[SUGGESTION] New Mob - Fire-Hen

This is a suggestion for a new mob and a new netherscape-only-usable item it will drop. I've written it as if it were a field report while studying the creatures. Please vote yes if you would like the creature described within to become a new mob. Additionally if it becomes a new mob, I will work with the contribution team to get the field report available as an in game book, for cheap (of course!)

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Field Report: Fire-Hens

Author: Perry Stahlsis
Netheric Studies - Nether Expedition 103.8: Purpose - identify and study rare and unique fauna and flora.

Recently, there have been reports of small, yet blindingly fast, flightless, birds running through the nether. Mostly, though, they're seen from a distance, swimming in lava as though it were water, and bathed in flames themselves when upon land. So we sent an expedition to study this among other matters. We discovered the rumors were true.

Theses birds go by many names: fire-hen, Nether-fowl, ...etc. But their origins remain a mystery. Nobody knows if they were just hiding, or living in remote areas, until recently, if they were created by Zombie Pigmen, or if my mad experiments conducted atop The Eye of Stahlsis set in motion an unstoppable chain of events. It's not clear their origins matter for the lay-person either. While, there are many similarities between these and regular chickens of the overworld, there are many more differences between them, that the lay-person must understand. The list of differences follows:

First, they are shrouded in flames. These flames will harm persons and ignite near by combustibles. So beware if you are a madman bringing overworld forests to the nether! These birds will be it's and your demise!

Second, while they were initially reported as "sterile" and non-egg laying, they have been spotted laying eggs. At best they do so at one tenth the rate of overworld chickens. And their eggs are unlike any regular chicken egg. More details about the egg to follow this list. As for sterility, it seems this too was incorrect. See the forth point on eating habits.

Third, initial reports have them flagged as harmless, apart from igniting persons and combustibles. But recent events have shown otherwise. These birds have a sixth sense for the inventory of persons. Any person carrying a fire-hen egg will be assaulted by as many birds as there are in a 100 yard radius, perhaps greater! Once these birds catch up to an offender they will peck the ankles mercilessly, causing 1 heart of damage per second, for every ten birds involved.

The pecking is not what typically kills a person, tho. It's the inferno that follows these birds everywhere. So unless immune to flame, a person will be burned to death. Also, before our main egg collectors untimely fiery demise, he started ranting about how he swore the eggs were summoning hens, not just calling those in the vicinity, when handled by people from the overworld. His details were sketchy and need further study.

Forth, they do not seem to "eat" anything natural. When presented with seeds they blink dumbly. When presented with gold nuggets, on the other hand, they snatch them up, presumably to fill their gullets like regular chickens do with bits of gravel. Interestingly though, junior members have reported an uptick in births shortly after feeding multiple birds this way, so perhaps this is also inducing an amorous state in these animals. As well, their preference for gold nuggets appears to suggest a tight relationship with Zombie Pigmen, yet they are seldom seen together. More study is needed.

Fifth, when running, these hens easily outrun the average person. Those under the influence of a beacon and/or powerful potion seem to be able to keep their distance. I can only speculate as to the terror one might feel when pursued by a flock of these burning birds.

Sixth, and final, on death, it would appear that the forces of immolation sustaining these birds also cook their bodies to a crisp. While usually resulting in nothing but a bit of ash being left behind, the occasional bird leaves a properly cooked corpse ready for eating.

About Nether-Hen Eggs:
These eggs are a magnificent find! Like a regular chicken egg, they might spawn things when thrown. And like the chicken egg this usually results in nothing. But given enough physical space, and enough eggs one can spawn all sorts of random creatures! If it normally appears in the nether, these eggs just may spawn it.

Due to the danger of carrying these eggs, however, it's not advised for the novice, or even the experienced individual, to try this. You will probably be burned to death by the ensuing fiery chickenacolypse!

While just collecting these eggs might just summon other hens to magically appear, what is known is that they do, in fact, call near by hens to protect them. The precise mechanism is not understood, but the effect it. As well, we have been unable to test the summoning theory or other theories on how near-by hens are called to aid, as our junior egg collectors have all returned to the overworld, citing safety concerns. It appears unleashing a ghast in the testing halls left them unsettled, and the loss of their mentor has left them listless. Once we assemble a more competent, braver, staff we will resume researching these subjects.

Er mer guard.. I think that if I was to sit down and type All of that out, I might kill ma self.

Please refrain from these sorts of comments. They're not at all on topic, nor helpful to the larger conversation.

They are relating to your text which is the topic.

TL;DR - Literacy is a gift. Use it.

