Mod Suggestion: Gotta Catch 'em All

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Had kind of a random thought that's way too complicated for me to make, but I'll volunteer to help with graphics if anyone else wants to take it on. 

I got to thinking it would be fun to run a "gotta catch 'em all" campaign in RimWorld.  Like the Pokemon games, you set out from home (on a caravan) and try to catch one of every type of animal in the game.  This would probably be boring with just megasloths and muffalos, but much more entertaining if you've got mods like Alpha Animals and Race to the Rim and such.  And from there, I got into a death spiral of various Pokemon things that might be helpful in Rimworld. 

You'd probably want something like Set Up Camp https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1470065926 to actually find things to catch out in the wild, but you could possibly just set up random encounters to be more likely (maybe if you're not on the roads) and force players to run their caravans back and forth to find stuff like you do in the Pokemon games.  Encountering rival "trainers" would also be amusing, although on the Rim, maybe just increase the chance that tribals and pirates have battle animals with them. 

First off, Pokeball, there was already a pokeball mod for 1.2, https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1162860582  hasn't made it to 1.3 yet, but I love this mod, super useful for grabbing things like Feralisks that you can't realistically tame.  Would be interesting to keep battle animals in their pokeballs while you're not using them, deploy them like a grenade or something.   

Second, Pokedex, this could be a nice simple thing that just keeps track of each animal type in your game and a checkbox of whether or not you've collected one.  Maybe info like what biomes they appear in would be handy, otherwise, I think all the relevant info is already in the description system.  For real completionists, might be interesting to have one that tracks both male and female and every alternate color.  You might want the option to disclude certain animals from the pokedex, like if you want to be catching Thrumbos and Huris and not wasting your time on squirrels, or if there are animals that are too impractical like Feralisk Clutch Mothers. 

Now, if you've ever played RimWorld, you know it'd be wildly impractical to actually have one of every type of animal, let alone on a caravan.  The way you get around this in the Pokemon games is Bill's PC (which maybe they've changed the name of in later games, ol' uncle Ace only ever played the gameboy games).  Bill's PC has two main functions, it keeps your extra mons in stasis and it allows you to swap out your team in any city.  Keeping things in stasis and long distance transport are already a thing in RimWorld, although building hundreds of stasis chambers for boomrats and gazelles and whatnot or sending critters across the world in drop pods would be stupid and a very late-game kind of thing.  We'd want the PC system to be relatively simple to build, and I think you'd want to be able to access it in friendly towns.  Maybe a system similar to the Change Dresser's clothing storage menu. 

One also can't help but think of Pokemon Centers in the context of RimWorld.  In the colony, maybe it's like a big hospital bed for animals that sets their natural recovery rates to 1000% or something.  There might be something you can access in friendly cities while caravanning too.  Balance wise, you'd have to question if the Pokemon Center should be able to revive dead animals or regenerate permanent damage.  Allegedly, the Pokemon Centers in the games cannot reverse death, and RimWorld animals and pawns do actually "faint" in battle, if they don't get killed outright.  Since battle animals are often very fragile against guns, I think the ability to resurrect them or at least super health them would make it much more practical to use battle animals against serious enemies. 

Pokemarts would also be super helpful on a caravanning adventure, since you'd want to be able to buy pokeballs and not have to make a machining table in the field every time you need to restock.  Probably doesn't need to be a separate Pokemart function, just make the normal trading function more likely to have pokeballs or other necessary stuff.  To that end, maybe having a separate Pokemart option when visiting towns that doesn't clog up the normal trading could be useful.  I could see other Pokemart items like Potions or Antidotes being useful in RimWorld too, like they cure injuries or diseases, but only for animals. 

If you really wanted the Pokemon games extra credit, maybe there are Gym Leaders in friendly towns that you can challenge.  I'm thinking roll up to a town and select "Challenge Gym Leader" and you are thrown into a fight (like Attack town) and if you win, you get a randomly generated badge.  You'd need some kind of hanky panky to prevent the faction from getting mad at you for mini-gunning their citizens and animals.  You could also distribute gyms on the map as hostile factions that you need to attack, although that could get weird if they are sending raiders. 

So yeah, crazy idea, had to share.  If you wanna make part of this and need some graphics, let me know.