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I'm investigating whether there's a problem with the current design of animals with regards to using them in combat. Some players do definitely use them, but I'm curious if more could be done to make this useful. So I'm opening the discussion and inviting players to answer the following questions:

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

3. How are you using animals in combat?

You don't have to suggest any solutions at all, of course. I';m very happy to just collect notes on player experiences. However, suggestions are also welcome. But, this is not an open thread for new ideas, related to animals or not. I'm only attempting small refinement-oriented adjustments, balancings, and fixes to animal combat mechanics. Off-topic posts are likely to get deleted.

Thanks all!

1. it depends. ofc big animals like elephants or thrombos are super cool in combat. but mostly for melee and small arm raids. boomaloops and rats are too undependable, and can backfire easily. all in all: i only use animals on early game against tribes etc. i dont use them on late game because they just have no real adventage. they are often too slow, have no armour, and do too few dmg to armored enemies.

2. the controllablity. since u cannot control them like pawns in combat its just a luck game. u cannot rly use them tactical.
also the mood debuff of bonded animals. (i know why it is in game and i totally like the possibility to bond to them. but in "war" its still annoying)

3.only as tanks and timesavers

I just plainly don't use them because of the mood debuff and the associated mental breaks that can happen if there's a death.

Maybe there would be a possibility to train them as war animals which prevents the mood debuff to happen when they are killed, but maybe that means that these animals can't haul or something like that to balance it.

1. Yes they are, however once you have a few colonists with ranged weapons it becomes almost impossible to not hit most of you 'fighting flock' and possibly kill them.

2. I would say that the chances that stray projectiles hit them and wound them could be altered to include the size of the animal, for example a bullet it less likely to hit a squirrel when it misses, however would be more likely to hit a Muffalo.

3. after i get around 3-5 colonists with ranged weapons i just keep them out of combat all together to avoid losing most  of my animals.

1.  Occasionally.  When I do, I usually setup a scenario where I start with plenty of animals to get started.  I usually specifically start with enough food for whatever type of animal I choose to go with.  Most of the time, I don't use them though.  It takes too much investment to keep animals around and the risk is too high to actually use them in battle except when I'm desperate.  I'd rather invest in animals that can haul and let them just do that.

2.  They're too squishy.  Maybe if I could install bionics or give them armor/gear of some sort that would help them survive a bit.  There should be some trade off on this obviously, like if they have gear on they are slower or something.  I also don't like the major mood debuff.  It's be nice if I could direct them to a kill too.  EDIT:  Was just thinking, it could be cool if you did something like some RTS games where you set a preferred target system on animals.  Something like click a stance button for like Defenses, where animal would defend its master (or possibly others), another where it attacks the closest enemy, another where it attacks the largest threat, etc...

3.  Like I said, mostly don't unless it is an emergency situation.  I always train them to release but don't use it.  When I do, I create large packs (see #1) and basically go total animal army.  Haven't used them in A18 really, I'm running a tribal scenario maybe I'll give them another go without cheating and see if I have any new opinions.

I mostly use them coz i preffer them taking injuries rather than my colonist. when some animal gets a bound i move them to transport duties and remove him from combat. however, most of my "bullet lurer" pets fall by friendly fire. im pretty sure animals would be better and more dangerous at combat if melee combat has some extra game mechanics, like inmobilize enemy on the ground or just bite his leg so he cannot advance. (maybe you could teach animals to do non letal combat)

At the moment they're not really very useful for combat. The mood debuffs are often the thing that breaks an unhappy, injured colonist and I find them too hard to control.
A way to differentiate between pets, utility animals purely for work and attack animals would be useful if they had a lesser chance to bond or a lesser mood debuff.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Animals are sometimes useful. I avoid using them when I can, but will when I'd otherwise die. I don't want my dogs to die :'( I'm attached to them, and they die a bit quicker than I can breed/train replacements.

Quote2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

They never target what I want them to. They walk around like fools, get themselves stuck in doors, walk away from the enemy when I want to attack and walk to the enemy when I want them to cover.

Quote3. How are you using animals in combat?

When defending the base: I keep them assigned to an animal handler to pop out/ambush/patrol at opportune moments. This usually fails.
When caravaning: Offensively or as ablative meat shield. This generally works.

1) They can be pretty handy since they lock AIs into melee combat, as well as them being expendable compared to colonists. Wild boars in particular I find are very good war animals because of their smaller body size, fast movement speed, decent melee DPS, relative ease of taming and training, ease of sustainability and rapid breeding rates - they're also very good outside of combat, and I generally favour them over other animals in the long run. I also like alpacas in the early game since they can take a few hits, dish out some fairly good blunt damage and are very easy to tame/train.

2) Yes, animals definitely have their quirks. As others have stated, the ability to replace missing parts - even with just the equivalent of makeshift/simple prostheses would be pretty nice. Other minor peeves I have is that when animals are wandering around masters in bunker setups, they tend to occupy spots for pathing which makes properly positioning colonists difficult. Not just that, but they tend to stray outside into the open which basically forces a release order. This is really just a limitation of my play style though. I'd also like to see an extension of release where you can have then target particular hostiles, even if it's only within a limited range of say 30 cells from the master.

3) Covered by 1.

I only use animals in close combat, in situations where my primary defence has fallen and I've been forced to retreat or when prisoners escape, drop pods land on top or infestations. They make an excellent buffer and can deal a bit of damage too.

To make them more effect in standard prepared defence combat, maybe sticking a personal shield on them would do the trick since it would allow them to get in melee range more effectively and also protect them from your own stray bullets. It also sounds practically possible to be able to attach a shield belt to them.

Playing regularly on Extreme Randy, I tried many times to use animals in combat and although they can be handy, their upkeep and unreliable behaviour typically isn't worth the bother at all.

The most successful use I got out of them is to act as meat shields/melee fighters to protect shooters, but the critical issue in this tactic is that they're incapable of taking cover while my colonists are shooting, so they'll be taking hits long before one of the enemy melee fighters get close enough to release them. If you release them too early they'll just take hits from the enemy AND your own colonists.

And since they are incapable to effectively retreat, they can end up dead very easily, they're not always easy to replace and their death can give negative moods to my colonists.



I don't have any solid solutions but there's some ideas I can offer:

-Buff their chances to dodge a bit. Small animals in particular feel like they should be harder to hit, but perhaps their movement speed should also be accounted for instead of just size?

-I guess this is more of a bug than anything but when you draft a colonist the assigned animal will first reach the position where your colonist was drafted before it starts to follow. This might cause an animal to walk right into the enemy if for example you're drafting a pawn from outside the base to retreat inside when a raid just arrived

-I honestly can't remember whether untrained animals even attack enemies in self defense but I know they have no "pack mentality" unlike wild ones. If one of my wolves gets attacked I would expect nearby allied wolves to retaliate

-I hope this isn't outside the scope of what you were asking but they could really use better options to control their behavior. One thing I've always wished for was instead of assigning them a handler to follow while drafted, giving them the ability to automatically attack enemies that enter a designated area. Imagine you have your barn or kennel near your firing line, and as soon as the enemies gets too close a swarm of bloodthirsty chickens runs out to attack them!

Might comment again later with further thoughts (if/when I get chance to put more thought into the subject), but my immediate thoughts for now are:

1 - Yes I use them and I do find them very useful (my favourite RimWorld update was at the time, and still is, A12). Although it can depend a lot on how readily disposable, or not, any particular animal might be. With readily disposable, readily replaced animals seeing far more usage than their opposite counterpart (but that's probably just obvious logic at work).

2 - A few annoyances, but for now I'll limit it to one point that hasn't been mentioned yet, but which has annoyed me for some time, and which I admit might be outside the remit of the question/this discussion.

Which is that one tactic I use in battles is to try and flank the enemy from behind, and/or try to ensure a 100% kill rate by covering the potential escape route of the raiders in advance of them fleeing, or rear attack as reinforcements if the battle isn't going as planned. I tend to do this by taking a time-out to create an allowed area for Pawn(s) that follows a route around and away from the action zone, and ending at a point where I intend to ambush the fleeing raiders. I then order a Pawn(s) to move to that end point (and be confident I don't need to do any babysitting because of the allowed area).

Now I would like to send some animal support along but there is usually a problem. Because if I just assign the animal to the Pawn as it's Master, the animal won't adhere to the allowed area the Pawn does, and so their path around and away from the danger zone might be, and usually is, anything but a path around and away from it. Depending on how closely matched their speeds are. So the only option right now is taking another time-out to create an animal zone that mirrors the Pawn zone.

Which to be honest is annoying, time-consuming and exudes pointlessness. Since why can't I just use the same zone for the animal that I just created for the Pawn? Why do I have to draw another identical zone? I'm not sure why there has to be separate zones for animals and Pawns, why one can't be assigned to the other, and why it can't be up to the player to decide if any particular zone is for Pawns only, animals only, neither or both.

As I said, something to do with zones is likely outside the scope of this discussion, but it has played a fair part in my own annoyances with how I like and tend to use animals in combat for a long while now. And that is the topic of this discussion, hence why I'm mentioned it (as a source of annoyance).

