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Super detailed idea to make an engaging Animal Husbandry system
Kionashi
Member
While looking at my ageless mount thread (shameless plug) I started to think on how the animal husbandry system could be, so I present to you guys my super detailed idea so you guys can tear it a part 
First off, taming is not animal husbandry, you will not catch monsters pokemon style in the wilds, but you might need to buy a few animals from the tamers to start working.
All animals in Verra will have a biological sex (male, female), base stats (life, attack, movement speed, stamina carrying capacity, lifespan and tenderness) and potential stats (the same as the base stats but higher numbers).
When breeding 2 animals from the same race you only need to put them in the breeding station and feed them both with an special food to make them breed. the process might take a while and the quantity of the offspring will vary depending on the race. The stats of the offspring will be randomized but also affected by the stats of their parents. so if the father has 20 base speed and the mother has 40 base speed, the child can't have less than 20 base speed.
Now you just breed 2 bears and now have 4 cubs , and you want to sell them for the highest price so you must train them so they can raise their base stats to the level of their potential and there are several paths you can take.
You want to make a battle pet?, you must focus on increasing their life and attack, so you must bring the animal to an arena, and since you are their trainer the animal will fight YOU and you can fight the animal in the arena until its hp is reduced to 1 when that happens the battle will be automatically over and the animal will be out of commission for a while, you must bring it to a stable so they can heal. When they are recovered their life and attack stats will increase a little bit (the max is determinated by their potential) once they are totally healed you can bring them to the arena again.
Now you want to make a fast mount?, you must focus on both stamina and speed, to train those traits in your animal you simply equip it with a training set and mount it, when a mount with a training set runs out of stamina (I suppose it works like the stamina bar in Dark Souls that runs out when you run at full speed and recovers gradually after a few seconds) when it recovers it will lose part of their max stamina (so it will recover 90% instead of 100% of the bar) and then you can run again to deplete the bar again, then the bar will recover to 80% instead of 90%. When the stamina bar only recovers to 10% it will reach the limit and the animal wont be able to keep running so you must send it to the stable so it recovers, when recovered it will have increased speed and stamina. The fun part is that, in this case, in order to train it you must ride it, so you can take it as an opportunity to go visit a neighbor node to buy a few cheaper items or simply explore the world. In case yo don'tn wanna go too far from your node, you can also place an (instanced?) "race circuit" in your freehold were you can run in a circuit to train speed without leaving your freehold.
Now you want to make the strongest mule that can carry all your stuff? The process is similar to the speed training but instead of using a training set, you will need a training caravan, is basically an empty caravan that needs to be pulled by your mount to train their carrying capacity, the catch is that the longer the mount pulls the caravan it will start losing it's maximum stamina, when it reach 10% it wont be able to move the caravan so you must remove it and go back to the sable so it can recover (and increase its carrying capacity and max stamina ) same as with the speed training you can use the training caravan to explore the world or simply run in the race circuit if you don't wanna get too far of your node.
Now you know how to make stronger animals, but there is a catch, a strong animal develops strong muscles and those are pretty hard to eat, so it's meat wont be any good, for each stat that reach it's potential you will lose tenderness in the meat. so If you wanna breed animals that can be used for meat when their lifespan is near over, you can't really max them in all fields.
Now is there a way to "train tenderness"? sure, you can get average meat if you send it to the butcher right away without any training but if you want high level meat, you must feed them in the stable.
The stable is a place were the animals you are raising recover from training, but in order for them to recover you must feed them some kind of food, there is stamina food, health food and there is also food to raise tenderness but the tenderness food comes in different flavors and different affinities, depending on what you want the final meat to be. While tenderness is an objective measurement of quality of the meat, the affinity is an special effect that the meat will produce when used as ingredient during cooking. So there is food that will give the meat "fire resistance" and food that will give "crit chance" effect to the meat, so when used in cooking the meat will add that stat by default.
Finally there is the lifespan, this is actually a reflection of the quality of the raising process, if you take care of your animals during training they will have the max lifespan, but if during combat training you force the combat to automatically ends because the creature had 1 hp, or when in speed training you let the stamina bar deplete totally until the mount can no longer run/push the caravan it will take a toll on the lifespan of the finished product.
And that's pretty much it...if we focus the animal husbandry system not only in the breeding aspect but in the raising of the offspring aspect we can have constant engaging gameplay to keep people busy but without forcing them to be chained to a GUI looking bars go up for hours
First off, taming is not animal husbandry, you will not catch monsters pokemon style in the wilds, but you might need to buy a few animals from the tamers to start working.
All animals in Verra will have a biological sex (male, female), base stats (life, attack, movement speed, stamina carrying capacity, lifespan and tenderness) and potential stats (the same as the base stats but higher numbers).
When breeding 2 animals from the same race you only need to put them in the breeding station and feed them both with an special food to make them breed. the process might take a while and the quantity of the offspring will vary depending on the race. The stats of the offspring will be randomized but also affected by the stats of their parents. so if the father has 20 base speed and the mother has 40 base speed, the child can't have less than 20 base speed.
