So, as we all know, you can capture pets in game right? But something ive noticed is that they are rather... Plain. In fact I rarely ever actually fight with my pets as they either die and theyre capture pod falls in a pit of lava, or you'll leave thm behind and never find them again! So here are a few suggestions on possible pets, pet mechanics, improved AI, and anything else that would improve how pets work. Suggestions: 1. A functioning Pet Slot. Basically, this is a simple one for the possible use, and function of the pet slot. Lets assume you've caught one or two monsters, yes? now, instead of throwing out the pod, you can put it in the slot, and then you can click lets say.. 1, on your keyboard and the first pet will be summoned in front of you! Then when it dies, instead of dropping as a pod, it will return to its slot, (Where the pod would be.) And will be put on a timer of around a minute. Once that minute is up, you may click 1 again to summon your tamed monster again. And the other slot would function the same but would use the number 2. 2. Trainable Pets. Now this one, im unsure if is programmed into StarBound or not, but a Leveling System would be a nice touch! It would show up below your Status Bars (In the top left.) as the pets own little one. It would have Health, as usual, and instead of energy, an experience bar! You would fill this bar up slowly, by pitting the pet against monsters, feeding it, and perhaps, interacting with it? Of course, there is the issue of overpowered Creatures, So it would work like this: Alpha Sector: Threat level 1: Pet can be trained up to Level 1 (The default, so pets tamed from this sector will start at Level 1, and so, should you have early access to Capture Pods before getting to Beta, your pets cannot level up.) Beta Sector: Threat level 2: Pet can be trained up to Level 2, and any creatures caught in this sector will start at Level 2. Gamma Sector: Threat level 3: Pet can be trained up to Level 3, and any creatures caught in this sector will start at Level 3. Delta Sector: Threat level 4: Pet can be trained up to Level 4, and any creatures caught in this sector will start at Level 4. X Sector: Threat level 5: Pet can be trained up to Level 5, and any creatures caught in this sector will start at Level 5. X Sector: Threat level 6: Pet can be trained up to Level 6, and any creatures caught in this sector will start at Level 6. X Sector: Threat level 7: Pet can be trained up to Level 7, and any creatures caught in this sector will start at Level 7. X Sector: Threat level 8: Pet can be trained up to Level 8, and any creatures caught in this sector will start at Level 8. X Sector: Threat level 9: Pet can be trained up to Level 9, and any creatures caught in this sector will start at Level 9. X Sector: Threat level 10: Pet can be trained up to Level 10, and any creatures caught in this sector will start at Level 10. "Wall of text Over Phew" 3. Environmentally influenced Creatures. Now, this is, of course, a matter of Programming, so im unsure if this is something difficult or simple to code. Imagine if, depending on which Planet Type you go to, different colors of Creatures will be affected by what the planet is? Say, you land on an Ice planet, you'll find creatures that are White, shades of blue, browns and grays? You'd be given the feeling that they're those colours because they evolved to camouflage to it? And on a dessert Planet, you'd find Brown, Orange, Black, Yellow and even Red? Of course, certain planets such as Tentacle would probably have little to no need for colour adjustments and would keep the default random colours. 4. Pre-generated Pets! In addition to the random ones, perhaps there could be findable pets that would work similarly to the ones we have now? It would work somewhat like this: You find an egg in a chest, you bring it to your ship, put it in a craftable incubator, where after, an hour perhaps, the egg will hatch, and in the Incubator, will allow you to collect the new pet as a Pod! I again, dont know if such a "Incubator" is hard to program, so an alternate way of this would be that the findable egg also functions as its "Pod." (Though the first way would be more... Immersive! Possible Pets: Dragons, Griffins, Pheonixes, and Other Mythological Creatures, Robots, Androids (You'd find these in the Labs, theyre "Egg" Would be either an instruction Manual or as a Box full of its parts.) StarBound Creatures (Those Fly Things in sewers, Poptops, the Po.) Lizards, Birds, and other Real-Life animals. (And yes, I know Earth is gone in StarBound, so they could be found as DNA that was brought into space before it was destroyed.) ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ And those are my Current Ideas! Do you like any of them? If you'd like to critique these ideas, please comment on what you think!
