Nasty little road-faring nippers.

[Galdun]

Wouldn't it be cool if some nasty little road-faring nippers(small aggressive animals) couldn't attack a player/character directly if he/she were mounted?  You know, hard code some smaller critters to attack the mount because they're unable to get to the somewhat elevated rider!  Sounds easy enough to do.  Hell, maybe it already exist.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: 'More kank death-traps, please.'

Not crucial but it could provide for some excellent 'grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it' survival stories around ye ole' tavern.

[Spud]

IMO, it wouldn't do anything for the game. I mean sure, IC you want to try and save your kank, but OOC you know if it's a small animal chances are your kank will tear it to pieces. Kanks aren't bad at standing up for themselves, most noob chars wouldn't be able to kill one if they attacked for some reason. So I don't think it would work quite the way you explain it, unless they were something that could actually do some harm to your mount.

[Rhyden]

Agreed with Spud.

[Delirium]

IMO, it wouldn't do anything for the game. I mean sure, IC you want to try and save your kank, but OOC you know if it's a small animal chances are your kank will tear it to pieces.

Packs. Three or four little beasties that have a taste for kank/inix/erdlu.

[wizturbo]

I'd love to see big creatures that think kanks/erdlu are TASTY and would go after them before they'd go after humans even.  I think Inix and War Beetles however, might be a less tasty looking target, because they're bigger and far more formitable combatants.

I like the concept of losing your mount, it makes me joyful inside.  It makes the desert dangerous without code that makes you walk in circles for hours.  If you want to prevent losing your mount, get one that's a tough bastard, rather then a pack animal.

[deinol]

I like the idea of a prioritized eating list. It can add to a lot of different things. Those NPC Thri-kreen should go after elves first in a group, because we all know those taste the best. And if they really want to go further, they can have both a priority list and a no aggro list (which I think they already have), Such that some critters just may not bother attacking something they wouldn't eat.

[EvilRoeSlade]

And I like the original idea.  If there's ten of them and they all have sharp teeth, or just one that possesses poison capable of paralyzing a kank, then they would be a credible threat.

[Ghost]

I'd love to see big creatures that think kanks/erdlu are TASTY and would go after them before they'd go after humans even.

There is at least one big critter that loves kanks more than the riders.

[Savak]

There is or was, in fact, a script to prioritize an NPC's list of potential victims.  I'm actually not sure if it is still in use, though I'll check when I get home.  The way I believe it was originally written would pose some efficiency/resource problems, however, so in that form it has relatively limited use.  We do have some pretty nice monitoring functions (thanks to Xygax) for such scripts now, though; I'll check around and see if we can perhaps rewrite or more widely utilize this sucker.

-Savak

[fearwig]

And I like the original idea.  If there's ten of them and they all have sharp teeth, or just one that possesses poison capable of paralyzing a kank, then they would be a credible threat.

True enough. And, best yet--even if the beasties attack the kank stupidly to die (as many would) they'd have a good chance of throwing the rider. I say it's a good idea, and it'll mix up the travelling world all that much more.

People are really, hopelessly opposed to small changes for the sake of intrigue and variety. Not all people--but enough to make themselves known. There's nothing at all wrong with this idea that would make opposing it logical, is there? Aside from "we don't need it!", whatever that really means.


Animals aren't always the best judge of targets, etiher--a snake might attack a horse, only to get trampled. If it's poisonous, sure, it might kill the horse--but even if it's not, it'll sometimes attack it. And not for food. Even if it only breaks up the tedium of the ride, and causes your kank to tear up some stupid little nuisance, you've added something good to the game. The best way to handle it would be by using the size code, though, if there is one in place with this mud--anything say, half the height of a kank or below would be forced to attack your kank first in combat.

I'd also like to see more 'critters', as opposed to 'beasties'. The food chain as it is relies on so many virtual animals that a character can't interact with--way more huge scary predators and scavengers than lower-level organisms, small mammals, birds or reptiles and the like. I get the impression that there used to be more real critters, for whatever reason. Were we that afraid of 'metahunting' that they got rid of them? I'm not talking about overpopulating the desert, but we've got a pretty bizarre balance of ecology here. Predators have to predate, and not just on crazy dehydrated newbies.

[Savak]

Don't be misled by the numbers of NPC's versus VNPC's.  There is certainly a multitude of smaller critters flitting about the wastes (and the cities), though it seems a little unecessary to hard-code a few hundred thousand kank-flies and everything else that is really out there, then deal with the inevitable mounds of miniature carcasses while people attempt to powergame their kombat skillz on 'em.

Instead we've focused on things that are either exciting (often in a potentially deadly sort of way, but hey) or useful (usually for raw materials), and have created a few of the smaller critters as roleplay prop -objects- (rather than NPC's) to leave them more manipulable.  We're always open to expanding or varying that, but it's just impractical to create real NPC's for everything.

Lastly, the smaller, less dangerous critters we -do- have tend to vanish relatively quickly due to being ignored, killed by PC's or other NPC's, and/or lost due to zone irregularities and not noticed as "gone" for extended periods.

-Savak

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Savak, this is excellent news. Might I pose something to you? Flags are a great way to add function to NPCs and objects. An NPC cloud of kankflies, with the auto-sneak flag, and a newflag called swarm, would be great, and given a script that made them only swarm around mounts and carcasses, realistic.

How the swarm flag would work: Simply put, it gives a message upon attack that says, "You swat one of the countless insects in a cloud of kankflies", or, if an option is given for a 50/50 chance of miss, "You swat at the cloud of kankflies but fail to hit any of them".

In short, the NPC would be non-attackable, would do no damage to PCs, and could be outfitted with all sorta cool emotes and such.