Do mutated Animals respawn?

[lindykwoo 0]

I've searched around but keep finding conflicting information and most of it is from older forums so I thought I'd ask here. Do mutated animals respawn if you leave at least one alive? 

[Ane 1213]

If there's at least one, there's a chance for it to reproduce overnight. So they should act like the other regular animals, basically.

[stlnegril9 9]

What is the actual procedure/algorithm for animal spawning (mutated or otherwise). If I could be pointed to a topic please, but I can't find it.

I did see Baz_Foobar's "Endangered Species Protection" topic, which I think is an idea for keeping one mutated animal protected to act as a "seed" for re-population.

But are there caps/limits on animal spawn? If so is it an overall animal cap? or a cap by "type" (hostile/non-hostile, bird, etc.?). We already know from the attack behavior of hostile and the flee of some animals the game treats them differently (plus the new music for hostiles). Or a cap by specific animal (e.g. boar). If it is an overall animal cap, does killing off 'regular' animals allows you to have many more mutated animals (assuming one exists on that yland).

If you kill all the existing animals of one type on a particular ylands do they never spawn again? meaning you can make your yland "peaceful". If this is doable, I'm sure experienced players do it all the time, I just never bothered.

 

Does "chance to reproduce overnight" mean if the player sleeps through the night again and again they can generate as many animals as desired. Do people use this?

(there was a thread about a an island with TOO many animals some months ago, I think it was a bug, though... spawning gone wild).

[TheSparkPlug 128]

Well, the little I have to offer is...

I have an exposed cave in which there are all 5 colours of mutated cat (3 normal, two alpha). Periodically I kill off all but one of each colour, but haven’t worked out a safe way to collect the dust yet so it just lies there 

Regardless of whether or not I sleep the numbers increase. It seems to max out at three of any given type (so, in my case, 15 altogether).

Unless I am mistaken, they also seem to increase when I am out at sea, or on a different island.

I also believe I have seen one spawn while I was in the pit. If so, distance and daylight are not factors (though it is possible that two cats were occupying the same space and separated when I got near).

i haven’t worked out precisely where the new ones spawn - is it at the animals original spawn point or just near where the animal currently is. I suspect the latter as I originally led one of the alphas out from lower down in the cave yet it spawns clones in the open cave.

i also have 5 horses that seem trapped by a rock (which they could easily walk around!). I am fairly sure there was only one trapped originally, so that suggests 5 is the max for horses. It also suggests they spawn very near (if not in the same space) as the ‘parent’.

Edited April 13, 2018 by TheSparkPlug
Clarity!

[Baz Foobar 102]

1 hour ago, stlnegril9 said:

What is the actual procedure/algorithm for animal spawning (mutated or otherwise). If I could be pointed to a topic please, but I can't find it.

I did see Baz_Foobar's "Endangered Species Protection" topic, which I think is an idea for keeping one mutated animal protected to act as a "seed" for re-population.

But are there caps/limits on animal spawn? If so is it an overall animal cap? or a cap by "type" (hostile/non-hostile, bird, etc.?). We already know from the attack behavior of hostile and the flee of some animals the game treats them differently (plus the new music for hostiles). Or a cap by specific animal (e.g. boar). If it is an overall animal cap, does killing off 'regular' animals allows you to have many more mutated animals (assuming one exists on that yland).

If you kill all the existing animals of one type on a particular ylands do they never spawn again? meaning you can make your yland "peaceful". If this is doable, I'm sure experienced players do it all the time, I just never bothered.

 

Does "chance to reproduce overnight" mean if the player sleeps through the night again and again they can generate as many animals as desired. Do people use this?

(there was a thread about a an island with TOO many animals some months ago, I think it was a bug, though... spawning gone wild).

This hasn't been documented anywhere that I've been able to see.

There are caps - we've had animals enclosed in a fenced in area the size of a barrier and once they got to 5 or so (horses) they didn't spawn any more.  Not sure if it's specific to species, but it was definitely within that area as other animals continued to spawn elsewhere on the island.

If you kill all the animals of one type then yes, they will never respawn again until you re-introduce them to the area.   The islands on the dedicated server I host eventually all become peaceful unless I keep adding more via the editor (which isn't something I want to get used to doing as I know Bohemia's intention is to eventually remove the ability to add anything via the editor to an active Explore game once this leaves early access.

