The Aquatic carnivores : playstyle ideas (Discussion post)

[Bill_Clinton_Supreme]

Why this thread?

- Welllllllllllllll, after uh certain events in The Isle's discussion boards and community as a whole, I think it might be good to cleanse everyone's palate with a discussion about one of the most hyped group of playables we'll be getting.

- I feel like the word "fisher" or "piscivore" is badly defined and these guys aren't differentiated enough and could fill each other's niches without being unique except for maybe deino, but he's a special case, and I feel like a lot of them haven't had the best representation so I'll give them unique roles and also talk about my grievances with the current ways they are planned too.

Before we start

- Size list: all animals in the Isle are meant to be around their real life max size, so this'll be important viantart.com/franoys/art/The-isle-Dinosaurs-chart-MKll-643064419

- If you're not here for serious discussion, then this isn't the discussion for you, I'd leave

what'll happen to our estuaries and waterways?

They'll be far more finite and populated, as animals would be made more dependent on the water and dry seasons and droughts and floods will encompass the island as it travels around. Herds will also impact the waterways heavily, a herd of triceratops encroaching the river will dramatically consume up the water available, which'll definitely impact the aquatic animals.

Austroraptor

This one has been discussed before, but Austroraptor will be like an amazon river otter, a pack hunting carnivore that works together in familial units to take down prey, capable of diving off of perches for either food to reach inside the river or to escape danger quickly. These guys are also capable of using their head in a less literal way compared to the competition, being able to use rocks or high heights to crack open the various bivalves and other hard bodied creatures they find.

Baryonyx

Pretty much a gimme if you've seen what I've said before about this guy.
Baryonyx will be a dedicated beach bum, feeding off of a ton of scraps and carrion the ocean spits out in a tidepool biome, and also being way more than capable of finding itself back if it gets washed out to sea from going out too far and the tide comes back, horseshoe crabs, ammonites, turtle, dead mosasaur, all of these will do well for a keen baryonyx exploring the tidepool area. Though it best be careful, as this area will definitely be partolled even by non-aquatics searching for the same easy-meals.

Baryonyx will also be an oceanic hunter of sorts, not the massive deep diving and open ocean spinosaurus, but rather takes for the simpler and more plentiful parts of the sea, Baryonyx will often go out to snorkel about in the kelp forests and coral reefs that spinosaurus might not have as much luck in due to its size.

Suchomimus

Honestly I feel like this guy has so much potential but is being robbed of it honestly, suchomimus has mostly just been pushed to the sidelines and referred to just eat fish which takes away a lot of fun that sucho has now. It's big, bulky, strong, and definitely not something to screw around with if you're an allosaurus, only problem is how its so slow and exploitable by apexes.
Also this guy feels like the first sign of fickleness to show in The Isle, a long time ago, Progression was planning on having a sort of Tech Tree where as you went down a specific dinosaur line, you would progress and get better, and honestly this guy and baryonyx suffer the most, it feels like both of them were only brought in to fill in that gap to just let people play spinosaurus and I hate that since these are cool as hell dinosaurs.

Right now, I sort of want to keep current suchomimus from V3 and add fishing skills sort of as a secondary role, Suchomimus I would want to be like a Jaguar with just a lot more aquatic affinities, strong as hell, fast, jungle prowler, and more than just capable in the water, shorelines of rivers or lakes near dense jungle is what suchomimus lives for.

Deinosuchus

Ok first things first, lets get the elephant out of the room, or quite literally in this case, what deinosuchus can become.
I can get wanting to keep these guys fictional for the rule of cool. But the developers have directly stated they want all animals to be at their current scientific max size, in which case, why does deinosuchus get special treatment and can grow to the size of fictional megamonsters

For all knowledge we have, Deinosuchus Rugosus on average reached lengths of 26 feet and 2 and a half tons, that's 1 ton lighter than suchomimus and nowhere near the "apex" that people taught this thing to be.

To be fair, Rugosus is the smaller subspecies, and Riograndensis is the much larger, but at max, it can reach the apex sizes of around 8 tons and up to 40 feet long, though, that's probably the very MAX they could get. Yes, reptiles can grow quite large, but deinosuchus probably got around the weight of your average T.rex if it was
A) the less famous of the two species, and
B) Incredibly lucky, and it reached nowhere near the size shown off which goes against the developer's words.

I think its no secret that I really, really dislike the elder system, it doesn't feel like a fully thought out idea and something they made to respond to the popular fan idea to get it in the game, where it was more or less thought of as a different form or stage above adult. Putting a timer on someone's playthrough isn't fun and I think a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

If deinosuchus is kept to a reasonable size and the "elder" system is redone, then I'll be happy.

Spinosaurus

If you haven't seen in the comments, I am not the biggest fan of the new spinosaurus model, its largely a combination of confused direction of what it should be, and it just looks like another monster spino made by whoever made Monsters Resurrected.

I think spinosaurus could be sort of a half & half, decent on land, decent in water, but not excellent at either, which is why its so land based but also has a couple of aquatic adaptations, probably preferring swamps or places with a nice combination of a lot of land but also a lot of water.

