BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => Development => Feature Requests => Topic started by: Eldargard on July 21, 2014, 12:13:12 PM
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*Title*
Hunting
*Summary*
Add a variety of elements into the game to allow nobles to hunt for sport
*Details*
Characters can gain the ability to hunt various animals using various methods and weapons.
Base Option:
Add a hunting skill. All nobles are assumed to have horses, dogs and hawks/falcons to hunt with. Add a "Hunt.." option to the actions page that leads to a hunt sub page. On the hunt sub page you can chose what animal to hunt (Stag, Deer, Bear, Boar, Wolf, Fowl, Rabbit/Hare, Fox or Any), what method of hunt to perform (Falcon or Hawk, Bow and Stable, Dog and Force) and the weapon of choice. Depending on the game selected, only certain hunting methods wil be available. Depending on the method of hunt selected, only certain weapons are available The hunt the commences taking XX hours. A report is then generated describing the hunt and its result.
Hunting Weapons:
Spear
Used in Dog and Force hunts with the jousting skill.
Sword
Used in Dog and Force hunts with the swordsmanship skill.
Bow
Used in Bow and Stable hunts with the archery skill.
Hunting Methods:
By Dog and Force
This is considered an honorable and prestigious method of hunting. Prey found then chased to exhaustion, then cornered (done with the hunting skill). The hunter then kills the prey with sword or spear (done with swordsmanship or jousting). This method of hunting is challenging and dangerous and can result in being wounded badly. You might increase your hunting, swordsmanship or jousting skill. H/P might be gained. Only Stag, Deer, Bear, Boar, Wolf and Fox can be hunted in this manner.
By Falcon or Hawk
This is considered an honorable and prestigious method of hunting. The bird is released into the air. Prey is then flushed by the noble and/or dogs for the bird to attack. Success in entirely based on hunting skill. This hunting is generally safe but quite challenging. There is a chance the Hawk/Falcon will not or can not return. Only Fowl, Rabbit/Hare and Fox can be hunted in this manner.
By Bow and Stable
This is not considered an honorable and prestigious method of hunting though it is also not frowned upon either. Thus is done by flushing game towards hunters waiting with bow and arrow (done with hunting skill). the hunter than shoots the game (done with archery). Best done with a slow and controlled herding of prey. Generally safe method of hunting with high success rate. Hunting or archery skill might increase. Only Stag, Deer, Bear, Boar, Wolf Fowl and Fox can be hunted in this manner.
Game Types:
Stag
The most prestigious kind of game. Can only be hunted by Dog and Force or by Bow and Sable. Very difficult to succeed.
Deer
Fairly prestigious game. Hunter is ok with any dear though would be delighted to find a stag. Higher chances of overall success but lower chance of getting a stag. Can only be hunted by Dog and Force or by Bow and Sable.
Bear
Prestigious kind of game. Can only be hunted by Dog and Force or by Bow and Sable.
Boar
Prestigious kind of game. Can only be hunted by Dog and Force or by Bow and Sable.
Wolf Killed by Sword or Spear
Not very prestigious. Can only be hunted by Dog and Force or by Bow and Sable.
Fowl (Goose, Ducks, Pheasant, Partridge or Grouse)
Not very prestigious. Can only be hunted by Falcon or Hawk or by Bow and Sable.
Rabbit/Hare
Not very prestigious. Can only be hunted by Falcon or Hawk or by Bow and Sable.
Fox
Not very prestigious. Can be hunted by any means.
Any
The hunter is satisfied to catch any kind of game their chosen method allows. Highest chance of success though high prestige game is less likely to be caught than if you hunted for that game specifically.