Suggested solutions. Either have free usage of zones and then have check boxes the player can use (if they wish) to designate a particular zone as animal only, Pawn only etc. Or when assigned a Master, the animal should adhere to their Master's allowed area rather than their own Although I suspect this latter solution to be fraught with implementation issues and likely asking for bugs and even more annoying behaviour. But the former solution seems straightforward to me (as a player).

3 - Mainly to deal with melee enemies (such as blocking their path), and/or as an alternative target to my Pawns for ranged enemies to shoot at. Faster animals I like to keep in reserve for chasing down those fleeing enemies. Raids convey a similar message to Pokémon for me. Gotta catch kill them all.

My use of combat animals depends on the map and the availability of colonists who are good at training animals. In my current playthrough I actually have grizzly bears thanks to a lucky self-taming and a trader arriving with a grizzly of the opposite sex. However because they are quite wild, my animal handlers weren't skilled enough to handle them. Because grizzly bears have a fairly long gestation period, I haven't got a high population of them yet.

Huskies, on the other hand? I'm basically drowning in them. They're good for moving things around in the base, but because I'm usually combating the raiders with guns, I wouldn't really consider training them to release. Let's put it this way, sending a wave of dogs into a gun fight might have the desired effect, but I think they'll probably take a bit of friendly fire on the way. If they could use their relatively fast movement speed to take the long way around, avoiding most of the gunfire, then I'd feel a bit more confident about their chances.

Honestly, I'm thinking that maybe smaller, faster animals are better for swarming enemies. How many times have you seen manhunting squirrels or hares scratch someone's eyes? Okay, now suppose that you have forty to fifty squirrels trained and ready to be unleashed. Those raiders aren't going to have any intact eyeballs after the sea of red critters is done with them. Small animals are also harder to hit directly with ranged weapons.

Conversely, if you have a raid with lots of frag grenades, sending bigger animals (better hitpoints) may be the way to go, because even if the raiders manage to hit an elephant or a grizzly bear with a frag grenade, one blast might not be enough to take them down.

well:
1. I mostly use animals in combat for bait, like for thrumbos or stuff, boomrats and boomalopes are really useful during raids.
2. the thing that annoys me is that the pet doesn't stay close to it's master during combat, when I'm planing strategies before combat I often find pets taking walks like a few tiles away from his master, and this is crucial, because they always get attacked first or the colonist master dies because he or she did not have the pet guarding him/her.
Well this is all I guess

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Animals are always a lot less useful than colonists. Enemies hitting them instead of my colonists is always better so if for nothing else, they're always useful as meatshields. Even a bonded animal's death is not that big of a deal when I can easily get a free permanent +10 mood buff just for keeping the joy bar on maximum.

I use them when I play on a map that allows them to graze. Otherwise upkeep costs would make combat-only animals simply not worth it to employ in numbers sufficient to stand up against late-game raids as meatshields. Their actual combat power is fine, although the ranged weapons' melee buff in B18 didn't help making them more useful.

Keeping animals for combat only is not a good idea when you can't let them graze. The only thing they can do outisde of combat is hauling. The problem with that is the most hauling generated by a colony (that is not hauling loot after a fight) comes from harvesting. But currently you can't let most animals haul plants because they eat it. They prefer it over kibble for whatever reason and make you bleed nutrients/medicine/textiles/drugs, first one being quite important on maps where you can't let them graze. There are only three animals for hauling plants that don't make me bleed resources: timber wolves, arctic wolves and wargs. All three are a pain in the backside to tame and train, at that point the warg is simply not worth it because it eats more by default and on top of that it can't eat processed food so its nutrient consumption automatically jumps to double on top of that (and then I didn't even mention the fact they only eat meat). Wargs need a taming buff, drop their wildness to 0% please, otherwise there's simply not enough reward for the investment. The meat-only niche should be more than enough, why make them so damn hard to tame/train as well? Wolves are fine but I would never use them on maps I can let boars graze, at least not for combat. Maybe a few to help haul plants but definitely not for combat when I can have boars grazing and dying for me instead.

Which leads me to the next point. A few animals tend to die in every encounter because they don't use cover and attack by rushing into melee. Most of the time half or more of the casualties will be via friendly fire. This means you need an animal that reproduces and grows up fast but also moves fast since their primary objective is to draw attention and lock enemies in melee, not to actually kill them. Smaller animals are better because ranged opponents get a severe accuracy penalty against them.

Boars are just perfect. Two times easier to tame than wolves, smaller than wolves, fast enough, reproduces twice as fast as wolves. Can't haul plants due to reasons stated above but at least can haul loot after a battle. Funny enough, better at melee DPS than wolves too.

Using animals with larger than standard body size in combat is futility. They get hit all the time, are usually not faster to compensate for it and breed too slow. Since they get hit more, they'll lose more limbs and other parts (which can't be replaced without a mod) and since they breed too slow you can't just replace them as easily as boars. I can raise a 30-unit boar army in half an in-game year. I need several years to raise a 10-unit bear platoon.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Friendly fire usually taking more animals down than raiders, for once. Humans being able to outrun a bear, for twice. Other than that, no distinctively annoying or weird interations.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
3. How are you using animals in combat?

• Raids: let enemy advance, then release. Shoot with colonists, not worrying much about friendly fire killing animals; more meat for dinner. Potentially walk up to 2-3 tile range and shoot point-blank if enemies are all locked in melee or distracted. Sometimes release only a few to bait out rockets if I don't have a psychic lance for it at the moment. After that, proceed as usual.
• Infestations: my own anti-bug zerg rush. Lets colonists fight nearest bugs with guns at point-blank range.
• Crashed ships: letting the animals completely surround the ship, then aggroing the mechs and releasing the animals is an extremely effective strategy.
• Sieges: almost like crashed ships, I just can't advance as close as for those before releasing them.
• Manhunters: manhunters will not gang up on them but they will. Very effective strategy when the manhunter horde isn't 80 elephants or other bullshit number.

For all the above, I need around 30 animals (read: boars) to make it effective enough. But once I've reached that threshold they become the new "I WIN" button. The problem is they don't work in small numbers and are too good at large numbers. Just like a zerg rush. Worse yet, it's impossible to balance them, they'll always be either trash or great.

1. I hardly use animals in combat. The issue is that to train and maintain an army of animals takes extensive time and costs, so that rather than training release, it can be far more worth to train an animal to haul, as then you get time back. Breeding and training combat animals just takes to long to build up a decent force.

2. Most annoying thing woud have to be how, with say wargs, you can release 5 or 6 of them and the raiders just focus fire on them mowing them down. While these animals are supposed to be terrifying, no one flinches away, not even tribals.

3. Not at all. The only time animals in my colony see combat is either the early game, before I have a safe area for animals or if they are too far away from the base when a raid arrives.

Like others have said a higher-tiered training where I can manually pick targets for my animals.  Also if I could manually set them to "protect" a pawn/animal or even an "object" of my choosing would be pretty amazing :D

I used animals for combat in my last play-through for the first time.  I only used them with my brawler for the last line of defense or mop up duty etc.

Thanks for the amazing game brother!

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

1. At early stages - yes very useful. Bunch of dogs or even elephants can give major (if not single) reason in defeating enemy raids. And while losing animals is bad - it is still much better than losing people (losing animals = saving people's lives). At late stages - no, not at all and for many reasons: it is more risky (because of doomsday and inferno launchers mostly, but also because of better weapons in general) and less rewarding, less reasonable (your colony can fight safe enough w/o using animals at all); plus at this point losing animals = losing morale. There is also performance issue - when I just cant have 300 huskies in reserve (which is adequate number of huskies agains raids on my colony). In all of my late games I always end up shifting from combat animals to only "economical" ones, who generate wool/milk/meat, can haul and/or travel with caravans; using and losing them in combat is a waste. I might consider reinforcing lategame caravan with combat animals, but it is too much discomfort of fighting against interface to bother.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

2.1. My major issue - swarming of animals around master. It is just asking for friendly fire or use of some AOE weapon from enemy. There really must be some level of direct controll over animals (at least "go over there and wait" order).

2.2. General inconvenience of interface to deal with large numbers of animals. Switching masters or "follow master" options - it can be done only for one animal at a time; it gets worse when I need to use different kinds of animals (boomalopes, fast animls, tank'ish animals) in different combats; multiply this on problems of world map travel when I need to quickly change master of muffalos during world map encounter, or master left his animals in colony and they need new master to fight in raid. Too much clicks to bother. It asks to add some new feature like grouping of animals (to manage animals as a group instead of individuals).

2.3. Very annoying feature: assignment of animal mastery to it's trainer. For small colony? It works ok. For big colony with many animals and trainers? It ends up in a mess of most of my animals rest safely in a barn, while some newly trained puppies will follow random masters on the battlefield and be killed by a stray bullet. It kills puppies, Tynan!

2.4. Brain damages on large animals. I have built giant tribal colony mostly on using elephants in combat (no way I would survive that long without them). But at some point I had to stop using them in combat at all because of multiple brain damages on most of them - it was literally THE reason. About 50% of all animals could barely walk; two pregnant females could not walk at all; only couple of newly tamed elephants did not had any brain damage. But this problem might be caused by just something beign off with brain damage in general in last build (especially in connection with reworked melee).

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM3. How are you using animals in combat?

3. The most typical example: my soldiers take cover in front, my animals with master stay behind and to the side. Enemy engages my soldiers; after a bit of firefight I send my animals to attack from a flank together with melee guys. But against weak threat I can send animals right away. And against some threats I might not use them at all (like mechanoids with inferno launchers).