I know that a lot of things that happen overnight weren't working when you forced it via sleeping, but I think that's been addressed.  We'd have to test to see whether that applies to animal spawning or not.

Also - wasn't asked, but since we're on the topic - I've determined that animals eventually make their way below the ground.  Not sure what causes it, but they keep getting progressively lower until they fall through certain spots and end up in the caverns below (if they exist) and then eventually fall through the world and end up floating at various levels below the world.  If enough remain above, they''ll keep respawning.  If not, you'll eventually run out of animals on the islands.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Baz Foobar

[V-Alfred 367]

1 hour ago, Baz Foobar said:

Also - wasn't asked, but since we're on the topic - I've determined that animals eventually make their way below the ground.  Not sure what causes it, but they keep getting progressively lower until they fall through certain spots and end up in the caverns below (if they exist) and then eventually fall through the world and end up floating at various levels below the world.  If enough remain above, they''ll keep respawning.  If not, you'll eventually run out of animals on the islands.

yep its happening.. so often I found couple boar or rabbit somehow inside the cave (not near the surface). They're (you actually) lucky if they ends up in the cave, not in black hole.. 

[stlnegril9 9]

23 hours ago, Baz Foobar said:

...

There are caps - we've had animals enclosed in a fenced in area the size of a barrier and once they got to 5 or so (horses) they didn't spawn any more.  Not sure if it's specific to species, but it was definitely within that area as other animals continued to spawn elsewhere on the island.

...

Thanks for the info/reply (and others as well).

Does this mean we are able to "farm" mutated animals, if we separate them by enough distance (giving more spawn chances w/ no cap on that individual animal)? I did separate 2 mutated wolves (using your barrier size as a reference) and did get 1 of them to "multiply". They are rather difficult to manipulate (flying via propeller pack in my case, but I think fight potions would work as well). Their AI is not as aggressive as I'd thought. They don't always follow right away. but eventually I could lead a lone animal away. The bigger issue was getting them up walls/etc.

(if not obvious, the idea is to separate each newly spawned animal far enough away from other animals of same type, so that it has its own spawn area/cap and repeat until there are plenty of 'spawn' animals).

 

Also, this means I should cull animals more often than I have, for performance reasons? I'd not paid that much attention to hordes of goats, for example, but now see huge groups of them and am guessing at some point that slows the game down?

[Baz Foobar 102]

I don't think they need to be spread out to the extent of one animal per barrier coverage zone - it was just coincidence that the horses I referred to were all fenced in to an area confined to that size.  I've had a spawn of 6 goats in a much smaller area, barely enough for them to stand in and have some space between them.

[stlnegril9 9]

3 hours ago, Baz Foobar said:

I don't think they need to be spread out to the extent of one animal per barrier coverage zone - it was just coincidence that the horses I referred to were all fenced in to an area confined to that size.  I've had a spawn of 6 goats in a much smaller area, barely enough for them to stand in and have some space between them.

OK, I may have assumed a spawn area because many times see 4 to 6 horses all in the same spot. They don't seem to "disperse" on their own as much as other animals, until my player comes near.

I may run a test, editing a new world (starting with an "explore" world, b/c not sure if there may be a difference otherwise), and then remove all animals on starting yland other than a particular type and run scenarios to see if spawning differs based on the survivor's location. If/when I get to it. (or maybe Ane/Ylands Team/someone will just tell us how it works).

[stlnegril9 9]

On 4/13/2018 at 2:07 PM, stlnegril9 said:

"chance to reproduce overnight"

I can't get this to work in a test world started from Explore then played in a regular play (that may make a difference - I'm also trying a regular "play" world which is then edited to remove all animals but for a few mutated, but that takes some work).

 

Have slept about 25 nights, altering the wake up point to see if that matters. Also tried just letting the clock go for about 3 full days and still no spawns. In this case I have 2 mutated wolves in one fenced-in pen, and another one in a much smaller pen further away. I have yet to get any new spawn in this test.

Does anyone have any data on the "average" number of "overnights" it might take for a single new spawn?

[Baz Foobar 102]

No idea, but one of my own experiments resulted in a spawn today - just dropped two mutated hyenas in a cave, enclosed each within their own indestructible cage (I don't want any players to kill them) and separated them about 10 feet apart from each other.  After allowing the server to run on its own without watching them, one of the players on my server reported that they spawned one inside of the cage with the original, and another outside of the cage.