Advanced Options:
Most of the Base option applies with the following changes/additions:
* By default, only Dog and Force and Bow and Sable options are available
* By default, the noble has no dogs or falcons to aid in the hunt
* Knights can build Kennels on their estate to gain access to dogs
* Dogs can be purchased via the kennels
* Dogs increase the chance of a successful hunt regardless of the kind of hunt
* Dogs can be lost/killed during a hunt, depending on the method of hunt and kind of game
* Knights can construct Mews on their estate to gain access to hawks/falcons
* Hawks/Falcons can be bought via the mews
* Hawks have a numerical rating like captains that add to hunting skill
* Hawks can be named or have randomly generated names
* Hawks can be lost during a hunt
* Knights can build Stables on their estates
* Once built, knights are assumed to have room for horses bred for hunting and gain a bonus to hunts
* Characters can hire a Falconer, Master of Hounds and/or Master of Horses to further add benefit to the hunt
* These people are assumed to train and are for their respective animals
* This extra care/training means higher quality animals and thus the bonus
* An option in which several player controlled nobles can hunt together.
* Every hunt is assumed to consist of the player character leading a group of minor nobility to hunt together though the pc noble is always the one to make the kill.
*Benefits*
Nobles where well known for hunting in the middle ages and hunting was, indeed, considered a noble pastime. This brings that aspect of nobility into the game. Further, this provides knights with something to do during peaceful times. It also gives new knights a way of earning H/P and increase skills.
*Possible Downsides or Exploits*
Players use hunting to buff up skills? Well, this is really a benefit to me - to a certain extent at least. I also think hat making it progressively more difficult to increase a given skill as its level increases should keep abuse from happening.
Players who hunt to gain too much H/P? Nobles could gain a great deal of honor and prestige through hunting. The pastime was highly regarded as where successful hunters. At the same time, care should be taken to ensure that a character constantly fighting in battles gains H/P more quickly that a character that constantly hunts.
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I like the idea overall, but I'm afraid it might be too easy to abuse by ceaselessly spam-hunting to farm H/P.
Maybe hunting should yield H/P only during a special event akin to tournaments?
There's no problem at all with hunting increasing skills though, given you'll have to spend at least as much money/time as you do in training grounds.
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I like the idea overall, but I'm afraid it might be too easy to abuse by ceaselessly spam-hunting to farm H/P.
Maybe hunting should yield H/P only during a special event akin to tournaments?
There's no problem at all with hunting increasing skills though, given you'll have to spend at least as much money/time as you do in training grounds.
Yes, require it to be a Hunting Party or whatever. Require a building Hunting Lodge to run them and a gold cost to perform them. Make them a social event just like tournaments.
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You could add in a fail rate depending on how few people join the hunting party, or add a loss of honor or prestige of one fails too many consecutive hunts. Also, this does seem like a cool idea.
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I love the idea of having multiple PC nobles getting together to hunt but thought the solo hunt (your PC noble with assorted NPC minor nobles) would be the easiest first step. I may very well be wrong though...
As far as mining H/P goes, I would rather not curb it excessively. A common complaint is that it can take forever for new characters to gain enough H/P to do cool things - especially in times of peace. Having another avenue of garnering some H/P would be good in my opinion. I still think that the odds need to be set so that battle is clearly the best means of H/P gains and would even be fine with a cap set on how much H/P one can gain via hunting. Awarding H/P for group (multiple PC Nobles) hunts and not for solo (only your PC noble) might help in curbing how often a character is awarded H/P.
Regarding the hunting lodge, are you suggesting that the hunting lodge:
* be necessary to form multi-noble hunting parties (my favorite)?
* be necessary to gain H/P n a hunt?
* or both?
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I really like this suggestion as well. Successful hunts could allow a boost to honor. But only rare or dangerous hunts should raise prestige.
Speaking of which, some of these animals ARE dangerous. There should be a chance for people on the hunt to become injured or even die (may King Robert Baratheon rest in peace!) when hunting particularly ferocious prey (including friendly fire which should LOWER honor).
And that is how you keep people from abusing the hunting mechanic just to boost their stats.
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I think it's also worth noting that prestige and honour already have a diminishing returns mechanic built in. It's not hard to make sure that someone with 1 prestige can go to 5 hunts and potentially gain 10 prestige, while someone with 20 can go to 20 hunts and not gain more than 3.
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I think it's also worth noting that prestige and honour already have a diminishing returns mechanic built in. It's not hard to make sure that someone with 1 prestige can go to 5 hunts and potentially gain 10 prestige, while someone with 20 can go to 20 hunts and not gain more than 3.
