Hey everyone.
I thought up an idea about adding a pet system for Boundless. I think this could be a great expansion to the game mechanics and a fun system to interact with. The picture is a copy of my crude ability to draw, and highlights what each does but I’m typing an overview here in case you don’t want to try and read my chicken scratch.
The premise here is that a minimum of 5 pets be added to the game. Each would have a slight “glow” to them, but might not actually light up an area (unless otherwise stated).
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Each pet would provide a Quality of Life function to the Citizen who “summons” it.
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Each pet is “summoned” via an interactable placed object that requires Spark to “charge up” your pet.
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Every pet would have 3 inventory slots you can access by interacting with it (unless otherwise stated).
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Pets follow you around, and show up on your “compass” so you can keep track of them should they attempt to lead you to something.
My examples of pets each come from a different activity, and would provide a service related to that activity. In most cases they are “super ultra rare” drops, although one is crafted with max tech crafting skill. They could be long forgotten constructs of the ancient Oort, and we resurrect them via applying “spark” to their long dormant charging nodes (placed item that “summons” them).
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The dog like one drops from embedded resources, and is able to track whatever embedded (raw) resource you place in their first inventory slot. It will “point” you towards a resource node that is nearby you.
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The goat like one drops from surface nodes (plants, shrooms, breakable rock items, etc.). It is able to track surface resources (especially vertically) by jumping to the node and “pointing” to it.
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The “cat” like one, would look like the upcoming “hunter” mob. This pet would do minor to moderate melee damage to creatures which are currently aggro’d to you. It would only do single target damage however. It would be a creature drop, and as one it would be more likely to come from meteors, but would not be exclusive to them.
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The “robot/golem” like one is crafted. This little helper is able to hold up to 9 items (up from 3), and might act as a light source if you place a light giving source in it’s first inventory slot.
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The flying “helicoptor robot” like one would drop rarely from either enemies spawned by a Titan, or the titan itself. It would allow you to “grab hold” of it, allowing you to hover/fly slowly (without any items currently in your hands). This would only work for a short while (maybe 30sec) before it needed to recharge (tails from sonic style).
Crude concept art with original notes on the idea below:
Yeah, i’m not much of an artist, especially digitally. I can draw things that already exist, but new concepts or ideas never translate to sketches well for me. Hopefully it is good enough you get the idea though.
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Just to note, I know the Devs and the community has more great ideas that simply there isn’t enough time to develop and implement them all. I just feel like this could round out Boundless’s mechanics in a fun way. Plus in the MMO world, most have some sort of pet system, even if only cosmetic. So it is something missing from this awesome sandbox MMO.
They mention pets in the ea-trailer, so it’s probably on the table, somewhere 
(video starts at the relevant point)
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Nice, I actually had never seen that early EA trailer. cool to see where what we have came from 
Be careful, it might make you sad, lots of things from it still missing 
Maybe one day! And lots of plans have changed during the 5 years since that video.
Yeah a lot is “missing” but i’d guess temperately (yet potentially permanently) cut is more accurate. They had a lot of ambitious ideas and concepts in that trailer that would take a game studio of a few hundred people to build in a reasonable amount of time. I think it is more than fair that some things were “cut” in order to get a ship-able product out so revenue could start coming in while they developed more to round the base package the game did release with. Still, I would love to see all of their ideas come to life, and the system I suggested here could in fact fit nicely into the plans they already stated in the video too 
Yup, all true. Although I might argue that releasing early has hurt the population a bit. But if it’s a choice between scrapping the whole concept and the current state it’s a no-brainer for me.
All in all, I’d love pets! Bring more life to your home and other places too 
Never feel lonely again
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I like it… even if it is just cosmetic, any time I can be a cat lady in a game too, I am. 
Maybe cats could gift the occasional dead wildstock in the mornings?
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In the very beginning people had a pig pet but I’m talking ancient times I heard a rumor that back then @Jeffrotheswell made to many pig pets and crashed the game causing the deletion 
blame jeff
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it’s true I had 200+ pigs on each of the world’s. I equipped each of them with leather armor and bells. nothing could apose me. (not that there was anything else to apose me)
anyway the crash didn’t just delete the pigs. it deleated any chance of there ever being tameabl pets ever.
so I’ll take that blame with a side of pork rinds plz 
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Inventory + light source is way OP, but familiars could definitely be neat
If the range of the light source is small and the pet haves the habit of randomly wandering around the player a bit, such that, the light source is inconsistent for staying in one place or following the player too closely, then it might not be overpowered
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Good point. I was thinking of the typical leashed/at-heel movement pattern
I would hope, if they put pets in, the pets would be a little more, lively then just blindly following the player around like that,
add some dynamic random AI to the pet, to make it seem more alive.
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one thing we do not blame ya for that is the mesh limit
that is dunedragon’s fault after lagging solum for a week
with his furnace pyramid 
#blame @Dunedragon
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Some of y’all are too demanding. We have to draw the line in the sand somewhere. jk
I Demand a pet bear, that is all and ill be happy.
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