OT: Very creative ideas, although parts of it sound a bit too much like the Super-Turkeys we had running around for Thanksgiving. Also, as passive mobs, chickens don't attack things, and setting fires by proximity just sounds like a bad idea altogether - "fun" in theory (for some people's idea of fun), but miserable to deal with in practice. I envision a lot of people burning to death or complaining of griefed structures. (And, as a side-note, fire destruction was disabled for several blocks precisely to curb fire-griefing).

They relate more to the commenters opinions on suicide as fodder for joking, rather than the content. That's always inappropriate to me.

Thanks for the insight on this. Are there any tweaks that you could suggest that might make it and the rare drop (egg) which was my primary goal, more feasible?

EDIT: Also, please check-out the nether-sheep suggestion I made. It might also suffer from the issues you mentioned here.
EDIT 2: FWIW, the proximity I had envisioned was "touch" much like enraged mobs.

I'm not a coder, so I couldn't comment on what's really feasible or not. I'm sure Aikar could shed more light on that topic, when he has time. I can tell you that Enraged (and also regular flaming zombies) cause the player to catch fire on hit, which wouldn't work if the chicken wasn't hitting the player (/attacking).

If the egg is your primary goal, I wouldn't get my hopes up though. You're basically asking to give players the opportunity to spawn hostile mobs at will. The randomness of the mob or the rarity of the egg providing that ability are noteworthy, but ultimately that's not a feature I see happening on EMC anytime soon and I have a feeling most of the playerbase will agree on that point.
Now if those were tamed non-hostile versions for the overworld - ie, pets - then I can definitely see a lot of support there. The main problem in that case is, EMC's player cap dropped to 40 primarily because of performance concerns over entities - giving players pets would up the entity level even more.
Though again, you'd have to ask someone more technically knowledgeable about the impact that would have.

I looked at the sheep too, but I've nothing useful to contribute to the discussion there.

Looking at your suggestions, I see you are going for an extravagant suggestion. You want to show off your writing skills along with your suggestion, I just think it should not be like that. When you are presented like this, players like me do not know whether parts of the story are the suggestion, or a part of the story.
This is what I assume you are suggesting:

• Name: Fire-Hen / Nether-Fowl
• Appearance
  • On fire
• Abilities:
  • Eat gold nuggets
  • Lays eggs
  • Super fast
  • Sets fire to flammable blocks/people
• Notes:
  • Lays eggs 1/10 the rate of normal chickens.
  • Attacks anybody carrying their egg
  • 10 birds = 1 heart of damage per second?
  • Upon death: Cooked Chicken (Sometimes)
• Egg Info
  • Spawns any nether mob
  • Chickens attack anybody holding it

My thoughts on this: Not a fan
Unless there is a zombie/zombie pigman riding the chicken, it cannot attack, so it would require one of those, invisible I assume.
It runs very fast. This reminds me of the Super Turkey, very annoying to kill.
Eggs can be used to grief people.
I don't think Aikar can make it so the chickens attack anybody holding the egg

The feasibility I was concerned with is player acceptance and playability. I believe you addressed those points adequately. Let me summarize what I believe you said: A new mob for the sake of it = not likely to gain traction. "Tamed" versions of hostile mobs spawned from these eggs = likely to gain traction, but the current performance issues with the core of MC (and therefore EMC) may prohibit it. Only the coders can say for sure.

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TL;DR: I am a coder, and I can tell you that if I had access to the core MC codebase I would change its architecture and general coding practices to improve the systemic performance issues that I have seen. I suspect Aikar and chickeneer feel similarly.

For example, I know that Aikar has posted about the performance issues with hoppers, however, there are many subtler things I've seen in the "decompiled code" which are actually more pervasive. And therefore these issues are more likely to cause general slowness related to all entities, not just MOBs. In many cases that I've seen these bits of code have the ability to introduce unexpected behaviors, but are tremendously difficult to force into that situation, making those bugs difficult to reproduce and then rectify one at a time. Such things would also plague any new mobs as well making this a very valid point to consider with any new mobs.

Not true. I actually write like this outside of EMC. Please refrain from injecting personal opinions about my opinions and motivations, in the future and stick only to the facts, as you did with most of the rest of your post.

Point taken. Please note that EMC is not the only place you will encounter this writing style. You will find it elsewhere, even in technical trades, the less technical, the more pervasive. Reading for content is a very valuable skill to develop. Your summary shows that when you put your mind to it, you can do it. Please keep up the good work.

Thanks for these points. I hadn't considered the griefing potential. Good to have it brought up. Kephras also mentioned your other points.

With talent like yours, I would want to show it off.
Well, I am sorry. That is the only conclusion I came up with.

Apology accepted. And thanks for the compliment.

Uh... I apologize, as I didn't realize you were so easily offended...

