Most tamed animals are garbage

[Edixo]

With the exception of cows and chickens, most tame animals are utter garbage.

Unless you micromanage their allowed zones down to a single tile, and make sure you always have a sufficient amount of kibble, they will simply wander around and eat your food storage, bond with a pawn and then rush to the frontlines during a raid and die horrifically, leaving you with a mood debuff that lasts for weeks.

And don't tell me to tame them, which also takes FOREVER to do unless you have a 15+ Animals pawn, and even then it takes a horrible long time. Rescue and haul? Useless when you can't command them.

To make pets viable, you need to at least be able to control them after they've learned obedience. Having a dog wander around your base the entire day, maybe hauling a random item here and there, and then eat 30 of your food supply in return is the worst tradeoff of the game.

[TheDirge]

You've clearly never had 10 huskies fully trained to haul stuff

[ahowe42]

I hate hate hate when they follow me into a fight, then get killed and ruin the mood!

[ahowe42]

Though, I did stumble upon a good use for tamed animals the other day. I had a cassowary self-tame.  Though I assigned it for training, it never came home, so there was no bonding.  The next raid, the raiders came in near where the cassowary "lived" and they decided to take it out.  Not only did the cassowary down one of the raiders, when they were firing at it, they accidentally hit a panther, who killed the other.

So you can assigned tamed wild animals that have not bonded to spaces around home and use them as decoys!

[kasnavada]

I personally use up to 30 boars to haul stuff rather than huskies =).

They get much less bonded than doggies so it matters less when they inevitably get eaten by a passing bear, or killed by a passing bullet. They also reproduce like crazy and can survive on hay or grass (if unlimited range). And, it does not matter if they run into the battlefield and die trying to rescue your downed colonists. They're food on paws. Just keep the bonded ones on reproduction duties.

Also, cows << Mufallos. Wool clothings are generally better than leather clothes and can fetch pretty good prices, especially with the a15 update where you can (finally) call traders. Alpaca in particular are awesome because they require a training skill of 0, which means it's perfect to train your pawns so they can train better animals later on. Also no one ever bonds with those so you can train them to be bullet sponges.

Fast reproducing animals include the green lizard thingy (forgot the name), which lay eggs like crazy and easily transform hey into meat + green leather.

There's a use for most animals, but no one can help it if you can't even bother trying to find a use for them.

[Shurp]

Yeah, but you don't even have to try to find a use for chickens.  Coop them up in your rice/corn stockpile, let them lay eggs, and you never have to hunt again. 

Maybe the way to express this is not "tamed animals are garbage" but rather "chickens are awesome"

[eadras]

You really need to have custom animal zones set up to control what animals eat and where they go.  Simply allowing them to roam free around your base will indeed make them awful to have, as well as get them killed when a raid shows up.

My main problem with tamed animals is that they seem to stop wild animals from spawning.  I have 5 muffalos, 5 alpacas, 5 labs, and about 20 wolves, and haven't seen a wild animal in about 3 years now, not even a squirrel.  I assume there is some kind of check in the wild animals spawn code to determine how many animals are already on the map, and it is including tamed animals in the count.  Not sure if this is a bug or intended.

[NolanSyKinsley]

I am not 100% sure but I believe A15 changed animals a little bit. I had over a dozen huskies (somewhere around 20-24), and over the period of a year only one became bonded to a pawn. Before I had 3 muffalo bonding to one pawn in a single milking session, so it seems they have really toned down the random animal bonding, without reducing nuzzling.

As for following into battle, yea, I wish I could define which animals are battle animals and which are not, so I don't have to constantly remove ownership before sending pawns out to fight. BUT things like elephants make AMAZING hunter companions, they just trample any animals that seek revenge.

For the eating of food, I found a tactic that reduces it by ~95%(for huskies that is). Placing a single tile stockpile of kibble outside the freezer entrances on each side of the door ensure that the kibble will be the first thing they path to for food from the outside. When they are on long hauling trips they still rarely eat inside the freezer once they drop off the stuff, but it is at an extremely reduced rate.

If you don't want to make kibble all the time consider using pigs or boars for hauling, they can eat hay instead, which is very plentiful unlike meat, but you have to deal with the increased dirt scatter that they produce.

As far as rescue and haul, they aren't useless, you just have to fully train them(hauling has to reach 8/8 before they will haul). A pack of a dozen or so fully trained can pretty much take care of all my hauling needs. (also, how do you expect to get to lvl 15 training unless you, you know, practice training?) Sure it takes a while, but what else are they doing in that time? Nothing! May as well train them to increase animal handling, and eventually have a pack of haulers.

[RandomGirl]

I want to set up a game at some point with the "lone colonist" starter, but give her like 15 tamed bears. See how well the raiders do against that.

[chaotix14]

Also you might want to take another look at the wool carrying animals. Alpaca's give 120 wool per 15 days, and wool is the best temperature isolating material, just make a duster and make sure not to hit the floor with your jaw. 

[Franklin]

Why are you not penning your animals? If you let the colony's cow just wander wherever it wants of course it's going to eat all your food. Who should probably be being fed kibble anyway.

My last game we had a single Caribou produce so much milk through a scant winter it was well worth keeping her around, but you keep her in a pen.

[SpaceDorf]

I want to set up a game at some point with the "lone colonist" starter, but give her like 15 tamed bears. See how well the raiders do against that.

Bears are awesome. I have a dozen now trained to haul.
With a bit creative Zone Management only a few wandered in the line of fire so far.
And guess what. They survived
Also a Bear beats a Warg in 1vs1 everytime ( bears have the stun ability )

And like any hogs or dogs they eat everything, hay, kibble, leftover attackers ..

[Mutineer]

I hate hate hate when they follow me into a fight, then get killed and ruin the mood!

Remove them from list of masters before fight.

[Kagemusha12]

Why are you not penning your animals? If you let the colony's cow just wander wherever it wants of course it's going to eat all your food. Who should probably be being fed kibble anyway.

...

Aye ... at least forbidding the colonies fridge should be a must in every animal zoning

[SimpleMachine88]

Pigs and Boars are the best way of disposing of raiders.  They can haul and consume the dead bodies so your colonists don't get debuffs.  And turn raiders into usable meat and leather without any debuffs.