I do use them (more out of forgetting that they're tied to a drafted colonist) and they're useful for protecting a colonist from melee attackers as long as they're not getting shot by friendly fire at the same time. But yes the mood debuff/mental break is a bit of an issue if you lose one. Perhaps a "Died honorably in combat." buff might be something to counteract that. And perhaps allowing such animals to be buried in graves or sarcophagi would be a good idea. All of the above said I do use the "A Dog Said..." mod which makes most of the other complaints a bit easier to deal with, so perhaps something along those lines as far as prosthetics/bionics would probably go a long way to making animal combat easier to stomach. EDIT: I also saw someone mention making the shield belts able to be put on animals as being a good idea to counter this and I second that one idea as well.

1. Animals are useful bullet sponges early game and vital for my tribal runs. After a point that is usually getting enough firepower, they cease to be combat animals and turn only to pack/haul/cattle animals.

The exception is of course during caravan ambushes in which case they're as valuable in combat as in early game.

2. The most annoying thing about animals in combat is after training them they autoset to follow when going outside or drafted.

The second most annoying is their inability to stay behind my shooter and Fido gets gunned down by a minigun. This is less of an issue with melee handlers but very much so with shooting handlers. Either animals stay behind or in a preset zone OR the chance to shoot your battle boars is reduced greatly.

The third annoying thing is they never really chase who I want to chase. During battle this is less of an issue but post battle, I'd prefer they prioritise enemies that are fleeing.

3. As how I personally use them, as said in point 1, as tanks. My battle animals consist mostly of boars, bears, wargs and muffalo. Never dogs because they're strictly hauling animals and after a point mufallo are prized for wool and milk.

In short: animals need a buff if not in controls (perhaps advanved training lets them hunt down specific targets?) or more agile and faster.

1. They are extremely useful in combat early on, before you can make turret. Mostly because they can prevent your colonist from getting hurt. and when raiding enemy base (via caravan), they kinda feel like cheap decoy you send out to get killed while a few colonist deal with the turret. If one die, it doesn't affect the colony.

2. When facing an animal in combat, I think its kinda dumb that colonist and raider default to melee attack instead of using their gun. Also, mass-taming can be annoying, but that's not really combat-related.

3. When I get raided, I release them and wait until its safe for my colonist to get in range and shoot to prevent injuries. They mostly act as a tank, disabling enemy while your colonist do all the damage.

In caravans, they are a cheap replaceable meat shield. Which allow you to send caravan with only a few colonist and still be safe from attack.

IMO, they can be quite game-breaking. I think it would be more realistic if the animal could be frightened from gun fire. Because right now, they feel like robot that you command to attack.

On a side-note: it would be really cool if raider could arrive with tamed animal!

I think the idea of war/attack-trained animals that give no debuff on the animal's death has some merit, even if it comes at the expense of using the animal for hauling tasks (which makes some sense anyway).

Personally, I tend to focus animal training/bonding on melee pawns, partially avoiding friendly-fire issues (while buffing melee pawns, which *badly* need it).

I think they are very useful at combat, specially the specialized ones like wolves, wargs, dogs, etc but I dont use them because its a hassle. You have to train them, which takes time, cant tell them who to attack to and if you lose them your animal master will be sad.

Also the thrumbo, even if you get somehow one of them, its just not worth it. Sure, it can deal with 5 guys with pistols alone, but thats the max he can do, and the price is an absurd amount of food and a very high chance of a permanent injury, which its also a problem for the other animals.

There is also the topic about chickens and similar, which you could zone into the enemy and send 500 chickens and they will absolutely obliterate them. I dont know if this is fixed or not cause I havent played the game since some time... But it feels cheap. If this doesnt happen anymore, just ignore this paragraph.

1. In my opinion they can be useful but I personally don't utilize animals in combat. Mostly because I find that the time I put into training and feeding the animal is wasted when I finally use them in combat. About 50% of the time one of my colonists ends up killing it in friendly fire or it'll be killed almost immediately. If not crippled permanently.

2. Yes, animals straying away from their handlers, usually over sandbags and barriers, wandering straight into the line of fire.

3. I'm generally not, I might be an outlier but personally I've never had a animal that has been essential in combat.

Hope progress on 1.0 goes well, thanks!

1) I used them mostly during early game, they can be a game changer when you don't have good weapons.

2) Contrary to what I think about them in melee combat, my experience with them has been really bad whenever there are ranged weapons involved. Especially with spraying weapons, they get hit quite a lot and get themselves killed instead of fleeing.

3) I use them mostly for tribal raids during early game, coupled with a melee fighter. They're good enough during 1v1 melee situations to make a decisive change.

You should be able to give Animals Armor! I never use them in Combat because I dont wont them to die. If you could give your Elephant Armor that would make it much more useful in Combat.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Not really, especially in long run. Maybe in first couple of tribal ones otherwise waste of training. Debuff mood from loss of animal isn't good either.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Didn't get question.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
3. How are you using animals in combat?

Boomalopes/Rats to has special barn 4 in corner of map. When enemy enters I change nearest barn animal zone to enemies. Elephants and Thrumbo straight charge. Smaller pets such as dogs stay behind for Rescue.

1. Yes. I use them because animals are not nearly as valuable (in terms of labour vs maintenance) as colonists are. Yeah, I'd rather lose 100 boars than lose a colonist with a burning passion for crafting, any day.

2. Animals wander in unpredictable ways. In and out of doors, meant to protect them, even. Then, there's the fact that animals don't always attack when you'd like them to. I've had animals set on "release" get shot at a few times before they decided to attack the hostile(s) responsible. This is especially unfortunate because it's the reason I don't use any BOOM-animals in combat. It would be nice if masters had a little more control of their animals. "Whistling" targets or commands for specific animals or animal groups would be nice. Also, given that there aren't any ranged animals, having the ability to add "belts" (shield, smoke-pop, etc.) to our animals would be nice.

3. I use them in 1 of 2 ways in each raid. a) Cheap, expendable animals are used to weaken raiders before I send my combat colonists out to clean up, and b) Expensive, dangerous animals are released when my combat colonists are harmed enough for me to want to pull them out of combat.

---

I'd like to add that it's a shame that raiders never bring attack animals of their own. Players might be more inclined to use attack animals if they see their foe(s) using them. Just a thought.

They are essentially my melee fighters. It would be great if there was a way to make it so you could draft animals, but eh

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

I use boars extensively, very useful to pin charging melee raiders so that colonists are out of harms way

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Bonded animals penalty for war animals are annoying and stack on the same trainer over and over. Some penalty is ok, but -8 apop can easily knock a person into madness and that's a bit silly

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Yes. Yes, mostly in tribal runs or early game in a standard run for my base. Always as an escort for my caravans.

Quote2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

After a large ambush, when you've a large number of animals, you've to micro the doc to prio the worst wounds, if you rely on the AI and reform instantly most animals will bleed out to death. Regarding combat per se, i think B18 has done a lot making animals more aggressive and fleeing less to the enemy.

Quote3. How are you using animals in combat?

Early game i train anything for cannon fodder. Mid-end game they're mostly useful to escort caravans. I use masters with personal shields to flank the raiders and overwhelm them in melee combat https://imgur.com/QsllZsy

At some point i sent juvenile boars trained for obedience in pods (20+ per pod), you don't really need release, with obedience they follow their master and attack the targets.

I've done many runs relying on animals, i've had an army of bears, boars, chickens.... but in the end the best animals are boars. They breed fast, they haul during their spare time, they fight well, they can graze, they've a small body size compared to bears (thus smaller threat in a caravan / DPS)...

If anything i'd like to have more viable options with comparable benefit/cost ratio to escort my caravans.

Right now in my 15 year colony i have 4 attack bears. The only reason i have them is because i want something to sink money into. But i do use them. My map is set up so that some sappers can mine into my mountain before im in position behind them to engage. So i use them in my halls to engage those that mine in. Amd even that they take a lot of damage. And i cant even set up shooters down the hall because of friendly fire. Im finding similar issues when they are on raids. I cant use them because my own people will hit them. So they are just glorified pack animals.

I think if they could get sheild belts it would help tremendously allowing them to close in unharmed and stay engaged my shooters fire around them as well. And some way to deal with missing body parts, once an old war animal gets too injured hes no longer combat effective and usually bonded so slaughter is a no go.

On a side note, id love to see raiders use attack animals... just my 2 cents though.

I have trouble making much real use of non resource animals, period. Haygrass seems to grow so slow and it gets eaten so fast. Unless you're on a map with a very long growing season it seems too troublesome to me to really make use of it until the colony is well established, and at that point it's not as useful as it would have been earlier on.

I thought to use combat capable pets to guard my animal trainers as they go out in the field for when training goes awry but either they aren't close enough (even when set to follow during said activity) or if they are they don't seem to defend their master from wild animals. I'll click the release command and they don't really seem to behave differently in this situation. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but it's never really worked out well.

In actual combat they don't seem to be much more than cannon fodder. They usually just get mowed down by enemies and friendly fire.

They don't seem to provide much comfort or happiness for just being around, yet their loss can be a very harsh penalty. so all in all if they don't produce a resource then they feel mostly like a resource drains without a lot of payoff.


