Hey Merry, i wanted to post a similar thread but you got to it before i did. Mine was just going to talk about small predators as i feel the three we have are far too few, especially when they can often make an exhibit feel alive when paired with bigger creatures. I intended to have the herrera and the oviraptor in there too, but since you beat me to it now i would have too few to post about, so can you please add the following two dinos to your suggestion, as small carnivores?
Ornitholestes - this one is perhaps a little bigger than a raptor, kindof reminds me of a quick, lean version of a cerato, heavily featured in an episode of walking with dinosaurs.
Troodon - this one is likely a bit smaller than a raptor. Two possibilities exist for this one, one, if there is a day/night cycle implemented, they ccould be more active in the night (and their eyes should glow, jurassic canon now, hah), if the cycle option is active, otherwise they'll just be active at all times. And second, it might be interesting to make these creatures kill differently. Instead of killing the animal they hunt, they will instead just deliver a bite and continue to stalk their target. In jurassic Park it's canon that these creatures had a venomous bite, so it could be done, to further diversify them, that their bites inflict a "poisoned" status on a target, and unless healed by a ranger, that target will expire without the need to be killed directly by the troodons. This can work exactly the same way that sleep darts currently do, as each bite will increase the speed and extent of the filling of the metre, but instead of the animal going to sleep, it dies.
if you could copy paste this into your suggestions, that would be fantastic! Provided you agree of course.
As for my feelings on your original suggestions personally, i disagree with suggestions 1, 2 and 8.
2 is basically a carbon copy of the Majungasaurus that's currently in the game and i dont think we need more dinos that look like existing dinos, especially ones that look identical to an already existing one. And a very similiar thing can be said for 8. Both the metriacantho and the majungasaurus look fairly alike right now and the rugops and Australovenator, i feel, would just increase that.
I fill heartedly agree with and back the herrera and the oviraptor, the rest are nice, but i could go either way on them.
I would also add that we scarcely need more "medium"sized carnivores, save for an Albertosaurus to round out their roster. We already have Ceratosaurus, Carnotaurus, Baryonyx, Majungasaurus, Metriacathosaurus and Suchomimus (unless it gets scaled up to fit a Large carnivore a bit more). If we get only an Alberto, we'd have more diversity in these than we know what to do with, while we only have 3 small carnivores.
