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About this mod
(UPDATE: Live prey feeders in Germany and eased-up research requirements for Tylosaurus and Shonisaurus) Tries to mend some stupid gameplay decisions and other foibles.
- Permissions and credits
Yes, I know people only play this game for sandbox mode with most of this stuff being moot, frankly I don't care.
Like most of the stuff I've put out, this was made adjacent to trying to give the game another chance. Suffice to say it's kind of a fool's errand, but whatever, this is an attempt to iron out a few of the game's stupid quirks where possible, namely with tedium and things being dragged out forever - the basic idea is a bit of a fusion of the first game and JP:OG. It should be stressed that this replaces core game files; a lot of the changes made here, like a couple animals' comfort requirements being changed, would be impossible if it didn't.
I hope it should go without saying that this isn't compatible with other mods that replace the files that this does. It also conflicts with mods like Expanded Dino Activities.
- - -
Version 1.01
- Softened research requirements for the Tylosaurus and Shonisaurus; I glossed over them in the release version, the stipulation of a park needing 3 marine reptiles before you can research them has been removed.
- Live prey feeders are now available in the Germany challenge's higher difficulties to accommodate Quetzalcoatlus and Thanatosdrakon.
- - -
Game Modes
Challenge Mode
Attempting to consolidate gameplay shifts
- Owing to their change in diet, Quetzalcoatlus and Thanatosdrakon are no longer available in the Germany challenge in Medium or higher difficulties. This restriction has been lifted as of version 1.01.
Chaos Theory Mode
The changes listed here are relatively minor.
- In the Jurassic Park: San Diego scenario, the pachycephalosaurs and mamenchisaurs delivered from Isla Sorna now have their proper film cosmetics.
- A certain sequence in the Isla Sorna: Site B scenario has been... uh... modified. Because I felt like it. It bears mentioning that the game doesn't automatically switch to a jeep after this sequence is through, so you'll need to man one yourself.
- The T. rex in the Fallen Kingdom scenario should now have the name "Rexy" pre-applied.
Mechanics
General changes that don't go anywhere specific:
- Ceratopsids and stegosaurs don't hate each other anymore.
Animal Diets
Yep! That's right! I'm here to CONFUSE new players by changing animals' diets! Call the police, cowards!
- Even in the vanilla game, Quetzalcoatlus and Thanatosdrakon can hunt live prey and other creatures, but Frontier opted to make both of creatures that are so intrinsically tied with being terrestrial predators only comfy with Goldfish brand Goldfish crackers - this has been mended. They look a little bit weird eating from meat feeders, but you can't put meat feeders in aviaries, so this shouldn't be a problem in normal gameplay.
- Deinonychus, Monolophosaurus, Proceratosaurus, Gigantoraptor and the Spinoraptor now require live prey instead of meat feeders to be comfortable.
- Kronosaurus now require access to shark feeders instead of tuna dispensers. Ideally, you'd be able to make them fine with either, but that isn't how this godforsaken game works.
- Their enclosure needs haven't been changed to account for this, but the following dinosaurs are now omnivorous: Archaeornithomimus, Gallimimus, Struthiomimus and Troodon
Hunting & Combat
What a horrible system!!!
- General buffs to armored herbivore offensive and defensive stats, where I figured they were necessary. Small carnivores, conversely, have been nerfed, not that this really matters in the grand scheme of things given that pack hunting is fundamentally broken on a base level
- Goats now have slightly (slightly) buffed combat stats, about on par with a Homalocephale. There's a bit of a danger factor to compies and other tiny carnivores hunting them now - do you want cool small-scale hunting action, or do you want to be responsible?
- Dilophosaurus no longer engage in pack hunts.
- Small carnivores can no longer pack hunt sauropods. There is something that can mob them, however...
- Large sauropod hunting in general has been seriously restricted, though naturally, sauropods are still wary of big predators. Only a select few large theropods and even fewer medium theropods have the guts to hunt them: Acrocanthosaurus, Allosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Giganotosaurus, the Indominus Rex and the Scorpios Rex.
- * - Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus are mild exceptions from the rule, as they can hunt more middle-range sauropods like Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus and Diplodocus (also, T. rex can hunt Alamosaurus specifically, reflecting them being real life contemporaries).
- The vast majority of carnivores can now engage in social hunts.
