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Feedback Pets feel more like grenades and less like travelling companions

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by Moose2001, Aug 25, 2016.

  1. Moose2001

    Moose2001 Phantasmal Quasar

    It's not just their poor AI in general, but the way their stats scale. For example, my Apex Mutant pet, with me wearing full DPS gear, giving it a rage buff, AND a Damage III collar, still dies to an equal level 6 Adult Poptop.

    If pets are meant to only be able to barely, or not at all, take on an equal level monster, what is the point of them? They honestly simply feel like high damage grenades that you can toss out at this point, as their not expected to do a whole lot.

    The fact that the most useful pets I have found have been mutants with damage III collars (for a nice 200 damage hit before they die in 3 or so hits) to nutmidges with explosive collars (quad explosions anyone?) indicates a problem :/ Even when I tried to make a tank pet, an Adult Poptop with a healing collar didn't last very long (granted, I was in DPS gear, but still......)

    Also, just a thought to kind of discourage the mindset of pets only as bombs, could the elemental collars get a small passive effect in addition to the pet exploding? Perhaps if the pet could apply the appropriate status effect for that element on attacks, pets wouldn't be solely viewed as grenades......

    Although without better AI and proper stat scaling, I'm afraid all they'll ever be are grenades :/
     
    Silverforte and Pingeh like this.
  2. Dander.1981

    Dander.1981 Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Pet grenades and throwing gnome families. Transports vegetables across star systems in a regard that would make an Australian toll inspector die of heart attack. Yup, the protagonist is a villain. No doubt about it. >.<
     
  3. Mythril-Jelly

    Mythril-Jelly Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    I also use them for base defense and populating barren areas, though the tether hordes stick out rather obviously in most setups. Especially if you want critters now.

    Oblivious lumoth is good for finding and lighting caves, though there's a cave detector and ore detector now so mostly de-throned.

    I do wish there were more viable options, and more options in general though. Ixolings and Moontants are pretty unique pets but not exactly viable.
    Serpent droids are disabled, and Ruin monsters aren't capturable or viable but are downright cool and disappointed I can't have them in my zoo.

    Shame about swimming and flying critters being non-capturable now. I highly dislike many being marked as such as it's very limiting. I can understand a slowflake being non-capturable since that would be silly but entire mob classifications... egh.
     
    TheFloranChef, Ablekaine and STCW262 like this.
  4. Ablekaine

    Ablekaine Pangalactic Porcupine

    Don't take my word for it cause I don't use pets much more than cosmetically, but the regen collars can help a little? And I find the Scandroids to be decent because they use their ranged energy ball attack as opposed to charging enemies nonstop and taking damage. (Although because they float they often run into hazards and break while I'm mining easily)
     
  5. Lintton

    Lintton Guest

    pet leveling and evolution would address a lot of this.
     
    Silverforte likes this.
  6. Moose2001

    Moose2001 Phantasmal Quasar

    The regen collars are really really slow, and honestly only make a difference out of combat if your afking. I'm pretty sure you'd have to be wearing the melee set for it to matter much (and if your wearing tank gear.....why do you need a pet in the first place?).

    I think the biggest mistake is tying gear directly to pets. If I'm wearing tank gear (melee set), I don't need a tanky pet more than likely. If I'm wearing DPS gear, I probably would desire a tanky pet. The problem though is their AI as well, granted, some pets stay at range a bit better than others, but they all eventually try to charge in for melee, which causes them to take a ton of contact damage, which = dead pet.
     
  7. Moose2001

    Moose2001 Phantasmal Quasar

    I too was dissapointed with the critter change. I think the problem is that they didn't like fish swimming through the air, or the fact that flying critters fly, well, for a VERY long time. I honestly don't see why they didn't just give fish critters the aquatic monster AI so that they flop when on land instead of swim. The Pet tethers are a sore sight, but I think I could have dealt with them, especially since this gives a way for the pet to be permanent (no way to accidentally launch a grenade into the fish tank now >.>).

    Speaking of pets that are still not captureable, I'm very dissapointed that the Po wasn't re-enabled. Hoping this was an oversight and not a design decision (like removing the USMC bunkers, there were so many unique pets that got disabled because of that).
     
