Evolution fixes part 2

[SirPendrak]

Summary

Bugfixes "Fix upgrading of zombie animals, ferrous zombies and some monstergroups tweaks"

Purpose of change

A lot of evolved monsters can evolve into different variants back and forth after "copy-from" was introduced for them.
I believe it is an unintended side effect, that for example skeletal zombears transform into acidic ones and vice-versa (or into themselves).

Rust shell and rust plated zombies had regular, standard zed evolution options.

Festering boar, rust zeds and skeletal zeds had their evolutiongroup written in a way that additionally limits their chance to evolve when evolving.

Some evolutiongroups didnt sum up to 1000. And miner group had one non-functional line.

Describe the solution

Give upgrades:false where it felt appropriate. To remove this side-effect of copy-from.

Make rust plated zombie an evolution of rust shell zed. Remove rust plated zed from rust zombie evolutiongroup.

Remove skelly, rust and festering boars from their evolutiongroups. If they are meant to have lower chance of evolving, it should be done with longer half-life. Checked that their evolutiongroups are not used as spawngroups anywhere.

Rot-weiler now evolves into acid dog, not brute-dog.

Made some monstergroups sum up to 1000. Kept the original ratio.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Remove cost modifier from groups that are only evolutiongroups and not spawngroups. I believe it does nothing?

Testing

Spawned some monsters and masters, watched them evolve. No errors. Debugged some time flow.

Additional context

Part 2 of #76180

[Nebnis]

I was under the impression this was done to prevent a world where you see nothing but the same type of monster? And give more variance in endgame rather than hulkcdda

[SirPendrak]

I understand your concerns, but this does not change monster variety directly. Only in situation when you un-luckily get the same evolutions in one group of monsters, if you wait, they will finally differentiate themselves.

Copy-from was introduced to monsters to pervent situation when one new feature requires editing every monster and to reduce code lenght. Not to make more variety in evolutions. If thats intended as well, it needs to be more consistent.
It was more obviously a bug with tier 4 zed (tentacled zed) devolving into tier 1 (tough zed), and its less obvious with pale charger (t2) changing into sinewy warhorse (also t2).
And speaking of hulk, it has upgrades:false for years ;p

To sum up:
I we want evolved monsters still be able to change (into the same tier or even different tier) this needs to be done with that intent in mind. When copy-from was introduced, it used tier 1 as reference 99% of the time. For monsters that evolve only into t2, is not big of a deal, but it is still an unintended side effect.

[Karol1223]

Made some monstergroups sum up to 1000. Kept the original ratio.

Unnecessary. Don't change ratios without a reason. On top of that, you did not keep the ratios in the dog evolution group (though that minor ratio difference for the skeletal dog being there in the first place is weird)

Don't make changes for the sake of changes. If you really have to change them, change them to the lowest denominator that keeps the ratio intact, not some arbitrary choice like a total of 1000.

[SirPendrak]

Unnecessary. Don't change ratios without a reason. On top of that, you did not keep the ratios in the dog evolution group (though that minor ratio difference for the skeletal dog being there in the first place is weird)

That dog ratio difference is from times when z-dogs had only 3 evolutions and when sum of 1000 was required. I am 99% sure original autor wanted every dog evolution chance to be equal, but had to split them 340, 330 and 330.

And I did this only because ratios that are in fact ‰ are easier to read. And I was already working on that file where every other group sums up to 1000.

[kevingranade]

I agree with Karol here, if the intent is to make the weights even, just remove all the weights instead of manually setting them to the same numbers, and if the difference between the status quo and "even" is less than a percent, just leave it.

[Daved27hundred]

The zombie horse mutations suffer this problem too...I never got to fixing it myself.

[SirPendrak]

Rewerted every group ratio, with small exception of ferrous, where chance of plated zed is included in chance of shelled zed.
Since sticking to sum of 1000 is no longer desired, removed some other instances of monsters evolving into themselves.
Most importantly, this affects brainless zombie. It had additional 71,5% chance to not evolve.
If anything, these changes are going to increase variety.

Changes made. LGTM now