How to make them better? Well the grass growth getting fixed should help, assuming it grows fast enough to allow longer term grazing. This isn't all specifically combat focused, but here is my feedback:

1. Reducing friendly fire would help. Or at least have people try to target the target they believe has the lowest chance of resulting in friendly fire (while still a decent chance of hitting desire target) instead of just what is closest without regard for what is in between. They also wander around too much when told to follow someone while drafted. Possibly hitting traps and getting in the way and getting shot before the enemy is close enough to be given an attack order.

2. Tweaking animal food requirements, maybe increasing haygrass growth rates or environmental tolerance? Maybe research that lets you crossbreed crops with local plants to increase yield and resilience? That'd be nifty.

3. Animal armor and shield belts/collars/harnesses etc.

4. Hunting animals. When a hunted animal goes down the hunting pet, if large enough, rushes in for the kill and carries it back. Otherwise it waits behind the hunter ready to protect them from harm.

5. Colonists can snuggle with friendly animals for warmth if needed.

6. Less of a mood hit for pet death, if they died heroically defending the colony instead of some other random pointless demise.

7. The more intelligent animals being able to be trained to go to a specific zone when the alarm is sounded would be nice. People too.

8. Not just for animals, but it would be nice to be able to set a colony alert state that prevents people from leaving safety for mundane jobs if they aren't drafted, while combining with number 7 above. Assigning posisitions of your soldiers could be better. How about Danger: go to your assigned area (for combatants) and (stay inside) for non combatants.

I would like more realistic effect when animal lose it's leg(s), like stop moving, just saw a deer lose 2 front legs (shot off) and it was still running until third hit shot neck off.

I consider myself an experienced player (almost 300 hours), but even still I find keeping animals one of the most difficult aspects of the game. I keep a couple of boars for hauling and muffalo/alpaca for caravans, but anything more requires a huge amount of micromanagement: Unless you are playing on a map where they can graze all year, the amount of food they consume is quite terrifying. I've taken to drastically culling the population every winter otherwise my colony essentially shuts down with the demands of producing kibble to keep them fed. This means that I will never have a population large enough that I can throw a reasonable-sized group into combat.

Also controlling them in combat is very difficult. The only reliable way to get them to charge en masse (the only way enough will survive to actually engage) is to abuse animal zones, which is tedious and requires a lot of micro.

Overall I would say that we need better ways of controlling population, controlling the animals in combat, and a reduction in the food demands (i.e. buff kibble or increase haygrass growth rate), for animal combat to be anything other than an act of sheer desperation.

I train male Muffalos for release and put them on caravan duty.  Occasionally they'll help defend the colony if they're not out trading, but only in rare situations where my fixed defenses don't work such as an insect outbreak or siege before I can counter mortar.

It is not worth training my dogs for release because they're scarce - I need them to haul since they're the only ones that don't eat raw plants.  They're also much worse in combat than Muffalo.

I don't attempt to train wargs, wolves, or similar as the amount of time it takes and the odds of aggro on my handler are way too high.


I would really like some way to give trained animals nutrient paste meals.  The only thing in the way is the UI: it provides no way to operate the dispenser unless it's for self feeding.  Maybe haul trained animals could push the button for themselves the way prisoners do.

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Very much so! I value my colonists immensely, and will reload if any of them die. Animals take the heat off the colonists.

But only early in the game. As colonists start getting better armor and weapons, animal's innate toughness starts mattering less, and friendly fire takes a greater toll. Also, once I've had a bear living in my colony for 6 months, it stops being cannon fodder and starts being a friend. And what sort of monster sends their friends ahead as bullet sponges?

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

They will. Not. Stay. In. Cover. Which means, as others have mentioned, I have to decide at the beginning of battle - leave all the animals behind at home, or mass-charge immediately when the enemy's in range. It'd be nice if they had behavior more like "hang out behind me, but swarm anyone who gets within 5 squares."

Milling out into the open in a big firefight is a death sentence.

3. How are you using animals in combat?

As said above, since they will get into the line of fire and die quickly, I release them the moment the enemy enters firing range. A charge with half a dozen big-ish animals (wolves, dogs, bears, muffalo, whatever I have handy) to accompany a fulsade of survival rifle and assault rfile fire can be a big help.

I stopped using combat animals because it seemed a good chunk of the damage they took was friendly fire. I like the idea of them but training them only to shoot them doesn't seem very productive. (this is a tough problem obviously)

1. Animals are only useful in a melee-heavy environment or to throw as fodder to soften up enemies. Especially useful for tribals.

2. Friendly-fire and the fact that I can't direct them to attack a specific target. This should be an option on the handler. Animal handlers IRL can tell their dogs or whatever who to attack.

3. I send them out with hunter colonists for protection, and used them extensively in my tribal run, making sure to keep bonds to a minimum.

Quote from: Tynan
1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Somewhat.  I primarily use them to attempt to guard flanks, as it's easier to keep them safe that way and I can concentrate most of my firepower in one area.  I don't use them at all when it's mechanoids (chopped up too quick) and always use them against manhunters (need counter to slow down the raw numbers).

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2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

No even general "point and attack" mechanic, lack of focus/pack tactics to take down a single target, no capability to keep them out of the line of range fire once they're loose.

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3. How are you using animals in combat?

Mainly when I need to slow down a lot of melee attacking enemies, though sometimes as a flanking group to a dug in enemy position if I can get there.

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?
Against raids I do not release them to attack.  Others have covered the pain points already, but mainly it's the friendly fire problem.  They just get massacred by your own salvos, and even if they get into attack range there's little benefit.  Basically, if you care about min/maxing your combat at all you're building some kind of killzone, and sending animals charging into your killzone basically defeats the whole point.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned wrt "combat", however, is the usage of animals as hunting companions.  If my animal tamer has enough shooting to go hunting, an animal companion is solid  for tagging along and helping out in animal revenge situations.  But this is usually a bit of a gamble once the pet learns hauling, since they might be across the map when I need them to come running.  Some kind of "follow while hunting" option might be cool there?

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?
The classic "doh" moment is usually when drafting my tamer caused a bonded animal to run to him and, because the animal was off hauling stuff, it bee-lined into a killzone or did something else incredibly stupid.  Not sure how to fix this though, the draft behavior is sometimes useful so it's a tradeoff.

3. How are you using animals in combat?
If my tamers have to fight, I keep my tamers in the very back of the line with animals next to them.  The animals never really contribute unless shit hits the fan, at which point a few extra bodies can sometimes make the difference.  To this end, I stopped training "Release" on my animals anymore. 

Also, I second the point about managing animal feed (kibble or hay) being a bit of a micro nightmare that usually ends in starvation anyways.  Being able to predict the amount of hay I need to survive through a winter is difficult and animals really seem to run through it.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?
2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?
3. How are you using animals in combat?

1. Yes, animals are useful at specific use-cases (see #3). Yes, I use them successfully.
At some point of the game, you have enough food, so animals are basically "free", while increasing number of colonist increases the power of raids. The same goes for caravans, as they can eat caravan's food.
Animals are also very useful for hauling, especially those things that are far away from your base.

2. The most annoying is the amount of friendly fire they take during massive combats. While for small battles, e.g. caravan engagements it is possible to manage that.
I don't find "Bonding" as a problem. You just don't take those animals to the battle and they give a passive bonus to one of your colonists.

3. I use animals in three ways:
a) Large hauling animals like Elephants are amazing in caravans engagement. You let them "tank", while do actual killing with your colonists.
b) I use wolves for hauling. As a large battle comes, I put them on a flank and let them take damage. I also use them to run down retreating enemies, to get their loot. They are reproducing very fast, so friendly-fire casualties are not a problem.
Note: I do not use kill-boxes, as I believe it is a kind of an exploit of AI system.
c) My pack of hauling wolves is amazing when defending from infestation. They "stun" skill is very useful to block insects and gives me some time to assemble colonists. Again, casualties are not a problem as I have not issues with food.

I use animals in a limited fashion. The vanilla creatures are mostly too costly to train for defense and hauling. So its a big one or the other kind of choice. Next is how fast they breed. Its not like i can get a group of bears in a timely fashion plus trained only to watch them all get wiped out on the first raid they see. Then im spending another 90 in game days training the next round just to repeat.

The only creature i have had modest success with is the sacred white fox mod. Only because it will survive most fights by dropping unconcious before it loses too much blood or body parts.

A more complex and tactical commands system. In combat (like pawns) we should be able to determine the action/role of the animal (more specific, we should be able to give more specified commands to them).
- Follow: Simple, the animal just follow and only attacks if they have a preference or if ordened.
- Distract: In which the animal try to flank behind the enemies and serves as a distraction.
- Attack: The standard option, the animal attacks the selected pawn/animal, the higher the level, more the animal can be more precise in attacking sensitive/unprotected areas aka more severe/deadly wounds.
- Rescue: Only for powerful and specifed animals, the animal can push/haul a pawn to the nearest friendly medical bay/bed.
- Wait: This option have a 2-diferents variation, the first one he only waits, until be given a specifed command or when he have to eat, sleep etc... the second one is like a stand-by option, the animal stays on its detemined area and when a raid happens, the animal goes to help its owner.
- Protect: as the name says ... the animal stays close to its determined pawn ... until a threat gets close to a specific range, if close enough the animal attacks the enemy.

