Is there an animal guide out there?

[Shian]

I remember seeing one somewhere....
No, not the wiki.

A blurb that hashed out the usefulness of each animal. What's good to keep for combat. What's good to keep for food. What's not good to keep for food. Has anyone mathed it yet? I tried keeping four caribou but despite having a large amount of meat, they grew and reproduced way too slowly.

I have some raccoons I'm going to try...

[taha]

Very simply put, animals are useless after you are established.

Pros:
- meat, milk,
- nuzzling
- combat (?)
- haul
Cons:
- they eat food
- they make dirt
- you need 1-2 colonists to take care of them
- if you use a bonded animal in combat, and dies, its bonded master is useless
- need special facilities / space for them
- more pawns on the map -> more lag on old computers

Instead of 1 animal, better get 1 colonist.

Imo, animals are more trouble than they worth.
So they get sacrificed every time they self-tame or join. (I tend to eliminate useless production chains: can I play without animals? Yes. Is better? Hell, yes. No animals for me then)

[Argus Leadhead]

I will usually just keep chickens for food/eggs.  They're low maintenance and constantly produce eggs (keep the rooster away).

Also, I find wargs to be brutal in combat.  My trainer had three and I'd usually just send her + her wargs to meet any raid up to about 9 or 10 people.  Given how fast the wargs kill the raiders, they usually end up fleeing after a few of them are torn to shreds.  Just don't give the handler grenades... you get dead wargs that way.

[Listen1]

Very simply put, animals are useless after you are established.
Imo, animals are more trouble than they worth.

A hauling team of 8 Labrators, on my 6 years colony A13, made everything so much easier, they nuzzle, they haul everything really fast, and instead of having 4 or 5 dedicated hauler, I had two dedicated cleaners. Every production table was set to "Drop on Floor" because a dog was always nearby to haul it.

The hauling capacity of the Dogs/Pigs/Boars is nothing to be taken lightly, as it allows your colonists to focus on more important tasks.

As for the clutter of information, it would need to be updated again.

[Shian]

Very simply put, animals are useless after you are established.

What?
So.. you eat raw corn all the time then? Yeah, no thanks. I'm feeding my people fine meals at the very least. They get lavish during summer. I want to find good meat animals. Hay is so cheap and easy to grow, why not turn that into better food?

I can't count how many times my people go out hunting and end up dead. Why take far away, dangerous food when you can have domestic food that does not fight back when you kill it?

[b0rsuk]

Animals are nice because they don't go into the colonist limit you have and have simple needs.

Most animals fetch good prices. Baby grizzly bears sell for 120 silver and don't eat much. Juvenile animals (1 month old) sell for nearly as much as adults. I think all animals need 1 year to become an adult. Juvenile ones may be the sweet spot for selling, but I would typically sell as soon as I have a trader because getting the right caravan/bulk goods trader is the problem, not feeding them. You don't want to feed them for next 6 months just because you ignored a caravan.

Alpacas provide very good wool and it's valuable in cold biomes. They turn food into something better than cloth. Mufallos, megatherium, dromedaries are comparable, but I think they may eat more.

Bears and cougars are nice for combat, but don't expect too much of them. In the open their tactics are terrible so you want to use them indoors. Animals escort hunters (but not animal tamers trying to tame something nasty). Bears can take a ton of punishment, but you need to plant A LOT of healroot. I used up over 50 after a big tribal raid! Megatherium is a bit slow but like bear that yields wool.

I haven't tried farming them, but egg producing animals amazed me when I got them from drop pods. One egg is worth 5 meat for fine meals (ostrich may be more), and they stack VERY well.

I found milk-producing animals not worth it. They don't produce more milk than they eat food. Treat milk as a small bonus if you're farming animals for selling or have females for wool.

When you have a lot of animals, you no longer have a fire hazard in lush biomes like rainforest.

Animals make nice supplemental haulers, but rarely haul things far from your colony.

