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[WillowLuman]

Adventure mode testing reveals that wrestling, as a whole, is seriously bugged. In full armor, I fought a mallard. Mallards, who cannot learn and have no wrestling skill, are able to grab you by the arm and snap it off by the elbow. With their knees.

What causes our handless creatures to initiate wrestling so much, when vanilla creatures don't?

[Putnam]

Vanilla creatures do! Many a minotaur has been brought to his/her knees by an obsession with strangulation.

[WillowLuman]

But minotaurs are different! Normally, ducks, muskoxen, deer, dogs, cats, or anything else, doesn't, except for "bites and latches on firmly."

[Halfling]

They shouldn't initiate it more than vanilla creatures. Vanilla birds have two attacks (bite and scratch) and my templates give birds two attacks (peck and scratch). On the other hand they do have more body parts to wrestle with with the realistic bodies.

The snapping parts off at the elbow is new. That's because you can snap a joint and well... here joints connect the part distal to them to the body, in vanilla they don't and are instead lumps inside the appendage. So if you rip the elbow out the rest of the arm comes off.

One reason why you might be more vulnerable is that halflings are about half smaller than vanillites, while mallards are... actually about 3/4 the size of a vanilla penguin. Not that we actually need to calibrate sizes to vanilla, what matters is the relative size.


Now that you mention it... there may be truth to that. I put vanilla ducks in an arena and they do not wrestle that much.
If anyone can figure out the cause here - why some things wrestle and some don't despite both having limbs - then I move that we make all animals (except ones that really should) not wrestle immediately. That would definitely be good.

[WillowLuman]

Holy crap, adventure is nasty. I've tried formics, halfings, and treelords, and none can survive an encounter with a wild Mallard or Dirigible antelope. They're not aggressive, but they keep spotting my Legendary stealthers, doing the "animal panics when next to you" attack, and dismembering them. The antelope bite and tear your upper body off, while the mallards delimb you and let you bleed out.

[Halfling]

It's really not that bad. Are you trying to punch them or what?

[WillowLuman]

Spear.

Formics are quite brittle, it seems.

[StLeibowitz]

Is it the dirigelope that kills them? How big is it? Is it a Formic soldier?

[AutomataKittay]

Vanilla wild life on average seem to be more interested in trying to get away than actually fighting. Invaders and megabeasts are pretty prone to wrestling, and judging from comment of a few embarkers, wildlife's hungry for everyone's blood. It might be relative size, too, it seems like biting and striking attacks are used more when they're similar in size.

Granted this' going off combat reports I gets in fortress mode, I don't know how it goes in adventure mode

Taking quick glance through vanilla raw, it seems the creature bodyplan that tend to wrestle have smaller RELSIZE for their limbs compared to upper/lower body than those that don't?

[Halfling]

The dirigible is in my experience too pretty brutal. Arena testing shows it eats formic queens like... whatever that thing eats (actually the queen can also win, but a dirigible antelope just killed 3 in a row) but is inferior to a man-eater. Still, not exactly a harmless beast.

But generally, in adventure mode, be armed, pick your fights and aim your shots, and you can take out anything including a storm dragon with just a cudgel.

[WillowLuman]

They're not aggressive, but the mallards, antelope, and hounds make short work of any adventurers trying to sneak up and hunt them. Armor makes halflings immune to dirigible antelope (except for shaking) but both them and mallards absolutely annihilate Formic adventurers. Mallards still delimb halflings with ease, no matter the armor. Bear in mind that the Antelope and mallards aren't hostile, they just can't be hunted without extreme danger. And then there's those goddamn wild insects.

Oddly, hunters and soldiers in fort mode seem to have little trouble taking down the "passive" creatures (mallards, antelope) but they shred adventurers like confetti.

Also, whats with all the wild hounds? They come in massive swarms and though only hostile in ambush, it seems weird that domestic dogs should be the most common animal anywhere, wild or not. Glaciers are absolutely plastered with mallards and hounds since nothing else seems to live there. Is this to give access to them no matter where they are? Because [COMMON_DOMESTIC] already does that, no wild population required.

The more I explore, the more I see we've created a very strange world that clearly still needs work 

[Halfling]

Disabling wrestling holds on the mallards clearly would be a good idea if someone figures out how to do that. That is how they can kill you and shouldn't be. However, I have to simply disagree with your experience (well, you can't really do that, but you know what I mean). I've killed mallards with an axe and otherwise in close combat when hungry for meat, my companions keep killing them, I have not had one death to them so either something has changed in the newest version or you're fighting with some unusual style...? I have not adventured with formics though, almost at all, only halflings. In short: how?

Hounds are supposed to be closer to a wolf than a vanilla domestic dog... actually they resemble the vanilla wolf more. Think feral, primitive dog. They compensate for halfling melee weakness. Keep in mind we are not trying to rebuild the same world again, that would be completely pointless. They come in large packs to give an element of danger to the minimal world. They are set to everywhere because there were no other fauna at the time when they were created.

Now, the intention was that hounds and mallards and all once dominant creatures would become less common as more creatures are added. The rules have a special provision that you may, when creating new creatures to populate biomes, reduce the frequency of old ones or the biomes they appear in (with a minimum of a reasonable biome and 10% of the original frequency). I don't think anyone has done that yet though, but it's how it should go. So for example when you make a blizzard man you may remove hounds from there.

[WillowLuman]

I think that wild Hounds aren't really necessary, though. They're "powerful but docile," yet the vast majority of them roam the wilderness in ferocious, untamed packs. What with the plethora of other vicious beasties since introduced, it may be time for them to exist as the pets of sentients alone. As of right now, their description seems a bit contrary to their actual existence.

[Halfling]

It seems contradictory to remove things from nature while acknowledging there aren't enough creatures yet. Furthermore hounds packs are a nice threat, so I'd rather change the description if that's the issue. Limiting them is fine. Sugg for hound biomes:

Code: [Select]

[BIOME:TUNDRA]
[BIOME:DESERT_BADLAND]
[BIOME:DESERT_ROCK]
[BIOME:SHRUBLAND_TEMPERATE]
[BIOME:SAVANNA_TEMPERATE]

-- places where you might expect to find dogs gone feral, and smaller than original frequency. With the provision that once more creatures are out, can remove [BIOME:SHRUBLAND_TEMPERATE][BIOME:SAVANNA_TEMPERATE] and make hound packs dwell mostly in badlands.

I'm not supposed to be in a position to dictate this though, and it's your modding turn... the one biome that would be nice for them is [BIOME:DESERT_BADLAND] which is probably barren of other creatures anyway (how would a giant spider hunt there?).

[StLeibowitz]

(how would a giant spider hunt there?).

Right - badlands! I'd intended to add giant scorpions in the desert, instead of giant spiders . I should probably should get around to doing that, if we need more animals to live out there. Those hounds'll need company, after all!