[Jelly the Fish]

Well Spinosaurus is modeled as a terrestrial build, so I would imagine it to be preferably on land, but is capable of eating fish and wandering in the water if it wants to. I know you want suchomimus to have some sort of way to intrigue, but the deino should really be rivals / have competition with the spino. It just makes more sense.

Instead of the spino trying to hunt at the ocean, it should really stay in marshlands / swamps since it has realized that its chances to get anything in the ocean are small due to the size it has.

I think sucho could be in between. Being able to have luck in the ocean and marshlands / swamps.

The bary stays in the ocean since it gets wrecked by most things in the swamps with the deino and spino. I think the bary could use the ocean as its way for escape.

[bigmoe808]

I haven't read it fully yet, but I'd like to add Megalania as a semi aquatic.

Mostly a cross between deinosuchus and baryonyx. An island hopper, river crawler nomad. Not that'll need to have the most destructive ambush from the water, but it could just skim along the surface and quietly encroach upon the unsuspected.

[Tregrenos]

With all these additions it'd be great if the "needs" system made it so not all carnivores will want to eat the same thing. Like in your Baryonyx proposal, it would prefer fish over eating a carcass. While it should be capable of surviving off meat from other dinos if it had no other choice the penalty for doing so should be great enough that it's a weighing option to either eat the meat in front of you or to wait until you get to a shore line or lake with the food you need. Baryonyx might also be adaptable enough to actually hunt for food in the ocean while Deinosuchus would need fresh water to hunt in.

[Bill_Clinton_Supreme]

Originally posted by Jelly the Fish:

Well Spinosaurus is modeled as a terrestrial build, so I would imagine it to be preferably on land, but is capable of eating fish and wandering in the water if it wants to. I know you want suchomimus to have some sort of way to intrigue, but the deino should really be rivals / have competition with the spino. It just makes more sense.

That's my main problem with spinosaurus in this.

Its meant to be an ocean-going animal, yet entirely has the build of a land animal.

Deinosuchus in complete reality wasn't very big as touted. Since the developers would want to go with a more realistic size, the biggest they could get would be from 6-8 tons, and that'd probably be about as far as it goes, the animal just wasn't very big on average. On the small and most conservative end, you have it around 2 tons, that's quite literally allosaurus levels of weight, on the very high end, it was about 5 tons, which probably represented exceptionally large individuals of the D. Rugosus species. Even then, that's small fry compared to the monster-spino ingame.

Deinosuchus should largely not be a rival with spinosaurus, it was simply just not as big as the devs think
(though tbf it probably would be with the real spinosaurus since spinosaurus wasn't like how it is ingame at all either)

[Bill_Clinton_Supreme]

Originally posted by bigmoe808:

I haven't read it fully yet, but I'd like to add Megalania as a semi aquatic.

Mostly a cross between deinosuchus and baryonyx. An island hopper, river crawler nomad. Not that'll need to have the most destructive ambush from the water, but it could just skim along the surface and quietly encroach upon the unsuspected.

I like your point, I definitely forgot about it and it makes sense to help the guy out some more. I think it'd be cool to make it like a giant nile monitor and not just mega komodo dragon

[bigmoe808]

Originally posted by Krona:

Originally posted by bigmoe808:

I haven't read it fully yet, but I'd like to add Megalania as a semi aquatic.

Mostly a cross between deinosuchus and baryonyx. An island hopper, river crawler nomad. Not that'll need to have the most destructive ambush from the water, but it could just skim along the surface and quietly encroach upon the unsuspected.

I like your point, I definitely forgot about it and it makes sense to help the guy out some more. I think it'd be cool to make it like a giant nile monitor and not just mega komodo dragon

Yeah, just a jack of all trades prehistoric giant monitor lizard. It'll have a place on land, but occasionally get its toes wet.

Even if it's only situational, such as to escape a predator by slithering away into the water. As for hunting, sense it won't have much of an ambush from the water (least I hope it won't), it can just reposition itself by quietly crossing up and down stream.

Like Bary, I hope it'll take to island hopping and maybe even a bit of beach scavenging. If possible, I would like it to create habitats in trenches and squashed crevices in the rocks on shore.

[Truly Meaningless]

On the Spino, it's in the same exact situation as what the devs are doing to Magyaro, yet say they can't do to Anky. They've made Spino something that ISN'T a true spino, and are making Magyaro, a sauropod that lived on a remote island without any apex predators, capable of fighting against allosaurus. And yet they say if they add Anky, despite Anky being fully capable of defending itself, they have to change it, and then it won't be anky anymore

[Code]

its a game they can make every dino viable no matter what the paleo facts are...... because its a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game...

People need to stop dreaming of this game as some sort of paleo sim and look at what the game actually wants to be which is similiar to site B from jurrasic park the lost world...

A tropical island where dinos have been manufactured and released and just like the lost world they want to throw in human mercs...

If you look at how Dondi wants the isle to be then literally go listen to John Hammonds memoirs on youtube or watch The Lost world (second JP movie for those unsure).