In combat, as people said, they are somewat useless in some aspects, and they are only used as meat shields, distactions or (when having a large number of them) to attack. Look at how people uses boomaloops, boars, squirels and chicks/chickens.

I used to use combat animals more often, until A18, when boomalopes started making chemfuel. Now my grazing resources are taken up by fuel production. Still, I will use muffalo as my main combat defense in early game caravans. 1 pawn + 3-5 muffalo + bulk low-value trade items like leathers = small ambushes that can usually be fended off with muffalo alone. I have no major complaints about animal combat, but sure it can be improved and most of the suggestions here are pretty good.

Mostly I just wish there was a way to mark the animals I wanted for combat, who could die and the animals I want to keep for wool or milk or because they are cool.  It would be nice to say these are the war elephants or bears or wargs and they go fight and sometimes die, and that is sad, but not break your mental health sad...

Quote from: WickedGoddess on January 21, 2018, 10:59:19 PM
Mostly I just wish there was a way to mark the animals I wanted for combat, who could die and the animals I want to keep for wool or milk or because they are cool.  It would be nice to say these are the war elephants or bears or wargs and they go fight and sometimes die, and that is sad, but not break your mental health sad...

Simply do not train animals you want for resources or want to keep for other reasons besides combat.  Problem solved.

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Yes animals are very useful in combat in a variety of situations. Yes all the time. I find them to be really versatile in how they can be used. A release of Boars as others have mentioned can be devastating to an enemy raid. But also having a squirrel tamed and assigned to your brawler types helps as a soak for damage (small size easily missed by weapon fire and can distract attacks away from pawn.) My personal favoured animal is the camel gives Milk and Wool and hands out a smack load of damage in combat and can be used as a pack animal. My camels have saved my caravans on many an occasion. 

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

The slow wander when following a drafted pawn. Everyone forms up at the sandbags and good old "Miffy" the pet husky who is there to keep their master safe has now wandered over the sandbags and is about to cop some friendly fire.

Maybe a sit ability (Trainable) once a pet comes within the range of its master (a pre determined distance say the size of a EMP mortar round explosion) the sit command could be given (a draft style button) and the animal will stay on that tile until the master moves out of range, release order given or sit command cancelled.

3. How are you using animals in combat?

I am using them as the equivalent of melee Pawns and occasionally late game to assist in hunting down fleeing opponents.

I find that animals just get in the way. They normally just end up getting themselves killed since you have no control over them at all. Whenever a raid comes i usually set them to no owner and put them in a safe zone somewhere in my colony. A way to make them be a bit more useful would be if their masters could give them commands, like seek cover, attack, return. This would also help with the games immersion and make it less annoying to have to go into my animals menu every time I get a raid.

I raise Rhinos for combat. I have a colony with plenty of brawlers so when i send them with the rhinos to attack, i usually end up brutally murdering any raiders.

Only problem is, they become blind WAY too fast. It does make some sense, since attacks on their faces are common, but is really annoying to have a blind 9 year old rhino considering they have 40 years of life expectancy.

Still, i wouldnt change them for anything.

Something i would like to ask you regarding this is to implement an option to apply certain substances like luciferium periodically to animals. Since the only way to cure blindness on animals is by applying them luciferium, I gave it to my 9 year old blind rhino, but had to send him to cryosleep since it was impossible to remember about it all the time and i had to reload save too frequently to avoid his death.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'm considering it all systematically.

I still prefer bears for combat, due to good HP and their stun attack (assuming that still exists ^^').

Quote1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

I use raptors from the Dinosauria mod. I avoid using livestock because I am overly cautious about losing them, even though a lot of them breed very quickly.

Quote2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Friendly fire is a major concern later on, so animals rarely play a role in large raids. Having newly trained pigs and llamas wander into combat because they were assigned a master can be pretty annoying--I have to open the animal tab and reset a bunch of animals every time a raid starts.

Quote3. How are you using animals in combat?

Fast animals (e.g. raptors) close distances very quickly and are better than armed melee humans. I also use them to engage archers as quickly as possible, and to chase down kidnappers and fleeing raiders.

> 1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Can be useful, but are unreliable and hard to use. I use them when I have to, otherwise not.

> 2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

They are hard and inconvenient to position and quickly engage/disengage, while precision and speed are key factors to successful melee combat. Being able to give them specific orders would help with this, but would still not make them really viable because the micromanagement wouldn't be worth the benefits most of the time.

Also, being unarmored means that they more or less inevitably and fairly quickly get permanent injuries. It's not a problem if you mass breed them to be cannon fodder, but otherwise it is.

> 3. How are you using animals in combat?

Early game, they can provide extra dps or tanking because it's easier to keep them out of excessive retaliation. Also, muffalos can help protect caravans untill ambushes start getting really nasty. Other than that, I only use them in desperate situations.

I personally would use my big cats in caravans as lower power score melees if:

1) permanent injury was reasonably fixable
2) they could hunt while traveling in biomes where they normally can hunt

In larger scale combat, I don't see non-throwaway animals becoming usable unless there are shields and armor for them.

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1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

I generally don't use animals because they are too easily killed and the mood debuf and training time usually doesn't make it favorable. I only use animals heavily in combat if I specifically aim to play a game that way.

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2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Not being able to control the animals makes them a gamble. When they work it's great but when they don't I usually end of killing them with friendly fire. They also never stay behind cover so they usually just wander into the enemy fire before I can even release them properly.

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3. How are you using animals in combat?

I like to pair animals with my hunters to give a buffer for when animals decide to attack or the whole herd becomes man hunters. I find that usually my hunter can handle themselves but several times having one or two assigned animals has made the difference.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
I'm investigating whether there's a problem with the current design of animals with regards to using them in combat. Some players do definitely use them, but I'm curious if more could be done to make this useful. So I'm opening the discussion and inviting players to answer the following questions:

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

3. How are you using animals in combat?

You don't have to suggest any solutions at all, of course. I';m very happy to just collect notes on player experiences. However, suggestions are also welcome. But, this is not an open thread for new ideas, related to animals or not. I'm only attempting small refinement-oriented adjustments, balancings, and fixes to animal combat mechanics. Off-topic posts are likely to get deleted.

Thanks all!

1.  Sometimes.  They are nice when things hit the fan (sapper breach, drop pod mech type stuff).  Normally, they're a liability because beating raids on extreme w/o losses/risk requires precision control you can't do with animals.  On the biomes I play they're not so expendable either.
2.  Even on release to attack, they often take a long time to react after being hit.
3.  Their utility is similar to extra pawns in melee.  Mostly this means dragging them through a door for defeat in detail against raiders.  They're pretty cumbersome for this though, especially with door hold open/close micromanagement.

As the game drags on and raid size/quality scales up, they are increasingly less useful outside the stopgap role (melee shares this curve in general, if only for sanity reasons).

My only preference would be to make them more responsive to commands (release vs not, following master more tightly when drafted).  Maybe allow targeted release with a higher training cost...actually this would make them very useful on maps you can feed them.

Quote from: Simpology on January 21, 2018, 08:13:24 AM
To make them more effect in standard prepared defence combat, maybe sticking a personal shield on them would do the trick since it would allow them to get in melee range more effectively and also protect them from your own stray bullets. It also sounds practically possible to be able to attach a shield belt to them.

Quote from: king komodo on January 21, 2018, 10:33:33 AMEDIT: I also saw someone mention making the shield belts able to be put on animals as being a good idea to counter this and I second that one idea as well.

Quote from: O Negative on January 21, 2018, 12:58:13 PM
Also, given that there aren't any ranged animals, having the ability to add "belts" (shield, smoke-pop, etc.) to our animals would be nice.

Concept illustration:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/7rzlpo/art_gallery_of_the_outer_rim_exhibit_11/

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

3. How are you using animals in combat?

1. Animals, for me, are useful in combat. They tank well enough, depending on the type of animal. They get mauled by enemy fire, but if you aren't bothered by that, they're great, as they force the enemy to focus on them and not your colonists. With that said, I want to use them, but I don't. The reality is I cannot train and breed enough of the species I choose to keep, such to make their losses in combat acceptable, not to mention that I am one of those people bothered by watching them get slaughtered. So they get used in combat only as a last resort, these days, when I know I'm in a fight for the very survival of my colony.

2. Perhaps the biggest issue is that I often see them take more friendly fire than enemy fire, especially bigger species, and I'm really not okay with that. I know that's not untrue to life given that they're in the line of fire, but maybe this is a time where reality could take a bit of a back seat to a gameplay mechanic made to reduce that issue. I would use them for low intensity stuff, like following a master while hunting or doing field work, but I see some of the same issues there. My colonists are a bigger danger to them than the odd revenging giant sloth or grizzly bear is to my colonist, ultimately.

3. When I am using them in combat, it's generally to drag dangerous enemies with serious long range hardware into melee, so that my colonists have enough time to shoot the bad guy down, with out getting torn up by whatever nasty weapon I'm trying to get out of the fight.

Additional Comments. I would use things like the giant sloth for sure, but then we get into training issues (I know you didn't ask about that, but it's worth mentioning in my mind). It's nearly impossible to tame one, and even more so a Thrumbo, but when I finally did tame a couple sloths (never gotten a Thrumbo to this day, but I will make it happen!), I realized their usefulness was limited, because it was nearly as hard to train them on the colony tasks I needed them to do, as well as make them combat-order capable (I know, I need to be selective about what I focus training on).

