Critter Interactions

Copied my discussion verbatim from Discord:

I'd prefer a secondary weapon that is more akin to a tranquilizer, tracker, or scanner

Basically a bag & tag system

You tag the animal, research it, gain credits.

You can't bag & tag the same animal

Or you can choose to kill it and loot its corpse

The FarCry method of dealing with animals

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To reiterate, you wouldn't take the animal with you, you'd tag it and research it over time.

More scientific

Or you could kill it for a more immediate but less prosperous gain.

 

So you'd land on the planet, see a lifeform, shoot your secondary which tags it, take off, and research it in a separate menu with stats about the animal. You can do entire planets worth of animals or research a specific one, but the same animal over and over will generate decreasing returns so you'll have more incentive to tag new animals.

On the flip-side you can drop down and massacre an entire planet for a more immediate, but an overall less beneficial gain than long-term research.

I don't rightly know what kind of returns you can get from lifeforms, maybe a scientific credit system that lets you research more technology a la Kerbal Space Program.