When I have a dangerous force of war beasts, it's invariably bears, elephants or rhinos. They offer good balance of damage, resistance to lost limbs, and training time. Wargs and wolves are about as hard to train, but are numerous so their training takes more time. They lose paws left and right.
What's your experience with smaller war beasts ?
I usually send in everything that is willing to fight for food, melee is a numbers game. If someone looses limbs in battle, I just cook them, unless it's a beast of burden or a bonded animal. Muffalos and dromedaries are king if they are in the area, you can get one on day two and watch the despair on the face of that one asshole with a shiv that comes later. Dogs are also good if you have a decent amount, they are faster then farm animals. Wargs suck, regular dogs are almost as good but a lot easier to train. Pigs are where it's at for defence, they reproduce fast, easy to train, decent health and dps, not to mention they are good haulers and meat. Bomalopes sound !fun!, I've never tried them. They take their sweet time to reproduce though, so if you want to go explosive, I'd suggest using boomrats instead or taming them once you see them. Should probably keep them in a safe room. Big cats are really strong, and more importantly, really fast, the right tool to catch raiders on the run or save colonists fast. Other animals with wilderness of 50-ish like boars and rams are good early on, but I'd not recommend to breed them to fight.
I have a large pack of wolves. I have sold off most and regrown the pack. They multiply quickly and are very effective fighters. Feeding them is the challenge.
Quote from: wolfmaster on January 14, 2017, 04:49:19 PM
I have a large pack of wolves. I have sold off most and regrown the pack. They multiply quickly and are very effective fighters. Feeding them is the challenge.
If I'm doing a wolf or warg pack, I generally set up a den on the outskirts of my base, with a special exit for them. It's a big time investment to train them to haul, but once they are trained, they will pretty much feed themselves, and then haul the corpse back to a designated area to be harvested for leather and spare meat. Puppies and pregnant females can be brought into a barn for safety. But yeah, they do feed themselves on most maps, if you set it up right.
I use dogs. Quick to train, quick to breed. Cheap to feed (corpses).
I tried using megasloths, but they take quite a while to breed and grow.
Wild boars are my 1st option. They eat grass, do alot of damage and reproduce like crazy. The only downside is that they die quickly. My base has a "Chess" defense so that melee and animals can attack through the flanks. Works quite well.
It elephants right now for me. How do you guys even feed all these animals?I tried boars once and it was insane keeping up the food for them.
Quote from: Catastrophy on January 16, 2017, 12:47:46 PM
How do you guys even feed all these animals?I tried boars once and it was insane keeping up the food for them.
Boars are easy to feed. Since they can eat grass, just restrict them from your food stockpiles and they'll feed themselves.
Year-round growing zones I guess.
Not only do they eat grass, but they also eat corpses.
Once I have a well stablished colony, with hydroponics for my colonists, I usually use the spring/summer to plant hay, and stock that for the pigs.
I was able to run out of grass with all the piglets and the limited space I had. Last colony was too large - it had enough grass, but paths were kinda long. Trying to balance it in the current one. I have relocated low priority crops outside the fortifications.
The problem with a horde of wargs (I started one colony with a mated pair using prepare carefully) is that they take FOREVER to train, even with a max Animal skill trainer.
On the other hand, you can safely use them as crop haulers, since they only eat meat.
Overall I prefer timber wolves, much more trainable. The percentage numbers aren't that different but there's some sort of threshold or something because in practice timbers tame much, much more quickly than wargs. I had wargs die of old age before they were fully trained in some instances.
Either wargs or wolves will hunt and bring the animal corpses back to your base once trained as haulers.
Again food problems with the animals. I've had it! Luckily I have a psychopath, so now there is a NPD for all the meat. I hope the raids keep coming.
I bought 3 wargs for my colony once and immediately regretted it. Being only able to eat meat, they decimated my freezer in days. Had to call up a caravan and resell them.
Chinchillas, on the other hand, make for great attack animals. Well, more like "stand around and let the raiders miss at you a bunch" animals, but a meat shield is all i need these days.
Quote from: Hieronymous Alloy on January 17, 2017, 09:18:47 AM
Overall I prefer timber wolves, much more trainable. The percentage numbers aren't that different but there's some sort of threshold or something because in practice timbers tame much, much more quickly than wargs. I had wargs die of old age before they were fully trained in some instances.
The difficulty to train an animal type is based on its "wildness" value. The more "wild" it is, the more difficult it is to train. Wargs are very wild. Pigs are not wild. Boar are in the middle. Thrumbo are something like 98% wild and are very difficult to train.
You can open up the dev tools and there's a page for stats that can be used to list all animal types and their stats I believe. It's also on the wiki, but I am not sure how up to date that is.
Quote from: MediaGoat on January 17, 2017, 05:30:56 PM
I bought 3 wargs for my colony once and immediately regretted it. Being only able to eat meat, they decimated my freezer in days. Had to call up a caravan and resell them.
All you need to do is restrict them from your freezer and they'll hunt for their own food. Teach them how to haul and they'll haul the kills back for you.
Quote from: DeathWeasel on January 17, 2017, 05:43:48 PM
Quote from: MediaGoat on January 17, 2017, 05:30:56 PM
I bought 3 wargs for my colony once and immediately regretted it. Being only able to eat meat, they decimated my freezer in days. Had to call up a caravan and resell them.
All you need to do is restrict them from your freezer and they'll hunt for their own food. Teach them how to haul and they'll haul the kills back for you.
It's slightly more complicated than that. Make sure they are restricted from your freezer and that your freezer is not in the path between two allowed zones (or two sections of a single allow zone). Pawns, including both humans and animals, are allowed to path outside their allowed areas as long as their destination is within an allowed area. I've had animals go through my disallowed freezer to a grazing zone on the other side and grab snacks on the way through.
Quote from: GiantSpaceHamster on January 17, 2017, 05:55:41 PM
It's slightly more complicated than that. Make sure they are restricted from your freezer and that your freezer is not in the path between two allowed zones (or two sections of a single allow zone). Pawns, including both humans and animals, are allowed to path outside their allowed areas as long as their destination is within an allowed area. I've had animals go through my disallowed freezer to a grazing zone on the other side and grab snacks on the way through.
Pretty sure it doesn't work like that. I have my entire map except my freezer as allowed area for my bears and I've never seen them take any food from it. They shouldn't even be able to interact with items outside their allowed area.
It may have been addressed in A15 or A16. Unless I have food problems I don't pay a lot of detailed attention to my animal wanderings.