Better Hunting - New mod in development

[Brain]

Greetings All,

 

I humbly present you my first mod project, currently in development, called "Better Hunting". I already have a prototype working . I would very much appreciate any feedback, ideas and criticism on anything, I´d love to hear what the community thinks and wishes.

 

On this post I will place a summary, but the full design document with all the number crunching is on the following google spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qm3DtTln93z-Lri69hA-BjKjemOANcvg8oyBe9-vJDU/edit?usp=sharing

 

Thanks in advance! I hope you like the ideas.

-- brain

 

 

Better Hunting - Design Phase

 

What this mod does:

When you investigate a Suspicious Dirt Pile, you will track and find other creatures, not just the Koalefant. Currently, 17 different new encounters are planned.

 

Objectives:

Add variety without making the game easier or harder.

Add amusing behaviors / interactions on most of the new creatures.

Most encounters should be killable by a single player. Some encounters could be easily dealt in a group

Preserve as much as possible the original Koalefant function as Meat and Breezy Vest source.

Use as much as possible of the original game graphics / animations.

RoG and DST compatibility

 

Sources of Variety:

New encounters / creatures / animals / enemies in unusual sizes, with different stats, in strange places, with different behaviors.

A large number of them in spawn table will make any single one quite rare, thus maintaining replayability value.

Certain types of mobs will spawn in biomes where you don´t see them usually, and things might interact in unusual ways.

Season-sensitivity when possible and applicable will make hunting experience different along the game year.

Some encounters will drop items that are not food.

Some encounters will drop rare and sought-after items, with very low chance.

 

Details (light spoilers)

 

Naming, size and prefab choice (light spoilers)

Candidates for new encounters were taken from a list of all creatures in the game based on a subjective judgement. New ideas are very much welcome!

Mobs that will be scaled up in stats received a larger size, and a superlative prefix.

Mobs that will be scaled down in stats will received a smaller size and a diminutive prefix.

Sizes and name prefixes are cues so the player can have reasonable expectations on what is coming.

All mobs will have similiar behavior as their base prefab, but not quite the same.

I focused on choosing a wide variety of mobs, and making rare mobs less rare.

Same mobs have horrible names so far, I need ideas please!

 

Spawning and Seasonality (light spoilers)

First, the basic Koalefant spawn chance was established. All other creatures will spawn only when a Koalefant is not chosen.

Since Winter Koalefant is the only source of the Breezy Vest, a decision was made to establish that Koalefants prefer cold-weather.

Thus, on Winter 66% of all tracks will be Koalefant tracks, 0% on summer, 33% on the other seasons.

Each mob on the spawn table received a relative weight. The remaining spawn probability for that season is split between mobs with a simple weighted average.

Each mob was then evaluated to be removed from the table on a specific season, if it fits their style.

Weights were tweaked to make Summer the best hunting season for loot / bosses.

Winter will be the Koalefant hunting season. Food is more varied on Spring.

Prime bosses hunting season in Summer provides a tradeoff for the player to decide: risk the heat?

Some encounters were made to to be very rare and unusual. (of course assuming the player didn´t read all these spoilers)

 

Combat balancing (light spoilers)

The base difficulty of a Koalefant is given by the fact that he has 500 hp, 50 dmg per hit, kiteable.

Different mobs were objectively balanced to have about the same hitpoints and damage.

I created a combat score that is health* damage, and so the reference Koalafant has 500*50 = 25k points. All encounters with this score points are assumed to be the same difficulty overall

Bosses are 100k points; Mini-bosses 50k; Regular encounters 25k

If on test a basic mob is harder / easier / more annoying to kill then a Koalefant, behaviors will be tweaked. (no stunlocking, for excessive kiting the player)

Bosses don´t ever despawn, so you can devise elaborate ways to kill them after they are found, if you want.

Mini-bosses will despawn when their off-season comes. There will be time for elaborate plans, but they should be killable in plain combat without proper skill.

 

Food balancing (light spoilers)

In Excel I plotted the hunger replenishment value of eating cooked meat or making meatballs with all the meats dropped by all mobs in all encounters.

Honey nuggets was assumed the recipe used for honey, bacon and eggs for eggs . Butterfly wings was ignored. Trunks were ignored because I assume they will be used to craft items.

Afterwards I compared the new creatures drops averaged over their spawning probability along the year to reach the average food-creating capacity that the animal tracks mechanics provide.

Some food drops were then increased to provide a less unbalanced food experience.

In comparison with the vanilla model, Better Hunting will provide 30% less hunger replenishment if you eat cooked food. If using a crockpot for meatballs, the loss is 20% in average.

During winter, just 8% less food. The less food drops balances out the other item drops.

This effect is because some encounters won´t provide food or will provide less food than the usual 100% Koalefant 8-meat + trunk all the time.

One encounter has vegetarian drops, so meat-only characters experience a very slight advantage.