This was my thought exactly.
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I like the idea of a Hunting Logde being necessary. This would be a building that can only be built in rural regions (or just woodlands). The lord of the region could set up the hunt party much like city lords can set up tournaments. For the purpose of coding, I would view it exactly like a tournament. I am not sure that a gold reward would make sense, though it should still cost something to join. I also do not feel it should be a continent wide event, either private or realmwide. Prestige and honour could be won by all those who participate based on what they catch, but also to the lord, based on who shows up: more value for nobles ranked higher than them (dukes, rulers and council members - who kill something) down to nearly nothing for knights.
There could also simply be some probability that no animals are found causing a loss of prestige to the lord. This probability should be very low initially, but increase exponentially as the animals are being killed. I am not sure how to implement that, perhaps have some standard length of time that it takes for the animal population to recover (it could be random or changing based on all sorts of variables: weather, # of participants in the previous hunt, size of region, type of region, how recently a large army moved through the region, etc.)
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I like the idea of a Hunting Logde being necessary. This would be a building that can only be built in rural regions (or just woodlands). The lord of the region could set up the hunt party much like city lords can set up tournaments. For the purpose of coding, I would view it exactly like a tournament. I am not sure that a gold reward would make sense, though it should still cost something to join. I also do not feel it should be a continent wide event, either private or realmwide.
While some of the code could certainly be reused, because it would most definitely not be a continent-wide event—and thus also not be exclusive; that is, more than one Lord could be running a Hunting Party at one time—there would be significant differences in the code from how tournaments are handled.
However, we have had a plan on the drawing board for a while of making tournaments no longer exclusive, and this would serve as a good trial run for that, too.
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I think small group hunts are a good idea as a kind of mini-tournament. But I think hunting alone is too much of an anti-social activity, and is basically just grinding for stats. If it existed, it would have to be made like the academy where the main restriction is gold rather than time.
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Cool idea. I was thinking if as a reward next to H/P, it could also be rewarded with a limited amount of food (like 5 bushels, more a token reward)? Or alternatively, it could cause a small morale raise for your men (hooray, boar and pheasants!). But overall this sounds like a fun thing!
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Just one tiny nitpick,
There is no archery skill, and its been said there never will be. Use a real weapon, not some savage peasant's tool.
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I'm not so sure about permanent H/P gains, but maybe a kind of 'unique item' that nobles can farm for? "Pelt of the White Boar" or "Golden Stag Antlers" and all that. You can have a Honor or Prestige boost that isn't overpowered, might even integrate into the advy game of barter, and gives people the all-too desired 'achievement/medal/whatever'.
Additional thought: It would be kind of neat if you could 'organize a hunt' like a tournament announcement. Some region owner pays gold depending on how many takers you think there would be, folks join, whoever gets 'the kill' ends up with an item. More prestige for bigger hunts, chance of complete failure, a convenient message group for folks to RP, etc.
My main problem with the feature request is that it doesn't create character interaction. We need more features that bring people together, not stat-grinds that keep people from talking.
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An idea struck me, well two really, the first was depending on the type of region, you can hunt for different types of game. For instance, you won't find the same things in mountain regions that you will in coast, or rivers, or forests, or deserts, ect. Another was not only could you be wounded as has been discussed, but have a rare instance if the hunting party is exceptionally small, that they, depending on the region, could come across while hunting a wolf, the whole pack, and be killed by it, or if hunting in the mountains, you won't have the same ability to fight, so a mountain lion catches you on bad footing and drags you away to you death.
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My main problem with the feature request is that it doesn't create character interaction. We need more features that bring people together, not stat-grinds that keep people from talking.
I agree. the ability for multiple PC nobles to hunt together would be much better than solo hunts. I even suggested it an an optional piece but did not make it a part of the base as I had no idea if it would make things too complicated for the devs. I would prefer for hunts to be available to any and all knights regardless of income, H/P, skills or whatnot but that is just my opinion.
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While some of the code could certainly be reused, because it would most definitely not be a continent-wide event—and thus also not be exclusive; that is, more than one Lord could be running a Hunting Party at one time—there would be significant differences in the code from how tournaments are handled.
