The Important parts are all in Red. Giant Animals There should be a new sub-type of enemy animals... Giant sized! Giant sized animals would be, obviously, much larger than other animals and the player, the very largest rivaling even the player ship, and have their own randomization pallet. These giant animals would have a 25% chance to be neutral, and being hostile the rest of the time, though they would also be very slow and not jump very high. Hostile giants will openly attack other animals, while the rarer peaceful animals will mind their own business as usual. Both types are rare, but not too rare. They would also have intense amounts of health, not as much as mini-bosses but enough to receive several hits from even the strongest weapons available in the sector, and do enough damage to kill the unarmored player outright with a single blow (As posted here, Avians would be one-shotted with or without armor due to heavy damage). As a reward for killing these thunderous beasts they will drop several pieces of meat, and perhaps a rare weapon or some ore. They can be found in every biome, and can be seen either flying, walking along the ground, swimming at deep sea levels, wading in lava, or sometimes in large underground hollows. This would definitely add to the exploration and combat factors of the game. But watch out for Mini-bosses in the form of giant animals, they may just be powerful enough to pose a challenge for players 2 tiers ahead of them! To keep things colorful, some worlds would be totally giant animal-free, while some would be dominated by up to 3 different types! That should keep players on the move if they do\don't want to battle these mammoths. Size Randomization Animals should have a randomized size, not like giant animals but varying from rat sized little mongrels to beasts twice the size of the player. What I mean is, when a species is randomly generated, it has a chance to be any of these sizes, not two members of the same species at totally different sizes but all roughly the same. Health and damage would scale with size, so larger mobs would be tougher (not like giant animals, but just a bit stronger to pose at least some threat to players of the same tier), and smaller critters would have relatively low health and damage, though smaller animals have a much lower chance of being hostile in the first place. Mini-bosses would also vary in sizes, and they too would scale difficulty with size (because as a player, I just don't find Mini-bosses challenging enough...might be a bug?). Another thing would be speed and jump height randomization, with larger animals being slower and smaller ones being much faster and more agile. Passive Animals Mostly, animals come in two flavors; Hostile and Neutral. Hostile mobs attack on sight, while Neutral animals will attack only when provoked. I say that animals should come in a third personality, Passive, where-in they will try to run away instead of fight back. Mostly, this will only be possible for animals the size of the player and smaller, but sometimes (very rarely) giant animals may be passive. Passive animals would also have a higher chance of dropping meat, but a much smaller chance of dropping anything else. Hostile animals will always attack passive animal in the same way they do the player. Abilities, Health, and Drops Specific to Body Parts Since all animals are randomized, it makes sense that they will have certain perks that go with the body parts they own. Each body part would have it's own set of statistics that would add to that of the animal. For example, a spiked conic shell that seems to be a fairly common piece, would give double health (since it's a shell ), give the animal the ability to hide inside said shell, if it's a pseudopod, and would drop upon death to be used in crafting of aesthetics or special, non-story related items (since not every planet will have cone shell-wearing animals). Another example is the sloth like claws that many bipeds have. These claws would add extra attack, perhaps not as much health, allow them to climb, and drop plant fibers upon death. The last example would be white fluff that seems to be a very rare trait. It would give little in the way of health, act as a shock absorber, and would drop fabric upon death. It makes hunting much more useful outside of gathering food. Better AI Each animal should also have an aesthetic factor. Hostile animals would attack passive animals and sometimes neutral ones too, while the other two would graze on grass\leaves. Birds may land in the grass only to fly off\attack when the player comes near. Animals should also be more self aware, being able to resist falling off ledges and would run away from\attack the player when the player hurts or kills another member of their species. Perhaps some animals will also have chance to spawn in packs, herds, flocks, schools etc. If you have anymore AI factors that will definitely aid in less dull-witted animals or even simple aesthetics, leave a comment below. Aquatic, Flying, and Burrowing Animals (other than birds and Fish) Just as a simple gesture, there could be more animals that fly, swim through water, swim through lava, maybe some that burrow, maybe some that only spawn at night, to keep the worlds lush and filled with life (those that are supposed to be, that is). One thing that should be here is that some giant animals can burrow (since Mammoth literally means 'giant burrowing mole') bursting out of the ground when the player draws near. Plant-based Animals, or Stationary Animals Since the concept definitely exists in Starbound, embodied by the Florans, then there should be a rare sub-type of animal in the form of plants, with their own randomization schemes, levels