So in the end, I don't get to keep around the more exotic, sci-fi type creatures like the giant sloth, and instead default back to, say, grizzlies or elephants (if they're attainable), because they're also big and tough, but more importantly far more trainable. Alas, that's just not the same as having some exotic creature out of the pages of sci-fi protecting my colonists or my Muffalo herds, etc.

Perhaps having more medical options with animals mauled by enemies, but still alive, would be a good thing. Bionic parts or something, I donno. Just a thought.

• They are fun to use when i decide to actually use them in my playthroughs. But it is pretty rare because i mostly use guns.
• Lack of positioning. You can't tell the animal whether to stand back or in front of the handler. Also no way to sic' the animals at a target of your choice.
• Overwhelm with numbers using wild boars. I find big animals to be a waste of time.

Animals would be more useful in combat if they got some sense of self preservation too. Should try to retreat if they get hurt past 50% of their "health" unless the handler say otherwise.
Also the the ability to strap a IED onto a animal would be useful :P. Think the molerats with bombs attached to them in Fallout 4. Maybe let them use shield belts too?

Quote from: FGsquared on January 21, 2018, 07:37:05 AM
I just plainly don't use them because of the mood debuff and the associated mental breaks that can happen if there's a death.

Maybe there would be a possibility to train them as war animals which prevents the mood debuff to happen when they are killed, but maybe that means that these animals can't haul or something like that to balance it.

This right here is the issue for me. I feel like when I send out my war animals, they are all weak melee fighters, so they are going to take lots of damage, including maybe some friendly fire, and I might lose too many. In vanilla, you can only patch up your fluffy buddies so much. I think we've all gotten to that point at least once where we have a colony dog who only has one eye, one ear, no jaw, no tail, has dementia, one good leg with two people legs, and his name is Lucky. We would be devastated to lose Lucky.

I still don't want to lose the whole bonding mechanism. I think it's fantastic. But maybe something could change about it, because isn't the debuff very long for a bonded animal death?

I also think it would be TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME if there was at least one or two layers of apparel for animals in the vanilla game. At least so it would be easy for modders to add in equipment. Right now, we are so lucky to have the combination of these mods all working together: Giddy-Up (and it's companion mods Battlemounts and Caravan) along with Run-n-Gun (same author I think?) Genetic Rim and now ranged animal attack just came out.

I want to be able to invest now in these animals defense it equipment, especially after I might have to invest do much in capturing, breeding, raising, and training them.

Also, some of us might not have newer high end rigs, so I can't afford to have 100 colony animals. I might only have 10-20. So it would be great if we were allowed the option to build more "tall" than "wide." Quality over quantity.

EDIT: I also hate how we don't have a way to deal with boom creatures except when it rains. Could they please have a natural predator, that might have a venom they inject as they fight, making boomers not explode? Or we could get this as a special attack modifier, maybe.

Quote1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

They can be. I use them sometimes. It mostly depends on the availability of animals I want combined with the feasibility of feeding the animals in whatever biome I am playing in.

Quote2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Pretty much everything related to combat with animals. They are not directly controllable and they run into the line of fire like bullets are cheese-steaks. It all makes complete sense in the context of RimWorld being a sim, but it makes mixed human/animal combat super annoying and frustrating to the point where I would label it "not worth it".

Quote3. How are you using animals in combat?

I assign all combat-ready animals to a single pawn, usually a melee pawn so he doesn't shoot his own pets, or a non-combat pawn. The latter is actually my preference because I never, ever send animals into combat when my humans are in combat. That is simply a recipe for disaster. By assigning them to a non-combat pawn they are used as a reserve force. If my defenses are broken, I release the animals as a last-ditch effort to contain my base. This has worked quite well in the past and prevented more than one base wipe. I also use my pet reserve force to deal with insects and mechanoids if I don't have enough able-bodied combatants (or, again, as a last-ditch effort if my combat humans are all incapacitated). Animals can be quite effective against insects if you have enough of them. They are also surprisingly effective against small numbers of mechanoids, but get destroyed by moderate or larger numbers.

It's also possible to build a tight-cornered maze-like entrance to your base and then release your animals into it when raided. You need tight, short passages to prevent the raiders from being able to fire before your animals engage in melee, and it's still not as effective as a proper human-defended defense structure, but it can work in a pinch (or just to mix things up and try something new).

I don't ever use animals for combat in caravans because of the feeding issue. If I have to feed someone to defend a caravan it's going to be a human because they are simply much more effective per unit of food required.

A slower game speed option (e.g. a 1/2x speed) would help the ability to micro human pawn targeting to avoid hitting your own pets, making it easier to use pets in combat with humans colonists, but I'm not sure that's the answer. (Although, sidenote, I would love a half-speed mode for combat regardless of pet combat because I generally feel that large combats are hard to manage at normal game speed...but I digress.)

Since the game is at least partially a sim I started thinking about real world use of pets in combat. Typically you don't send an animal into combat and then fire at the same person. You either keep the animal leashed (literally or metaphorically) and fire a weapon or you release the animal and do not fire while they are engaged. Attack animals in the real world are also generally trained to be able to attack a specific target, which would help immensely in RimWorld to keep them off to the sides of combat or to specifically target raiders that get behind your lines, allowing your gunners to continue shooting at the ones still advancing. Adding this might be juuust enough to make mixed human/pet combat feasible.

I don't use them in combat. After all the time and food I've spent on taming them bears, they have to work hard to break even. Not gonna expose them simple minded folks to bullets and ruin my guy(s) efforts.

1 - I find that they're somewhat useful, in the right circumstances. To be fair I haven't experimented with them a ton, and don't rely on animals.

2 - There are two things I don't particularly like about war animals.

First off, they have a good chance of dying, and they have a good chance of bonding. Them dying easily isn't bad in and of itself, but if they bond with a pawn it's damaging as they are at the most risk in a combat situation. It's a good way to upset pawns.

The other, and probably more critical issue, is managing them in combat. They're rather unwieldly as is. Being able to have some basic strategies, and maybe give some orders would help. They probably shouldn't have the same capabilities as pawns, but they should be more managable than they are now.

3 - If I do use them, it's mostly to distract enemies and take a few hits. I have also used boomalopes and boomrats to start fires.

1) Yes, mainly i use them only early game when turret research is not done to help against raids, then throughout the game as haulers.

2) As most people mentioned - no control over them, so they create utter chaos in a fight and mostly die to friendly fire. That leads to another issue people pointed at - moodlets. They bond with trainers quite often and when they die, trainer-pawn has atrocious long-expiring moodlets.

3) Early game they are a great help to level the playing ground with pirate raids since starting weapons are weak. Can tank some hits, draw ranged guys into melee, so I can sneak up on them with my melee brawlers and etc. Not to mention that if one of my starting colonists has great animal handling skills zerg mob tactic becomes available. In harsher biomes tamed animals also double as emergency food supply, however sad it sounds.

Midgame - they can still be used in combat, mostly they can help a bit with raids that use drop pods or sappers to bypass your turret defense line. For example you can set up a zone for them around landed pods, which automatically forces raiders to be in melee once they come out, preventing lots of gunfire. Kind of like surrounding mechanoid ships with them, like someone mentioned earlier. You can setup ambushes by creating animal zones in a building that raiders will pass by and then unrestrict and release them. Still in midgame you start to see lots of casualties among your pets if you still use them for combat and that often makes me just avoid using them for that purpose.

Lategame raiders become just too strong for pets to be able to even put a dent into them. They come in armor with good quality melee weapons and pretty much tear most pets apart unless there literally is an army of pets like 30-40 heads. And even then there will be crapton of deaths, so you'll have to regenerate your pet army slowly, there'll be bonded deaths, friendly fire... Just meh. Honestly most use out of pets in lategame and second half mid game is hauling squads, where they really are indispensable.

You can already somewhat control animals with animal zones, but that is wonky as all hell, honestly the best way to improve them will be adding Advanced Obedience Training that allows you to draft pets and control them as long as their master is close enough to "issue precise commands". That could allow for advanced tactics using pets as additional melee fighters. Also letting us craft and equip armor and implants for animals could be really good addition as well and might decrease pet vulnerability.

Maybe we can just get a tool that we can "paint" certain targets that animals set to attack will prefer fighting. Since the friendly fire is such an issue, you could for example paint or "mark" the raiders you need your pets to go for first, while your pawns focus on different targets.

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?
No, I don't think they are, at least not most of the time. I do use them to guard my hunters and miners from hungry predators, but that's pretty much it. Training them is a large food and time investment that is very likely to just die on you if you try to use them for actual warfare as they're pretty much guaranteed to get hit by many stray bullets, so it's significantly more worth your time to just tame working animals like dogs or livestock like cows, muffalos and chickens that actually provide the colony with a steady benefit.

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?
Aside from them being magnets for your bullets?
They do tend to wander around you, blocking your shots and attracting enemy fire due to being out of cover. Then being downed and bleeding out right after.
The fact that they start with "follow when drafted" activated upon successful obedience training is rather annoying, too. Several times I've noticed that a few newborn puppies i just pre-trained followed me to the fortifications during a raid because I forgot to untick this box, and promptly gets shot and killed by the encroaching raiders.