The less-food effect won´t happen on the first season of the game by default, because encounters that don´t drop food will be disabled in the first season. (configurable)

 

Game Start / Difficulty Balancing (light spoilers)

To preserve the original DS/DST difficulty experience, bosses / mini-bosses / harder encounters will not spawn in first season of the game, either Autumn or Spring.

Food-wise, a Spring start will be slighty harder because the second season, Summer, will be the season where less food drops from hunting.

(under evaluation) Hunting mechanics will be tuned for Summer to offset this problem, so that in summer the players will encounter tracks more frequently.

 

Encounter list ( HEAVY SPOILER - point of no return)

Koalefant

Goliath Frog

Queen Bee

Aged Beefalo

Orphan Smallbirds (1-8)

Really Fat Gobbler

Distracted Krampus

Emperor Pengull

Elite Clockwork Knight

Elite Clockwork Bishop

Walrus Scout

Abandoned Mosling

Mother Catcoon

Angry Goat

Varg

Infant Deerclops

Teen Moose

Baby Bearger

 

Item Balancing ( HEAVY SPOILERS )

Koalefant Trunk: with 50% probability Winter Koalefant will drop an extra trunk. This is to offset the fact that in vanilla you always get 1 trunk but in Better Hunting you might need to hunt more times. DST compatible as well.

Goliath Frog: He eats insects so sometimes he will drop some extra stuff for fun.

Queen Bee: Lots of food because honey is weak hunger-wise.

Walrus Tusk: it is common sense that the fun of winter is "farming" the Walrus' items. So it was added as an year-long very low chance feature. No hat or blowdarts drops, also no spawning on winter.

Aged Beefalo: Since he is stronger than regular beefalo, he will always drop lots of meat, a horn and some wool. He also makes beefalos renewable and can alone make a herd of this own wherever he spawns. Maybe you want him alive?

Krampus Sack: an almost impossible drop in vanilla, because not only it had a drop rate of 1%, but actually spawning Krampus was time consuming. Getting this item is now possible, but still rare.

Bosses: The best Ancient Items, all Thulecite-based, are now a 100% drop rate from the bosses. This is so there is incentive to hunt and kill them. They are rare though. The chance to get a specific item is 0,7% per attempt.

(under evaluation) The chance to get an Ancient item is 7,3% average when you hunt a track. But you have to kill a very strong mob.

Remeber that not all Ancient Items are game-breaking. The Pick/Axe for example. Or the Thulecite club. Also, the purpose of the mod is to bring fun and amusement out of random events, as in getting a super rare item.

Mini-Bosses / Mini-Giants: they have way less health and way less hitpoints than their regular versions. So the drop chance for their items was lowered.

 

Some stats after tuning 1.0 (HEAVY SPOILERS)

High-sought encounters are: Walrus Scout, Distracted Krampus, the 2 clockwork bosses that drop one Ancient item, the 3 mini-giants with chance to drop giant items.

Average probability of finding one such encounter is 23,8% On summer is: 48,4% On winter: 12,7%

Chance of getting a Krampus Sack: 2,38% or 1 in every 42 animals tracked

Chance of getting a Walrus Tusk 2,06% or 1 in every 48 animals tracked

Chance of getting a specific Ancient Item 0,7% or 1 in every 134 animals tracked. And you have to kill the mini-bosses.  And don´t share the loot (DST)

Chance of getting any Ancient Item 7,5% or 1 in every 13 animals tracked. But you have to kill it and loot it. If you get help it is only 1 drop for all friends

Food supply from tracks will be reduced by 26,8% overall

Food supply from tracks will be reduced by 8,1% on Winter

Food supply from tracks will be reduced by 55,5% on Summer

 

Current Issues

 

Scaling up the creatures produces slighty poorer graphic quality.

No artist to produce mod icon.

 

[StarmanUltra]

Rather than having Koalefants have a chance to drop two trunks, It might be better to include a few different types of animal hide, and include as many new recipes for breezy/puffy vests. If you're really adventurous, you could make duplicates of the two items with copied stats. But a Koalefant dropping two trunks just isn't right. ^{It breaks my immersion.}

[Brain]

Rather than having Koalefants have a chance to drop two trunks, It might be better to include a few different types of animal hide, and include as many new recipes for breezy/puffy vests. If you're really adventurous, you could make duplicates of the two items with copied stats. But a Koalefant dropping two trunks just isn't right. ^{It breaks my immersion.}

Thank you for your feedback. I wasn't liking that as well, and will probably remove it from the plans. I'm *trying* to avoid new recipes so what I can do to balance this out is facilitate winter gear in other animals like the cat one dropping 4 tails (her tail is quite long you know), and the special beefalo always dropping horn. Since they appear in other seasons as well, differently from the winter Koalefant, they actually give you more access to insulation gear, and this sorta balances out the lower occurrence of Breeze Vest during winter.