However, we have had a plan on the drawing board for a while of making tournaments no longer exclusive, and this would serve as a good trial run for that, too.
The ability to prolong a tournament ought to be considered as well. In continents where population is stretched in a more linear than diffused manner, even if you put the highest delay, many would be too far to attend. Being able to keep the tournament grounds ready for an additional week before the actual tournament takes places, possibly for an added cost, would help boost participation, now that density is lower than what it once was and tournament cancellations are more likely.
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The ability to prolong a tournament ought to be considered as well. In continents where population is stretched in a more linear than diffused manner, even if you put the highest delay, many would be too far to attend. Being able to keep the tournament grounds ready for an additional week before the actual tournament takes places, possibly for an added cost, would help boost participation, now that density is lower than what it once was and tournament cancellations are more likely.
There would need to be some modification that allows you to maintain your unit for longer, though. The current span is already long enough to where you can lose your unit quite easily, even if you pay them beforehand.
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There would need to be some modification that allows you to maintain your unit for longer, though. The current span is already long enough to where you can lose your unit quite easily, even if you pay them beforehand.
Right, that's also something to consider, but even without this it would at least allow for TLs to drop their units and attend if they want to, when far away.
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Perhaps just faster travel. Afterall, it is just a noble and a small honour guard that is traveling, they should be able to travel much faster than the troops.
If this is already the case, just increase the speed.
In any case, the hunts would only be local so would not require the travel times. I would think that hunts should only last for two or at most three days.
Also, I have completely disregarded the single hunt idea. If that is the part that people are interested in and want to develop, then I have lost interest and would not use the feature.
Increasing the food does not make much sense, perhaps a bunch of people are fed for that feast, but they are over eating and are not the lowly peasants.
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One aspect of the original idea I proposed was that this should be something a lowly knight should be able to initiate on his own. Just about every knight and noble enjoyed hunting and were capable of organizing and engaging in a hunt. I would prefer to avoid having hunts becoming as expensive, time consuming and restrictive as tournaments.
All that being said, multiple nobles being able to join a hunt is just plain awesome and I would prefer that over single pc-noble hunts.
Perhaps it can go like this:
1. Any noble holding an estate, region, duchy or nation can announce a hunt.
2. A noble can only announce a hunt in a region his domain.
a. a knight can only announce a hunt in the region his estate is in - his estate is his domain but mechanically it ends up being the region.
b. a lord can only announce a hunt in his region - his region is his domain
c. a duke can announce a hunt in any region within his duchy - his duchy is his domain
d. a leader can announce a hunt in any region in his nation - the nation is his domain
3. When a noble announces a hunt he selects the game of choice, the type of hunt, additions to bring (dogs, falcons, ect...) and nobles to invite.
a. the noble can invite any nobles within his domain when the hunt is started.
b. once announced the hunt will begin in 2 turns
4. Invited nobles receive the invitation and either accept, deny it or ignore it.
a. ignore acts like deny but the response message is something like "Sir X never responded" instead "Sir X declined to join the hunt"
b. when accepting, the noble can chose a weapon, bring dogs, falcons, horses, and all that as they are able and the hunt allows.
5. when the time of the hunt arrives, all nobles that chose to partake in the hunt go hunting.
a. the hunt lasts one turn
b. only nobles who joined the hunt and who are in the hunt domain participate.
c. region type affects how likely a given hunt is to succeed.
d. if the hunt organizer is outside the hunt domain but other joined nobles are present, they hunt without the organizer
e. if no one accepts the hunt, the hunt organizer hunts on their own.
6. estate additions (kennels, mews, stables, etc...) allow knights to bring extras to a hunt or plain participate in certain hunts
a. kennels allow dogs and dogs aid every hunt type.
b. stables allow hunting horses and help every hunt type.
c. mews allow falcons and allow one to join hunts with falcons.
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Hunts should not be possible in Cities, Towns or Strongholds. Animals that are worth hunting usually avoid those areas. So any knight or lord of one of those regions should not be able to host one. I would also say, there is no need for leaders or dukes to host, let the lords host them.
