How can we improve the design of animals in combat?

[Names are for the Weak]

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.

[Noheals]

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.

[Ukas]

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.

[Grubfist]

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.

[Kori]

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

[Covered in Weasels]

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.

[khun_poo]

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.

[sick puppy]

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

[SzaryKaptur]

They are great for meat.

[cultist]

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.

[East]

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.

[arcweldx]

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).