Short: A brick wall using temporary dirt structures for utility and battlefield control.
I've been working on this for a while, with feedback from Discord friends, but got a little bit overwhelmed by how fast the new suggestions went up. I hope you'll still enjoy it!
Quote
Wild:
Dicynodonts already survived one apocalypse, it's not a surprise to see them thriving in another. These hardy herbivores are found all over the wasteland, surviving the constant attacks with the simple strategy of completely ignoring them. They can always retreat into their burrows if things get dicey, after all.
Domesticated:
While their thick skin prevents traditional tranq methods, I've found that giving them a good whack when they poke their heads out of their burrows will do the trick.
Once tamed, these living bulldozers become an excellent addition to anyones arsenal. While their bites leave something to be desired, their bulk and unparalleled strenght allows them to push through crowds with ease, ensuring that your guiding hand is always where it is needed. A creature of this size burrowing is already impressive, but with a just bit of training they excell at all earthmoving tasks, be it digging tunnels large and stable enough to allow others to pass through, or piling up walls in record time!
Core Abilities:
Tunnel
While the Placerias can burrow, it does so differently from all existing creatures. While it can burrow up walls and through bodies of water, it does so very slowly and at great Oxygen cost, forcing it to surface after a short distance. But if you surface at a valid point (above water, either on flat ground or on a wall with a floor in front) it creates temporary "burrow" structures that work as a shortcut from now on - similar to an s+ tek elevator, if you're familiar, but with a much more limited range. Burrowing on top of an existing burrow uses it as the entrance, allowing you to link several to form larger networks.
Excellent for shortcuts, ambushes, secret exits, and much more.
Simply walk on top of it with your Placerias and it will highlight all connected tunnel exits, look at one while holding spacebar, and you and nearby small-medium tames following it will be teleported there. After a small digging animation, of course.
The burrows decay if not used regularly, as to not fill the world too much. As temporary structures, they do not block spawns.
They are invisible to enemies unless they stand almost on top of them, and if discovered, they can be blown up or have a Purlovia burrowed on top as a nasty surprise to anyone attempting to travel through.
Dirt Wall
With a great effort of stamina and a cooldown, Placeras can throw up a wide dirt wall. The higher its weight stat, the wider the wall. Excellent for blocking up chokepoints. The wall is very resistant to all but the stringest damage, but decays in less than a minute or when leaving render, and leaves behind debris that prevents you from building one in the same place.
Any creatures swarming it will also be thrown behind the wall on creation.
Including a 'turret mode' of sorts where it creates one when damaged or approached.
Resistance to Damage over Time
To complement their wasteland nature and allowing them to stay in combat for longer, their thick hide makes them highly resistant to bleed, fire, posion and lava, and completely immune to all other sources of environmental damage, such as sulfur pools, radiation, molten element or freezing water.
Implacable
While walking, they can push all but the largest of creatures around. Good for not getting stuck, pushing wilds into traps, or disloging Enraged creatures from Supply Drops.
Clay Specialist
While it can harvest wood and mineral resources, it only excels at gathering clay, collecting it whenever it would normally gather sand. Making it an interesting choice for builders.
Temporary Ramps and Bridges
In addition to the Wall, there are smaller temporary structures to choose from. Notably piling up dirt to form a ramp, each use making it a bit taller, or using gathered wood to form a bridge. (UI similar to a zipline. I imagine an animation where a tree appears out of nowhere in front of its snout which it then topples.)
"Thick Skin" buffs
I'm not 100% on this, as it migth be a bit hard to balance. Each time you are attacked you gain a small, stacking defensive buff. The more you have, the faster they decay. Would be great to increase survivability while swarmed.
Using your regular Melee attack drains all Thick Skin points, but gives a short speed and damage buff, to help out your allies in tough spots. The more stacks you had, the greater the buff.
Stats
I'm no game balance expert, so these will be more suggestions than raw numbers.
Health: High to Very High
Stamina: Below Average
Oxygen: Very High
Food: High
Weight: High
Melee Damage: Low to Below Average
Movement Speed: Low when walking, Average when sprinting, but at great Stam cost.
Controls
Main attack (left click): a bite/tusk slashwhen looking forwards, a kick when looking back. Mediocre damage, harvests bushes, rocks and trees.
Secondary attack (right click): Create Wall.
Crouch (C): Create Misc. Structure.
Jump (Spacebar): Tap to create new Burrow. Hold to travel through existing burrows.
Circle Menu (Hold R): Choose Misc. Structure type.
Saddle
(Art incoming!)
Outfitted with rollover bars, spotlights and an erectable canvas canopy to keep the dirt out, this is a true living bulldozer. I imagine the player would lie on their stomach rather than sit, to lower the profile for tunneling.
Taming
To complement their digging nature, they are knocked out through a game of Whack-a-Mole.
When damaged below half health, wilds will burrow until they regenerated. Players can then interact with the burrow to coax them out, starting the taming process. They poke out their head, and in this state, any damage dealt to them will deal torpor instead. After a few seconds, they burrow again and move unseen to a different spot and poke out again, repeated until they are knocked out. Letting them reburrow without taking damage removes a bit of torpor, and letting it do this too often will reset taming and heal it back to full.
Additional Ideas
Stuff I cam up with during brainstorming. May not be the most balanced things, and not vital to the playstyle. These are not serious suggestions, more records.
Using resource nodes as weapons.
A special attack that throws rock nodes, topples trees, explodes lamp posts, etc. Might be fun, but very niche.