3. How are you using animals in combat?
Like I mentioned in question 1, I use them as guards for my vulnerable non-drafted colonists doing work outside the safety of the settlement walls. Every other instance of combat, I try to keep the animals as far away from as possible to keep them alive. It takes far too much time to successfully train a predator due to its wildness, even with high skill levels, to risk them immediately dying to something you could've just shot instead from behind a wall.

Ideally, having more control over animals would help. But, I understand that kind of thing might leave a lot of room for exploitation.

Part of me feels like the best and most simple solution would be to allow (shield) belts to be equipped on animals. It would help mitigate friendly fire damage, as well as help prevent combat animals from taking significant damage from hostiles before they have a chance to reach their target(s). Boomrats and boomalopes would actually be able to effectively make it to their targets and explode where you want them to (right in the hostile's ugly face!)

Quote from: O Negative on January 24, 2018, 03:21:23 PM
Ideally, having more control over animals would help. But, I understand that kind of thing might leave a lot of room for exploitation.

Part of me feels like the best and most simple solution would be to allow (shield) belts to be equipped on animals. It would help mitigate friendly fire damage, as well as help prevent combat animals from taking significant damage from hostiles before they have a chance to reach their target(s). Boomrats and boomalopes would actually be able to effectively make it to their targets and explode where you want them to (right in the hostile's ugly face!)

There's a pretty wide space between what we have now and "total control of animals", and at least some of the possibilities within that space would still be reasonable balance-wise.

I'm thinking more along the lines of "attack that thing" or "back to master" as being the only options, rather than moving them directly or something which would be game breaking :p.

I don't use the animals in combat due to the lack of control and the massive debuff due to the death of bonded animals.
A way to improve animals is to be able to have more control over what the animals attack.
   1.)A button to tell animals to stay in a pack, attack as a pack, and have pack mentality.
   2.)Be able to tell the animals to attack targets in an area.
   3.)An easier way to stop the bonding of colonist and animal.

I have an extreme counterpoint to the chorus of "nah too expensive and fragile"
I had one tribal playthrough on Rough or Intense on a jungle biome with a skilled trainer. I tamed a few wild boars. At 10 boars, battles became easy. But they bred out of control. I ended up with 70 before the grazing became thin. Battles were a joke. Enemies would never even see my colonists. I had no need for tactics, because I didn't care how many boars died. I slaughtered any with permanent injuries, making room for replacements.

Pets don't really work in a shoot-out. But a melee stampede is viable if the colonists aren't prioritized by enemy shooters. If enemy shooters prioritized the closest target, that would be easy enough for players to game.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Not really. I mean, I usually train the starting pets (unless they're a cat). But my experience has not let me to specifically seek out pets that would make good warbeasts.

Main reason is friendly fire, animals get shot by my bow and gun-equipped colonists almost as much as they get bashed or stabbed by the raiders. There is also a bit related to how difficult it is to tame most animals that would be good at fighting (though I understand that's a balance issue more than anything) especially compared to animals that can be sheared and/or milked, like Alpacas and Muffalos.

Quote
2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

The fact that I can't control them, yet they can get in the way of drafted pawns if, in sticking to another pawn, stand where I want another pawn to be.

Quote
3. How are you using animals in combat?

Usually have them stay near my gun-toting colonists to help ward off melee attackers so they can keep shooting. Works decently against manhunter packs, but with raiders, especailly grenade-carrying pirates and mechanoids, this does me little good, but as I mentioned before, releasing them just to get shot from both sides isn't much more helpful.

Quote
You don't have to suggest any solutions at all, of course. I';m very happy to just collect notes on player experiences. However, suggestions are also welcome. But, this is not an open thread for new ideas, related to animals or not. I'm only attempting small refinement-oriented adjustments, balancings, and fixes to animal combat mechanics. Off-topic posts are likely to get deleted.

Thanks all!

Might be beyond the small adjustments, but instead of it being just a toggle, could "releasing" give us the ability to control the animal while drafted? Or at least some ability to tell them which enemy I want them to harass.

1. I love animals in combat. They are the best end game combat solution for areas that can sustain a colony of them.

2. The most annoying aspect is the wander mechanic. When animals are released, they will immediately look for a combatant in sight. Seeing none, they will go through a wander that is too long for combat. Often times this means they drift into the enemies sight while still under the wandering spell. I toggle it on and off to assist with the issue.

3. Typically the animals will stay with my handlers. This allows them to defend in case of a mad animal taming event. In a raid, the handlers are placed in a position that will allow a surprise attack when the enemy comes into firing range. In a perfect scenario, the colony will have generated a surplus, and the disposal animal soldiers will do 90 percent of the fighting. In a caravan, I take two colonists with handle and medical. They take most muffalos and the muffalo do the work.

Why do we have some pets that are bonded to pawns that cannot control the pet due to it's required animal handling level (example pawn has animal handling at 2 but a cougar requires 6 I believe) when they spawn in with them? Maybe we should have a way to change bonds if there is more than one candidate. I thought it would be cool to let all of my colonists have their own husky that would sleep in an animal bed in the bedroom with the pawn, and they would eventually bond overtime.

Also, it's been a few weeks since I have played past test games so I cannot remember 100%, but will pets you tame later on end up bonding to random pawns that are outside of their skill level as well? If that's the case, then I believe this is even more reason to allow the player an ability to further influence who a pet is bonded to.

Could we not have multiple bonds from a pet? I mean really, let's think about if you had a colony of 10 people and a couple dogs. Those two dogs individually are going to end up liking or disliking pretty much everyone throughout the colony. I am not asking for Psychology level social system for animals, but maybe when you select the animal's info tab you have a drop down list of available candidates to choose from for the bond, just like the master.

Being able to mount sufficiently tamed animals and control them like a vehicle during combat would be pretty great (and in the western spirit, too!)

The idea is I'd train a muffalo to accept battle commands, then mount it during a raid and order it to charge the enemy line.  Being able to fire a weapon while mounted (with a penalty to aim) would be just awesome.  Imagine having a whole cavalry of colonists charge a raid this way?  Suddenly aggressive counter-attacks are appealing instead of the usual defensive "hunker down" strategies.

Should work well with caravans, too.

they are a fun concept but as many people have stated they are squishy and slow maybe increase all of their speeds a little bit, maybe with a curve depending on the animals squirrels vs wargs for example. as well as add craft-able armor for some like war plates for rhinos and like Kevlar/ padding for wargs. also beef their attacks most of them beside the thrumbo are so week they are not even useful until you have 10 which is a giant turn off for some that are as described made for war. i would definitely use them more once they get balanced right but for now id say pack animals are the only thing going for them right now.

1: Not really. They tend to go down very quickly, and there's no way to improve an animal to be better in combat. You can't armor them, give them better weapons, or improve their combat skills. Here's a little story to illustrate my point. A group of about 10 yorkies, give or take, joined my colony. I trained them all in release, assuming that they would at least make a decent meatshield. A small raid arrive with no more than 5 raiders, so I position my guys and release the yorkies. A few seconds later, most of them were dead, and the few that survived were too crippled to even hope to be useful in combat.

2: Quirks? None that I can think of, besides the ones that people have already mentioned.

3: Not much at all. My yorkie story nicely summed up the problem with using animals for combat. Admittedly they are pretty weak, but even with tougher animals, such as dogs, alpacas, and camels, it's not worth it. The problem is is that the animals I mentioned above tend not to be common, and some can only be obtained through trade or special events. The problem can be summed up as weak animals make weak meatshields, and strong animals make an insufficient meatshield.

To make animal combat more viable, I would add in items that would improve your pet. Pet armor,  pet bionics, and pet weapons would be a good start. I'll even like to suggest a pet weapon that I call the "Unicorn Horn". Basically, it's a helmet with a spike on the end for ramming enemies with. If you really wanted to go crazy, you could have a back-mounted turret gun you could put on larger animals. I would also make it so that animals that are trained in release can actually train the melee skill like humans can. They can then train it through practical experience or through further training by a handler.

1. Animals are very useful is melee combat but not so much in ranged combat. If i am using doing a tribal playthrough (and have a decent handler who can tame them) i use them as a meat shield and to supplement damage output. In late game where you have high end ranged weapons or are using a killbox with a lot of turrets they are almost completely useless due to the friendly fire. Generally you do more damage to your animals than you do to your enemies.

2. There are a lot of annoying quirks to animal combat imo.
A. Bonded animals become more of hindrance because they often get killed causing serious mood debuffs.
B. When you have a lot of animals and utilize release function they often get clumped and make it difficult use your pawns to attack.
C. When they are set to follow a colonist when drafted they often clog up areas and stand in doorways (This results in doors opening that you don't want open and makes it hard to position your pawns properly because you can't place them where animals are standing.)
D. Animals are often far to susceptible to friendly fire, which makes sense but severely reduces their usefulness when you use any ranged weapon.
E. Most animals are not fast enough to keep up with (or catch up with) fleeing enemies.
F. Your pawns and enemies are always getting better gear/skills/weapons but there is no way to improve your animals for combat (such as armor.) The only way to improve their effectiveness is to get more of them.

3. The most common uses of animals for me is a "meat shield" or a bodyguard when hunting/taming incase other animals turn manhunter they sometimes give you a chance to run away as they attack.

