Animal hauling question

[OwlPaste]

Hey, I am kinda confused how animal hauling is meant to work? So I got a husky, its 1/1 obidience and 8/8 hauling. But how does it actually haul stuff? I let it roam the whole map without a master and it is not doing anything. It somehow managed to haul some steel but I haven't figured out why it did that but nothing else? It has no movement restrictions either. Healthy, age 3, not hungry, but it just wonders around my base doing nothing...

[zandadoum]

animal hauling is automatic but not as frecuent as colonist hauling.

also make sure that the animal is either unrestricted or at least has the hauling origin and destination as allowed zones.
and like you said: best is to have them without master

that being said, it seems to me that animals wont ever go too far away from base. but it's ok for me, they clean up my base pretty quick and also haul food into my barn

certain animals might react better... labradors, huskies and pigs and boars are very good haulers imo. whileas elephants and other animals seem to trigger the hauling less times.

get your hands on a male and female labrador. they train real quick and also breed very quick. test it with them and see what you find out.
i prefer huskies, seem to work better in cold weathers.

[TLHeart]

My labador and wild boars keep the hauling jobs around the base done. Don't have to have the pickup location in their zone, only the drop off location. And when a colonist goes after that long distance cargo pod drops, the pets follow, and haul back some of the drop.

From my observations, they like to follow the colonists. Large corn harvest coming in, the dogs and boars clean it up while the colonists harvest.

[b0rsuk]

You can trick animals into hauling by drafting their master, positioning him at a remote mining site, and undrafting. Some animals will take a while before they haul, and those boars will most likely start by eating tall grass, but they will wander around and eventually haul for sure.

But yes, it's at random intervals, and you can't do much to influence it except getting even more haulers. My first game in alpha12 - I started with a labrador, which I soon trained for hauling. Later, I bought 2 huskies, then got an event where two more labradors joined me, later bought 4 pigs and also trained for hauling. With 9 hauling animals I could simply unforbid cargo pods or deconstructed mortars on the far end of the map and it solved itself! Massed haulers are very powerful.