[mod suggestion] Smarter hunting attack range

Started by stigma, July 09, 2017, 10:37:03 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

stigma

This is a pretty simple QoL improvement idea I want to air.

Hunting is overly inefficient and frustrating to watch as pawns always engage at maximum distance - leading to a lot of misses. The hunting strategy used seems pretty dumb to put it bluntly. Especially with certain weapons that have atrocious accuracy at their maximum range your pawn can spend half the day and a hundred bullets to down some random rat fora trifling amount of reward.

The idea is simply to change that to make pawns close to optimal accuracy distance before shooting (or to within some reasonable percentage of the optimal accuracy range). Should lead to more efficient hunting, less collateral damage, better use of time and less of a compulsion to have to micromanage hunting via drafting.

A slightly more advanced version would take into account the hunted animals risk-factor for revenge and weight the distance with this so that if you are hunting a chicken then you walk close to get an optimal shot and shoot it in the face - but hunting a panther the pawn will stay a bit nearer to max range for safety (a larger tolerance to the % compared to optimal range).

I suspect that the code for determining the range for a decent shot is already in the game since pawns will back off with certain weapons before shooting if they are really close - so it's probably only a matter of modifying this code and forcing them to take better shots at distance (It seems like there is no minimum requirement for accuracy at long range currently)

A final level of refinement would be to check for cover and move to an unobstructed line of fire before shooting - but coding this logic is probably more work for less payback than the basic changes suggested above.

Of course if there exists something along these lines already that I have missed I'd be interested to know about it :)

-Stigma

Razzoriel

No, actually the hunting idea is very efficient, because you're not taking into account safety.

Engaging in maximum range means that when an animal turns back and charges at the pawn, you have maximum amount of time to respond to that. Your idea reduces the time to react to a predator or enraged animal pack, and as such, is stupid, but since you completely missed it, I'll take it as something you didn't thought out well beforehand.

kaptain_kavern