Gene Improvement: Toxic body, short snout, gills, saber fangs and horns

[Mulan the Cat]

To start with, toxic body:

Toxic body isn't very helpful on the hard/killer islands. It doesn't have any heat/cold ressistence which makes it difficult on the snowy mountains, savannah and jungle. I understand no cold resistence but no heat resistence doesn't make sense. On top of this, the repelling predators isn't the most effective.

So, better stats would be:

+2 (or more) poisonous 

+1 distasteful appearance

+2 heat resistance 

And immunity to bluebirds plus a better job of discouraging (or doing more poisoning to) bearenas and apes. 

 

And now short snout. 

It is one of the worst head gene as it only adds +2 smelling. As it is based on rodents (who you don't want to be bit by) better stats would be:

+2 smelling

+1 strength OR +2 of a higher chance to do bleeding when attacking a predator (slashing or something?). (~30% chance every time they attack successfully. I think this would be useful down the line too.)

 

Gills:

Gived a choice between water body and gills, water body would be a better choice for underwater breathing since it gives swimming. So I think gills should give:

+2 underwater breathing

+1 swimming

 

Saber fangs:

The only problem with saber fangs is that its stats are the same as bearena snout so what if it gave:

+2 strength

+1 distasteful appearence

+2 smelling

+1 of that higher chance to do bleeding to predators

 

Horns:

Well, there is an imbalance here. Megahorns are better than ram horns, antlers and savannah horns and no horns is by far the worst. I understand that megahorns is hard to get but it still should be balanced with the other genes. 

So Megahorns:

+2 strength

- 2-4 flying

Either incompatible with the weaker body genes OR -2 speed if the creature has less than (or equal to) 3 strength and -1 speed if the creature has less than (or equal to) 6 strength. Since you need to be strong to support such a weight. 

And ram horns, savannah horns and antlers:

+1 strength

Either incompatible with the weaker body genes or -2 speed if the creature has less than (or equal to) 2 strength and -1 speed if the creature has less than (or equal to) 4 strength. 

[Sky]

The only thing I don't agree with is less speed for the smaller horns.

[Spacestar TheThundersuncat]

Toxic appearance has worked on bearyenas for me, given they're not hungry. Rogues also have a bar that changes their tactics a bit when full. I guess Toxic Body could smell bad to the smelling ape, or at least be seriously scentless in the jungle. Not much to do with hearing.

If -- then or +chance to suggestions are generally not implemented, but I don't know what the issue is with that. I'm still eternally confused why toxic body has no heat resistance. It seems like such a given. Or actual platypus "smelling" tactics. Short snout has been risen from the grave to be adorable and useless, though. 

[Mulan the Cat]

On 11/10/2019 at 11:27 AM, catsagainstdeterminism said:

Toxic appearance has worked on bearyenas for me, given they're not hungry. Rogues also have a bar that changes their tactics a bit when full. I guess Toxic Body could smell bad to the smelling ape, or at least be seriously scentless in the jungle. Not much to do with hearing.

If -- then or +chance to suggestions are generally not implemented, but I don't know what the issue is with that. I'm still eternally confused why toxic body has no heat resistance. It seems like such a given. Or actual platypus "smelling" tactics. Short snout has been risen from the grave to be adorable and useless, though. 

Hmm, might be a bug then for me but bearenas go for toxic-bodied nichelings before medium bodied for me. I'll test it later. Rouges don't really need to be effected by toxic body but'd it be useful if they were. I suppose that making toxic body more poisonous would work too, as long as it effected bluebirds.

 

3 hours ago, Skysplash8 said:

The only thing I don't agree with is less speed for the smaller horns.

I have that just to balance out the genes a bit. Since otherwise no-horns would be the worst when in real life, very few animals actually have horns. Of those that do, they all have some way to support the horns. 

The problem with my method is that a double clawed creature would have enough strength to have horns even though the claws wouldn't help support the horns. But, I don't want to limit diversity of the nichlings by saying that creatures with this can't have horns.  I also don't want to limit flying with the smaller horns. 

A better solution might be to give a bonus to no-horns but it'd have to make sense and be balanced. For instance, +1 speed, swimming and flying would be over powered.  

So the smaller horns could also be given requirments to use their strength. Like ram horns could be used only when 'ramming' or antlers could only be used against other nichelings but that would take a lot of work to implement and would be annoying.  

One idea is to give some horn genes different seasons like deer have in real life. That's been suggested before, I'll see if I can find the link. But that wouldn't work for all the horn genes. 

Nor do I want to just give the genes always +1 strength and -1 speed because that would make hunting rabbits all that much harder and fighters all that much slower. 

And yet another option is just to get rid of no-horns and replace it with manes, crests, ear tufts, and so on.