Narrative Events
LOADS of these have been cut from normal gameplay, mostly ones not tied to the player having instigated some sort of downward spiral themselves (no more putting down a building and the game pissing on your face when you put it down and pissing on your face again when it's been built). Such events have been kept intact for the Malta campaign, however.
Research
Pretty drastic efforts to streamline things. Frontier looooove passing inane busywork and stupid design choices off as challenge and depth.
- Disease research prerequisites have essentially been completely removed.
- Same with basic guest comfort facilities. For some reason, the player requires a dinosaur in their park to be able to place a toilet.
- Ditto with goats and fish feeders.
- Ditto with access to dinosaurs, barring some star rating blockades and hybrids needing their parent species. A dinosaur winning three fights in your park = the ability to research a T. rex = nonsense.
- The research nodes for aviary and lagoon viewing galleries are WAY cheaper.
- Pretty severely shuffled the dinosaur research trees for classic campaigns and challenges. Certain animals have been removed, others have been added, and some have been moved around.
Scientists & Tasks
- The Challenge Mode-exclusive Disloyal trait has been reevaluated. Instead of having a weird omnipresent threat of destroying the park at even the slightest provocation, they now just have much thinner exhaustion thresholds.
- Serious speed-ups for dinosaur incubation and synthesis, modeled roughly off of JP:OG's wait times.
- * - 30 seconds for small, swift carnivores and herbivores
- * - 40 seconds for medium carnivores and softer medium herbivores
- * - 60 seconds for medium-plus carnivores and armored herbivores
- * - 80 seconds for large carnivores and giant herbivores
- * - 120 seconds for hybrids
- * - Some animals fall outside of this scheme because they share incubation and synthesis tasks with other animals. Blame Frontier for half-assing the most random things in this game that they could possibly half-ass.
- Similar changes have been made to construction times. On top of several buildings taking much shorter spans of time to construct, monorail tracks and most fences have no wait times whatsoever - large electric fence segments take one second to contruct, heavy fence segments (concrete and barbed) take two seconds and invisible fences take three seconds.
- Same deal with expeditions, which all uniformly take two minutes to carry out (again, like in JP:OG)
- Velociraptor fossils in most game modes are now found in sites deduced from scenes in the original trilogy which show raptor fossils being uncovered in Montana. The first site, very roughly deduced from the "two hours from Choteau" line in the first movie, is the Judith River Formation, while the second, simply drawing from Fort Peck Lake in the third movie, is the Hell Creek Formation.
- Other tweaks to stupid mistakes and inaccuracies with some fossil locations, Hell Creek Styxosaurus I am looking right at you. Some have only relatively been fixed, I'm not adding brand new dig sites to make up for Frontier's ineptitude. Some other vanilla gaffes have been kept intact for balancing reasons, I'm only really mending particularly annoying ones.
Presentation
Though they aren't included here, Neutral Jurassic World Color Grading and No Red Fences were created in tandem with this mod.
Environment
- All maps' daytime lighting conditions are later in the day instead of all being 9:00 AM, meaning shorter shadows. A good chunk of Isla Nublar 1993 isn't cloaked in darkness anymore.
- BioSyn Sanctuary is no longer constantly in a weird quasi-sundown state with super long shadows everywhere.
Dinosaur Cosmetics
Every so often, a skin and pattern combination in the vanilla game will look presentable, but 80% of the time the skin system produces abhorrent results. Good on the devs for somehow making JWE1's six baked-in skin approach preferable in hindsight. I can't salvage it at a root level but I can mend some tiny, easily-fixable hiccups
- The Mamenchisaurus and Pachycephalosaurus's default skins are now the ones reflecting their film designs.
- This is a weasel call, mostly for compatability with Kaiodenic's toolbox mod; the Jurassic World: Dominion roster's primary skins are now Frontier ones.
- - -
Installation
Though this is a replacement mod, in the interest of simplicity, I've opted to structure it in a way where it can just be dragged and dropped into ovldata like any other mod.
To install, drag all of the provided folders (except the "bak" folder, this is where backups for the original files are stored) to the following directory:
steam\steamapps\common\Jurassic World Evolution\Win64\ovldata\
If prompted to replace anything, either select "yes" for every prompt or "yes to all". Do not rename the folder, do not rename anything in the folder and do not put the folder in any of the folders already inside of ovldata.
