[Tutorial] Dinosaur Taming Parameters

Development Modding ARK: Survival Evolved
, ,
1

This may not be a very big issue for many people, but it was for me, and I thought it would be nice to share my findings with others. When talking about the taming process, there are two things to consider: eligible foods and a dinosaur’s taming variables.

Let’s look at eligible foods first. These are defined in DinoSettings files within PrimalEarth\Dinos\BaseBPs. We are mostly interested in two fields: “Food Effectiveness Multipliers” and “Extra Food Effectiveness Multipliers”, which are mostly the same. Each element in these fields corresponds to one food item and has the following parameters:
Food, Health and Torpidity Effectiveness Multipliers: These work together with “Use Item Add Character Status Values” (found in the item BP) and are applied to the amount of food, health and torpidity an item provides. For example, raw meat gives 10 food and -5 health, and carnivores have their multipliers set to 5 and -1 respectively. This means they gain 50 food and 5 health from eating raw meat.
Affinity Effectiveness Multiplier: Changing this parameter does not appear to have any effect.
Affinity Override (AO): This is how much affinity an item gives. High affinity results in more effective taming.
Stamina Effectiveness Multiplier: Likely works the same way as the other multipliers, but has no relevance to the taming process (at present).
Food Item Category: Set to 0 for all foods and dinos by default. Doesn’t seem to affect anything.
Food Item Parent: The actual item these settings are for. Can be set to “parent” classes to affect multiple food items (such as berry_base, veggie_base or kibble_base).
Untamed Food Consumption Priority: Dinos will eat items with higher priority first.

“Extra Food Effectiveness Multipliers” work exactly the same way, with one important thing of note: while only one “affinity override” is used (from the extras), all multipliers stack. Meaning, if you set the food multiplier to 10 in the “main” half and to 10 for the same or child item in the “extra” half, the result will be a 100 multiplier.
“Taming Affinity No Food Decrease Percentage Speed”, found just below, sets how much affinity a dino loses per second when it has no food, in fractions of the required amount.

Next we’re looking at dinosaur specific settings. These are defined in a dino’s respective Character_BP, found within their folders in PrimalEarth\Dinos. The fields relevant to our interests are:
Required Tame Affinity (also Per Base Level): Very simply, the amount of affinity points a dino needs to be tamed. If it’s set to 100 +10 per level, a level 12 dino will need 220 affinity.
Tame Ineffectiveness by Affinity (IA): A modifier that controls the effectiveness of taming. The higher it is, the less effective taming is.
Taming Food Consume Interval: Default 1 for all dinos. Minimum delay (in seconds) for a dino to eat. Can only be used to make a dino eat more rarely as the minimal animation delay is more than 1 second.
Taming Ineffectiveness Modifier Increase by Damage Percent (ID): A multiplier for how much taming effectiveness will drop if you hit the dino while it is unconsicous. Shouldn’t matter unless you mess up.

These are all the parameters that matter for sleeping taming. Now, taming a dinosaur has two variables: effectiveness and progress.
The progress part is super simple: once the dino accumulates enough affinity from eating, it will be tamed.
Effectiveness is a bit more difficult. It affects how many extra levels a dino will gain upon being tamed. The function is linear.
Effectiveness is calculated as 1/(1 + IMIAN/AO + ID*D), where N is the number of food items eaten and D is damage dealt in percent of dino’s max health. In case more than one type of food was used, the N/AO element becomes (N1/AO1 + N2/AO2) etc. IM is a base multiplier (see below).

Now, how about those dinos you tame without knocking them out, like the dolphin or gigantopithecus? There are a few parameters specific to this type of taming:
Min Player Level for Waking Tame: The minimum level a player has to be to tame this dino.
Waking Tame Feed Interval: Similar to normal taming food interval, this is the minimum delay (in seconds) for feeding a dino you’re taming.
Waking Tame Food Increase Multiplier: A multiplier for the food value of an item. Applied alongside the ones found in dino settings.
Waking Tame Affinity Decrease Food Percentage: The food threshold in percent at which a dino starts losing affinity.
Waking Tame Allow Feeding Food Percentage: The food threshold in percent at which a dino can be fed.
Waking Tame Food Affinity Multiplier (WA): A multiplier applied to an item’s affinity.

Taming progress is exactly the same as for sleeping taming. The final formula is 1/(1 + IMIAN/(AO*WA)).

One more thing to note is the speed at which a dino’s hunger rises. This is defined in DinoCharacterStatusComponent found in PrimalEarth\CoreBlueprints. Specifically:
Base Food Consumption Rate: The amount of food (points) the dino consumes every second when idle.
Crouched/Prone Water Food Consumption Multiplier: How many times quicker a dino consumes food (since they don’t use the water stat) when crouched or prone. Since dinos cannot crouch, this is set to 1 for all, and the “prone” position is them lying on the ground unconscious.
Food Consumption Multiplier: A base multiplier for all food consumption. Default is 1.