Rescue seems bad except for hauling combat animals to animal beds for healing. If you rely on many animals for meat shields, they will often get incapacitated. If your colonists are often incapacitated, it's a sign you're doing something wrong and won't last long (missing limbs at best). TRICK: manhunter animals ignored rescuing animals last time I checked (which was in alpha12). The trouble is in getting the animal to rescue someone especially further from doors.

[FalconBR]

Cow produces 8 times more milk them the other mammals! They are maybe worth of having!
Chicken eggs are awesome, I always try to some chickens, I sell/slay all male but one, so I get more unfertilized eggs and controls the population grow up, since I only get unfertilized egg to cook!
I use some dogs to help with the hauling but they normally die in combat, I fail to understand the usefulness of Yorkshires.
I saw some people placing bounded animals to sleep in the same room as the owner, without I guide I have no idea why they do that! I heard there are some bonuses!

[Listen1]

I believe it is nuzzling bonus.

Also, milk needs a rework, for its value and nutrition, it just takes up space. If a muffalo would give 20 milk a day (enough for 2 meals) I believe it would be nice to convert Hay into milk.

By the way Falcon, each muffalo gives 6 milk, so a cow would give 48 milk? Can someone confirm it?

[Jimyoda]

OP, I think this is what you want:
https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=15774.0

[taha]

A hauling team of 8 Labrators, on my 6 years colony A13, made everything so much easier, they nuzzle, they haul everything really fast, and instead of having 4 or 5 dedicated hauler, I had two dedicated cleaners. Every production table was set to "Drop on Floor" because a dog was always nearby to haul it.

Replace those labradors with colonists. Not 8 colonists. Not 6. Only 4. Restrict them to animal area, replace those 8 animal beds with 4 colonists beds. Drop those 2 cleaners, you don't need em anymore.
Set 2 of them to haul + clean. 12 work, 8 sleep, 2 joy, 2 anything. Make 2 different shifts.
You have all hauling AND cleaning covered, and still have 2 colonists as backup if shit happens.

Raiders are made of meat. No meat problem here => lavish meals for everyone, even for prisoners. Their skin also sells well. If your people are killed when hunting, you are doing it wrong.

I still fail to see what's the use of animals... Sorry.

PS Forgot to mention that I only play on Ice Sheet. Maybe the way I do things might seem harsh for some, but "this is how we do things in the north"

PPS Later edit.

... snip...

In other words, once the food is no longer a problem, animals are useless.

[Listen1]

Why would I put my colonists to haul, if this colonists can be put to Grow, Craft, Tailor, Smith and Art?

I don't chop people up because that's how I play. So having hauling animals is better because you can make your colonists to more with it. I believe that was not OPs point really.

Jimyoda posted what he wanted. Also, this should be thrown in the wiki and refined with the new animals.

[b0rsuk]

PS Forgot to mention that I only play on Ice Sheet. Maybe the way I do things might seem harsh for some, but "this is how we do things in the north"

You play only a very limited subset of the game and that's nothing to brag about. Ice sheet has no vegetation, no wild animals, no corn, no devilstrand, no haygrass, no air conditioning, no spoiling food, no trade caravans for most of the year as well as raids and visitors. No wonder your view is so narrow.

[keylocke]

i tend to have a lot of dogs. i collect them and assign them all to a single brawler which acts as the beastmaster.

the beastmaster is a one-man-flanking-army. (that's what she said)

dogs are not only great for hauling, they're also great for munching on the unwanted corpses. so after each large battle, i confine the dogs to the corpse stockpile and they stay there until they munched on everything.

i mean let's face it. ever since the huge stacking mood penalty for butchering corpses and the necessity to populate your group with cannibal psychopaths to endure that drama. large scale cannibalism is too much hassle to actually do anymore.

and in the late game when your base is drowning out from the flood of corpses, having an army of corpse eating mongrels is a great asset.