Though a backup is included with the download, it still won't hurt to backup your existing game files. Given the things this mod changes, I also recommend backing up your save game data, which should be stored in the following directory:
(user folder)\Saved Games\Frontier Developments\Jurassic World Evolution 2
Like most of the stuff I've put out, this was made adjacent to trying to give the game another chance. Suffice to say it's kind of a fool's errand, but whatever, this is an attempt to iron out a few of the game's stupid quirks where possible, namely with tedium and things being dragged out forever - the basic idea is a bit of a fusion of the first game and JP:OG. It should be stressed that this replaces core game files; a lot of the changes made here, like a couple animals' comfort requirements being changed, would be impossible if it didn't.
I hope it should go without saying that this isn't compatible with other mods that replace the files that this does. It also conflicts with mods like Expanded Dino Activities.
- - -
Version 1.01
- Softened research requirements for the Tylosaurus and Shonisaurus; I glossed over them in the release version, the stipulation of a park needing 3 marine reptiles before you can research them has been removed.
- Live prey feeders are now available in the Germany challenge's higher difficulties to accommodate Quetzalcoatlus and Thanatosdrakon.
- - -
Game Modes
Challenge Mode
Attempting to consolidate gameplay shifts
Chaos Theory Mode
The changes listed here are relatively minor.
- In the Jurassic Park: San Diego scenario, the pachycephalosaurs and mamenchisaurs delivered from Isla Sorna now have their proper film cosmetics.
- A certain sequence in the Isla Sorna: Site B scenario has been... uh... modified. Because I felt like it. It bears mentioning that the game doesn't automatically switch to a jeep after this sequence is through, so you'll need to man one yourself.
- The T. rex in the Fallen Kingdom scenario should now have the name "Rexy" pre-applied.
Mechanics
General changes that don't go anywhere specific:
- Ceratopsids and stegosaurs don't hate each other anymore.
Animal Diets
Yep! That's right! I'm here to CONFUSE new players by changing animals' diets! Call the police, cowards!
- Even in the vanilla game, Quetzalcoatlus and Thanatosdrakon can hunt live prey and other creatures, but Frontier opted to make both of creatures that are so intrinsically tied with being terrestrial predators only comfy with Goldfish brand Goldfish crackers - this has been mended. They look a little bit weird eating from meat feeders, but you can't put meat feeders in aviaries, so this shouldn't be a problem in normal gameplay.
- Deinonychus, Monolophosaurus, Proceratosaurus, Gigantoraptor and the Spinoraptor now require live prey instead of meat feeders to be comfortable.
- Kronosaurus now require access to shark feeders instead of tuna dispensers. Ideally, you'd be able to make them fine with either, but that isn't how this godforsaken game works.
- Their enclosure needs haven't been changed to account for this, but the following dinosaurs are now omnivorous: Archaeornithomimus, Gallimimus, Struthiomimus and Troodon
Hunting & Combat
What a horrible system!!!
- General buffs to armored herbivore offensive and defensive stats, where I figured they were necessary. Small carnivores, conversely, have been nerfed, not that this really matters in the grand scheme of things given that pack hunting is fundamentally broken on a base level
- Goats now have slightly (slightly) buffed combat stats, about on par with a Homalocephale. There's a bit of a danger factor to compies and other tiny carnivores hunting them now - do you want cool small-scale hunting action, or do you want to be responsible?
- Dilophosaurus no longer engage in pack hunts.
- Small carnivores can no longer pack hunt sauropods. There is something that can mob them, however...
- Large sauropod hunting in general has been seriously restricted, though naturally, sauropods are still wary of big predators. Only a select few large theropods and even fewer medium theropods have the guts to hunt them: Acrocanthosaurus, Allosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Giganotosaurus, the Indominus Rex and the Scorpios Rex.
- * - Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus are mild exceptions from the rule, as they can hunt more middle-range sauropods like Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus and Diplodocus (also, T. rex can hunt Alamosaurus specifically, reflecting them being real life contemporaries).
- The vast majority of carnivores can now engage in social hunts.
Narrative Events
LOADS of these have been cut from normal gameplay, mostly ones not tied to the player having instigated some sort of downward spiral themselves (no more putting down a building and the game pissing on your face when you put it down and pissing on your face again when it's been built). Such events have been kept intact for the Malta campaign, however.