Dinos tamed awake are more complex. They also have a basic multiplier to food consumption, but it also depends on what they are doing:
Waking Tame Food Consumption Rate Multiplier: How many times faster a dino’s food is consumed when it is being tamed w/o being knocked unconscious.
Stamina Recovery Decrease Food Multiplier: Recovering stamina will increase food consumption by this % of base.
Stamina Consumption Decrease Food Multiplier: Using up stamina will increase food consumption by this % of base.
Health Recovery Decrease Food Multiplier: Regenerating health will increase food consumption by this % of base.

Also here are:
TamingIneffectivenessMultiplier (IM): Base multiplier for ineffectiveness. Works the same as the other ones, except regardless of circumstances.
MaxTamingEffectivenessBaseLevelMultiplier: How much effectiveness will boost dino level upon taming. 1 means twice the levels at 100% effectiveness. Default 0.5.

A final thing to note is that food items not defined in dino settings will automatically default to all values being 0, but whether they can be eaten or not is hard-coded elsewhere (you can force-feed meat to a herbivore with no effect, but you can’t make a carrion eater consume cooked meat). Also, it would seem that consumables that do not affect food are exempt from this rule (since narcotic works fine w/o ever being mentioned).

P.S. For all “percent” values, 1.0 is actually 100% and not 1%.

3

That is very odd, because by default, carnivore raw meat has a priority of 3 and all other foods a priority of 1. Also, for herbivores, all berries have a priority of 1 - and yet they will pick mejoberries over the other kinds when available.
I’ll try to do more testing today, I have a suspicion it may actually work in conjunction with a hidden modifier, or is somehow affected by the affinity override of an item.

4

There is something else that is worth noting: take a look at Stegos and Mammoth. They are identically configured, yet they eat berries at different rates.

The Stego eats a mejoberry every 7.5 seconds… while the Mammoth eats one every 5 seconds. For reference, the Bronto eats 1 every 10 seconds, and the Doed eats every 3.75 seconds. All the other herbs eat 1 mejoberry every 7.5 seconds like the stego.

I haven’t figured out where or what is doing this… if you are poking about in there perhaps you could validate the priority order and the Stego/Mammoth/Doed food interval anomaly.

P.S. Might want to mention in your Tutorial that “Use Item Add Character Status Values” is found within the berry/meat primalitem blueprint.

5

There is no anomaly in the food interval consumption. They eat eligible foods based on food values, not time. I’ll add explanations in a moment.

6

Great info!! While ive been able to add different consumables with alternate affinity values for carnivores, i have been striking out on herbivores. They wont eat the item even when i model it after mejo and implement it similarly to how i have it working with carnivores. Has anyone else experienced this. For clarification this would be a new taming consumable

7

An easy solution would be to use an existing type of food as parent and then change all the parameters you want.
Though that is strange, as anything defined in the DinoSettings SHOULD be edible. It’s things that aren’t that behave strangely (for vanilla foods anyway).

8

Same mejoberry and values… same food effectiveness multiplier… different rates of consumption on stego and mammoth.

The taming times are vastly different for no obvious reason: affinity increments at different paces and they eat at different intervals.

Anyway, I’ve spent many days overhauling taming in my mod and worked out an approach to resolve it (it involves baselining berries per second)

My last word on this is: pay special attention to stego and mammoth mejoberry food interval and expected tame times… just in case it doesn’t work as you expect.

9

That just means you weren’t paying attention to some of their stats.
They eat berries at different rates because they have different values for food consumption and multipliers for it when prone. They may appear to gain affinity at different rates because their maximum affinity value is different.
Making dinosaurs eat the same amount of the same food item per second would upset balance unless you set them all to the same maximum.

10

I see you found the identified the missing variables… at least the post is accurate now. But I don’t like being told I’m not paying attention because someone misses variables and can’t admit it so ignored and have a nice life.

11

One variable I missed affects only taming effectiveness, the other the amount of levels gained based off effectiveness. Neither of those would cause “irregularities” in their eating or taming speed (because they don’t even affect it).

12

N-n-necropost. Does anyone know what “Status Value Modifier Description Index” under the “Use Item Add Character Status Values” tree does? I can’t find anything on it anywhere, and looking at several different consumables I can’t seem to draw a link. Berry’s Food has a Modifier Index of 2, and the water an Index of 0. Narcotics torpidity index is 2, and the health index is 1. Health drinks have an index of 1 on their health component.

13

Do you know what one would have to consider when using the Flag “Force Use Item Add Character Stats on Dinos”?
It does not seem to use the supplied food stats as-is. I do assume it’s the Food Effectiveness Multiplier that plays into it. But then again, once that flag is set, the food item does seem to have lost its effect when you try and use it not remotely (like when you use it yourself or the dino eats it during “Waking Taming”).

Does anyone have experience with that flag?

14

Great tutorial, thanks :slight_smile: