Trap megathread animal hunting traps and PC traps

[theTrav]

Also also termites should totally fight with ants

The foxes killing chickens and rabbits is an awesome part of H&H and more of that I feel helps the world feel more alive and real.

[sabinati]

yep it's also great for noobs who don't have hunting yet, they might wander across a free lunch

[vikingdragons]

yep it's also great for noobs who don't have hunting yet, they might wander across a free lunch

exactly! and it would give you a warning as to there being predators nearby. and as for the debate between jackard and impaler jackard is right, the traps will balance themselves out. snares only work against rabbits and chickens, and pit falls are very tiring. and bear traps require metal (and maybe basic mechanics) so a noob isnt going to spamming bear traps everywhere. and i like the suggestions on poisons. thx for the support

[Orteil]

The foxes killing chickens and rabbits is an awesome part of H&H and more of that I feel helps the world feel more alive and real.

It'd be awesome to have an actual working self-regulating ecosystem, with predators feeding on herbivores feeding on plants, etc. But from what I understand, H&H spawns the animals near the players to minimize the server load, so it wouldn't be "real". Still, even an illusion of that would be nice.
Also would it be possible with those animal interactions to drop a live chicken when chased by a bear, so the bear gets distracted and chases the chicken instead ? That's the kind of emerging gameplay that might happen.

[Morgant]

The only real problem with this is that Animal AIs shut off with noone around, this is to save the server, I'm guessing. IE: God damn useless ass bears not moving while I wait inside the cave for ten minutes. But moving when I charge past them into the wilderness. And then of course, with Pacho's client you can see a fox standing next to chickens all nice and cozy, but as soon as they see you, Kill-mode.

[ImpalerWrG]

The foxes killing chickens and rabbits is an awesome part of H&H and more of that I feel helps the world feel more alive and real.

It'd be awesome to have an actual working self-regulating ecosystem, with predators feeding on herbivores feeding on plants, etc. But from what I understand, H&H spawns the animals near the players to minimize the server load, so it wouldn't be "real". Still, even an illusion of that would be nice.
Also would it be possible with those animal interactions to drop a live chicken when chased by a bear, so the bear gets distracted and chases the chicken instead ? That's the kind of emerging gameplay that might happen.

Don't emulate, SIMULATE. Simply having some population numbers for each species both plant and animal per map-chunk (what ever granularity is desired, probably mini-map size is good enough) and these numbers get crunched once an hour, the mathematical formula for this kind of thing is simple and can be found in any biology textbook. Animals would move to adjacent area to repopulate them and each time a player kills an animal their would be a decrement to its population in the area. Then when a player is present the rate that animals spawn would be determined by the pop values. The total computational load would be trivially small and you would get both the natural predator-prey interactions and the effects of hunting, for example if you decimate foxes in an area you'd see rabbit populations rise as a natural result. The ability to deplete/restore hunting grounds would also also add an interesting angle to hunting.

[ThirdEmperor]

How about this, instead of actually catching creatures that spawn in the area, every hour or so there's a chance based on the quality of the bait in the trap of a animal spawning inside the trap, much like a beautiful dream! spawns in a dream catcher.

[ImpalerWrG]

I think its about time their was a spin-off thread dealing exclusively with the types/mechanics/balance of traps, particularly this issue of how animals will be caught/generated if no players are nearby.

The OP really focused on active hunting rather then passive traps and much of my discussion of traps has been off-topic.

[Jackard]

How about this, instead of actually catching creatures that spawn in the area, every hour or so there's a chance based on the quality of the bait in the trap of a animal spawning inside the trap, much like a beautiful dream! spawns in a dream catcher.

thats kind of boring and doesnt prevent trap farms

[theTrav]

How about this, instead of actually catching creatures that spawn in the area, every hour or so there's a chance based on the quality of the bait in the trap of a animal spawning inside the trap, much like a beautiful dream! spawns in a dream catcher.

thats kind of boring and doesnt prevent trap farms

The chance could be modified by proximity to another trap to make trap farms less effective (they'd still happen)

I agree that the suggestion is fairly dull, but are traps really all that exciting anyway? I can't think of many ways to make them exciting