Research
Pretty drastic efforts to streamline things. Frontier looooove passing inane busywork and stupid design choices off as challenge and depth.
- Disease research prerequisites have essentially been completely removed.
- Same with basic guest comfort facilities. For some reason, the player requires a dinosaur in their park to be able to place a toilet.
- Ditto with goats and fish feeders.
- Ditto with access to dinosaurs, barring some star rating blockades and hybrids needing their parent species. A dinosaur winning three fights in your park = the ability to research a T. rex = nonsense.
- The research nodes for aviary and lagoon viewing galleries are WAY cheaper.
- Pretty severely shuffled the dinosaur research trees for classic campaigns and challenges. Certain animals have been removed, others have been added, and some have been moved around.
Scientists & Tasks
- The Challenge Mode-exclusive Disloyal trait has been reevaluated. Instead of having a weird omnipresent threat of destroying the park at even the slightest provocation, they now just have much thinner exhaustion thresholds.
- Serious speed-ups for dinosaur incubation and synthesis, modeled roughly off of JP:OG's wait times.
- * - 30 seconds for small, swift carnivores and herbivores
- * - 40 seconds for medium carnivores and softer medium herbivores
- * - 60 seconds for medium-plus carnivores and armored herbivores
- * - 80 seconds for large carnivores and giant herbivores
- * - 120 seconds for hybrids
- * - Some animals fall outside of this scheme because they share incubation and synthesis tasks with other animals. Blame Frontier for half-assing the most random things in this game that they could possibly half-ass.
- Similar changes have been made to construction times. On top of several buildings taking much shorter spans of time to construct, monorail tracks and most fences have no wait times whatsoever - large electric fence segments take one second to contruct, heavy fence segments (concrete and barbed) take two seconds and invisible fences take three seconds.
- Same deal with expeditions, which all uniformly take two minutes to carry out (again, like in JP:OG)
- Velociraptor fossils in most game modes are now found in sites deduced from scenes in the original trilogy which show raptor fossils being uncovered in Montana. The first site, very roughly deduced from the "two hours from Choteau" line in the first movie, is the Judith River Formation, while the second, simply drawing from Fort Peck Lake in the third movie, is the Hell Creek Formation.
- Other tweaks to stupid mistakes and inaccuracies with some fossil locations, Hell Creek Styxosaurus I am looking right at you. Some have only relatively been fixed, I'm not adding brand new dig sites to make up for Frontier's ineptitude. Some other vanilla gaffes have been kept intact for balancing reasons, I'm only really mending particularly annoying ones.
Presentation
Though they aren't included here, Neutral Jurassic World Color Grading and No Red Fences were created in tandem with this mod.
Environment
- All maps' daytime lighting conditions are later in the day instead of all being 9:00 AM, meaning shorter shadows. A good chunk of Isla Nublar 1993 isn't cloaked in darkness anymore.
- BioSyn Sanctuary is no longer constantly in a weird quasi-sundown state with super long shadows everywhere.
Dinosaur Cosmetics
Every so often, a skin and pattern combination in the vanilla game will look presentable, but 80% of the time the skin system produces abhorrent results. Good on the devs for somehow making JWE1's six baked-in skin approach preferable in hindsight. I can't salvage it at a root level but I can mend some tiny, easily-fixable hiccups
- The Mamenchisaurus and Pachycephalosaurus's default skins are now the ones reflecting their film designs.
- This is a weasel call, mostly for compatability with Kaiodenic's toolbox mod; the Jurassic World: Dominion roster's primary skins are now Frontier ones.
- - -
Installation
Though this is a replacement mod, in the interest of simplicity, I've opted to structure it in a way where it can just be dragged and dropped into ovldata like any other mod.
To install, drag all of the provided folders (except the "bak" folder, this is where backups for the original files are stored) to the following directory:
steam\steamapps\common\Jurassic World Evolution\Win64\ovldata\
If prompted to replace anything, either select "yes" for every prompt or "yes to all". Do not rename the folder, do not rename anything in the folder and do not put the folder in any of the folders already inside of ovldata.
Though a backup is included with the download, it still won't hurt to backup your existing game files. Given the things this mod changes, I also recommend backing up your save game data, which should be stored in the following directory:
(user folder)\Saved Games\Frontier Developments\Jurassic World Evolution 2