Conservation's Impending Irrelevance

[Vilyathar]

Moving this post here from the general forum.

I want to start by noting: keep up the good work, guys! Thanks for all the fast bug fixes since Fortuna came out!

I just wanted to highlight for future consideration the current limitations of the conservation system (which is my new favorite thing, by the way). At the moment all you can get from it are the floofs. This becomes a problem because of this little thing called "decoration capacity." Once you've hunted enough, you have a million floofs, more than you can possibly put in your ship. At this point, where is the incentive to keep using hunting as a viable alternative for earning standing? You are no longer getting anything for it that you can actually use.

I realize that conservation was originally meant to be a fun little extra feature, which ended up going over "better than expected," as someone (I think it was DE Steve?) said regarding floofs in the latest devstream. But given that it has gone over so well, maybe consider in the future adding some additional integration that makes it remain a good alternative for standing farming for longer? Many people like it just as well, or better, than the fishing and mining systems, but those are more integrated with the broader economy so that their gains apply to many things, like getting cosmetics or building items in the foundry. At the moment conservation is like if the fishing system's only potential reward besides standing were the fishing trophies.

Some ideas for potential things to earn with tags that might provide some additional incentive to hunt and make it more rewarding for longer once the floof stockpiles have become obnoxiously large:

My personal vote goes to using a large number of tags (maybe 100?) to buy a live version of the animal from the Biz. I'm not talking about a full-on companion you can take into battle like kavats, moas, etc., merely more of a decorative pet you can have wandering around your orbiter. Pretty sure a lot of players would love this, and it would play nicely to the pokemon-style addiction that has unwittingly been unleashed on the player base! Might help satisfy that "gotta-catch-em-all!" bug we have caught in a way the floofs simply can't. (Did you really think when the Biz said that white-breasted virmink are popular pets every player wasn't going to instantly think "PETS?! Aw, I can't have this one? Well which one CAN I have??"). Maybe build it into the existing incubator segment, so that if all your kubrows/kavats are in stasis, you can have a bolarola or a virmink, etc. out wandering around? Though it would be nice to be able to have Kubrow and Kubrodon hanging out with each other!

Another idea might be to make tags usable with some other vendors for some specific items. For instance, give Little Duck a set of animal-themed operator armor that uses tags to build. Who doesn't want armor with a kubrow motif or a hunter-trapper set with pelts? (okay, maybe not that last one, since we're SAVING the animals, not skinning them for their furs, but you get the idea!)

So, I wanted to put this out there for further consideration. Even if my ideas end up being unworkable for one reason or another, I'm sure you guys can come up with something to make conservation a more well-rounded part of the broader system for us!

EDIT: Reading some of the other posts in this forum, some folks have had ideas regarding, for instance, an upgradable tranq rifle. I wanted to add it in here because I think this is another really good idea that deserves consideration, and because ties in well with not only the central point of this post, but with some of the challenges/things that could be improved with the conservation system's functionality itself.

P.S. Is there any chance at all of us getting to do conservation on the plains? I realize this is a long shot, since the town's stories are so different, but it would be nice to be able to utilize my new favorite little game element there as well! Maybe the Biz wants one or two types of plains animals for him to observe and study? (humanely of course!)

Thanks again for all the hard work, DE! You guys are the reason this is my favorite game!

Edited November 23, 2018 by Vilyathar