This is just a personal idea how the pet system could work. - CATCHING AN ANIMAL - Beings that can be captured have to be organic, non-humanoid and non-mechanic. There are different ways to do so, because not every animal can be captured with just one method. Dart Gun: This is the basic catpuring device. It can be used on any animal with soft skin surface without a resistance to toxic and paralyzing substances. A shot with this gun will cause the animal, depending on its size, to be stunned for 10 seconds or so. The ammunition is veeeery rare and/or expensive. Primed Bait: This primed food can be used on any animal without a resistance to toxic and paralyzing substances. You place it on the ground and back off a bit. The nearest animal will approach it to feast on it, getting stunned after doing so. Taser: This harmless device can bring down many kinds of animals, aslong as they're not immune to electric damage or have too high stats. Net Harpoon: Smaller animals can be captured with this gun quite easily, bigger ones will be able to break free after a short time. Good against flying targets, too. Psychic Destabilisator: With this tool, no animal is save from you. Even big ones won't be able to resist. It basically sends a direct and intense pulse through the nervous system of the target, telling the brain to shut down for a certrain time. - RETRIEVING THE ANIMAL - Now that you finally captured an animal on a planet, you have to get it on your ship. You have to quickly approach your victim before it can break free or gets his senses back. There 2 options now you can choose between. Enforcement Collar: This device is put onto the animal to make it instantly follow you. This is just a temporary solution if you don't want to keep the animal as a permanent pet, but need it for a certain quest or something like this. The animal won't help you in fights, and you can only have one animal with an enforcement collar to follow you. Leaving the planet will remove it too. Retractor Beam: You basically tell your crew to beam the animal onto your ship. This is only possible aslong as it's caught in the net or unconscious. It will then be prophylactically placed in a cage in a special section of your ship. - TRAINING THE ANIMAL - After your new companion got beamed to your ship, you can visit him in a specific segment of your ship. The cages they're held in have different sizes, depending on the size of the kept animal. The sizes are tiny, small, medium, big and monstrous. Also, every creature can have a level ranging from 0 to 3, after being captured for the first time they of course start at 0. They progress by killing enemies and following you for a long period. On level 3, every creature learns an ability that is exclusive to this species. You can have only on creature to follow you at a time. If it gets hurt you can inject a potion or give him some food, which will be far more effective. But be informed, that certain species only eat a special kind of food. If it gets killed, you can either use a special item to instantly revive it, or beam it back to the ship, where it can recover. Dieing too often will result in a loss of experience or even a whole level. Also, the creature can receive the status "Warily" if it wipes out too many times. If that's the case, there's the possibility it refuses to follow your orders.
I think this would make pets more interesting. If you needed more advanced gear to capture bigger and better animals I think it would add a lot of depth to that system.
I'll keep an eye out on this, maybe even put in a few ideas of my own. I like the idea of being able to freely catching a species.
I like this idea as you slowly progress from small weaker animals to bigger stronger animals, an idea of my own is that animals have "levels" which is to say that the longer you keep the animal as a pet the stronger it should get so pets just don't easily get thrown away when your able to get stronger ones and if you like how a certain pet looks like you can keep it and still have it relatively strong
This makes a lot of sense, I must say. I really like the idea of the enforcement collar. Although I've heard that the pet system should quite a bit simpler, meaning that you can capture an enemy when they are low on health (I guess it would work like a pokéball?). Nonetheless, some good ideas here and anyways, it's not too late for the devs to switch it up before the game is released, right?
IMO the balance between big pets and small pets should be the ease of keeping them, rather than a leveling system. A larger pet will take longer to train, eat more food and needs more attention in general.
Thanks for the feedback! A leveling system is something I don't consider, it just adds too much micro managment. Maybe an animal can only reach a maximum level of 3 and starts at 1 of course, this way it's kept simple. And being forced to feed them would be rather annoying after some time, maybe it would be just neccessary to gain their trust?
Yeah true, the game doesn't need monotonous tasks like that. I stick by that leveling to keep the weak animals to be equal in strength is a bit contrived. Putting in a few diffulcities with the large/strong pets is less strange than a tiny creature being able to one hit KO a massive creature because it was a higher level.
Yepp, my thoughts exactly, they're still animals and not Pokemon. Maybe just some small stat increases and 1 new ability on leve 3? This way you would be motivated to reach the final level.
or size modifiers that increase and decrease the damage incrementally. A small creature level 8 let's say with an attack of 6 - 12 (like rolling 2D6) that attacks a large creature maybe 2 levels lower, it's damage might be at some sort of a negative. In D&D sense, you take a smaller foe attacking a larger one and the AC usually gets amped up a bit on either side. the smaller one gets more AC because of how small and quick it is compared to the larger beast, and the larger beast is just that tough. Starbound doesn't need to be THAT complex, let's just say -2 damage for every size modifier up. and +2 damage for every size modifier down. Size modifiers can be, diminutive, tiny, small, normal, big, large, colossal. Colossal creature would get a +6 damage modifier to you and your normal sized creature, IF he can hit it. More mass means much slower movement. Unless you have someway to penetrate the obviously larger mass flesh, you'll be suffering a -6 to damage. This is all assuming the damage ration is 1 to 10, instead of like Final Fantasy games where the damage ratio is 10 to 100. or 100 to 1000.
