- 30 Dec 2015 20:57 #166416 Let me explain, in a real ecosystem, wouldn't bird pokemon have nests, and wouldn't a bidoof have a dam?
This may sound strange, but it would make the game much more of an in depth system.
Imagine if fox, rabbit, and mouse pokemon had dens, bird pokemons had nests, and bidoof had a dam!

[SKyTheThunder]

- 31 Dec 2015 08:04 #166451 Exremely hard to implement though. You'd need several pre-built ones to start (the easienst part) and then have Minecraft spawn them in right. Personally I wouldn't risk tearing up the terrain for a little bit of immersion. Plus most of these would usually be smaller than a block anyway.
I vote not worth the effort.

[Zetsumi]

- 01 Jan 2016 08:22 #166542 What about a simplified version? A nest block that functions like a spawner, set to produce one maximum female pixelmon of a random species capable of breeding. The female is set to aggressive, and attempts to remain close to the nest. After a period of time, the nest produces an egg of the same species as the mother. The player can only harvest the egg if they have an empty slot on their party. For balancing purposes, either destroy the nest once the egg is harvested (and order the mother to chase and attack the harvesting player, if she is currently alive.) or restrict the egg spawn rate to a significant length of time ingame. It adds a way to find eggs if the player doesn't have access to a ranch to breed, and could easily be plugged into the more comprehensive pokemon AI suggestions if they get implemented.

[SKyTheThunder]

- 01 Jan 2016 17:04 #166573

What about a simplified version? A nest block that functions like a spawner, set to produce one maximum female pixelmon of a random species capable of breeding. The female is set to aggressive, and attempts to remain close to the nest. After a period of time, the nest produces an egg of the same species as the mother. The player can only harvest the egg if they have an empty slot on their party. For balancing purposes, either destroy the nest once the egg is harvested (and order the mother to chase and attack the harvesting player, if she is currently alive.) or restrict the egg spawn rate to a significant length of time ingame. It adds a way to find eggs if the player doesn't have access to a ranch to breed, and could easily be plugged into the more comprehensive pokemon AI suggestions if they get implemented.

While that shouldn't be too hard, it only applies to nest building species (a "den" block or something doesn't really work). That would mostly be the starter birds and bugs though. Since these are very common and easily catchable it doesn't really add anything balancing-wise. Why would you go through the trouble of fighting a lvl 30 Pidgeotto and hatching the egg, if you can one-ball the next Pidgy you come across? Sure, you could teach an egg-bred Pokemon a random rare move upon hatching to reward those who use it. But then again that would be kind of broken as well (Dragon Rage at lvl 5 anyone?) and needed harsh balancing. Plus it wouldn't really make sense ecologically anymore, would it?

[Zetsumi]

- 04 Jan 2016 07:27 #166728 True, mechanically it doesn't add much. As a matter of integration of the pokemon system into the more open-ended minecraft environment and world, however, it's another small way to bridge the gap between the two. I can certainly see it making the very early game less brittle. Currently, we start with a level 5 starter, and need to either get lucky in item pickups or invest a reasonable amount of time in mining/crafting in order to obtain pokeballs. Then, we need to hunt down a pokemon at a low enough level to fight and capture, which may or may not be difficult depending on biome and RNG. (This has, at the least, been my experience as a casual player.) This provides an alternative, allowing you to steal and hatch eggs containing, as you've pointed out, exactly the type of pokemon the player would ordinarily be expected to find and catch early on. One has to wonder where their pokeball comes from, but I believe breeding via ranch still magically produces a pokeball for the child anyway.

Agreed, a random egg move would be difficult to balance and wouldn't make a lot of sense. Rather, I'd suggest giving pokemon obtained in this way a boost to their IV's in some capacity. This provides a solution to the issue you've pointed out - you could one-ball that pidgey, but this one has the potential to be stronger then that one, provided the player invest time in training it, and a slightly higher chance of having a perfect or near-perfect IV for use as breeding stock in the late/end-game. I wouldn't imagine this would be too unbalancing - the player would need to invest a reasonable amount of time training the pokemon for the difference between it and the wild pidgey to be noticeable. Of course, there is the issue of EV's/IV's still being a sidemod rather then integrated into the main mod, and I'm unsure if that's intended to be a permanent arrangement, but several sidemods have been integrated into pixelmon itself in the past.

Additionally, I feel there's a certain level of abstraction acceptable in determining what constitutes a nest-building species. While it might not be 100% accurate to their pokedex entries, I don't imagine anyone's going to find it too immersion-breaking to find a more diverse range of pokemon using nests. It's the same sort of issue as Skitty being able to breed with Wailord: Logically, it makes no sense, but it's a small, acceptable inconsistency. It wouldn't make sense for say, Magikarp or Lapras to use nests, but I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to accept pokemon such as Abra or Ponyta using them, even if that isn't perfectly accurate.