Boomalope/boomrat hunter predator

[Dupla]

I am currently using a mod that enables wild animals to mate. After two ingame years the boomrat population is at about 200, as no predators would hunt them. I would like to see a predator that hunts basically boomalopes and boomrats without causing explosions.

[jamaicancastle]

Unfortunately the way it's coded, boomrats/alopes will always explode no matter what the cause of death (if you tame one and they live long enough, they'll have a heart attack... and explode). You could, however, make a predator that was totally immune to fire.

I mean, there would be random boomalopes exploding all the time causing wildfires, but you could do it!

[AileTheAlien]

+1 for predator animal that is immune to fire

[Lemonater47]

I like the chain reactions caused by boomalopes. They can form herds. So when you kill one that's close to the rest it causes shredding damage. Along with lighting the rest on fire.

Surely if you had 200 of them on the map that would happen.

A similar thing happened when I got manhunting boomrats. Their explosions are smaller but they all stacked up at my turrets and mass detonated all at once.

[Dupla]

I am sad to hear that it is coded like that, however, like the idea of a fire immun predator. Is it possible for the predator to have an ability like the firefoam popper, so when the boomalopes/rats explode, it automatically extinguishes the fire?

[lancar]

Honestly, I'd like for the boomalopes to simply not explode when dying at full HP. It just makes no sense that there's a biological detonator set to trigger when their heart stops permanently.

But yes. A predator to counter them would be nice. Can't really think of a good fit for this, though.

[O Negative]

Something along the lines of a Chimera might work. I've seen them artistically portrayed in a few different ways which leads me to believe that a decently free artistic interpretation exists.

As far as game mechanics goes, an event could be used. Once the boomalope/boomrats population breaches a certain threshold, there would be a chance that the Chimera(s) would be attracted/spawn. Immunity to fire is cool, but it would need to be heavily resistant to explosive damage too, wouldn't it?

To be honest this sounds more like a good mod idea than base game idea to me. But I do really like the idea of predators that are harder to take down than the average bear

[Harry_Dicks]

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=38269.0

By the same guy that made Wild Animal Sex, Walking Problem. For all of the Walking Problem problems he creates, he also creates all of the Walking Problem solutions

[Granitecosmos]

https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=38269.0

This doesn't solve the problem. That's like solving the annoyance of pyros' mental breaks by removing the trait. That's not how a suggestion for the vanilla game works.

The game either needs a predator that specifically seeks these animals (and has the potential to ruin your walking chemfuel generators in the process) or an animal counter based on map size to limit the exploding animals to a certain percent and make them leave if their numbers grow too high. Or both.

As far as we know nothing is hunting these on the entire planet (other than a few humans I guess). They won't leave the map either so they limit animal variety on the map (since people will just hunt the other animals). Honestly how come they haven't taken over the planet yet? Nothing hunts them while all the other herbivores are being hunted by wild animals. Logic dictates every other herbivore population would slowly die off while boomrats and boomalopes would reign all over the place; without a natural predator they'd just multiply exponentially and eat all plants, leaving nothing for the other animals. Could be solved lore-wise if mechanoids did boom-animal cullings as part of their programming (could be a new event too; "you see huge explosions in the distance, go check it out if you wish"; could find a few mechanoids shooting at boom-animals, some possibly damaged, to kill and disassemble for parts).

We already have fire-immune pawns, how hard could it be to add a new predator? Even the "new" AI wouldn't be too hard to make, it just needs more strict restrictions for hunting targets.

[Harry_Dicks]

This doesn't solve the problem. That's like solving the annoyance of pyros' mental breaks by removing the trait. That's not how a suggestion for the vanilla game works.

Please don't put words in my mouth. I never said it solves any problem or that this is the only way to deal with a suggestion. Also, people will post mods as responses to others' problems in this forum all the time! All I was doing was posting a link to a patch that prevents the boom animals from naturally spawning, because OP had mentioned they already had the main mod by the same author, and this is a rather small patch to go along with it. I even threw in a little snark to show that this was all in good faith, but you seem to be the type who wants others to act only in accordance with your forum "rules."

Besides your invalid assumptions, I do agree that there needs to be a change with the boom creatures, especially rats are mind numbingly silly to me.

[malloc]

The counter argument to why the boomalopes haven't taken over the planet due to the lack of predators is that in being herd animals, when one dies, many and sometimes all others in the herd also die within the coming days due to either direct damage or the resulting infections.

Boomrats on the other hand are not herd animals so should have taken over the planet by now which would be awful as they are not even worth the hunting hassle.  At least the lopes have a high meat payoff to counter the extra hunting difficulty.

[lancar]

Perhaps...

A boom-predator animal could inject its prey with a poison (firefoam? :p) that prevents it's prey from detonating?
That way the animal doesn't have to be made explosion or fireproof to work in this role.

[Granitecosmos]

A boom-predator animal could inject its prey with a poison (firefoam? :p) that prevents it's prey from detonating?
That way the animal doesn't have to be made explosion or fireproof to work in this role.

This could work. A venom that disables the chemical trigger mechanism and keeps the chemfuel intact. Could make the predator actually consume the chemfuel itself instead of the meat (or both). We have genetically engineered walking biological chemfuel reactors, why shouldn't we have genetically engineered walking biological chemfuel siphons to counter the generators?

Could also make for a nice new event to target players' chemfuel storage.

[Boston]

To be entirely honest, just the concept of a wild animal species that literally explodes when killed is.... Asinine. Nonsensical.

Such a species -could not- exist in the wild, as they would eat and breed themselves to extinction, since their population wouldn't be controlled by predation.

Carrying capacity is a thing, after all.

I would prefer it if instead of being wild creatures, boomrats and boomalopes were instead animals that could be bred using glitterworld tech, and husbanded for chemfuel. Releasing them should cause an ecological disaster.

[Harry_Dicks]

To be entirely honest, just the concept of a wild animal species that literally explodes when killed is.... Asinine. Nonsensical.

Such a species -could not- exist in the wild, as they would eat and breed themselves to extinction, since their population wouldn't be controlled by predation.

I think you are being intellectually dishonest with yourself if you say that there is 100% absolutely no chance whatsoever that nowhere in the entire universe there has never been a species that can "combust" if it were killed. I am using that word very lightly, mind you. Are there not insects that use chemical defenses? And are some of these chemicals used by certain organisms not "active" until combined with a secondary chemical produced by a separate gland in the organism? In my dummy imagination, I think it is completely acceptable to think that there are some species somewhere that have taken this "chemical defense" to levels beyond what we have ever seen here on Earth. Maybe not necessarily to the levels that a boomalope explodes, but maybe some other kind of very intense chemical reaction with possible deadly gases that could rapidly expand.