I also don't think that knights should be able to host. It should only be lords.
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I also don't think that knights should be able to host. It should only be lords.
*Benefits*
Nobles where well known for hunting in the middle ages and hunting was, indeed, considered a noble pastime. This brings that aspect of nobility into the game. Further, this provides knights with something to do during peaceful times. It also gives new knights a way of earning H/P and increase skills.
Giving a separate and somewhat exclusive way for the knights to make themselves known is pretty much the rationale behind this request. It's pointless if it's only for Lords.
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Why not just make it simple like tournaments?
But smaller in size? Maybe up to 10-25 people?
Also, keep it short as well like maximum of three days or something.
Allow the host to put prizes up to 3rd place and as for how to decide who is going to be the winner, maybe make it completely random since we don't really have skill for archery?
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Maybe restrict the number of participants in a hunt based on the rank of the person who calls it?
I don't see why a knight couldn't organise a hunt but it should realistically only be big enough for him and up to four friends whereas a baron should be able to organise a hunt big enough for the whole realm to attend.
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A Duke, or a particularly well off Earl maybe could set up one for the whole realm, but if a Knight can only invite 4 nobles, a Baron shouldn't be inviting five times that. It isn't that big a step up. I know Knights with estates larger than some Baronies.
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Pfft.. they're still knights. The Baron has the title!
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A Duke, or a particularly well off Earl maybe could set up one for the whole realm, but if a Knight can only invite 4 nobles, a Baron shouldn't be inviting five times that. It isn't that big a step up. I know Knights with estates larger than some Baronies.
And there are (and historically were) Dukes with larger estates and far more wealth than many of our rulers. A Baron is a Lord no matter their income, and titles matter when talking about hierarchy and appearances far more then wealth. The jump from a vassal knight with regards to their position/rights/privileges to a Lord whom is able to have such as vassals should be reasonably significant. I do agree though that making all Lords able to invite the whole realm leaves a hole at the top of the scale.
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Perhaps make it five nobles for a regular knight, ten nobles for a region lord and the whole realm for a duke - that should give a nice gradiation between them and only in the smallest realms would a duke not have a greater privilege than a region lord does in terms of organising hunts.
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Margraves already have the option to launch a tournament and invite everyone. We don't need to have a hunt option for everyone. It can be nice to have this as a specific option for lower positions - in the same way that some options are reserved for new characters.
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Margraves already have the option to launch a tournament and invite everyone. We don't need to have a hunt option for everyone. It can be nice to have this as a specific option for lower positions - in the same way that some options are reserved for new characters.
It makes little logical sense to forbid high ranking nobility from holding Hunts, especially when the holding of them is supposed to be tied into being prestigious.
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It makes little logical sense to forbid high ranking nobility from holding Hunts, especially when the holding of them is supposed to be tied into being prestigious.
However, given the way landholding works in BattleMaster, it makes perfect sense to restrict Hunts to nobles with estates in regions other than cities, strongholds, and townslands.
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However, given the way landholding works in BattleMaster, it makes perfect sense to restrict Hunts to nobles with estates in regions other than cities, strongholds, and townslands.
Now that I think would be a very interesting way to set it up. Extra points for different hunts for woodland regions VS rurals.
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Release the hounds!
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I would have gone more with varying odds than a simple on/off switch. I have always viewed region types as describing the most prominent features of a region and never even considered that a towns land region was really 100% town or that a woodland region has nothing but trees.
Woodsland - 50% chance of Deer, Boar, Bear, Wolf...
Rural - 25% chance of X, Y, Z, 30% chance of A, B, C
City - 5% chance of ....
Beyond that, if you consider the hunting domains idea I threw out, Dukes and Kings have much greater access to prime hunting grounds that knights and region lords. When the king holds a hunt the whole realm is his playground while Dukes hunt anywhere within their duchy they please. To join such a hunt is a great honor and a memorable event. When a knight or lord hosts a hunt they are restricted to their region (optionally reduce the odds for a knight to reflect his estate size), it is a smaller affair and the chances of finding game can be severely limited if their region does have much hunting ground.