My point is that they could change everything and anything about all the dino's as they are manufactured by AE presumably in a lab just like Ingen in Jurrasic Park...

Your more likely to find more accurate paleo details in POT because the plot doesnt revolve around humans manufacturing dinos..

[Truly Meaningless]

Originally posted by Codex:

its a game they can make every dino viable no matter what the paleo facts are...... because its a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game...

Here's a flaw with that logic, they said they don't want to add Anky, because it wouldn't be viable, yet they want to add Magyarosaurus, a dwarf sauropod that had no predators on its isolated island to deal with and expect it to compete against the likes of Allosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, T-Rex, Giganotosaurus, and even Ceratosaurus. To add Magyaro, they literally have to change everything to make Magyaro viable in the game, yet Ankylosaurus, something that evolved alongside tyrannosaurids like t-rex, isn't viable enough to get in the game as it is. Something, that evolved armor plating, and a clubbed tail meant for breaking bones, that evolved alongside t-rex, to protect itself against t-rex, is less viable than a sauropod that lived on an isolated island, without large predators like Ceratosaurus and Allosaurus on it, in the devs eyes.

[[GD]FrankBashtard]

OP, if they have anything aquatic within a year from EVRIMA, I'll buy a beer. No joke, I'll sent you the money.

[Bill_Clinton_Supreme]

Originally posted by Codex:

its a game they can make every dino viable no matter what the paleo facts are...... because its a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game...

People need to stop dreaming of this game as some sort of paleo sim and look at what the game actually wants to be which is similiar to site B from jurrasic park the lost world...

A tropical island where dinos have been manufactured and released and just like the lost world they want to throw in human mercs...

If you look at how Dondi wants the isle to be then literally go listen to John Hammonds memoirs on youtube or watch The Lost world (second JP movie for those unsure).

My point is that they could change everything and anything about all the dino's as they are manufactured by AE presumably in a lab just like Ingen in Jurrasic Park...

Your more likely to find more accurate paleo details in POT because the plot doesnt revolve around humans manufacturing dinos..

Hey wait a sec

Isn't jurassic park the same franchise that tried for the time to be completely based in reality?
It is, and its dinosaurs only look that good because they had way more than 100 man hours put into them.

Also this isn't a question of accuracy, never said that, never will.
Spinosaurus's body plan just isn't good, no matter how you slice it
-long bipedal legs that would make a ton of drag in water
-huge tail with no aquatic adaptations

Yet this thing is meant to be swimming in the ocean fighting sharks, even though they very clearly made it a land predator.

this would be like giving t.rex a tail fluke, we never said it could be inaccurate, but at least make sense and not look stupid in doing so.

[Adam__86]

Honestly I would rather have a wide selection of terrestrial dinosaurs with functioning enjoyable combat mechanics before they even attempt with aquatic dinosaurs. As such my interest in the aquatic playstyle is still dead

[SkBonez]

So regarding spino, it seems like they’ve backed off on the “ocean hunter” niche and are instead giving it negative buoyancy so it can run on the bottom of lakes and rivers like an overgrown predatory hippo while also allowing it to be able to hunt on land. Kind of a generalist playstyle,
the best nowhere but capable everywhere. “Oh, there’s rexes or gigas in the jungle? Well I’ll just go hunt in the swamp or lake. Food supply’s dwindling or hordes of giant alligators in the lake? I can still hunt on land if I need to.”

Austro I would like to see get a lesser version of Utahraptor’s pounce where it can’t grapple onto larger prey but can still pin smaller creatures like dryos or humans. That way it can still be a threat to smaller land creatures and have a defense strategy to make it not just a free meal for other raptors or small carnivores that find it on land if it’s moving between water sources or if larger predators pushed it out of the water it was calling home. This would help differentiate it from Beipiaosaurus which seems to be getting some of the ideas listed here such as perching and diving off of rocks and logs. Speaking of which, a pounce could help it have an edge that lets it hunt beipi on land if it catches it off guard instead of getting into a head on fight with those claws while the little guy can just barely out swim austro to let it escape in water if it saw it coming, make a good predator prey relationship here.

With the other dinos being freshwater based I love the idea of Baryonyx being saltwater based. No additions to the idea, I just love it. Same with your sucho idea.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02724634.2020.1767638 So Deinosuchus actually just got an upsize. The one in the game might be too small now, so the idea of a spino rival and even sucho predator works pretty well for it now. As for its infinite growth, there hasn’t been any mention of the idea for months, maybe even the entire last year. Pretty sure they scrapped that idea ever since the general response was “Blech.”

[rustyOkin]

man, there was a time when I really loved these discussions especially when it's about aquatic creatures, I used to take notes and write down all my thoughts for TI

At this point I just hope that we'll see a finished version some day...

[Jelly the Fish]

Originally posted by Rusty:

man, there was a time when I really loved these discussions especially when it's about aquatic creatures, I used to take notes and write down all my thoughts for TI

At this point I just hope that we'll see a finished version some day...

Well we might as well discuss this since the chances of these coming to life are slim