I recently started looking into Ashes of Creation, and I have to say I'm excited about it. I know it has only finished up Alpha 1 for the most part recently, and not much information on trade skills has been released, but I'm mostly excited about the animal husbandry branch. I have some hopes and ideas I would like to express. Some of these ideas may be well beyond the scope of what's possible, and some of them may have been expressed before, but if they have, I haven't been able to find them, so I am going to express them here.
Section 1 Stats and stat growth
First off, we know that the base stats of tamed creatures are speed, health, armor, and energy. At least for right now. What I would like to see here are a few different ways to increase these stats in the long run. What I would like to see as a base is breeding. My idea is that you would get the average of the parents' stats +/- a small fraction based on your skills to influence the base stats.
For example, let us take a cow and assign stats of 10 across the board. Now let's have another cow with stats that have stats of 15 across the board as well. Breeding them together would produce a cow with base stats of 12.5. Now let's assume that there are four tiers of skill growth that directly affect your breeding, and let's name them apprentice, journeyman, professional, and master.
So let's assume this is an apprentice breeding this cow. Its base stats are 12.5, but as this is an apprentice's project, it may add or subtract 1.25 from its stats. As a journeyman, it may change to a range of +1.5 to -1, and a professional may have a range of +1.75 to -.75, while a master has a range of +2 to -.5.
This range could start decreasing as well as you get closer to the max birth stats of your breeding target, be it a pet, mount, or livestock. On top of the base breeding, you could add in special nutrients made via alchemy, cooking, and farming to give you a boost to a stat while you are breeding or removing at least part of the negative part of the curve. You could also use similar foods to increase stats after birth, but I would have a hard cap on what the base stats could be, like hidden IVs in pokemon. Let's use the baby cow we made earlier, and let's assume that it only has the base stats it was born with, without any adjustment from the breeder. So we have a base stat setup of 12.5. The breeder finds an alchemist that can brew a potion that can increase the speed by +1% to 10%, but that particular cow can only ever have one potion in its lifetime.
I would like to have the breeding affect the base stats and not the earned stats that you may gain as they level up and have the earned stats based on the base stats of the creature. As an example, let's take two Tigore's, one with base stats of 10, one that has been bred up over generations to have base stats of 20
Now let's say that the leveling process for this species adds five stats per level to all plus 10% of your base stats. After 50 levels, we would have the one that's a fresh catch with stats at 304 vs. the bred one having stats of 363. It would take many generations to get to that point, but it provides a slow creep of growth and keeps older breeds viable as mounts and pets as well as possible future breeding stock.
Section 2 Traits
For traits that a creature can contain, I would like to see a dominant/recessive gene system. Let's say our cow has a dominant trait, and we breed them with a cow without that trait. We would have a 50% chance of that trait being passed down, and With both parents having the trait as dominant, it would be 100%. For recessive genes, it would be 25%/50%, respectively.
I would also like to see a system where each fresh catch could have any of the possible traits that that species has naturally, both positive and negative, allowing the breeder to attempt to emphasize traits they want to keep and try to breed out traits that they consider less desirable. I would also like to see a mutation chance naturally turning a recessive trait into a dominant if it has been reinforced while breeding. Maybe 5%. This would go for all traits, both positive and negative.
Tying back into the other trade skills, I would like to see almost a forced evolution system. As an example, let's say an alchemist finds or makes a recipe that acts as a fertilizer, turning some wheat seeds into iron wheat seeds. Now the iron wheat would no longer be usable in normal recipes, like flour, but if fed to a cow, it would have a chance of giving the cow the iron horn trait and/or the iron flesh trait at level 1. after multiple generations, you could develop the iron flesh trait and the iron horn trait to level 5 and have the cow evolve into a gorgon.
Now that you have a gorgon, you could have a few options. One is to tame it as a pet, or slaughter it and feed it to a carnivore pet to attempt to pass down the iron flesh/iron horn traits to another creature, say a lizard of some sort. Or you could breed a horse with the iron flesh trait or have the iron horn trait mutate into an iron hooves trait, allowing for new skin and a new augment that may provide better traction or faster movement in certain terrain.
I would like to see a number of trait slots available growing as you become proficient. An apprentice could have access to 5 traits, while a master could have access to as many as 20, depending on the breed.
Section 3 Skills
To begin with, I would like to see a familiarity mechanic or skill that as you breed and practice with a species, you become more familiar with that species, allowing for more modifications as you work on that species. As an example, you have gotten to journeyman rank by breeding cows, and you have maxed out your familiarity with them. You then start breeding donkeys who are in the same tier. You may get a bonus to the familiarity with donkeys since there are a number of similarities between the breeds, but you would still have to practice on donkeys to get your skills up to the same level that you have with cows.
I would actually like to see a familiarity mechanic for all the trade skills, with different effects. As an example, for taming, you might start seeing some kind of alert that a target has better stats than normal if you have maxed out your familiarity with that breed. Something like seeing a number of colored stars beside the target's name letting you know that the horse you are attempting to catch is either sub-par or a prime example of its breed. It would provide an interesting synergy between the trade skill itself and what you are focused on inside that trade skill.
Another example with farming could be you are so familiar with wheat while farming that you can harvest higher quality wheat, influencing products further down the road of the crafting road. This could also lead to an interesting tracking system where you could get ideas for other recipes/breeds while working on a parent or sibling breed. To use a previous example, you may find a hint about breeding gorgons from cows while working on your cows. Or a combination of having your familiarity at a certain level and reading a book in one of the libraries. Another example may be smelting a new kind of alloy as a refiner.
These are a few of my ideas. As I said before, I have no idea how viable they would be from a mechanics stand point or even from a fun stand point, though I know I would enjoy it.
