Domesticated Wargs. Dog guards, hunters, let's talk about it!

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http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=13606.0
So recently, someone hosted a poll asking for what people wanted added to the game for alpha 12. One of those was about domesticating animals as pets "Dogs / wargs as pets (or other animals)" was the vote option. That started a bit of a discussion, which pretty much then had me write an hour long comment I'm going to post here in suggestions, because it's pretty much a really messy suggestion. Here's a quote for something I referenced, then it's below, un-edited.

I'd really like to see animal taming, I usually spend a lot of time with it in any game that has it.
And Tynan please, if you ever do add this, stay away from cage traps, can't think of anything more antifun than cage traps.

How would you get them tamed then? Right click and feed them food? And later on when they get used to your colonists, pet them, learn them new tricks and so on?

idk, anything that is simple and functional
that also doesn't involve littering the map with 500 cage traps like in Dwarf Fortress
edit: my answer was inside the quote x.x

Ah, being able to take in pets, an idea I've really liked for a while. With wargs being flesh eaters, even better, as they make great guards. Let's go over this ludeon forumers! So, I agree with nego, I'd prefer not having cage traps. How it would likely happen is we'd need some new equipment. You'd need a dog bed, which would take up 2 spaces, and work like a normal colonists bed. The dogs(Wargs, but since domesticated lets call them dogs, it's easier) would have a lot of in common with colonists, enough to be able to control them, yet be different, as we don't want them taking up colonist spaces and doing little.

Lots to go over. Lets start with getting a dog. You'd need a dog bed first, and unlike colonist beds, dog beds serve for medical and sleeping, as they're dogs, they don't really care and it makes it less complicated. I'm pretty sure wargs can be incapacitated like other animals(Have yet to play alpha 11), makes sense, so if one is, you're able to rescue it to a dog bed, which automatically becomes theirs. Thing is, to make it make more sense, you have to tame it with a colonist, and it becomes theirs! So the wargs all have somewhere in their stats requiring say 5-15 of the social skill (Skills are only stuff that is always relevant, we don't want to require a new one, and hunting wont make sense). If a colonist has enough of that, say the warg that's down requires a level 10 social, you can go have your colonist assigned to 'tame' that warg. That means it becomes theirs, they deal with it. One you have the dog (Warg) assigned to a colonist, you can have it rescued and healed by a doctor on a dog bed. Heal it up, you got yourself a new dog!

Now, lets go over what it does and stuff that's going to get in the way. Firstly, animal doors. You can place them in the wall, it requires maybe 2-5 extra steel. It's small enough to let wargs, bunnies, squirrels, boomrats, deer in. It does not allow muffalo, the mechanoid enemies, or humans at all. This is all because wargs cant operate doors, and if automated doors don't trigger for normal animals, even muffalo, wargs probably can't trigger it. So we need a door for wargs, but anything smaller then wargs could probably get in too. Lets pretend for the sake of the game though the humans can't crawl in it while wolves can. So when you decide your bed location for the dog/warg/wolf, you want it by your entrance, in a room separated from it but also from everything else, just for the dog beds. This is so you can heal it, and have a room for the wargs, but don't need to have them outside, and other animals may come in but the wargs will probably kill them.

So, how wargs work is next. Wargs require a bed, the door to go outside, and food bowls, which is also assigned to a warg. This is because the person taming the warg feeds the warg, brings it food. So wargs...This pretty much ALL depends on whether they feed on normal animals and food, but just don't prefer it. You can feed it to them, but they get a negative bonus for eating it, just either normal meat or veggies so it's less complicated, micro management and stuff. Let's see. Wargs, when you select them, have an option at the bottom of the screen like the furniture tab and such tabs, and like humans. It allows you to put down a flag, and a cube distance to a certain max and minimum. That flag is where the warg will spend it's day when not eating/sleeping, and while still tamed.

So the flag is basically where the warg guards. The warg will have options to attack enemies, humans (Not yours), and animals within the distance. By default, it attacks animals around it and raiders. So you'd place the flag in front of your base, in your killbox if you had one likely, and when raiders come in or animals, it'll attack em. Hunted animals will be attacked right away, animals that aren't only when it's hungry. When the warg becomes hungry enough, it wanders away from the flag area and kills animals, which it eats. It'll bring back the animals it kills near it's bed, and eat them (I'm assuming, as I saw in the alpha 11 video, they don't actually eat the humans off the ground but just kill them.). So they'd 'eat' the animals and it would probably eat away about half the durability of the animal or such depending on it.

This is just full of holes, but it's how stuff is made. Gotta make a base idea and build. So let's talk a bit about how the warg acts for joy and mood. They could get a mood negative for eating anything but human flesh, but since that would be a lot, it would be better to just add a mood boost if it's human flesh. They need space, and lots of it, while awake, more then humans. Instead of cabin fever, they'd get upset at not being able to go outside, I don't know the exact name but basically too much energy. They could have an energy bar too, which refills after sleep, and they get upset if it fills, the longer it's full like cabin fever the more it effects the mood for a negative. They wouldn't care much for beauty, so the negative would be much less for them. In order to not have pointless managing, they'd just have a much higher tolerance. There's the part about small rooms remember, so yeah.

