Make Hunting on Skis more Viable

[Roheline]

I've very very rarely managed to utilize the speed benefits of skiing to be able to hunt large herbivores on this game. Even if the skis allow me to get close enough to get a good shot, I find that by the time I take off the ski stick and get my arrow ready, the game has already fled out of bow range. And once I start chasing the game, I never see them again, just tracks or hearing sounds just off the screen.

I think either an adjustment of animal fatigue rates in snow over a certain depth or a slowing of their running speed under snowy conditions could help quite a bit, or else a change to how weapon arming with skis works. My character has no problems chopping down a tree while wielding the ski stick, so presumably some kind of automatic tucking away of the stick is happening there but not with weapons. In the process of hunting with skis, I have this mental image of my character skiing up on the game, then slipping the leather leash of the ski stick up their arm and reaching for an arrow all in one smooth motion.

Is this unrealistic? Maybe it could be changed somehow to one action "remove ski stick and wield arrow" or have the "wield arrow" action automatically remove the ski stick so it takes one turn and not two? Or maybe a compromise where the single action becomes available to characters with skiing above a certain level...less than 50 skill and you fumble around with your stick for a turn, scaring away the game, more than 50 ski skill and you can pull it off in one motion?

Has anyone had success ski hunting with spears? Perhaps I'm just using the wrong tool for the job...

[PALU]

I haven't reached skiing yet with the beta adjustments, so I can't comment on those (for the stable version I gave up on skiing as I found the increased compounded endurance penalty from the extra weight of the skis caused skiing to be worse than walking after only a kilometer or two). I hope the adjustments will make skiing the better option.

A significant different between the old time/in game ski stick and modern ones is that the old version used only a single long stick (a bit like a sesta) rather than the current day meter long pair of slender thingies, so to quickly shift from a ski pole to an arrow you'd either have to release the pole (causing it to fall to the ground and potentially scare the prey), stick it upright into the snow (similar issue), or lean it against your body or a tree (with a risk of it sliding and falling, potentially knocking at your bow in the process for the body case). On the other hand, the noise you made skiing up to that position ought to be louder than sticking the pole into the snow...

So far I've rarely used bows to hunt animals (bows are extremely useful when "hunting" marauding Njerps, though [with bow and ski stick mismanagement leading to the death of one of my characters]), as I tend to endurance hunt them (and I usually fail with predators, but I usually avoid actively hunting those, as they're dangerous [which goes for the piggies as well]).

I think I've had some success with javelins, although I tend to avoid that as well, as it damages the skin, and endurance hunting has worked well.

I guess it very much depends on which ski hunting method you use. If you ski around and suddenly see a suitable prey at a short distance (possibly by zooming in) you may have to react quickly and probably use javelins. If you try to sneak up on prey they shouldn't bolt just because you're stopping. However, moving towards them and decide to attack as a reaction to them bolting is probably not the best tactic (as opposed to moving towards them, saying: this is close enough and then shift to the bow).

Open terrain probably favors bow and arrow over javelin.

A lot of rambling of dubious value...