Pets, Pests, and Breeding

[Gimble]

Pests Are Friends Not Food

Hello science team,

I have personally become a pest aficionado and I enjoy the aspect of having a ton of children I can feed nachos to. Regardless the following are possible things to consider adding in the future that are either QoL, new aspects of the game, or both.

Basic Pest QoL

• Allow us to pick up our pests so that we may either put them where we want in our base without the possibility of pathing ruining the experience of our little guys/gals/things doing what we want. This will also allow us to deploy our pests for battle in a more efficient way.
  
• Allow specific cooking recipes to also be fed to our pets that they may like. Nachos are wonderful and all but I am quite sure some of my pests would enjoy a slice of cheese once in a while.
  
• Include ownership of pets, similarly to beds, that forces the pet AI to follow their owner at all times if activated.

New Features

• Add pet armor that allows different abilities depending on the armor being worn and also gives damage reduction to the pets. This will give a buff to our pet friendly folks that love to have an army of lil guys.
  
• Add the ability to breed our pets, possibly with a breeding pen or what I like to call "The Critter Coop". Functionality wise this would work 2 ways. It would allow you to breed domestic pests and it would also allow you to have a percentage chance to breed higher ranking pests.
  
• Add the ability for a cage keychain that you can put a pest into. The way this would work is when the player enters combat, the pest would leave the "cage" and attack the nearest enemy in combat with the player. Upon death of the enemy, the pest would return and heal. If the pest dies in combat, it would heal over a period of time and could not be deployed again until max health.

Love the game, love the community, love my fellow scientists, and of course I love the dev science team. You are doing amazing things with this game and I am looking forward to seeing the advancements/improvements made!

Gimble of the Science Team

[AFK like JFK 619]

I highly agree with this post

[Vuur]

100% agree. Also, why can't we tame other aliens. Might be cool to have a peccary as a guard dog.

[Blaidd]

These are ideas we need to see considered. The "Cage Keychain" suggestion is something that I personally would adore. Being able to auto summon an Exor when aggro'd would be down right amazing.

[Rozez]

So I agree with everything stated in this post I just have many ideas and suggestions that almost NEED to be in this game for our lil Pests pets.

For Breeding, there could be:
Adaptations (Faster, Bigger, More Spiky / More Spikes, New Abilities [For example: Shroom Carbuncles Spore Attack]), 1 % chance for every new pest baby to have an adaptation

Mutations (Main Color, Secondary Color, Spike Color, Eye Color, Type of Spike),
2 % Chance for every new pest baby to have a Mutation

Defects (Slower, Smaller, Less Spikes)
1.5 % chance for every new pest baby to have a Defect

To counter Defects which normally lower damage, speed, or chance to status effect or ability; their could be a new stat: (Gene Splicing or Breeding or Taming) which at lvl 5 could unlock Breeding enhancer, which when placed in a breeding pen with two pests (Which lets say needs 5 Reinforced wood planks, 10 Nails, and 10 Cloth to craft) causes Pests to breed faster, their young hatch faster and Increases the chance of adaptations to 2.5 % and lowers the chance for defects to .5 %. The breeding enhancer would either act as a Soup, Food, or a Bench upgrade for the breeding pen (Also their is a 50 % chance that a baby pest inherits one of their parents traits from each Adaptation, Mutation, and Defect slot) I plan on making my own discussion for specifically Pest Breeding, Artificial Selection, and possibly even the aspect of a Evolve Serum to evolve pests to peccaries.

[moonlocke]

The cage keychain is precious and I would go to extreme lengths to build pet armor.

[Kleo ツ]

OP is with the science team for sure.

Pests Are Friends Not Food.

[Rozez]

I am making a post with like the same name lol I saw this post and thought I posted it on accident. (it's quite big so far but not done) [Ima have to look for a new name now]

[Salios]

I love OP's post but Landon's addition is also a good one. AB has certainly distinguished itself from the regular tree-punching survival craft and I'm hoping they'll lean into pets the way any panicked engineer would rather than away due to many other recent games including them.
I feel as though evolution would be tied in, especially as the carbuncle, pest, pecary, exor, etc.. have notations about being part of an evolutionary path.
Maybe, for the more sadistic players or true scientists (take notes! without notes, you're just committing war crimes!), there could be a way to test new items or inventions on pests, or expand the idea crafting minigame to include home brewed Deathwish coffee and energy drink monstrosities you can then test on - ahem - /feed/ to your lovely pets as a 'treat'. If they turn purple...er... cool! If they explode... maybe just use that in a grenade instead.

[maeharaprojekt]

I like this idea. It would free up my kitchen to roast chashu Peccary, adding slices of it, along with a Six-Minute Ante-verse Egg, to our Ante-verse Wheat ramen.

[Crochwhisle purple]

is this the highly anticipated sex update?

[Gibs420]

I wholeheartedly agree with OP's ideas 👍

[The Jewish Ninja]

Originally posted by Vuur:

100% agree. Also, why can't we tame other aliens. Might be cool to have a peccary as a guard dog.

Peccary dog. Pls. He would be good boy.

[Vetch]

Desperately need the ability to pick up/place, and would be cool to have a "stay" command, but my fantasy is being able to pick up my lil buddy and hurl him with the full power of my maxed out throwing ability, directly into the face of mine enemies. Could also be a great way to determine agro when facing multiple enemies. I just love the idea of walking around with a pack of cuddly lil shurikens that come back to get thrown again.

Honewstly love all the ideas in this thread and it would be REALLY cool to see the addition of a "tamer" skill branch, with things like breeding, pack size, or evolution unlocking or scaling with time spent near/damage done by pets. Though I fully realize that that's a LOT to ask for lol, especially at this stage in development. But who knows!