I make too much of this up off the top of my head and building off previous stuff. So I think I covered mostly everything... Let's discuss food again though, as it's the biggest problem. They'd need to be able to eat off human corpses and animal, and I'm not sure about if they can or probably can't at the moment. If they got hungry enough, unlike a human, they'd go off from the area, kill an animal, haul it back and eat it.
Here's an idea though: If they 'break' like a human from low mood, they'd run off from the area. They'd be made to roam the map for a bit, maybe a week eating animals and humans, but not being hostile to the colony, until the time is up, and then they'd leave the map. In that time, because of them breaking from the effects, their social requirements would raise. Instead of being say 10, they'd grow to around 15, due to the humans. So someone with a higher level (Which may even be the same colonist, they might of even slowly leveled high enough from the animal, which they could play with) could try to tame it again. They'd have a chance like a prisoner, maybe just 20% at the lowest, goes up 10% for every level higher then the required, maxium 90%. (So a level 5, breaks, requires a level 10, the level 17 would have a perfect 90% chance to tame it and be it's new master).

Okay, so I just spent I think about an hour writing this. Let's talk the last bit about some other stuff for it. They'd enjoy sharing a bedroom with other dogs, being around them, more then being alone, which might even give a negative, to combat that could even make it so if they're with a human they're okay. There could be a "Playing around with dog" boost, like socializing with humans, and the dog could get the boost 'Playing around", which would work for humans and other dogs. You could have playing fetch and such, as there's the horse shoes, but I'm not sure how well that would be for putting in and might be too much trouble for what it's worth for Tynan, as most of this post is. Dogs, domesticated, tamed wargs would be pretty much mostly useful for guarding. You could make it so they could also hunt though, by having an option for "Hunting" on the bottom too, where they'd drag back the animal close to their room as possible. The wargs could be poisoned by food like humans, pretty sure none of the food currently would actually kill them as normal wolves even or dogs, they'd vomit. They might also shed in warm weather, because why not. Wargs would not haul, they would not do other things, because it just seems unlikely. Dragging a sled, maybe, but I don't feel like having a moving sled hauling an object attached to a dog is very rimworld-like at the moment, just imaging how it would move and such around things.

So yeah, I know I've spent at least an hour on this so far, maybe a bit over by 10 minutes or something. Thank you for reading this stuff that come off the top of my head as I wrote it all pretty much, which is why it's not in any order and I probably say stuff that contradicts myself. Have a nice day Ludeon Forumers! Or night... since the suns pretty much coming down for me right now and it was shining an hour ago. Looking at this in preview, this is a lot of text! Damn you'll enjoy reading this.

I wish I could tl;dr read this, I really wish I could, but if you're hoping for one, sorry mate.

[A Friend]

Dunno if this is off topic but I think Tribal Raids weaponizing Wargs (And perhaps other animals) would be pretty nice.

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That would make sense, as if we could tame them, tribals would likely be able to tame them also. So yeah.

[Lonely Rogue]

This is probably going to sound rude, and it's only because I find it to be a big problem, just realize you're not the developer and you don't need to come up with every single thing, the developer, Tynan, will find a way to put these things in if he wants them. This is for suggestions, as in the idea for taming wargs, not players making the decisions for a loving developer.

[MarcTheMerc]

This is probably going to sound rude, and it's only because I find it to be a big problem, just realize you're not the developer and you don't need to come up with every single thing, the developer, Tynan, will find a way to put these things in if he wants them. This is for suggestions, as in the idea for taming wargs, not players making the decisions for a loving developer.

Even so it doesn't stop us from enjoying the conversation and entertaining the idea.
Also tynan might realise the fans interest as something to be considered down the line.
However Project K9s being redeveloped as far as i know.

[isistoy]

Yep, Project k9 is in porting to A11 and trying to be revived. We are in for a good try at that!

[Lonely Rogue]

    I know he will take in these suggestions, but God dang that's a lot of detail for someone who has nothing to do with making the game.

[MeowRailroad]

There could also be cats (to be fair to the kittehz), and colonists could have a trait like "dog lover" or "cat lover". They could have a buff from being around favored animal, and a debuff from being around unfavored animal.

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    I know he will take in these suggestions, but God dang that's a lot of detail for someone who has nothing to do with making the game.

Well yeah, because it's suggestions. All of this, the entire thing, is a suggestion. Ideas are grown off other ideas. I know it's likely not all of this will get put in, but Tynan does check suggestions and such, and any idea can spark a new idea. This is meant for the topic of dogs and pets, ideas can be sprouted, added, if nothing happens owell.

[hector212121]

What if there's a chip-type thing that they use for the automated doors rather than motion sensors? Chip collars.

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What if there's a chip-type thing that they use for the automated doors rather than motion sensors? Chip collars.

True. They used to have keys for doors way back, so it's possible it's something like that. I thought automated doors would be eh/eh to add, so sure, could add them since they're automated. The only reason I said no in the post was because there still needed to be a method that worked besides automated, instead of forcing automated doors.

[Humort]

I agree, after fight, often remain wounded some dogs, to shelter them - good option, especially, if kamikazedogs are necessary, or it is simple, the victims in a war hearth.

[Euzio]

I agree, after fight, often remain wounded some dogs, to shelter them - good option, especially, if kamikazedogs are necessary, or it is simple, the victims in a war hearth.

No kamikaze dogs please.

Though in order to make sure dogs don't get killed too easily when raiders come (they are armed after all), if we do get dogs as pets, do allow us to craft armour for them so that they can withstand attacks somewhat (or even allow them to equip personal shields).

Also, having dogs as a joy activity would be great fun too. The colonists can have a positive mood buff for playing with the dogs (likewise for the dogs as well if they have a mood meter too). And we can also have new traits such as pet lover for example (+6 mood buff) if the colony has pets.