Making pets more lively and engaging.

[SquidNeko]

While i know Pets are Ghosts and Ghosts arent supposed to do much other than spectate from how i see. I still feel like Selecting Observer to Ghost and Select Pets could make Pets abit more interesting.

I myself really like playing as a pet. As boring as others might find it to play, i think it add's abit to the roleplay of the whole station with players controlling the different pets and Heads pets.

I had alot of engagement with CMO by playing Runtime and its fun. What i do miss though it bieng able to do just a few things.

First of all to eat stuff. Bieng able to eat means your owner could feed you. Adding more engagement to the pets.

Second is Biting/clawing. Depending on type of pet. Not all might have. But cats can claw. Cats and Dogs can both bite in real life. Damage can be minor, but it could add to the game.
One example of when this could be is when an scientist tries to abduct you. Doing bad things maybe. Who knows what that certain scientist have in mind. If you roleplay as scared you would wanna bite or scratch them maybe. Just a slight self defence.
This would give people abit of an oh shit momment where they probably have to think abit more than just grabbing a pet without making sure they are comfortable like real life.

I would love to try to make pets more of a fun thing lively thing on the station.

Ontop of this i think playing as pets should add playtime to unlock some ghost roles.

So basicly 3 suggestions.

Clawing/Biting
Eating/Drinking

Pets count for playtime for ghost roles maybe?

[Kyet]

Thoughts:

• Some pets already can claw/bite. I'd be fine with giving ian/runtime/renault a very weak (<5 point) bite/claw attack. They'll still lose any fight they get into, though.
• Eating/drinking as a pet sounds like a neat idea, but in practice we used to have a pretty much unrestricted version of this, and it led to griefing. Specifically Ian would run past the chef's counter and eat EVERYTHING on the counter in under a minute, ruining huge amounts of the chef's work. Maybe it should be possible for humans to feed a pet by clicking them with the food item on help intent, and that would heal them a little. That would be good. Giving them the ability to eat anything they find, though, would not be good.
• Pets count for "living" playtime, same as any other living mob. They do not count for crew playtime, and never will, because they are not crew.

[SquidNeko]

1. That would make me happy~

2. You could add pet bowl for people to put food into. Then we cant just eat all the food the chef makes but only food our owner puts in the bowl.
This is abit more complicated though. But just an suggestion to solve the problem you mentioned.

3. Not sure what living playtime unlocks if it unlocks anything would just be nice to be able to unlock Drone jobs with this kind of playtime.

[Kyet]

1 minute ago, SquidNeko said:

1. That would make me happy~

2. You could add pet bowl for people to put food into. Then we cant just eat all the food the chef makes but only food our owner puts in the bowl.
This is abit more complicated though. But just an suggestion to solve the problem you mentioned.

3. Not sure what living playtime unlocks if it unlocks anything would just be nice to be able to unlock Drone jobs with this kind of playtime.

1 & 2 really just need someone to put up a PR for them.

3. Living playtime is only used for stats tracking, and...the pollCandidates function: https://github.com/ParadiseSS13/Paradise/blob/12dbd691a65cdb86e40ea1524f836cdd3aeadfac/code/__HELPERS/game.dm#L465

Since most ghost roles use the pollCandidates function(!).... this means that living time, including time spent as a pet, already counts towards unlocking "ghost roles".

[Veterankyl]

I do think pets should be able to eat. Though to prevent griefing, perhaps they should have a limit to how much they can eat at once. That way, all Ian would be able to steal is one taco before he has to wait a while before he can eat again.

[Happy Tim]

Or to literally make them sick from overfeeding to punish such behavior, though knowing how masochistic the playerbase can be, the bowl idea seems to be more plausible.