Mud Puddle temporary structure
Kicking its back legs repeatedly, the ground and creatures behind the Placerias are covered in mud. Greatly slows attackers, but also gives them some damage resistance.
Wooden Spike temporary structure
created using wood from your inventory. When stepped on, it deals high damage (like 250 + 10% of max health), but is destroyed in the process.
Megaphone Saddle
A megaphone mounted on the saddle provides increased Whistle range. As this is already a creature you want to be mounted on for its full potential, this would help out singleplayer and smaller tribes greatly.
I hope you enjoyed my suggestion, despite the rather scuffed and temporary art. I'll see if I can get some proper animations to you over the weekend.
(Just need to remesh my sculpt into a workaple model, do the UV unwrap, slap some textures on, do the rigging, and take some Ark screenshots to photoshop it into. Maybe even rip some models from the files so it has someone to interact with.)
Suggestion
Moebius137
Short: A brick wall using temporary dirt structures for utility and battlefield control.
I've been working on this for a while, with feedback from Discord friends, but got a little bit overwhelmed by how fast the new suggestions went up. I hope you'll still enjoy it!
Core Abilities:
While the Placerias can burrow, it does so differently from all existing creatures. While it can burrow up walls and through bodies of water, it does so very slowly and at great Oxygen cost, forcing it to surface after a short distance. But if you surface at a valid point (above water, either on flat ground or on a wall with a floor in front) it creates temporary "burrow" structures that work as a shortcut from now on - similar to an s+ tek elevator, if you're familiar, but with a much more limited range. Burrowing on top of an existing burrow uses it as the entrance, allowing you to link several to form larger networks.
Excellent for shortcuts, ambushes, secret exits, and much more.
Simply walk on top of it with your Placerias and it will highlight all connected tunnel exits, look at one while holding spacebar, and you and nearby small-medium tames following it will be teleported there. After a small digging animation, of course.
The burrows decay if not used regularly, as to not fill the world too much. As temporary structures, they do not block spawns.
They are invisible to enemies unless they stand almost on top of them, and if discovered, they can be blown up or have a Purlovia burrowed on top as a nasty surprise to anyone attempting to travel through.
With a great effort of stamina and a cooldown, Placeras can throw up a wide dirt wall. The higher its weight stat, the wider the wall. Excellent for blocking up chokepoints. The wall is very resistant to all but the stringest damage, but decays in less than a minute or when leaving render, and leaves behind debris that prevents you from building one in the same place.
Any creatures swarming it will also be thrown behind the wall on creation.
Including a 'turret mode' of sorts where it creates one when damaged or approached.
To complement their wasteland nature and allowing them to stay in combat for longer, their thick hide makes them highly resistant to bleed, fire, posion and lava, and completely immune to all other sources of environmental damage, such as sulfur pools, radiation, molten element or freezing water.
While walking, they can push all but the largest of creatures around. Good for not getting stuck, pushing wilds into traps, or disloging Enraged creatures from Supply Drops.
While it can harvest wood and mineral resources, it only excels at gathering clay, collecting it whenever it would normally gather sand. Making it an interesting choice for builders.
In addition to the Wall, there are smaller temporary structures to choose from. Notably piling up dirt to form a ramp, each use making it a bit taller, or using gathered wood to form a bridge. (UI similar to a zipline. I imagine an animation where a tree appears out of nowhere in front of its snout which it then topples.)
I'm not 100% on this, as it migth be a bit hard to balance. Each time you are attacked you gain a small, stacking defensive buff. The more you have, the faster they decay. Would be great to increase survivability while swarmed.
Using your regular Melee attack drains all Thick Skin points, but gives a short speed and damage buff, to help out your allies in tough spots. The more stacks you had, the greater the buff.
Stats
I'm no game balance expert, so these will be more suggestions than raw numbers.
Controls
Saddle
(Art incoming!)
Outfitted with rollover bars, spotlights and an erectable canvas canopy to keep the dirt out, this is a true living bulldozer. I imagine the player would lie on their stomach rather than sit, to lower the profile for tunneling.
Taming
To complement their digging nature, they are knocked out through a game of Whack-a-Mole.
When damaged below half health, wilds will burrow until they regenerated. Players can then interact with the burrow to coax them out, starting the taming process. They poke out their head, and in this state, any damage dealt to them will deal torpor instead. After a few seconds, they burrow again and move unseen to a different spot and poke out again, repeated until they are knocked out. Letting them reburrow without taking damage removes a bit of torpor, and letting it do this too often will reset taming and heal it back to full.
Additional Ideas
Stuff I cam up with during brainstorming. May not be the most balanced things, and not vital to the playstyle. These are not serious suggestions, more records.
A special attack that throws rock nodes, topples trees, explodes lamp posts, etc. Might be fun, but very niche.
Kicking its back legs repeatedly, the ground and creatures behind the Placerias are covered in mud. Greatly slows attackers, but also gives them some damage resistance.
created using wood from your inventory. When stepped on, it deals high damage (like 250 + 10% of max health), but is destroyed in the process.
A megaphone mounted on the saddle provides increased Whistle range. As this is already a creature you want to be mounted on for its full potential, this would help out singleplayer and smaller tribes greatly.
I hope you enjoyed my suggestion, despite the rather scuffed and temporary art. I'll see if I can get some proper animations to you over the weekend.
(Just need to remesh my sculpt into a workaple model, do the UV unwrap, slap some textures on, do the rigging, and take some Ark screenshots to photoshop it into. Maybe even rip some models from the files so it has someone to interact with.)
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