Now you just breed 2 bears and now have 4 cubs , and you want to sell them for the highest price so you must train them so they can raise their base stats to the level of their potential and there are several paths you can take.
You want to make a battle pet?, you must focus on increasing their life and attack, so you must bring the animal to an arena, and since you are their trainer the animal will fight YOU and you can fight the animal in the arena until its hp is reduced to 1 when that happens the battle will be automatically over and the animal will be out of commission for a while, you must bring it to a stable so they can heal. When they are recovered their life and attack stats will increase a little bit (the max is determinated by their potential) once they are totally healed you can bring them to the arena again.
Now you want to make a fast mount?, you must focus on both stamina and speed, to train those traits in your animal you simply equip it with a training set and mount it, when a mount with a training set runs out of stamina (I suppose it works like the stamina bar in Dark Souls that runs out when you run at full speed and recovers gradually after a few seconds) when it recovers it will lose part of their max stamina (so it will recover 90% instead of 100% of the bar) and then you can run again to deplete the bar again, then the bar will recover to 80% instead of 90%. When the stamina bar only recovers to 10% it will reach the limit and the animal wont be able to keep running so you must send it to the stable so it recovers, when recovered it will have increased speed and stamina. The fun part is that, in this case, in order to train it you must ride it, so you can take it as an opportunity to go visit a neighbor node to buy a few cheaper items or simply explore the world. In case yo don'tn wanna go too far from your node, you can also place an (instanced?) "race circuit" in your freehold were you can run in a circuit to train speed without leaving your freehold.
Now you want to make the strongest mule that can carry all your stuff? The process is similar to the speed training but instead of using a training set, you will need a training caravan, is basically an empty caravan that needs to be pulled by your mount to train their carrying capacity, the catch is that the longer the mount pulls the caravan it will start losing it's maximum stamina, when it reach 10% it wont be able to move the caravan so you must remove it and go back to the sable so it can recover (and increase its carrying capacity and max stamina ) same as with the speed training you can use the training caravan to explore the world or simply run in the race circuit if you don't wanna get too far of your node.
Now you know how to make stronger animals, but there is a catch, a strong animal develops strong muscles and those are pretty hard to eat, so it's meat wont be any good, for each stat that reach it's potential you will lose tenderness in the meat. so If you wanna breed animals that can be used for meat when their lifespan is near over, you can't really max them in all fields.
Now is there a way to "train tenderness"? sure, you can get average meat if you send it to the butcher right away without any training but if you want high level meat, you must feed them in the stable.
The stable is a place were the animals you are raising recover from training, but in order for them to recover you must feed them some kind of food, there is stamina food, health food and there is also food to raise tenderness but the tenderness food comes in different flavors and different affinities, depending on what you want the final meat to be. While tenderness is an objective measurement of quality of the meat, the affinity is an special effect that the meat will produce when used as ingredient during cooking. So there is food that will give the meat "fire resistance" and food that will give "crit chance" effect to the meat, so when used in cooking the meat will add that stat by default.
Finally there is the lifespan, this is actually a reflection of the quality of the raising process, if you take care of your animals during training they will have the max lifespan, but if during combat training you force the combat to automatically ends because the creature had 1 hp, or when in speed training you let the stamina bar deplete totally until the mount can no longer run/push the caravan it will take a toll on the lifespan of the finished product.
And that's pretty much it...if we focus the animal husbandry system not only in the breeding aspect but in the raising of the offspring aspect we can have constant engaging gameplay to keep people busy but without forcing them to be chained to a GUI looking bars go up for hours
6
Comments
As for the whole train for tenderness and send to butcher thing, I mean, if we want to get real, just send the babies to the butcher. Babies taste awesome. Veal, lamb, chicken, there's a reason people eat babies.
My guess is animal husbandry is not going to do the whole livestock for meat though. But we'll see I guess.
Hey Im willing to compromise with the livestock for meat thing if we get everything else lol
I'm excited just reading your text.
As for the training system, I think it's a pretty interesting idea!
My concern then is the genetic component of the ability from parent to child.
If the child to be born does not fall below the ability of the lower potential side of the two parents, then I think the potential ability will continue to increase with each successive generation of livestock.
In other words, the randomness caused by livestock farming will diminish and the ability of the mount will depend solely on training.
I love horse racing (as a sport, not betting
The interesting thing about generational changes in horse racing is that you don't necessarily get great horses from great parents, and you don't necessarily get bad horses from bad parents!!!
Of course, a combination of great horses is more likely to produce a horse with high ability, so a system in which the parents' ability influences the offspring makes a lot of sense, but I think that the depth of animal husbandry can be embodied if you allow for the possibility of a child being born that is inferior to either of the parents.👍
But as far as I know it doesn't have any English version available.
I hope it turns out to be very enjoyable for you.
animal husbandry is more of a processing/crafting branch of the artisan tree, but fear not, Taming is one of the gathering professions so you can capture and tame wild animals