ARK: Survival Evolved

ARK: Survival Evolved

TCs Brutal Ark v1.0.1
 This topic has been pinned, so it's probably important
TimmyCarbine  [developer] 6 Jan, 2019 @ 4:49am
Gameplay Mechanics
Gameplay Mechanic Details

This section will explain the details of all the gameplay mechanics.

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Tribe Progression Tracker
This system scans each tribe periodically, it is responsible for assigning the Threat values to each tribe. There are 5 categories of threat and each category will influence a different aspect of the Brutal Dino encounters. It is up to you to work out what contributes to each category and how it affects the encounter.
Threat Categories:
  • Wealth
  • Strategic
  • Ecological
  • Husbandry
  • Alliance

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Purification System
This system is responsible for starting and ending the attack encounters. It uses the data that the Progression Tracker has acquired to generate Brutal Dinos to attack the target tribe.
A purification will be triggered every PurificationFrequency hours, at which time it calculates the threat of each tribe. The more threat a tribe has, the more likely it will choose them, but there is a slight chance that it will choose any tribe as long as they have reached the Threat Threshold.
Once a target tribe has been chosen the faint sound of war drums will be the only indication of something starting. The war drums will get progressively louder and more intense as time passes, after around 4 mins, the wars drums will fade away for all tribes that were not chosen and continue for the target tribe.
At which point, thick fog will start to roll in at a random location around their base and a few seconds later Brutal Dinos will burst from the fog with the sole purpose of destroying the target tribe.
There are 2 factors to the type of Brutal Dinos that will spawn:
  1. The type of material the base is built from
    • This is a percentage based system, if you build a few too many metal structures, it will class your base as metal
    • It does not count things like pipes and you can place upto 40 railings before they start getting counted
    • Only primary structures like foundations, walls, etc will be counted, but it will also take into account spiked walls
    • Building mostly out of wood will spawn smaller Brutal Dinos (i.e Brutal Raptors)
    • Building some stone will spawn larger variants (i.e Brutal Carnos)
    • Building a small amount of metal will spawn the most fearsome variants (i.e Brutal Rexes)
  2. The geographical location of the base
    • Building up high surrounded by a cliff will force flying variants as the mod knows land based dinos would be ineffective
    • Building surrounded by water will also induce flying variants
  3. Warning: There is a limitation with cave bases. You will not get attacked in caves because the Brutal Dinos will spawn above the cave.

During the encounter the mod will rescan the tribe every 60 seconds to check their threat level. If the tribe has taken substantial losses, it will call off the attack.
The mod tracks each tribe's victories and defeats and adjusts it's difficulty accordingly. If the tribe keeps being defeated, it will continue to make the encounters easier. If the tribe is victorious the majority of the time, the encounters will continue to get more difficult.
At the end of the encounter, if victorious, the tribe will receive bonus Perk Points based on the difficulty of the encounter.
If the target tribe is offline or they logoff after being chosen, the mod will record their tribe ID and will send the attack as soon as they log on next.
If the target tribe is online but away from their base, the mod will centre the attack around one of the players instead of the base (this can be devestating, always try to get back to base)
When an encounter is centred on a player, the Brutal Dinos get a speed bonus to make sure the player can't get away from the attack.
Every encounter will auto abort after 15mins and count as a Stalemate, you will recieve 25% of the Perk Points you would have recieved from a Regular Victory.

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Brutal Dinos
The Brutal Dinos that spawn to attack you during a Purification are very similar to their vanilla counter parts with a few exceptions.
  • Brutal Dinos cannot be tamed.
  • Brutal Dinos do not take torpor damage.
  • You cannot hide from Brutal Dinos behind solid objects.
  • Brutal Dinos can damage all structure types.
  • Their level, health, damage and speed will be adjusted depending on your threat catergories and encounter type.

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Brutal Dino Loot
  • All Brutal Dinos have a chance to drop a death cache.
  • Flyers have the lowest chance.
  • Metal Tier Land Dinos are guaranteed to drop a cache.
  • The rarest dinos from each tier have a small chance to drop Alpha quality loot.

Note: Picking up loot will increase your threat. When the mod checks to see if you have taken substantial losses during an encounter, the loot you or your dinos have collected might offset your threat loss resulting in the mod to continue the onslaught. If you are worried about an attack, do not collect loot and set your dinos to not harvest items while the encounter is active.

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Claim Area Building System
Players can only build inside of claimed areas. By default each tribe can have 1 Claim Block, 1 Temporary Claim Patch & 1 Mobile Claim Area, however, this can be configured via INI settings. See Configuration for more info.
Some structures are be allowed to be built outside a Claim Area like Pipes, Ladders, Oil Rigs, etc.
As your Tribe levels up, your claimed areas will increase. The rate at which they increase can be configured via INI settings.