Thanks for your apology, however,

Now Extending the TL;DR: It's not about me. It's about general appropriateness. I find it irresponsible and disrespectful to make comments denigrating another forum member. You did so by criticizing the length of the post. To joke about suicide as the manner by which you make such a criticism is doubly irresponsible. If you would like to know more details why, let me know in a PM.

In the future, if you find a post too long for your liking, don't read it. Silently move on. If you absolutely must get to the bottom of why its so long, do so privately and respectfully. If the OP declines to engage, move on politely.

I actually liked the idea of writing a suggestion in the form of a field guide. It's very well done. Anyways, back on topic. The first thing I thought, after I finished reading, was "overpowered."

I do like the idea of a mob you actively have to try to avoid, but the fire seems a bit too... annoying... for my liking. Though fire wouldn't kill any player with good gear, it'd wear down armor more than anything and be an absolute pain to put out.

From this part, I'm led to believe the Nether will have about the same, if not more of these than pigmen. In a 100 yard radius you'll have 50 on you and die in 2 seconds. Perhaps a rarer spawn rate (that of Netherhounds) and only a 16 block radius would be more realistic.
[qyote]The pecking is not what typically kills a person, tho. It's the inferno that follows these birds everywhere. So unless immune to flame, a person will be burned to death. Also, before our main egg collectors untimely fiery demise, he started ranting about how he swore the eggs were summoning hens, not just calling those in the vicinity, when handled by people from the overworld. His details were sketchy and need further study.[/quote]
See my first response on fire, as it applies here. I'm not going to retype it.

If the spawn rates are what I imagined them to be by reading, you'll be swarmed from all sides with no hope. It's an instant death trap. Maybe they need to be slower? However, if the spawn rates are what I suggested, (in my opinion) the birds should be the speed of a sprinting player.

And another few unique items, right...? Maybe a few diamonds or gold, similar to netherhounds.

Basically, I love the idea, but it needs some balancing.

Wow. Sounds like a super OP animal to have chasing you. Don't you think thats a little hard to program? Other than that, it sounds epic!

Thanks for the compliment.

Overpowered has been mentioned several times. I was more having fun with the concept than thinking of how it would pan out in game play. SuperTurkey-ish was mostly how the OP was alluded to. SuperTurkey was also before my time. I joined after they stopped spawning and never encountered one. But yeah, in hindsight it's a good observation.

EDIT: As for the difficulty to program see my reply to PenguinDJ.

Yep. OP has been mentioned a bit already. Mostly alluding to the SuperTurkey resemblances. (Speed, flame...etc.)

The field guide did not convey the spawn rate effectively, nor density in a given area. I also left an open question if more would even spawn on possession of an egg. This was to encourage balancing discussions. In my mind, there were a couple of dozen involved in the untimely demise of the main egg collector, that's a couple of dozen in a 100 yard radius... maximum. I have no idea why I struck that part from what I originally wrote when editing it. Bad Perry. Bad! No soup for you!

Also at 10 yard/second top running speed (this is much faster than an unaided player) one could easily argue that it would take much longer than a couple of seconds to become surrounded by all hens in a 100 yard radius. (10 seconds for the furthest hens to arrive on the scene.). The specific speed above and beyond an unaided running speed was again vague to encourage balancing discussions. With all of that said, if a lower radius makes it easier, more playable, less annoying, then by all means a lower radius it is! I can update a number in the field guide!

Also the mention of dropping the egg in possession as a trigger to put them back to neutral was meant to encourage strategic thinking on how to collect the eggs. There will be risk, sure! But if you run until they're close, drop, then wait until they disband you can make incremental progress without needing a lot of armor. (I'm not suggesting that is a safe strategy, but it is one that could, in a pinch, work)

A more effective strategy would be to place chests at regular intervals where one can deposit the egg before the hens catch up. Then wait. Then transfer to the next chest in the chain... I can even envision people setting up fences and have a relay system with different runners...etc.

Yep. It certainly does need more balancing. Neat drops on death are certainly fun and deserved for anyone hunting these beasts.

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Aside: As for programmability, only those who know the EMC code can comment on what's actually feasible in what's been presented.

Since these would be neutral mobs until a triggering event occurred (Think Enderman.) and they would also revert back to neutral when another triggering event occurred. And unlike the Enderman there is only a need to check player inventory, not what they're pointed at and for how long. This seems, on the surface, simpler. That is to say: depending on actual behavior of code, not necessarily trivial, but not nearly as complex as determining facing, does it intersect with an Enderman with no intervening blocks and has it been sustained for a couple of seconds... But I can't say that it actually is, with any authority.

As for what the special egg does, I'm 100% willing to retract the hostile mob spawn. As was correctly pointed out this would likely be used to grief players. (hidden BUD detector + hidden dispenser anyone?) Other suggestions on what it could do are certainly encouraged and I am more than willing to rewrite the appropriate sections.