Wildlife Spectrum And Other Ideas

[Cosmoline]

I homesteaded a bit up here in AK, and though I know this game is highly fictional it would be interesting to see more wildlife. I thought I might centralize some of my thoughts here.

--Fish. These are currently too tough to fish to make it really work out, but in real life they're probably the number one resource. I think you should be able to set up multiple holes and check them like traps, and that the raw fish esp. salmon be virtually free from any poison.

--Mice/voles. These are a real menace for anyone trying to store food in the winter. I've seen them borrow up under dogfood bags and build nests inside, from underneath, so you don't realize they've infiltrated the batch until you scoop down, break the nest wall and a bunch of valuable food pours down their hole. Clever for rodents. Putting them in cabins would be another way to prevent too much squatting on one place. But I'm not sure how you'd balance it. Maybe have a certain percentage lost to rodents every day, and animate them darting around.

--Grouse/ptarmigan. After a few months in the sticks in real life I started thinking of these things as hamburgers with wings. They're incredibly easy to bring down and very easy to butcher. Basically you just tear open the thin breast skin and remove the dark, rich breast meat. The rest of the bird can be used for its feathers or whatnot. But you really take them back to camp rather than trying to cut them up in the field. Many people will hang them awhile. Their MO is to remain perfectly still and then EXPLODE out of the underbrush in a flurry of flapping and a dark shape flying across your field of view. Nature's own jump scare. But once you cotton to it, you can spot them staying still and ground shoot them in a survival situation. Wasting bullets I suppose but they're a good meal.

--Arctic hare/rabbit. These are in game now of course, but I'd like to see a few upgrades. For one thing, snaring them is currently too easy. I can put snares out in the open and they have the same success rate as ones properly placed. All I have to do is find an area where they're hopping around. I would suggest limiting the zone of successful snaring to areas under logs and in tight spots, where they have to route through your trap. You should also be able to carry them back to your cabin for processing. They're not that heavy.

--Fox. These would be an interesting alternative to rabbit for trap/snare bait. They're fast and dart around in the trees, often leaping around in the snow like it's a trampoline.

--Lynx. These guys go after the hare, but it might be fun to have them attack the player's head periodically.

--Wolverine. I would use these guys as dangerous scavengers. I notice in game now that I often leave deer half butchered and then return the next day for the rest due to time constraints or menacing wolves. Wolves tend to leave, but you could add these guys hunkering down on kills, charging after you if you get too close. They are known to do this in the wild. I remember some folks finding a moose with a wolverine living inside the rib cage, eating his a new home. They have a rep as northern honey badgers.

--Deer. I think I mentioned this in another thread, but it would be nice to see them more savvy to being hunted. So once one is taken the others shy away from the area for a week or so, forcing you to go track them down.

--Moose. These would be a perfect bridge between docile deer and hostile wolves. They could attack you if provoked and would also attack wolves. As far as hunting them, I wouldn't make them tanks because they aren't. But they do have a reputation for taking a bit to die just because of their sheer size. So you'd have to chase after one you killed, exposing you to danger.

--Wolves. There's much I like about them now, but what I don't like is the programming that sets them up to patrol set areas. After awhlie they so much resemble the usual WWII German soldiers in their routines I expect them to say "Ach, Mein Leiben!" when I shoot them. Back and forth, back and forth. Why not make them act like wolves. So instead of a rather predictable route of patrol, they'd be in a pack and move in a much more random way. When I say pack I mean you'd see one, then another, then up to five or six all patrolling along the same route. There would be less of the somewhat absurd dodging from house to house where you know the wolves live and more of the running for your life when they show up where yo least expect them. It would also make it more difficult to do what I"m doing now, which is essentially learning the local wolf's pattern and using him as my bullets to grab deer for me.

--Awakened bear. I would suggest using these as the ultimate horror of the sandbox. The Fortean events have screwed up the wolves' behavior, so it could have woken up the bear as well. They'd be starving and insanely full of rage. Running into one would be a nightmare worse than fluffy. They would also kill anything else they ran across, but they'd be unusual and appear only on random and unpredictable spawns. Another possibility would also have them breaking into your cabin as they do in real life and eating all your food. So if you leave for a week and come back, you might find your place ransacked and a crazed 800lb brown bear waiting for you as desert. Even the rifle would be iffy against them.

[brostoevsky]

+1, great post. Especially being able to drop lines down fishing holes and coming back to check the strings later. Currently fishing is so inefficient in terms of time and weight to calories that it's pretty much a waste of time unless you have no other option.

Food does already degrade slowly in containers inside, so perhaps you could just explain that as being the work of rodents.

[EternityTide]

Great post, nice list of animals.

I made a post a little while back, fairly similar to this, but your one is more comprehensive in its breakdown of what animals you want added: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=2603