How's the Animal army going?

[keylocke]

i often keep my animal army tied to only one brawling master. then i let them go ninja around the enemy flank and then send them to attack isolated enemies. wargs/huskies/retrievers/boars are generally my brawler meatshields. just keep them clear from frags and rockets. (which is why you should not release them.. yet.)

afterwards, once the enemies starts fleeing, i release them to start hunting people. along with my other brawlers. they're basically the ninja / cleanup crew.

[LittleGreenStone]

My current best handler has 13 handling and 15 melee, equipped with power armor, power armor helmet, a plasteel gladius, a plasteel shield (a mod offering medieval shields) accompanied by ~15 boars.

Enemy came, in a corner I ambushed them.
Only 2 boars died, ~8 was injured (mostly lightly), 20+ raiders killed.
Butchered the dead boars, got myself meat and leather.

Rest of the colonists harvesting and crafting in the meanwhile.

This is the tits, animal army banzai.

[Shurp]

How long does it take to breed attack animals?  When I perused Races_Animal_Pet.xml I saw painfully long breeding times.  For example, it lists a husky's gestation period as 45 days and adulthood at 0.8, which I assume is years... which means it takes a full year to breed replacements for the casualties from the dozen or more raids you'll get every year.  I can't imagine this is viable unless you have a pack of 100 or so.  How are you making this work?

[LittleGreenStone]

How long does it take to breed attack animals?  When I perused Races_Animal_Pet.xml I saw painfully long breeding times.  For example, it lists a husky's gestation period as 45 days and adulthood at 0.8, which I assume is years... which means it takes a full year to breed replacements for the casualties from the dozen or more raids you'll get every year.  I can't imagine this is viable unless you have a pack of 100 or so.  How are you making this work?

For one, I don't breed huskies. I find it rather slow to my taste.
But if I did; tame them, buy them.
1 healthy, young male is plenty for 10 females, breeding them will get you ~20 or so huskies in a year.
"Attack animals" IMO should include boars, wargs, thrumbos, cobras, rhinos and similar. You can replace "attack animals" by buying them and/or taming them, if breeding alone isn't enough.

Animals are a "consumables", they're melee often attacking ranged units, even if you create the best opportunity for them they'll probably take losses still, but you'll get yourself meat and leather/fur, so it's not exactly a waste.

...Or change the numbers in the xml, give them shorter gestation periods for example.

[Shurp]

The gestation period isn't bad, it's waiting a year for them to grow up that has me discouraged.  I usually play a colony only for 2 years before I get bored with it.  In the time it takes to breed an attack force I could probably just build a ship and leave.

I thought about hacking the xml... but I first wanted to hear others' ideas and see if maybe I'm misunderstanding something or doing something wrong.