[DEVBLOG#199] Vanilla Animals Expanded - Royal Animals breakdown (Patreon)

Hey folks and welcome to another mod development blog! This time we will focus on a mod first teased in May 2020 (It was originally meant to be released then, but things happened and we put it on the backburner).

So now, over two years later, the mod is finally nearing the release. Don't worry, it doesn't have 2 years worth of content in it - we have literally not worked on it for most of the time it spent on the backburner. But now we have. And it's nearing completion.

Royal animals is something we have promised a long time ago, and never quite found the time to deliver. From the very initial notions, what we wanted to do is to introduce some special animals with unique gimmicks that could go alongside the pampered nobles in the Royalty DLC.

This is a great opportunity for us to create something super unique and not entirely realistic - whilst also making the Royalty DLC more attractive by utilising mechanics and code added in it. I hope this selection of animals will make you want to collect them all, as each of them comes with a unique function that’s bound to come in handy.

IMPERIAL ANIMALS ONLY

These animals (animals listed in this mod) can only appear with an Imperial trader. As such, a new type of trader should be added for the Empire that actually deals with these animals.

These animals however should be purchased by Exotic Animal trader as well - just not sold by one.

Let's start breaking down what animals are coming in this mod.

Cranes

Cranes are large and majestic birds. They are slow, as in, they don’t move very fast.

If you have at least 5 cranes under your control, any pawn with a nobility rank of any kind receives the following mood buff:

Beautiful cranes - “My royal gardens are full of the most noble of birds.” - +5 mood.

Orangutans

Orangutans are large orange 'gorillas' that have been selectively bred and genetically altered to… learn to speak. In fact, royal families often employ orangutans to serve as tutors for their children. Intelligence-wise, they are as intelligent as humans, and can hold a conversation.

As such, they are able to form social relations with humans. People can develop opinion of orangutans. Orangutans can hold sophisticated conversations with humans, boosting social stat and recreation.

Furthermore, each conversation with an orangutan gives a little bit of XP to a random skill, similar to how teaching works in Vanilla Social Interactions Expanded.

Peacocks

Peacocks are unique royal birds with a great psychic potential. They should have a special type of nuzzle that increases Psychic sensitivity of whoever they nuzzled with by giving a following hediff:

Nuzzled by a Peacock - “The royal peacock nuzzled me. I can feel a psychic energy flowing through my body.”

This should increase Psychic Sensitivity of the nuzzled person by 25% for 12 hours.

They should nuzzle quite often. Not as often as dogs, but more often than elephants.

This hediff should stack up to 8 times, resulting in +200% Psychic sensitivity if nuzzled by 8 peacocks.

Pheasants

Pheasants are unique defensive birds. They reproduce very slowly and lay little eggs, but they have a unique gimmick that makes it worth keeping them.

Whenever a pheasant is in danger (it starts fleeing), it emits a psychic shockwave in radius of 6 cells around itself. It only does it once every 24 hours.

You can see what psychic shockwave I mean by checking Psychic Animal Pulser ingame.

This shockwave gives all pawns under player control the Psychic Invisibility hediff. That’s right, when pheasants are afraid and start running away, all pawns in radius become invisible.

Quails

Quail is an imperial bird known for its extremely tasty meat. It should drop a special type of meat when butchered called Royal poultry, which instantly turns any meal it’s used in into a lavish meal.

Royal Tigers

Royal tiger is a huge and scary looking sabretooth, but it’s actually extremely nice. It should nuzzle a lot. It’s excellent in combat, but it prefers fleeing, as it’s quite easy to spook.

Swans

Swans are the majestic birds or the royalty. They take a long time to lay eggs, and generally don’t produce too much offspring. They should mostly stay on water - if we have some way for them to prefer water cells, that would be great.

Swans create their own sleeping spots that have extremely high beauty (they are essentially wooden nests with flowers in them). Swan will only create one such nest and until it exists, it won’t create another.

Angora Rabbits

Angora rabbits are very cute and very fluffy rabbits that form a special connection with their master.

As long as an Angora Rabbit is set to follow their master to whom they are bonded, the master has a new hediff:

Angora bond - ‘Psychic connection with an angora rabbit that helps with neural heat dissipation.’

This provides the master with <PsychicEntropyRecoveryRate>0.083</PsychicEntropyRecoveryRate>.

However, if the master dies, so does the Angora Rabbit, as they bond for life… literally.

Megachicken

Megachicken is a genetically engineered chicken favored by the Royalty. They’re often given to young nobility as a pet project. Their gimmick? They never stop growing. Overtime they can outgrow a thrumbo.

With age they get stronger and more powerful, their attacks get higher damage and they get higher health scale and body size.

It has three different lifestage graphics. It’s a small chicken for the first 3 years, then a medium chicken for the next 5 years, and then after a total of 8 years it finally changes the graphic to the final one.

After about 10 years it reaches the size of a Thrumbo, but it doesn’t stop there.

It keeps on growing all the way to 20 years of age when it’s 2x the size and strength of a thrumbo.

It’s lifespan is 20 years.

Female Megachickens are called Megahens, male megachickens are called Megacocks.

Megacocks have a different color, same way normal hens and roosters vary in color.

Megahens only start laying eggs when they turn 3 years old. They lay roughly 2 eggs a year, and they are huge, incredibly nutritious eggs.

These eggs take a full year to hatch.

That's it when it comes to Vanilla Animals Expanded - Royalty. Obviously this mod will require Royalty DLC. It will also come with a new design for description imagery! That itself was days and days of work.

Let me know what you think, and I will see you again very soon... perhaps with a mod release!