous to send my brawler into a deadly animal.

[schizmo]

This is a great Idea. But to help you with the problem short term if you really need to, equip one of your brawlers or good people at melee with a long sword, and let them go to town. They're super effective against things like that. I only hunt big game with guns since its more efficient and would be dangerous to send my brawler into a deadly animal.

That's more or less how I deal with small animals currently, its just a very active solution to something that is meant to be passive, I feel, but thankfully there are options in the short term.

[Rock5]

You may also have better luck using a weapon that shoots more bullets such as a fast pistol or a burst weapon like a charged rifle or assault rifle.