[TheSparkPlug 128]

6 hours ago, Baz Foobar said:

 just dropped two mutated hyenas in a cave, 

Were they both the same colour?

also, do you happen to know if the spawns were the same colour as the originals?

I have been working on the basis that, for mutants, each colour/variant has its own spawns and spawn cap,  yet horses seem to spawn random colours so this might not be true. 

[bojo2736 1016]

1 hour ago, TheSparkPlug said:

Were they both the same colour?

also, do you happen to know if the spawns were the same colour as the originals?

I have been working on the basis that, for mutants, each colour/variant has its own spawns and spawn cap,  yet horses seem to spawn random colours so this might not be true. 

I was the player that found them. They all looked the same to me, but I was a little busy trying not to die.

[Baz Foobar 102]

4 hours ago, TheSparkPlug said:

Were they both the same colour?

also, do you happen to know if the spawns were the same colour as the originals?

I have been working on the basis that, for mutants, each colour/variant has its own spawns and spawn cap,  yet horses seem to spawn random colours so this might not be true. 

Just confirmed - the spawn were a different color than the parents.

[TheSparkPlug 128]

Interesting.

Ignoring alphas, I have been keeping three (different colours) mutated cats, that regularly turn in to 8 or 9. 

So, maybe the cap is - say - 8, the colours irrelevant, and just the law of averages that I max out at 3 of any colour?

[stlnegril9 9]

8 hours ago, bb cakes said:

I was the player that found them. They all looked the same to me, but I was a little busy trying not to die.

ty bb_cakes, for confirming that regardless of the mutated animal color, players should run at the same speed - fast!!

[kimbuck 746]

You only have to run  a little   faster than the slowest  person

[bojo2736 1016]

@Baz Foobar how about trying it with the land hyenas?

[stlnegril9 9]

mutated animals appear to avoid stairs. In continuing to play with Mutated Animal (wolf, in my case) spawning, I expanded a platform area with walls and built stairs up to it. (so that I can check how often they spawn, and potential spawn cap, in a regular "play" SP game,  more easily in a confined area)

But, they won't follow me up the stairs!! Have gotten better at learning their AI, so I can get them to follow me pied-piper-like up walls and over hills, etc. Anyone know if they avoid ALL player-made/crafted materials? I may just have to drop some dirt to make a ramp.

 

This could have been a completely new thread, but I 'll out it here as the whole point is to learn more about mutated animals (and regular) spawning/re-spawn.

[TheSparkPlug 128]

A version or two ago, I encountered the same issue with normal wolves and pumas, which I was trying to trap in a log ‘box’.

Like you, my solution was a dirt ramp which worked a treat... until they vanished a week or so later!

With regards to other aspects of their AI, it is interesting just how small an item can be to stop them in their tracks when they bump into it, and they still seem incapable of avoiding or walking around said objects.

Edited April 17, 2018 by TheSparkPlug

[bojo2736 1016]

We had a hyena incident a while back. I finally had to build sand piles to get high enough over them to kill them. In the end, I fell off and was killed. But it worked pretty well. Now i always carry dirt, sand and gravel with me.

[bojo2736 1016]

On April 16, 2018 at 6:19 PM, bb cakes said:

@Baz Foobar how about trying it with the land hyenas?

I can report that it does work with the land hyenas as well. I found one out on my island loose and no where near the cages @Baz Foobar put out.

[stlnegril9 9]

An update on tests mentioned above in a game started in "editor" then played as explore" (meaning it is basically an empty world when starting). I did finally get some mutated wolves to spawn new (sleeping until noon, for 10 days in a row). Still no idea of the frequency/randomness of animal spawning. My 2 other animals (a horse and a goat) spawned nothing.

 

However, be warned that the animals can "drop" below the "surface" of the world. Others have reported they will eventually get into lower caves and even covered holes in some cases, but I didn't expect to see this: (no idea how it "passes thru" the level grass area).

 

 

I checked the unique ID of that Mutated wolf and it was oddly (in my opinion)  lower number than the above surface wolves.

[bojo2736 1016]

I haven't tried it with mutants yet, but in a private game I had an unkillable panther who respawned.  So I am going to try using this idea for mutants repopulation in the caves:  in editor make a mutant both unkillable and harmless (cuz it would be just wrong to dump an unkillable murder machine in a public place) I am thinking this will keep the mutant population viable for new players.