Trapping as a hunting alternative

Started by Limdood, July 01, 2019, 02:34:45 PM

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Limdood

Been a while since i thought of anything that could be under "cheap ideas," but I've got one that makes gameplay and common sense and should be fairly easy to implement, but it has the potential to impact the game enough that I thought (hoped?) it deserved it's own thread rather than being posted as a little blurb in "cheapest ideas."

- Animal snares -

Trapping or snaring animals has been a staple of humankind since it's earliest days.  Using tools to catch small game, or kill medium game, or injure large game is not only a common sense and risk-free way of trying to get food, but it both makes sense from a "real life" perspective and from a gameplay POV (no risk hunting balanced by inconsistent results and resource cost per trap)

I was playing on desert with 1 tribal pawn and emus kept wandering over and eating my plants.  My pawn was fairly useless in combat, so i put a trap at the doorway of my one building and kept it open (i walked in and out the other door) so that if a raid came, i'd at least be fighting 1 on 1 at an advantage.  I couldn't mess with the emus because of their 100% attack chance and my shooting skill of 2 with a poor shortbow, but eventually an emu tried to walk into my building and eat a meal, and the trap killed it.

So i thought about using that as a viable hunting strategy, but at 35 resources a pop, it's very cost inefficient, especially in the desert.

What about animal-only traps that cost less?  you can seed a building with a bit of food manually, or just scatter them about, and when an animal paths over it, it has a chance to hurt the animal badly...at least as badly as the 35 resource deadfall traps.

With this, there is a "very simple" idea and a slightly more involved idea:

- Most basic:  A deadfall trap coded to not spring on humanoids at all, that costs much less resources.  That's it.  It'd be up to the player to figure out how to lure animals over it or where to place them.  It's an idea worthy of the "cheapest ideas" thread and would probably take someone who can navigate the xmls about 5-10 minutes to mod (assuming disallowing a certain type of creature to trigger traps is a thing the xmls allow)

- somewhat more involved:  a unique trap that would actually have to be "seeded" with food manually by a pawn, like refuelling a fire.  Animals would see it as a food source (but might ignore it if there is other plentiful food nearby), and if they eat the food, there'd be a chance the trap would spring (maybe like 50% spring chance, but the trap isn't destroyed, or 100% spring chance, but the trap dies like a deadfall).  It might even be guaranteed to "incapacitate" animals under a certain body size, probably up to around boar sized (maybe a reduced chance of downing the animal as it goes over a certain body size), and immediately flag the incapacitated animal for "hunting" so that a pawn prioritized to it would go over and kill it like they do normal downed "hunting" flagged animals.  I have no idea the complexity involved in coding a whole new item with a whole new behavior, but i tried to keep my idea as much 'within the bounds of things already represented in game' as i could.

I thought of this due to the complaints over the (perceived as way too high of) risk while hunting normally and the people who skip the entire hunting mechanic to do drafted animal murder squads, as well as the specific challenges facing me in my most recent game, with a poor shooting pawn on a resource scarce map - but the pawn is otherwise good at building things and smart.  It feels like he should be able to outsmart a giant bird to figure out a way to get meat from it.

Prologue

I'd also like to see somthing like this.