----------

as a backup, herbivore army is also great when you live in temperate/jungle biomes.. you can create an animal army with minimal effort. you don't even need to feed them, just assign their animal zone where the grass are, train them to learn up to release, then when raiders drop by near the edge where your animals are, draft your beast master, release your animals, watch them stampede raep the raiders.

and since you only have 1 beastmaster, when he goes drama.. just let him get wasted with booze.

problem solved.

[taha]

PS Forgot to mention that I only play on Ice Sheet. Maybe the way I do things might seem harsh for some, but "this is how we do things in the north"

You play only a very limited subset of the game and that's nothing to brag about. Ice sheet has no vegetation, no wild animals, no corn, no devilstrand, no haygrass, no air conditioning, no spoiling food, no trade caravans for most of the year as well as raids and visitors. No wonder your view is so narrow.

Each with its own I guess. Like I said, I tend to eliminate what I see as useless production chains. Is just my opinion, and I do not try to present as "best". Is only my view, ok?

So it's all about survival. Once you managed to survive on Ice Sheet, most of the challenges on other biomes become easy and boring.

To sum up:
No vegetation -> no wood -> no heat -> hypothermia -> death
No animals -> no meat -> hunger -> death
No spoiled food -> still need 4 coolers on fridge (is in the center of colony)
No trade -> (actually there are traders) -> must do with what you get.
No visitors -> (actually there are visitors) -> you can only get new colonists from raids

On a normal biome, parkas mitigate the need for heaters. Not on Ice Sheet.
At -90 you can't afford to work all day outside, so everything develops slower: mining, construction, butchering, etc. When 1st notable raid hits you (as in raiders = 10 x number of colonists), you are happy for extra parkas and for the meat. In other places you want to be friendly with factions so they could send traders. Here you want them to be hostile, so they send walking meat and weapons.

So yes, I "miss" a lot from the game, that's why I played it since A12, and I find it too easy in other biomes.

Are you kidding me? I chose the shortest path between 2 points in order to achieve a goal and you say MY view is narrow? Yeah, maybe for someone who wants to build things, to experiment with traps, to blah-blah... is a lot of content right there.

But for someone who wants to become super-efficient, self-sustainable in the shortest amount of time, well... 10 kinds of meat and 10 kinds of skin are just clutter. Same stands for pets. Just walking meat.

Sorry for the rant. Calling my vision "narrow" can have this result. Don't confuse me with someone who just saw the game, please. If I did not posted on forums did not mean I was not around.

[b0rsuk]

Each with its own I guess. Like I said, I tend to eliminate what I see as useless production chains. Is just my opinion, and I do not try to present as "best". Is only my view, ok?

Why do you even comment on something you're not competent about ? Animals need surplus food, or at least plants, and ice sheet doesn't have that.

No vegetation -> no wood -> no heat -> hypothermia -> death

No flash storm, no dry thunderstorm, no forest fire, no toxic fallout that matters.

No animals -> no meat -> hunger -> death

No hunting accidents, no taming, no hungry predators beyond the first few days, no psychic pulse making a boomalope herd crazy and setting the world on fire.

No trade -> (actually there are traders) -> must do with what you get.

Traders don't show up in fall, winter because it's too cold. No decisions to make regarding silver, selling medicine you got from drop pods etc to get a new replacement limb, etc.

You also get fewer raids (not generated when it's too cold) and raids are much easier to beat when they're wading through snow as you shoot them.

No visitors -> (actually there are visitors) -> you can only get new colonists from raids

Not true, there are still wanderers and you can save an escape pod guy even from the other end of the map. I know because I purposedly made a colony on the border of a 400x400 ice sheet map.

And -90*C only matters before you get a woolen parka.

Are you kidding me? I chose the shortest path between 2 points in order to achieve a goal and you say MY view is narrow?

Yes, your view is narrow. You play without a big fraction of the game's elements. Likewise you can opt to build a ship in the desert with no mining whatsover, that makes the game harder too but it doesn't make it more interesting.