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MajorMinion1 year ago

A couple thoughts around this system and potential other correlating systems that might end up operating together as a sort of "Fight or Flight" engine...

  1. "Fight-to-flee" behaviors, that seek to tactically inhibit a foe's ability to pursue.
    1. Immediate sense is that there's some context of "observed original pursuit potential" versus "observed inhibited pursuit potential"
  2. "Pounce" solo behaviors, supporting a short-term burst of either straight-line (cheetah) behavior or aoe/agility (jackrabbit or snake) that may go unobserved in the pressure
    1. E.g. "I see how fast that thing's moving and account for that speed but get surprised when I move in such a way that causes the pursuer/pursued to engage their burst"
  3. "Herd" vs "HerdING" social behaviors, seeking to manipulate pressure complexity through grouping with like-entities
    1. Same-species
    2. Symbiotic-species?
  4. "Cornering" the animal, either through physical or perceived barriers, resulting in a "fight-to-the-death" versus "fight-to-flee"
    1. (as you'd hinted at earlier, with the "fight-to-flee" idea)
  5. "Beguiling" behaviors, where a would-be pursuer/pursued attempts to subvert another creature's "programming" by behaving in a way counter to expectations
    1. Rushing a predator trying to close distance
      1. Bear rush, or a rabbit running at the predator just to zip around them & take advantage of a perceived low-agility
    2. Posing as weak in order to gain some form of advantage
    3. Lure into disfavorable terrain, "playing dead/damaged", a social ambush, or into an optimal range
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Menector1 year ago

Right.  It's a small step for now, but helps establish some basic mechanisms that can be used for intelligent behaviors later. 

A big concept this works towards is  perceived threat vs. actual threat.  By enabling individuals to move/act based on how much danger they "think" they're in, we can enable players (and creatures) the opportunity to "trick" them.  This makes them intelligent enough to be exploited, and ideally that'll be reflected in their evolution patterns as well. 

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Menector1 year ago

Also, by giving creatures a sort of survival instinct I hope to make encounters much more interesting.  Evolution and behaviors will trend towards survival when the environment becomes dangerous to them. 

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MajorMinion1 year ago (2 edits)

You know... That same datapoint could feed into a sort of long-term "Migration" system too, where creature species in a localized region have some form of tolerance threshold ceiling and/or rate-over-time for threat, where surpassing it results in the dramatic decision for them to attempt to migrate regions. 

Could ultimately work well for them or for the new regions' species, or terribly, or some combination.  Plus it might deprive the OLD region from an important food source or otherwise destabilize it, resulting in a natural cascade migration/extinction/regrowth effect. The idea of an Apex predator feeling so threatened they shift regions only to THEN completely destabilize the region they shifted towards... that sounds like a delightful interaction.

Such a system might indirectly result in Species that feel threatened by humans ending up naturally moving away if human population centers get closer (b/c it would be causing an increase in traffic e.g. "threat" application).

And probably would need to apply a statistic approach to account for outlier scenarios, like where humans decide to just bully the same one/two individual creatures but the rest of the species in the region is left alone?  Plus some kind of "transition period buff" to give the environment time to at least try to stabilize after a migraine event occurs.

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