Dinosaurs suggestions for interesting gameplay

[JoaquinZaba]

Your Feature Request / Idea
I've already mentioned some of this ideas here, but since it's not really a species wishlist I think it deserves its own thread for further discussion.

Extremely aggressive territorial
I got this idea from the original Michael Crichton's novel, from the Cearadactylus (which I discard because the game doesn't have flying creatures, but another species could adopt this behaviour). This species would have a specific number of social need and tolerance, equal to its population need and tolerance (both 6-6, for instance), so it couldn't share a pen with another species.

Mandatory shared pen
A dinosaur with a population requirement higher than its social maximum: it needs to live with another dinosaur of a different species. I remember the Walking with dinosaurs documentary showing how small herbivores like the Othnielia follow bigger animals like Stegosaurus to feel safe, so that's a candidate.

Omnivore dinosaur
A creature capable of eating from both ground herbivore and carnivore feeders...maybe some kind of oviraptorsaurian? I like the "demon chicken" Anzu, but there are already a lot of dinosaurs from Hell Creek, so maybe the Asian Oviraptor itself is a better option.

Scavenger
A carnivore that won't hunt goats or other dinosaurs, just eat from carnivore feeder...or unlucky guests if left to starve and desperate enough.

Compulsory hunter
Similar to the above, a carnivore that won't eat from the standard feeder and actually needs to have live bait (including other dinosaurs). As far as I know no real life predator would waste energy hunting when free meat is already served, so this one should some kind of hybrid..."more weapon than attraction", like Cabot Finch says about Indoraptor.

Solitary herbivore
The title is self-explainatory, but I had a funny idea about this: in a series of missions Dr. Wu asks you to get the complete genomes of T.rex, Velocirraptor, Ankylosaurus, Triceratops and Stegosaurus (yes, I'm thinking about that hybrid) and after several "release with X modification", "enclose X and Y together", "let X and Y fight to the death and contain the winner for Z time" you unlock Henry's latest creation: designed to be the ultimate predator...and it turns out to have T-rex's social (0-1) and habitat requirements (12.720m2 open space +772m2 forested area), Velocirraptor's comfort threshold (80%) and Triceratops/Ankylosaurus/Stegosaurus diet.
Cue to Ian Malcolm talking about the impredictable of chaos.

Do you have any other ideas?

 

[LordTrilobite]

I like the idea of having omnivores. It could also potentially work with a bunch of other dinosaurs like Plateosaurus and Heterodontosaurus.


Scavengers? I dunno. I don't think it would fit. There are no known obligate dinosaur scavengers. For Pterosaurs maybe, but it doesn't fit with dinosaurs. And no, T.rex wasn't just a scavenger.

 

[JoaquinZaba]

I like the idea of having omnivores. It could also potentially work with a bunch of other dinosaurs like Plateosaurus and Heterodontosaurus.

Plateosaurus? Never heard of it being an omnivore...and honestly I can't imagine the prosauropod hunting animation...if it was included in the game as an omnivore it could possibly a scavenger as well.

Scavengers? I dunno. I don't think it would fit. There are no known obligate dinosaur scavengers. For Pterosaurs maybe, but it doesn't fit with dinosaurs.

Even modern scavenger animals will try hunting if starving (I'm thinking about vultures, and I think you too...the dinosaurish thing more similar to a vulture would be a pterosaur), that's why I included the "unlucky guests" comment.

And no, T.rex wasn't just a scavenger.

I don't know why you mentioned T.rex, but...within the Jurassic Park lore T.rex is stablished as both hunter and scavenger. I think however that large carnivores like T.rex should have a preference for meat feeders over live bait and other dinosaurs, since they can scare other animals away from their food.

 

[LordTrilobite]

Plateosaurus? Never heard of it being an omnivore...and honestly I can't imagine the prosauropod hunting animation...if it was included in the game as an omnivore it could possibly a scavenger as well.

I hadn't either until I read it in "Dinosaur Palaeobiology" by Stephen Brusatte. Though I generally don't read much about Sauropodomorphs. So it's fairly well known that the first dinosaurs were likely all carnivores. Apparently based on the teeth Plateosaurus is kinda seems to be in the transition to become a herbivore. So it seems plausible that it might have mainly eaten plants but also supplemented it's diet with meat. Though if scavenging is added as a thing in the game, then yeah I suppose that makes sense for Plateosaurus. Even though it has some wicked claws on its hands. I tend to agree that I don't see it chasing down some fast prey. Though maybe it might eat an animal it killed in a fight.

Even modern scavenger animals will try hunting if starving (I'm thinking about vultures, and I think you too...the dinosaurish thing more similar to a vulture would be a pterosaur), that's why I included the "unlucky guests" comment.

Yes pretty much all active hunters also scavenge when they get the chance. But in your original post you seemed to suggest dinosaurs that don't at all hunt for food. So that means obligate scavengers. So I meant that dinosaurs that only scavenge wouldn't fit in the game. But perhaps dinosaurs like Plateosaurus and Heterodontosaurus could be the exception, where it would eat both from the plant and meat feeders, but it wouldn't actively hunt.

But we kinda already have opportunistic scavenging in the game. When one carnivore kills another dinosaur, a second carnivore might take a bite out of this killed dinosaur and thus scavenge a something that it did not kill itself.

I don't know why you mentioned T.rex, but...within the Jurassic Park lore T.rex is stablished as both hunter and scavenger. I think however that large carnivores like T.rex should have a preference for meat feeders over live bait and other dinosaurs, since they can scare other animals away from their food.

I pretty much mentioned T.rex as an "in b4" people start saying T.rex was an obligate scavenger 'cause of the whole debate even though that's already been settled. But it didn't have much to do with your original post. so sorry for the slight derail there.

 

[JoaquinZaba]

I pretty much mentioned T.rex as an "in b4" people start saying T.rex was an obligate scavenger 'cause of the whole debate even though that's already been settled. But it didn't have much to do with your original post. so sorry for the slight derail there.

Don't worry, thanks for the feedback

 

[WillDJurassicplayer]

I have an idea for dinosaur behaviour: the habitat in a dinosaur's enclosure can give it an advantage or disadvantage. Take for example hunting: hunting on open ground may look easy, but in real life the goat would probably have saw it coming. Hunting in water too; the splashing would easily spot the predator.
So how about there is new behaviour for what the habitat the dino is in? for example, an Allosaurus could hide in the trees, then burst out, taking the goat by surprise and chomping it down before it could move. And a Velociraptor could skirt around the edge of water and attack from the side. What do you think?

 

[JoaquinZaba]

I have an idea for dinosaur behaviour: the habitat in a dinosaur's enclosure can give it an advantage or disadvantage. Take for example hunting: hunting on open ground may look easy, but in real life the goat would probably have saw it coming. Hunting in water too; the splashing would easily spot the predator.
So how about there is new behaviour for what the habitat the dino is in? for example, an Allosaurus could hide in the trees, then burst out, taking the goat by surprise and chomping it down before it could move. And a Velociraptor could skirt around the edge of water and attack from the side. What do you think?

When small carnivores hunt goats they do make a small "stalk, then jump" thing, and when hunting other dinosaurs both small and large carnivores attack prey from behind (not trying to be stealthy, but for large carnivores I let it pass because of the "if it doesn't move, it can't be seen" JP thing).
The one that doesn't make sense is how goats react to large carnivores (they don't). You can think of an in-universe explanation (raised in a farm, never learned to fear predators) but I'd like if there was an actual hunting animation for that...Indoraptor has a pretty brutal one, but its body shape is wildly different from other large carnivores so probably it's not helpful for that.