Icons have arrived!

One thing I ALWAYS wanted for this mod was for all the armies to have unique icons in battle. So you actually SEE your direwolves facing off against the giant crabs, or whatever. The mod just really doesn't shine when they all use the generic tiny Xeno army icon and we have to use our imaginations. Sure, there is the planetary feature art but I really wanted something for the army screen.

My hope was that by releasing the mod I might drum up a little interest and on the page I'll put a request for icon help, but nothing ever happened.

Until now!

I have an upcoming planet viewer mod, and in my work there an idea struck me: I can make the army icons bigger, and this way they will support visuals for straight up concept art instead of just UI icons! Then I can take screenshots of all the art I already have in this mod (from the planetary features), cut it into circles, add fancy trims, and voila - I can make the army icons for myself.

So that's what I did.

This entire time I was under the assumption that players would sadly need to combine this mod with my upcoming planet viewer to experience the pretty icons... but as a quick and dirty test I've downscaled them to the original size for a totally unmodded interface and they don't look half bad!

So that's it! Fancy new icons, and I'm very happy with the result. Images in the workshop slidehow at the top. The planet viewer interface mod probably won't be out for a little while but these mini icons work well in the meantime!


Other changes:

I had some great feedback in the comments about encounter rates. I'm busy with lots of stuff relating to the UI at the moment so I haven't implemented all of the suggestions, but:
1. Reduced the frequency of attack events from a chance every year to a chance every OTHER year instead
2. The chance for an attack itself is slightly lower (weight of no attack from 3 to 5)
3. The chance for an attack on AI is even lower further still (weight of no attack from 7 to 12)

Remember, you can customise all these settings on your own end in the scripted_variables balance file. Let me know what you pick and how it currently feels!

The future:
The actual combat balance of the wildlife hasn't changed, even though their icons/nameplates now have the fancy new rarity/strength tier designation trims. I'll do this in a future update.
The uncommon bosses (diamond tier) and the rarest bosses (onyx tier) don't have their unique text colouring yet (though they do have the icon trim).


(Also, had no bug reports for a while. Are they all cleaned up? Anyone have proof of using their own wildlife bosses in combat etc?)

DWE has been updated for the machine age! It's a minor patch:
- Fixed boss recruit - spawn - recruit - spawn loop.
- Reduced number of wildlife worlds by default in a new galaxy (9 down to 5 for huge galaxies)
- Wildlife rarity slightly tweaked up (more common)
- Minor cleanup of scripted triggers for planetary diversity (now that it has left beta)
- I have noticed that this mod doesn't work well with PD's new planet classes like the tidally locked worlds and so on. And these seem to be very common in the newest version? I don't really understand that mod in full so if anyone wants to offer some advice please let me know.
- Added a delay of 5 days before events run to potentially help with compatibility
- Collecting the "subconcious morphogenetics" technology (xeno cavalry) now flags your empire has having possesed it. I'll be using this flag in my Army Attachments Revived update coming up for something kind of cool.

Some compatibility housekeeping between my mods.

One of my other mods, Army Attachments Revived, implements the old army attachment mechanic. It has a bunch of new armies and they are based on cut-paradox content found in the game files. And notably some of those attachments are themed as beasts, for example the "Battle Worms" attachment or the "Raptor flocks" attachment.

Then, a few months ago, I released this mod. In which I ALSO implemented these old paradox ideas - except not as attachments, but dangerous wildlife.

So, you might see the problem. If you run both mods together there is a vaguely lame "doubling up", in which you get different forms of the same story idea in totally different ways. (Such as having a "mutant horde" attachment long before you ever meet actual mutant hordes on tomb worlds).

So to resolve this issue I've decided to re-theme a few of the forms of dangerous wildlife in this mod so that they don't overlap anymore. It's not a major update, and no content is being cut, I'm just drawing a clearer seperation between the ideas so that everything plays together perfectly. The general idea is that army attachment revived beasts are entities your empire might be able to simply find/genetically engineer within your own borders, and the dangerous wildlife monsters in this mod are extreme specimens actually found out in the galaxy.

1. "Raptor Flocks" renamed to "Vulture Flocks" (this is more fitting with an arid world anyway)
2. "Battle worm army" renamed to "Maw Worm army" and "Maw Worm Lancers" (the planetary feature already referred to them as maw worm tunnels anyway)
3. Mutant Hordes have been renamed to the "Tomb Creepers"
4. "Parasitic Swarms" have been renamed to "Dread Wasp Eggs/Hives"


They all have new boss names as well, which I won't spoil. (But details are on the spreadsheet as always)

Updated!

Fixed an error with the wildlife boss event chain. Rejoice! The full thing should work now and you can properly recruit your own bosses once they have been defeated.

Fixed a significant error in the spawning of wildlife blockers that was causing species to double and triple up! Woops! This has the significant upside that NPC empires will be able to defend themselves better. Feedback still wanted on if they are struggling post patch please!


Fixed an error with arid worlds where they werent being fed the correct script_variables weight for enemy varieties.

Some localisation tweaks.

Primitive civs were getting battered by wildlife! I don't blame them, their armies are pathetic.
So now primitive civs have learned to live peacefully with them, and won't be attacked.
This also fixes a fringe case where a primitive civ gets occupied by wildlife, apparently you couldn't take it back.

Quick update, based on a message in the feedback thread (thanks!):

Wildlife attacks no longer trigger in the first ten years, so you don't get battered out of the gate it you were unlucky enough to find dangerous wildlife on your early colonies (that you are kinda forced to settle). I set up that 10 years as new option you can change easily in the scripted_variables file.

Similarly, for people with the game setting to spawn guaranteed planets, wildlife will never appear there.

AI now has half the chance to get wildlife attacks, too, since apparently they are struggling to take back their lands! You can configure that easily, too.

If any of these numbers need to be dialled higher just let me know, it's easily done.

Tiny update, mostly just pushed because one of the scripted_effects I'm calling from my other mod changed, so it had to change on this side too.

Tiny change, literally one number. Forgot to set the values for the attack spawn rates properly, woops. I'm tired.

First version.

This isn't playtested at all. Seriously, I just made the mod and turned the game on at a bare minimum.

Report any bugs you find please if you try it!