How can we improve the design of animals in combat?

[GiantSpaceHamster]

1. 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.

2. 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".

3. 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.

[kvchaos]

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.

[gipothegip]

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.

[Madman666]

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.

[Harry_Dicks]

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.

[lancar]

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.

[O Negative]

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!)

[TheMeInTeam]

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.

[TreeStump]

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.

[NiftyAxolotl]

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.

[Foefaller]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Dashthechinchilla]

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.

[Harry_Dicks]

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.

[Cyan]

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.

[tresflores]

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.