Ok we all know Unreal predators (even lynxes) are dangerous. But that's cool and all, I'm not here because of that.
My point is: Unreal elks aren't. They really are wimpy compared to the real ones. My current char had so much trouble chasing an elk he dropped all weapons but a small knife in order to ski faster. In the end, he knifed and kicked an adult elk to death (with near or zero skill in those). Sure he got a crush in the eye and fractured ribs and some bruises.
And there are also stories of characters who have dropped dead in the similar situation after receiving a single elk kick into their heads - which sometimes leads to discussion if the elks are ridiculously fatal in the game. So...we have to remember that not all the elks in the game behave equally. Some are more wimpy than others.
And I also remember a documentary of some indigenous russian tribe and its two hunters who were hunting a bull elk. The hunt lasted for a day. It was wintertime and the hunters were walking in elk’s tracks. At the last phase they sent their dog after the elk. It chased the elk for some time, and the men walked in the both creatures tracks finally reaching the prey. The bull elk stood still, seemingly exhausted. The dog had been called away. One of the hunters took his knife, walked slowly at the elk which was facing his direction. Some staring, no movement, then he quite slowly thrusted his knife into elk’s throat, and retreated few steps. The elk bled to death pretty much at the same location it had received the blade.
I personally want to have the both kind of elk hunting endings to appear in the game – depending on the many complex and unpredictable factors and mechanics. So, we don’t often balance things based on “this one thing happened once to me”, but always need to look at the big picture.
Let’s look at the suggestions then, which are better to post as one crisp thought rather than a list, but here we go:
1) I'd like to see elks, especially bull ones, buffed up considerably. It should be madness to go against them practically bare-handed. The reward is anyways a huge amount of meat. More strength, stamina and speed.
We can add more strength, stamina and speed, but that doesn’t increase the fatality of going against them bare-handed. One kick kills are possible for them already. It’s more of a matter how their desperation attack mechanics get triggered. Animals choose to attack based on a lot of factors, with cornered animals the desperation builds a bit bit by bit. What we might adjust would be these mechanics, but it also requires experimenting with numerous game elks. I can play a little to see if there’s something that immediately requires attention. The thing is, who is to say how many of the say 100 elks you get cornered would really choose to attack the pursuer to their fullest potential. 25%, 50%, 100% ? We only know it’s not 0% but not 100% either.
2) Elk AI: Naturally they should almost always just flee, but when cornered they shouldn't just run circles to exhaustion but stop to rest and threaten the pursuer with a snort and kicking the ground. Fight or flight, not flight until breathless.
Like mentioned sometimes they do threat and attack the pursuer. Desperation attack mechanics are result of many factors. The resting thing is different and tricky one, and it’s cover all the animals and NPCs in the game. It’s true that they sometimes tend to exhaust themselves in situations where they could rest. If it’s made too clever the persistence hunting times are pretty much over.
3) Enable elk to jump over fences or even break them when fleeing.
If this was added it should be linked to gradually building desperation, and not enable just like that whenever the creature is escaping. I’m fairly sure elk’s primary option would be to try to find a natural route to flee rather than to jump over or break a man-made things. At least in the history there are so many examples of driving wild animals to their death with simple man-made obstacles which could have been broken if the animals just tried. So it’s a decent idea, but it’s not a simple one. I can already see the headlines “Elks are jumping over fences too often.”
4) Elks are great swimmers irl, ought to be grandmasters in Urw.
It'd be cool to come to a new version of urw and try to exploit this old tactic only to realize the elk just swims away. Of course there should be some reluctance to animals wading and swimming, but it'd be a cool addition.
Good swimming escape wits is indeed something the animals in the game lack. It’s not only about elks. This is something that would be nice, and also interesting to work on. Of course it’s lots of study to figure out how the decision about entering the water should be done. However, the cornering tactics on ice would still be quite usable if hunting with bow and arrows, as relatively slowly swimming elk is a good target.
5) Urw ungulates (hoofed herbivores) are pretty good to get out of a hole in ice?
I've noticed that ungulates fall through ice easily and get out just as easily.
I don’t have the code at hand now to check, but I’d like to think it’s not just like that thing. At least the mentions about dead elk in the ice are far more frequent. I can check but could this have been situation, animal attributes and water depth related thing..
6) EDIT: Attack: Trampling. (Allow aggressive elks/big reindeer/beoars to enter a tile with a character, making them 'fallen'.) Hehe. And there it goes...
I’m not too fancy to add new attack mechanics as the wound effects with the current ones are similar, but truly the big animals could do harm simply by running against the character.
7) EDIT: Only pits should work for ungulates. This was always odd anyway... It's not in their nature to go into tight spots. I think all ungulates should pass all snares, lever and deadfall traps without harm or trigger.
Yep. Elks getting into such traps isn’t intended but just something that happens due to trap mechanics. There are some other oddities too, but we haven’t found them too critical to fix.
Topic: Buff up the elks, add swimming and jumping over fences (Read 17808 times)