Pup Survival Chance Rework

Greetings.

I came up with an idea to rework puppy survival chance.

First, I'd like "Survival Chance" factor to be renamed to "Safety" for compatibility with the idea I'm about to introduce. Puppy's Safety factor will determine how much damage the puppy is likely to take on rollover due to accidents. The maximum damage determines % points missing to 100% so the puppy will take from 0 to the missing % points. If puppy's HP hits 0 caused by an accident, the puppy will die. Injuried puppies can be healed with healing items to raise their chance to survive tonight. It might raise the demand of Healing Salves.

If puppy's Safety is 100%, no accidents will happen (no HP loss due to accidents) and the puppy will survive even on 0 HP if carried illnesses are not lethal. If fully healed's puppy (30 HP) has at least 71% safety, the puppy will not die on rollover due to accidents, but the puppy is likely to take damage. If puppy has less HP than missing % of Safety factor, the puppy has a chance to die depending on HP and Safety. Following the algorithm, for example puppy with 41% Safety will take 0-59 HP damage. Fully healed puppy will survive 0-29 HP damage, but no puppy will not survive 30-59 HP damage. It means fully healed puppy will have 50% chance of surviving accidents on 41% Safety.

It means that reworked Safety rate will make the puppy less likely to die to the equivalent of Survival Chance, so for balancing purposes I suggest decreasing Safety factor by 20 % points when a puppy is born.

I had this idea because I have read feedback that players feel frustrated when the puppy they want to keep safe has even the slightest chance of dying (here and here). Players feel either calm because all their pups have 100% Survival Chance or stressed with a thought that at least one puppy can die because of some missing % resulting in either the pup being completely fine or completely dead tomorrow. With this idea, the safety threshold is reduced and even on 0% Safety although pups are not completely safe with fully focused pupsitting, it takes fewer days and less risk to reach the guarantee of survival.

Also, I had this idea because players seek to reach 100% Survival Chance for their puppies and once it's reached, there's nothing that can make them any better and additional pupsitting assistance is unnecessary. Shortly, pupsitting is either insufficient or redundant. This idea provides much broader range of sufficient pupsitting and can be further improved to mitigate damage.

Another reason why I had this idea on mind was because HP of non-adult wolves don't serve any purpose except for securing wolves from lethal illnesses. Basically, when wolves are regularly healed from illnesses, HP don't seem to be a factor that should ever be worried about. This idea will require some Healing Salves and to be cautious about HP bar of pups.

In order for my idea to be implemented, I think developers should modify the code regarding Survival Chance, HP and death conditions for pups. Moreover, tutorials, guides (here, here, here, here, here) and Help section must be rewritten regarding Survival Chance.

Thank you for your attention.

Hmm, this seems like a very nice system - I like the idea of having potential smaller consequences instead of just death/survival.  BUT it'd mean I'd have to do even more math with an even higher chance of errors in order to figure out how much pupsitting a puppy needs in order to definitely not die, and the daily game of pupsitting tetris is already bad enough!  So I think I support this but only if there was some kind of obvious indicator of whether a puppy has a chance of dying or how much pupsitting is needed to eliminate it.

For example, make the pupsitting bar have different-colored sections: a dark green for the pup's base safety %, a medium green for protection provided by a pupsitter, and the remaining (unsafe) range should be split into pale yellow up to the pup's current HP minus 1 (i.e the range in which the pup can get hurt but not die), and orange past that (indicating the chance of the pup dying). And mousing over the bar should show the numbers for all these values, so I can tell how much pupsitting is needed to eliminate the red and/or yellow.

I would find a lot more lovely character development as well as interesting new gameplay things to be worried about if the death scenarios would only happen at maybe 50 percent and below, and anything higher may potentially result in something that permanently screws with a stat decrease, such as losing an eye, injuring your nose or ears, losing sight completely or only faintly, losing sense of smell, having a neurological issue happen, etc etc. Some potential threats may be more rare than others depending on what survival percentage is. This way pups are still in danger of potentially being a problem or a gamble later when they are kept in the pack ( maybe some injuries will make it so that can't complete any other jobs except pupsitting or something as an adult? ) 

Some would be visual changes too perhaps? Or maybe achieving the Injury would give you an extra wardrobe item as a " that sucks, have this though" for funsies, but the pup who sustained the injury could never take the appearance off?

@Nika I was also concerned about the fact that puppies are not alerted when they're at risk of dying due to lower than 100% Survival Chance. While we're getting alerted that some wolves can leave us due to neglection caused by low hunger/mood rate or filled adult slots with adols raising and pregnant wolves inform us that puppies might be stillborn, already born puppies being at any risk of dying are treated the same as those who're fully satisfied with Hunger, Mood and Survival Chance. I had this in mind to suggest adding such alerts, but I considered this as an additional idea which could be require separate suggestion thread.

I think that tutorials and guides should hint us that it's safest to keep puppies at full health with at least 71% Safety.

@Mags You seem to talk about scars, may as well think about checking this, where it's suggested about making those just visual. I think this would require completely new feature to think up. And it's dubious if community would like it, some of players would just chase all permanently injuried wolves such as they're doing with simple NBWs and common pups. On the other hand, if there was an item that would heal those injuries, which would be begged for if the feature was implemented, looking after puppies wouldn't be challenging at all and it would be much easier to protect them. It would require some new balancing.

I don't want alerts though, I want the actual numbers in the pupsitting bar.   My situation is that I have 20+ puppies and I want to know how much pupsitting each of them needs, without having to do math in my head.  Your proposal as it stands would require me to do math in my head for my 20+ puppies, which is why, even though I think it's a pretty cool idea, I'd only support it if it came with the numbers information clearly available.  Sorry for focusing on an aspect that's sort of a side issue of your idea, but it's pretty important to me on a practical level.

Sorry, I had something in mind and just responded to the part of it. I think it would be a good idea to provide information about the actual pup death chance on the next rollover, taking into calculations pup's Safety and HP as well as if mother's (or pup's if weaned) Hunger and Mood is satisfied, reminding that boost/penalty to the Safety comes before calculating death HP loss. About more advanced calculation, such as how many boosts guarantees no death or how many puppies can the pupsitter look after for certain puppy's guaranteed no death - it's up to devs to decide, I just can humbly say it'd be nice to have it.