  8. Oberic

    Oberic Spaceman Spiff

    Swimming and flying monsters (large flying monsters have special attacks still too) are still capturable, unless you specifically meant "critters" as in the little harmless guys.
     
  9. Aroxys

    Aroxys Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    The hilarious part is that pets used to be a LOT stronger, albeit the pet system itself was barebones and borderline unusuable.

    But yeah, the elemental bomb collars just struck me as Chucklefish outright admitting that they know captured monsters are far too weak, but rather than rebalance them to be viable travelling companions like they originally said the monsters would be, they just kept them as-is.

    Also, Serpent Droids were great for base defense, or any battle that takes place in confined area. Joke HP values aren't as big of an issue when you've got a plasma shield to reduce damage to pitiful levels and simultaneously deal massive contact damage, on top of having a moderately powerful gun to shoot things with that just aren't interested in suiciding on it. (Heck, back when Human Bunkers were still in the game, and the NPC AI was messed up, Serpent Droids had a nasty tendency to very nearly clear out the NPC humans despite their superior attack and defense values.)
     
  10. Mythril-Jelly

    Mythril-Jelly Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Yeah, the little ones. I used to make these tubes of Erchius fuel with glowing jellyfish in them and I can't do that any more as of 1.0 sadly. I hope this returns, it really brought life to the bunker.
     
  11. Oberic

    Oberic Spaceman Spiff

    During a short time (might have been on unstable?) there were Critter Capture Pods, but not Capture Pods.
    I'll check through some of my older assets and see if they're an actual separate file, they don't appear to be buried in Starbound 1.0.5

    Edit:
    I do still have the assets for the Critter Capture Pod. They were from the last stable before 1.0, I think.
    It used the same files as the current capture pods, but most/all of the related files are written drastically differently.
    Someone could (in theory) gather up all of the critter variants of the capturepod files and make a mod adding them back in.
    I could possibly do it, but I might not be able to make them craftable. Or make them work.
    Or find all of the files needed.
    I'm just a Ketchup Robot..
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2016
    Mythril-Jelly and Ablekaine like this.
  12. Daldingo

    Daldingo Void-Bound Voyager

    Pets are just bad in general. Another system they gutted to boot 1.0 out the door. We were supposed to have the ability to level them up and breed/modify them, but they're basically suicide attach dogs. It's a joke. The promised pet system is why I actually bought Starbound, and having such a poor system in its stead has sapped a lot of my will to play after 150 hours.
     
    Shooting Star and Pingeh like this.
  13. BlueLeafeon

    BlueLeafeon Cosmic Narwhal

    This is why I captured the fire puppy but never used him. :(

    I keep hoping somebody will make a mod to fix this. Must be harder than it sounds...
     
  14. Oberic

    Oberic Spaceman Spiff

    Pretty sure I saw a mod on the steam workshop that made pets better. Not definite.
     
  15. stealthXG

    stealthXG Pangalactic Porcupine

    I wish they never removed the leveling mechanic for the pets. I also miss having more than 1 pet out at once, I don't know why they felt they needed to remove that mechanic. I miss my army of pets. Hopefully they'll go back and add more stuff to the pets.

    Why am I calling them pets, I used to call them companions. lol
     
    Pingeh likes this.
  16. Preday

    Preday Starship Captain

    I use them as pets, i.e movable decorations. I have a shiny crystal being and a glowing icecube walking around being useless on my ship and annoying my cat.

    What more would you ask for in this life?
     
  17. Preday

    Preday Starship Captain

    I have a question though: can the capture pods be emptied once they capture smth? Like, remove the thing inside and use it to capture something else? Or are they single use?
     
  18. Monario

    Monario Subatomic Cosmonaut

    Pretty sure whatever they capture is bound to it. If the pet dies the capture pod's center doesn't glow blue (empty) or red (filled with living being) but remains dark. You'll probably have to make another capture pod, which is fine imo :p
     
  19. Von Marlon

    Von Marlon Pangalactic Porcupine

    Such a missed opportunity. :(
     
  20. Sandity

    Sandity Space Hobo

    Cough Pokemon Cough (P.s) most pets are pretty useless atm lol
     

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