What if pets would have attributes, skills and even different qualities of materials they give after butchering. Being able to breed them to get better hunting/war-creatures with interesting skills (for example flying scorpion mounts that are able to spit acid) could be awesome. This could all go along with the implemention of eggs, dwarven maturity (general maturity process) and mounts...
I'm all for the expansion of pets and creatures. In particular, I'd love to see more creatures that are tamable via Animal Trainers. And that includes tamable Megabeasts beyond the average, ordinary Dragon. (Though, I don't much care for the whole Dungeon Master noble requirement. I'd prefer what is possible to be based purely on skill and abilities.)
I also hope to see pet breeding expanded upon. I was hoping to see something reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics or even Legend of Mana. That is, getting two pets together for breeding and occasionally being able to find a monster egg in the wilderness (and the possibility of purchase from caravans). It'd be nice to have some traits of the parents passed on to offspring. Perhaps we could see a bit of diversity via stats in tame versions and perhaps offspring born tame would be a different color from wild?
And, yeah, I'd like to see more diversity in quality of animal products, too.
Edit: I forgot to add some things.
Q: Are their plans to improve the current breeding system? Consider how breeding is described in the
Meat Industry section of the wiki:
If a male and a female of the same species exist on your map then sooner or later (and probably sooner) the male will impregnate the female. No contact between a male and female is needed - pregnacy can and will occur regardless of distance, physical obstacles such as walls or locked doors, number of each gender (beyond the first), and even ownership. (This is often referred to as "breeding by spores".) Even a male in a herd of wild animals outside the fortress walls can impregnate a female locked deep in a lowest level. A female can get pregnant again immediately after giving birth. The only thing that has been reported to prevent pregnancy is caging, but females that are already pregnant can give birth while caged.
I see significant room for improvement here. I'm thinking that it would be more realistic if, for every male creature on the map, the game first tests if there are any females of the same species/caste which are not pregnant. If that tests true,
then it checks if a female is within close proximity. If not, the male
might try to approach, comparing the priority of mating with a list of priorities, such as a nearby food target or smashing nearby buildings. (Perhaps this is oversimplistic and not terribly realistic, but it's much better than the current system.)
But then, much futher complexity and realism could be added by a crude simulation of the female estrus cycle. (That is, only in heat certain times of the year. Also, the female will not be in heat until a long time after birthing progeny, giving the mother time to care for the young.) Further complexity could be added for certain species where the male tends to stick around the female afterwards to simulate dual parenting roles. But I wonder if that added complexity would be considered beyond the scope of DF...
Finally, I'm wondering about the health of pets and captured animals. Say you spent a lot on an animal from a caravan and it's the only female, but it got injured somehow. (Perhaps as a result of an attack or a fall.) Or maybe you managed to capture a rare creature for your zoo level (Megaproject) or finally caught a dragon to tame, but it became injured in the process. What to do?
How about adding a veternarian skill? (I'm thinking some of the doctor skills would cross across to care for animals). After doctor was added, I'm thinking veternarian should not be difficult.
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Topic: more realistic pets? (Read 2649 times)