of hostility or neutrality, and drop plant fibers or wood instead of the usual drops. These plant-animals would be common or rare on various different types of planets, very common on lusher worlds and far less so in hostile environments (In this order; Jungle, Swamp, Tentacle, Forest, Grassland, Arid, Desert, Volcanic, Magma, Tundra, Snow, Moon), and would match the foliage scheme of a planet; a planet with trees featuring giant eye-balls would have a plant-type animal with lots of eyes, while tentacle biomes would have more squidly looking plantimals. Plant-animals would, like everything else, have drops, sizes, and health all varying in scale, like for instance we would have giant venus man-traps on one world with tiny needle-shooting plants on another, and sometimes even plants that grow explosive fruits (Pomegrenades!) Biome Specific Parts Some parts of some animals should be specific for a certain biome, so that we don't have animals with tons of fur in the middle of the desert or slugs wandering around the ice planets. It is very creative to have this possible but it doesn't seem like it was actually intentional. Each body part should have a list of biomes that it can be apart of, for example the cone shell again. It seems it would go very nicely in jungles, forests, swamps, tentacles, and ocean biomes but not so much in deserts, snow worlds, volcanic worlds etc. The exception would be mini-biomes like mushroom and crystal, and moon or tentacle where everything is wacky and out of place. Some planets should have their own color scheme as well, so that the ice world isn't populated by flamingos and chameleons, with (again) tentacles and moons being the exception. What I'm talking about is blues and white on snow-worlds, lots of browns, grays, ochre's and such on desert worlds, very colorful beasts running around jungles and dull, boring colors in volcanic worlds. Just to keep things dynamic and diverse, so that every world isn't super colorful so much that colorful looses its beauty and uniqueness after the Beta Sector. Mounts This idea popped up just at the last minute while I was watching Star Wars. As the last item on the list, it should be something fruity and pleasing. With the creature capture station you would have three different kinds of capture pods; small, medium, and large. Small pods will capture anything small (duh) to be made into pets, but medium and large are for a much more diabolical purpose... if you are able to capture quadropedal, flying, or swimming animals, then you can make it into a mount after crafting a saddle! Mounts are slower than vehicles, and require that you keep them fed or they won't let you ride them, but are still more efficient than walking if you have an upkeep of meat or hay (or ores, for those really wacky animals). They can also be stubborn and are difficult to scale slopes with because the jump height is reduced, but are faster than the player and can automatically ascend two block high cliffs with a bit of difficulty, so they are best used on flatter worlds. Plus you can fire bows and guns while mounted, but cannot use swords. When attacking, your mount will resume it's own AI until you have holstered your weapons. Flying and swimming animals, however, are harder to capture, since there is a chance they will break free and escape\attack, but if you manage to do it, then flying mounts can be much easier than ground mounts (though still not as perfect as hoverbikes) as they can fly for short periods of time before having to rest, and swimming mounts can take you to the bottom of the sea much faster than you can swim (but are very hard to transport between water sources). But as a warning, mounts can only be transported between worlds through scientific methods, so you may end up having to abandon your first mounts when you leave for new worlds. NPC's can also use mounts, usually either a mount specific to their home world or one found on the current one. These mounts are as hostile as their riders, so if you are not friendly, riders can be very tough customers! Then, there are the large sized capture pods, used to capture...as if this wasn't awesome enough...giant animals! But be very careful, because it is very hard to capture giant animals! While giant mounts can hold multiple players\npc's and can do intense damage, there is no way to transport them between worlds, so the goodbye's may be inevitable... If you have anymore ideas for Animal AI, aesthetics, randomization or anything else, leave a comment, and if you like any of the ideas then tell me what you think!
This post deserves more attention, but it's kinda hard to read (so much text). So i'm gonna give my opinions on some things. Drops specific to body parts and biome specific parts work very well together and i like it, but those parts should not be very common, having chance to visit a couple planets without finding any of that specific, creating more rare objects in the world. Giant monsters would provide Giant parts too, so it would be something even more rare. But i don't think the chance of them being hostile should be too big, since it would share spawn properties, fighting every giant that comes in front of you would not be very fun. If the giants have a high chance of being hostile, would be cool if the aggro radius be small and from his head, so they would pretty much ignore you for being too small.
Well I shall indeed take this into consideration when I post more on this. Let the mega-thread series on Animal AI commence ! And I think I stated that giant animals would be very rare, almost like mini-bosses but not quite, and as such they are not quite as difficult as them either. Thank you for your criticism though, it really helps
