[plugger]

Hi,

It would be nice to be able to explore the Galaxy and not exterminate all forms of native life in the process.

If there was a 'stun gun' you could zap creatures, on planets, and they would turn into an icon, just like a commodity or item. You could then collect them in the same way and take them back to your landing shuttle.

They'd, just like a commodity, take up a cargo slot on your spaceship but as a living creature (in a force cage) they'd consume, say, 1 supply per turn while onboard. If you ran out of supplies on your spaceship you could, at a last resort, gobble up the critters but at a high risk of disease.

You could sell your biological specimens at Banker Stations. Perhaps only some of them accept biologicals, not all.

Prices would be randomly determined based on the level of the creature. But...the price you received would increase exponentially if you were selling a 'Set' of like creatures (eg. same sprite but different description, even if it's only a different name tag). The bigger the set the more the reward.

So now, in my ideal world, you could have a career as a collector of living biological specimens. You'd have an incentive to hunt down particular creature types and build up your sets. Kind of like a butterfly or big game collector of old who used to roam the wilds of Africa.

I'd imagine that this would be pretty straightforward to implement (unlike my previous idea of robots although I wasn't intending them to be autonomous) as it piggy backs off existing game mechanics.

You could finesse it by having an officer specialty ('Zoologist') who'd get you a better price for your critters and m-a-y-b-e having the occasional 'creature got loose onboard and killed some crew' situations unless you had a special 'secure Cage Containment' device onboard.

Not sure about the bunnies though. Zillions of different types. Would it be ethical to go bunny hunting? Maybe only evil bunnies. Perhaps if you took them to a certain embassy you'd get a great price 'cause they consider them a delicacy?

Or would that just be really bad karma.

Cheers,
Plugger