Claim Blocks
Claims an area and allows UNRESTRICTIVE building within it's area. This is a permanent area, perfect for building your main base in.
  • It's range can be adjusted up to your tribe's current maximum.
  • If you reduce the size of the area to a point where some of your structures are outside of the area, you will have a warning on your screen stating how many structures are outside. You will then have 2 mins to increase the size before those structures are picked up and placed in your inventory.
  • It's texture / model can be changed via the radial menu.
  • It does not take damage but can be picked up or demolished by the owning tribe.
  • CANNOT be placed on a Raft or Platform Saddle.
  • Picking up this structure will also PICK UP all structures within the area and place them in a cache where the Claim Block was.
  • Demolishing this structure will also DEMOLISH all structures within it's area. It will respect structures that are in another Claim Area.

Temporary Claim Patch
Claims an area and allows UNRESTRICTIVE building within it's area. This area will automatically demolish after a limited amount of time. It is better used for temporary structures such as an FOB or a trap.
  • Is always 25% of the size of your tribe's maximum claim area.
  • It's texture / model can be changed via the radial menu.
  • It does not take damage but can be picked up or demolished by the owning tribe.
  • CANNOT be placed on a Raft or Platform Saddle.
  • Picking up this structure will also DEMOLISH all structures within the area.
  • Demolishing this structure will also DEMOLISH all structures within it's area.

Mobile Claim Area
Claims an area and allows UNRESTRICTIVE building within it's area. This is a permanent area, perfect for building a mobile base.
  • It's size will try to mimic your tribe's maximum claim area, but will be clamped between 5 - 21 foundations (inclusive).
  • It's texture / model can be changed via the radial menu.
  • It does not take damage but can be picked up or demolished by the owning tribe.
  • It can ONLY be placed on a RAFT or a PLATFORM SADDLE and only allows building on the same Raft or Platform Saddle.
  • Picking up this structure will also PICK UP all structures within the area and place them in a cache where the Mobile Claim Area was.
  • Demolishing this structure will also DEMOLISH all structures within it's area.

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Threat Suppressor
The Threat Suppressor aka TS is an item placed in your base which will reduce the threat generated by your tribe. If the mod scans your tribe and you haven't placed a TS, your threat multiplier will increase by 0.2 which can stack up and get out of hand very quickly. If you had previously placed a TS and then it was removed, each scan will increase the threat multiplier by 1.0 (honestly, this is very dangerous, make sure you have one of these down at all times)
The TS not only reduces the threat generated by your tribe, it also allows you access to teh Tribe Menu which list various stats about your tribe and also gives access to the Perk Tree where you can unlock, rank up & activate various beneficial perks for your tribe.

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Perk Tree
Left Click = Purchase Perk Rank
Right Click = Activate / Deactivate Perk

Each tier will need to be unlocked by purchasing ranks in the previous 2 tiers. The amount of ranks needed can be found on the tooltip of the perk under "Ranks Required".

Purchasing a perk will allow you to activate it by right clicking it provided you have met the following criteria;
  1. Your tribe does not already have 2 perks activated.
  2. Your tribe has generated enough threat. This can be found on the tooltip of the perk under "Threat". "Sufficient" means you have enough to activate, "Insufficient" means you do not have enough threat.

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Player Death
Dying in Brutal Ark yeilds a punishment system in the form of losing XP.
If you die in Brutal Ark you will lose 5% of your current XP, you lose 10% if your death was at the time of a purification of your tribe.
While at low levels while you do not have a great deal of XP this might not be noticable, however, at high levels this can be devestating to the point of being set back enough XP to level up 3-5 times.
It's important to note, TCsBA does not remove levels, level up points or engrams when you die; TCsBA only remove the XP so it will take you longer to get to the next level. Keep this in mind when playing and always spend your level ups when you get them.

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Level Range Enforcer
The LRE periodically scans wild dinos and marks dinos higher than the max tameable level as untameable. It also ensures there is at least a certain percentage of dinos at tameable levels by replacing certain level ranges with the desired range.
There can be up to 30,000 dinos on a map at any one time, up to 40,000 on Ragnarok. To ensure the LRE remains lightweight, it is designed to work slowly, only processing relatively small chunks at a time. The first scan after installing the mod will take at least 5 mins just to scan every dino and check whether it's worthy of being purged. Purging takes longer but it doesn't need to process every dino so it normally takes about 5 mins on it's first run, and a few seconds every run after that. There are 3 stages to a full cycle of the LRE.
  1. Excluder Stage: This stage takes every dino, checks it's species, level and ensures it is untamed, conscious and tameable. It uses this stage as a filter to remove dinos from the purging process which have already been tamed, currently being tamed (unconscious), or are untameable by design (e.g Alphas). It also checks it's level and creates a tally for DesiredLevelRange and total dinos of this species.

  2. Refining Stage: This stage simply cycles through each dino which has been scanned and looks at the ratio of DesiredLevelRange to the total of that species. If the percentage is lower than the PercentageNeeded AND the dino's level is less than or equal to HighestPurgingLevel it approves it for purging. It will keep adding dinos to this purge list until the PercentageNeeded is attained.

  3. Purging Stage: This stage takes each dino which has been approved for purging and rechecks to ensure it is still untamed and conscious before destroying them and replacing them with a dino within the DesiredLevelRange of the same species in the same spot.

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Last edited by TimmyCarbine; 15 Aug, 2019 @ 7:06pm