Allow small animals on beds

[REMworlder]

Sharing beds and living quarters with animals is an age-old practice, perpetuated by millions of pet owners nightly and by idioms like three-dog night. Anyone who's had a dog knows beds are irresistible magnets for sleepy canines, a habit practiced for generations by peasants, pharaohs, and kings alike.

No Utility: Fixing a Problem
Small animals serve very limited purpose in RimWorld because they can't haul or rescue, and die easily. While we have nuzzling, it's unreliable.

Small dogs and other small pets have been bred for centuries for companionship, but in RimWorld large animals like tamed wargs provide just as much companionship -- nuzzles -- as a small lap animal like a yorkie, while also providing much more utility by being able to haul. Expanding on the animal-colonist relationship by introducing a special, simple mechanic for small animals would solve this discrepancy.

Defining the Mechanic
Small animals can sleep on human beds, treating them just like animal beds

3 Ways to Implement
Basic: animals can sleep on human beds
Two-stage: if animals are small they can sleep on trainer beds
Complex: small animals can sleep on trainer beds, providing automatic nuzzle bonuses whenever a colonist is also in the bed. The animal occupies the lower portion of the bed, or the unused side of the bed for royal beds.

^{Where small animals could sleep on the complex iteration}

Examples of Player Usage
-The player has a depressive colonist who has lots of mental breaks, so he buys a yorkie to improve the colonist's mood.
-Instead of killing off the starting small animal in a tragic accident, the player keeps it because it provides a mood boost every night.
-

Variations
-Hot dog. Animals sharing bed offset "slept in cold room" penalty thoughts
-Disease vector. Animals sharing bed track dirt onto bed.
-"Three dog night." More than one animal can sleep on royal beds
-Dogs only. The mechanic only applies to dogs. Sorry chinchillas.
-Prison rehab. Animals can sleep on prisoner beds.
-No master. Tamed animals will sleep on any colonist bed, with no preference.
-Muse. Animals sleeping on human beds get mentioned in art.
-Lamarr! Megascarabs are cuddly too.

Is this Needless Complexity?
I really like this mechanic because it humanizes colonists, playing into RimWorld's emergent form of storytelling. Animals don't feel quite like pets, but this establishes character links and makes it visually obvious to the player: the small animal is sleeping on the colonist's bed. This all involves players and helps them develop personal stories.

On top of improving the narrative, the mechanic balances out small animals. My starting yorkie, or tamed squirrels, rabbits, etc are all pretty useless and nuzzling it pretty uncommon. It's hard to establish a meaningful relationship with animals when the player gets almost nothing out of it at any level.

[harpo99999]

the cats mod does this for domestic cats except for the nuzzle at night

[REMworlder]

Oh cool. Do you think it have any effect on gameplay? If not, should it?

[Fluffy (l2032)]

Hi REMworlder, my Cats! mod does this, but it's rather rudimentary. E.g. there's no moods/thoughts or other interactions from colonists. I'ld like to add those, but it's not high on my list of things to do.

Whether or not these interactions should be there? I don't know, I think it'ld be nice - like you said it'ld help create a story, at the same time I always wanted all the changes to domestic cats to be 'ignorable', they may give some minor buffs/debuffs, but they should never be a so important they require the players' attention.

For example, cats will occasionally sharpen their claws on your furniture, giving some minor damage. You can add scratching posts to stop cats scratching up your couch, or just ignore it and repair stuff once in a while -- the cats will never completely destroy furniture.