Most tamed animals are garbage

[8roads]

Do any of you guys feed big animals nutrient paste?

[eadras]

Animals can't use the nutrient paste dispenser, so I'm not if there is an efficient way to do it.  If the dispenser had an automatic mode with a bill, and could just pump out x number of meals, that would be awesome.  Right now I just have it in my prison barracks - saves my warden a ton of time running back and forth with meals.

[8roads]

Animals can't use the nutrient paste dispenser, so I'm not if there is an efficient way to do it.  If the dispenser had an automatic mode with a bill, and could just pump out x number of meals, that would be awesome.  Right now I just have it in my prison barracks - saves my warden a ton of time running back and forth with meals.

1. wait till a pawn takes paste, pause game.
2. draft the pawn, the pawn drops the paste
3. undraft the pawn, the pawn takes another paste
repeat...

[Kagemusha12]

Animals can't use the nutrient paste dispenser, so I'm not if there is an efficient way to do it.  If the dispenser had an automatic mode with a bill, and could just pump out x number of meals, that would be awesome.  Right now I just have it in my prison barracks - saves my warden a ton of time running back and forth with meals.

1. wait till a pawn takes paste, pause game.
2. draft the pawn, the pawn drops the paste
3. undraft the pawn, the pawn takes another paste
repeat...

Sounds like a lot of micromanagement.
Probably better invested into making Kibble (which, after all, can use hay as vegetable ingredient

[8roads]

Animals can't use the nutrient paste dispenser, so I'm not if there is an efficient way to do it.  If the dispenser had an automatic mode with a bill, and could just pump out x number of meals, that would be awesome.  Right now I just have it in my prison barracks - saves my warden a ton of time running back and forth with meals.

1. wait till a pawn takes paste, pause game.
2. draft the pawn, the pawn drops the paste
3. undraft the pawn, the pawn takes another paste
repeat...

Sounds like a lot of micromanagement.
Probably better invested into making Kibble (which, after all, can use hay as vegetable ingredient

not really. just click the same button. 2 clicks, 1 paste. that actually feels quite rewarding
if only pastes can be fed to my turkeys without waste  :-(

[iceteazz]

I actually learn on this forum how to make your combat animals useful : use an animal combat zone with only 1 square that take place on the raider's way to your base, or the narrow channel in your defence, or even in a open battle field where you want to fight. There, when raiders come, let all your combat pets go to combat zone, tada, 5 bears 10 dogs etc at one tiny square will make them incredible powerful melee troops that can slay any raiders near them, you can place another zone and delete old one and animals will come to that place, then indirectly control those pets to fight

[CannibarRechter]

That's an exploit, though. Not really that different than invoking developer mode, and using the Delete button on enemy troops.

[Darkhymn]

Clearly you've never bred wargs and wolves as pets. My colony has more angry teeth and jaws than humans, and let me tell you, they can rip into a raid with a vengeance.

Remove them from list of masters before fight.

Also this indeed fixes the bonded deaths thing. Just send bonded animals home and use the unbonded ones to maul your enemies.

[night777]

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.

Thanks for the tip on placing kibble/hay outside the freezer, I'll add to that placing it outside of the entrance to the dining room. Having animals move my food to the dinner table and giving them more free roam is great, and was really annoying having to work with the animal zone to keep them away from foodstuffs.

[kasnavada]

Clearly you've never bred wargs and wolves as pets. My colony has more angry teeth and jaws than humans, and let me tell you, they can rip into a raid with a vengeance.

Remove them from list of masters before fight.

Also this indeed fixes the bonded deaths thing. Just send bonded animals home and use the unbonded ones to maul your enemies.

That part is the annoying one, having to remove the bonded when being raided.
There's a mod for that (allows to take animals for hunts and drafting or not) which IMO should be in the base game...

[8roads]

Clearly you've never bred wargs and wolves as pets. My colony has more angry teeth and jaws than humans, and let me tell you, they can rip into a raid with a vengeance.

But is it possible to make wargs and wolves take more initiative without training?
It seemed to me they always let raiders assault them first.
Maybe pigs and boars are good enough?

[TheDirge]

The only problem i have is the mood debuff colonists get when a bonded pet dies while it's just bred for combat

[NolanSyKinsley]

The only problem i have is the mood debuff colonists get when a bonded pet dies while it's just bred for combat

Anecdotal evidence suggests they have greatly reduced the instances of animal bonding in A15. In A14 my colonist would bond to 3 muffalo every time she went to milk them(I had 18 I think). In A15 I trained around two dozen huskies (all spawned from 3-4 I bought, so it was over quite some time) and in the time it took me to train them all fully for hauling I only had one instance of one bonding to the trainer.

[Shurp]

So how do you avoid the problem of friendly fire?  it seems to me that if I have a pack of boars chewing on pirates while my colonists are shooting at them that a lot of them will get shot up badly.

[keylocke]

don't shoot at your pawns already engaged in melee combat. try to find other targets or join in on the fun with a sucker punch.