Brainstorm - Creature Mechanic - Creature production - Ideas needed!

[damiant]

Like Sebt said, we have been thinking of the unlocking idea, why I am not that very fond of it is that it is to mainstream, a lot of games have buildings that unlocks creatures. The reason I got hang up on capturing enemy, drag him to prison room and feed him to the dark mother to create your own "clones" of this creature is because:
- It explains why the Dark Mother can create and spew up creatures.
- It encourage the player to leave his dungeon safe zone and start hunting down creatures.
- It will be more challenging as the player will have to do his best with what creatures he captures.
- The player would be over excited for every new creature encounter as the reward for capturing them is very big.

- In playing it, I never questioned why the Dark Mother can puke out creatures! Some magics are better left unexplained.
- I agree that a player should earn the right to build better creatures through combat and exploration. The exact mechanism to do that is less important than the bigger goal of encouraging combat through some kind of major rewards.
- A player should have a non-combat way to make an army to rebuild his strength after losing a battle. If you require combat as a marginal cost (instead of fixed cost), then a single battle could be the end of the game because you lose and can't recover.

I am not sure if I understand the egg idea. Once I gather the requirements for building a creature, I would like it to come quickly in case I am in an emergency and need creatures to defend. Adding in a hatching time delay could be a problem: what if my DM is being attacked, how to defend it if all she drops is eggs that get targeted and killed by the NPCs before hatching?