[Idea] Wild Animal Hunter and High-sea Fisherman (event)

[Elirector]

What about adding the yield directly to the nearest colony, like pioners do with wood? Amounts would be too small to affect game balance, like 5 to 10 furs/food, and I hope this feature doesn't affect AI. May be increase it for units with promotion and replace gold reward completely, as it is (obviously) more realistic then finding gold in remains or immediately selling them (to squirrels, I guess)

Btw, in my first game with wtp, being unfamiliar with game mechanics, it was completely obvious to me (and of course completely wrong), that you would actively hunt whales to get whale fat as there were lots of them swimming around as wild animals

 

[Vaulter]

I like this idea. I wonder if it could be made in a way where the slots can't load anything while hunting adds to slots without checking restrictions. That way it's a gather profession rather than a transport profession.

It would likely be a good idea to have a modifier in professions to tell how much cargo can be in each slot. We might not want to allow them to carry as much as dedicated transport units.

Wasn't there something like this in M:C? IIRC, early game I would hunt the wild animals for food. Was a fun little diversion. Would make a wonderful addition to WTP if possible.

 

[ConjurerDragon]

What about adding the yield directly to the nearest colony, like pioners do with wood? Amounts would be too small to affect game balance, like 5 to 10 furs/food, and I hope this feature doesn't affect AI. May be increase it for units with promotion and replace gold reward completely, as it is (obviously) more realistic then finding gold in remains or immediately selling them (to squirrels, I guess)

A game turn in the normal gametime is one of 300, each representing a whole year (even on Marathon speed a game turn is still a season). That means that there would have been enough time to skin and prepare the animal and it´s fur for storage and later sale and thus for simplicity adding a random amount of gold to the treasury.
Requiring a unit to actually walk back to town to "sell" the furs of killed animals would ingame take several years and be way off from reality.

Btw, in my first game with wtp, being unfamiliar with game mechanics, it was completely obvious to me (and of course completely wrong), that you would actively hunt whales to get whale fat as there were lots of them swimming around as wild animals

I assumed the very same thing and was astonished that actual WARSHIPS were the best at hunting sea animals while in reality a broadside would either scare the animals off or annihilate them on a full hit. However when now land gatherbots are a thing that is in discussion, then whaling boats who could actually attack whales would be great - the question is how to prevent Whalers to attack anything else if the ship has an attack rating and should only go after sea animals.

 

[orlanth]

You’re right Elirector that it may be simplest and best for AI to treat it like Col already does for Yields harvested to nearby colonies when clearing Features. (Perhaps requiring the colony’s within a certain distance if you’d like).

That sounds like a nice Moby Dick whale hunting challenge ConjurerDragon. Perhaps a ship Promotion Harpoons could enable Yield harvest and give a large combat bonus vs Animals (significantly boosting the Whaler’s low baseline unit strength vs them only). This could help both players and AI see sea animals as a target.

 

[Elirector]

A game turn in the normal gametime is one of 300, each representing a whole year (even on Marathon speed a game turn is still a season). That means that there would have been enough time to skin and prepare the animal and it´s fur for storage and later sale and thus for simplicity adding a random amount of gold to the treasury.

then nothing prevents hunting units from just dropping skins as furs and meat as food (and whale fat, why not) directly to colony storage

I assumed the very same thing and was astonished that actual WARSHIPS were the best at hunting sea animals while in reality a broadside would either scare the animals off or annihilate them on a full hit. However when now land gatherbots are a thing that is in discussion, then whaling boats who could actually attack whales would be great - the question is how to prevent Whalers to attack anything else if the ship has an attack rating and should only go after sea animals.

Why do we even need to prevent them? They have weapons, harpoons - weak against actual ships, but strong against sea animals. If I was modder, I should make whaling boats able to attack any ship with small strength and give them both levels of "high sea fisherman" (and may be even 3-rd level especialy for them) from start.