1. I use them in combat if I have enough meat and haulers. Planning to raise a pack of combat wargs in current game.

2. Well their head stays on screen even if their status is 'head blown off'.

3. Often passively and sometimes aggressively. I always start with a scenario with one man and a husky, and not much more. So in the first weeks the husky is very important in defense against raids and possibly mad animals. Later I have a couple squirrels running around in home area, as wolves and other beasts often target them first when they look for any existing prey. Ive had bears and such, and used them in combat - somewhat more against tribals than pirates, as guns seem to kill them easily. It's cool when youre in a tight spot, and can save the day with releasing an angry bear.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM
I'm investigating whether there's a problem with the current design of animals with regards to using them in combat. Some players do definitely use them, but I'm curious if more could be done to make this useful. So I'm opening the discussion and inviting players to answer the following questions:

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

3. How are you using animals in combat?

You don't have to suggest any solutions at all, of course. I';m very happy to just collect notes on player experiences. However, suggestions are also welcome. But, this is not an open thread for new ideas, related to animals or not. I'm only attempting small refinement-oriented adjustments, balancings, and fixes to animal combat mechanics. Off-topic posts are likely to get deleted.

Thanks all!

1. Yes I do. Especially I use large, hoofed animals like Muffalo or Elk to fight infestations, because they are a reliable source of heavy Blunt damage, a powerful damage type that is very difficult to reliably use.

2. The single most annoying part about using animals in combat is that there is nothing you can do about them taking permanent eye/brain scars. While prosthetic limbs and such for animals would be nice, the absolute worst thing is having their accuracy/effectiveness completely destroyed by a lucky headshot.
The second most annoying part about using animals in combat is their tendency to roam around their master uncontrollably, often on the other side of walls their master is hugging, causing them to get shot for no reason or charge an enemy their master is waiting to ambush. Having more control over their movement, specifically restricting them to within one tile of their master (if not the same tile) would go a long way to making them more managable in combat.

3. Because of their annoying tendency to roam outside of cover, I almost exclusively use animals chained to a melee brawler pawn, because otherwise they will simply get shot to death before the need to use them exists. There are exceptions where I find them useful with a ranged pawn (mostly protecting hunters or fighting in narrow hallways), but otherwise, they are glued to my brawlers at all times.

Quote from: Tynan on January 21, 2018, 07:23:49 AM

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

3. How are you using animals in combat?

1. I never use them in combat because I don't want them to get permanent injuries I can never heal. I like the idea of using them in combat though, but at the moment the risk is not worth it so I usually retreat them to a safe zone whenever there is danger around.

2. see 1

3. see 1

:)

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

I have found that animals are helpful in close-quarters combat. If my base is protected by bunkers and gun turrets with large cleared kill corridors then I find animals will often just get in the way, though they can help if used to intercept charging melee troops. However, they are great for fighting indoors or surprising raiders who have no chance to properly shoot at the animals. The best example occurred when I parked a couple bears and a megasloth by the opening point of a sapper's tunnel. When the raiders broke through the wall, they were torn to pieces in moments.

Animals are also helpful as a reserve defense force when things are going badly for my colony. They have been quite useful on occasions where I do not have good permanent defenses or when several colonists are recovering from injuries. In cases like this, it helps to be able to send a pack of muffalo to smash up the raiders and help keep my remaining colonists alive.

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Animals tend to wander out of cover and get shot unnecessarily. They don't have the ability to hide behind cover like a colonist, so if they are waiting among the gun line they will just eat bullets over and over again.


3. How are you using animals in combat?

I have found the most success with either pack animals that reproduce quickly (boars, wolves, and similar) and large beefy animals that can take a dozen rifle shots and stay standing (rhinos, elephants, bears). The former lets me keep a large enough stock of animals that a few losses will not be crippling, while the latter allows animals to survive combat with only rare permanent injuries.

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?
- I usually tame Thrumbo, Elephant, Rhino and Bear for combat propose. They're very good in tanking damage especially Thrumbo since its HP pool is very high. Dope them with Luciferium to cure scar and make them even more strong. I usually bring beastmaster colonist with some tank animal when forming a caravan. In base defense, they're using as security guard inside the wall because they're too expensive to use them at front line unless it's an emergency case like early siege, drop pod raid, crash ship part inside the wall. Fast animal like Panther and Cougar are great at hunting down fleeing raider or caravan too.

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?
- They are useless when cripple and scarred. They don't have protective gear to wear so they'll injured every time when put to combat. Colonist tend to shoot at them because they like to get in the line of sight too so that handle them manually to make them attack from the safe spot is kind of a pain sometimes . There is no method to add prosthetic organ on animal in vanilla yet too :-\.

3. How are you using animals in combat?
- Only Thrumbo, Just hit release and order other colonist to shoot at other target so that our Thrumbo don't get the friendly fire. With other animal, it's depend on what the encounter. With manhunter pack, I'll put the combat animal around the tamer to keep the distance between colonist and the horde. Cramp space like bottleneck hallway is best place for this. With the pirate and mechanoid, it's better to sneak around behind them and jump in for the ambush. Other animal than Thrumbo, elephant and rhino are too vulnerable to fire and bullet.

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?
2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?
3. How are you using animals in combat?

yesnomaybeidontknowCANYOUREPEATTHEQUESTION? kidding. still hard to answer though.

lemme tell you from the start: i usually play crashlanded so i start with a pet, often a doggie, which is great, because i love getting some cheap haulers in the beginning. i will trade for dogs and pigs and hope for dogs and pigs  joining. i will also tame boars of there are any around.

once i have enough haulers and they breed, i try and get the tougher ones that can survive a scuffle better. ideally, wargs, but also bears fairly soon aswell. i level up my hauler army until i have all bears, megasloths, elephants and thrumbos. sometimes i will add random animals that i get through rng, but usually i sell them because they rarely fit in.

i always tame rhinos. superfluous males get made into tough clothing, the stud and females stay for multiplying. and as soon as muffalos wander onto my screen i tame them, except maybe in the very beginning. they are just too good of an allrounder in my opinion. wool (any wool is good wool), best carrying (if slow) for caravans (very important for me) and also produce milk, which is a nice side effect. i wouldnt mind it one bit if they didnt, but since they do, i might aswell use that side of them. they are quite tough, even if they dont pack as much of a punch as camels, they still survive a fight more often than dromedaries, especially in late game alongside the toughest of warbeasts.

so in the end, to me, all that counts is utility. if animals couldnt haul, i'd just tame the toughest and strongest of them for additional infantry support. if milk and egg production was more useful and not as easily replacable with crops, i'd keep animals also for their food. if animals didnt produce any wool, only leather, i'd still keep rhinos for theirs and instead of taming thrumbos i just hunt them by default. (by the way, why dont thrumbos produce wool? oh wait, it's because that would be op...) also, the way i noticed, animals dont really count towards wealth, or at least they are much less worth than a pawn that you use as a janitor in peace times and an infantryman at war and maybe sometimes to carry some things on caravans.

to put it short, they are infantry-janitors that count as way less when looking at raid strengths.

what annoys me about them is that they dont automatically flee from a noisy group of raiding pirates. that's what most animals in real life do. hide. here they not only wait for bullets to hit them as they cant hear the weapons firing, they will also not run home asap, but just walk away for a bit and then wait. come on, animals arent that dumb

They are great for meat.

Animals can be an excellent flanking tool, but it requires a pretty specific base setup. They're also really helpful against raids that circumvent your main defenses (sappers) - these raids can often take a toll on your pawns as you're forced to work with impovised defenses, but a war bear or a handful of boars can make huge difference in a scenario like this, as they can soak up hits from the first wave so your pawns don't have to.

There's also the issue of the handler - ranged handler is a no go, as most of his shots are going to connect with his own animals instead of the enemy. The lack of control over animals is obviously a factor here as well. My handler usually ends up on guard duty at the sandbags with a melee weapon while the animals do the work - not worth the risk throwing him into the melee with them.

I also like the fact that a high animals skill can turn a non-violent colonist into a murder machine that can unleash anything from a horde of squirrels to an elephant on their enemies.

1. NO.
The reason for not using animals as an army is remarkably resembling reality. This is because reliability is poor.
They do not cover. It is difficult to concentrate the fire because of melee.
Extreme is an unreliable and durable way to attack.

2.
It keeps wandering and disturbing the battle.

3.
Prior to the animal runaway patches, animals were used in one place.(Region Restrictions , Not animal training.)
All the animals attacked at once and the enemy fell immediately.
Great power in the corner.

1. The animal interface could use a single button to set /clear all animals to follow. Being able to hold a key down and using mouse-over to select / unselect multiple animals to follow, instead of having to click each individual animal, would really avoid the tediousness of preparing animals for a fight.

2. Setting animals to "guard" (attack anything within their assigned zone) would be great. Could be used for fights but also for using dogs to guard the cattle & fields from wandering wildlife. We REALLY need the ability to create more animal areas though, the current number is just not enough to have multiple specialised roles.

3. As many have said, even when "released" animals often don't do anything...it's just so unpredictable.

4. I keep my animals in the back as a reserve - too dangerous to let them get in the way of flying bullets. It's only when the raiders flee that I like to "release the hounds" to chase down stragglers (but as often as not, released animals just don't do anything).