Pets and Combat, what are your thoughts?

[Supert]

Here's three changes I think will make combat pets much more viable:

• Assigned animals should be toggleable between Combat and Noncombat. Combat animals accompany their masters when drafted; noncombat animals don't. It's a pain to manually unassign animals before combat and reassign them afterwards just because I don't want Charlie's bonded mutt getting shot.
• Assigned animals currently wander randomly up to 2 squares away from a drafted master. This means they wander around cover out into the open and promptly get shot. Drafted animals should stay adjacent to their master, take cover beside their master, and when all else fails have a Prone state where they lay down on the ground (similar to sleeping) to reduce their chance of being hit.
• When released, attack animals should have a burst of speed to quickly close the gap between them and their target.

This man speaks wise; listen to him.
I should add that noncombat animals should flee from dangers just like colonists do.

[zandadoum]

i disagree with most claiming that animals are useless in combat!

you just chose the wrong animals!!!

you need animals that
- are easy to tame
- are easy to train
- breed quickly
- can be eaten if dead
- soak up a decent amount of damage (relative)
- deal a decent amount of damage (relative)

answer: BOARS! heck, even TURKEYS!

ofc if you send your precious rhino for extra tank and damage, it will only end badly, because it's too valuable.

heck, i am having a great success at breeding grizzlies! hard to tame at first, but once tamed, they train and breed quite easy!


what i DO agree with everyone is that bonded animal death is a problem, so the vanilla game should have a better interface like fluffy animal tab mod (with filters, mass selection, etc) and petfollow (if an animal is bonded, it doesnt go into combat)

maybe, make it so bonded COMBAT animals don't give such a huge -debuff when dead?

ofc, also useful: equip animals with some armor and allow for bionic/prostetic legs?

[kasnavada]

The base game basically needs petfollow in it to have pet be anything like useful.

What it could need otherwise is to enable players to set either "train as a combat animal" or "train as a pet" or "train as pack animal", "train as hunter" (automatically seeks out prey for his nourishment then brings back the remaining part of the bodies to the camp) rather than "obedience". Animals would therefore have one specialty, and one only. Then have their behaviour depend on it.

With combat & pack animals never being bonded, never causing happiness issues, and pets being bonded automatically (giving a possibly bigger happiness bonus than now). And, still petfollow. so that pets don't go to combat.

[deslona]

Here's three changes I think will make combat pets much more viable:

• Assigned animals should be toggleable between Combat and Noncombat. Combat animals accompany their masters when drafted; noncombat animals don't. It's a pain to manually unassign animals before combat and reassign them afterwards just because I don't want Charlie's bonded mutt getting shot.
• Assigned animals currently wander randomly up to 2 squares away from a drafted master. This means they wander around cover out into the open and promptly get shot. Drafted animals should stay adjacent to their master, take cover beside their master, and when all else fails have a Prone state where they lay down on the ground (similar to sleeping) to reduce their chance of being hit.
• When released, attack animals should have a burst of speed to quickly close the gap between them and their target.

Quoted to agree. no 1 is a MUST.

[Stormfox]

Just want to basically echo what was already said above:

- There needs to be an easy, basic setting to keep pets OUT of combat.
- Combat training could be a seperate training category (it more or less already is with "release") that actually amplified their combat prowess when toggled to draft with their masters.
- Drafted Pets should either behave reasonably autonomous or adhere perfectly to commands just like characters do. No in-betweens.

Even if all this was implemented, I would likely NOT use combat pets for the same reason I stay away from melee colonists and regard brawler as a major drawback - melee is ridiculously dangerous. You have no cover, usually have to cross over enemy fire and it simply does not work in tandem with your own shooters. Meticulous movements pre-combat CAN work around some of these issues, but it is very tedious and hard to make melee work in a world of charge and sniper rifles.

[stopkillingtheplanet]

Personally, I love combat animals but I use them not for direct combat for reasons others have stated. Instead I use them so no raider escapes. The way I set my base up is having a room at the end of my killing plane that raiders enter from and when they begin to flee or if something has gone wrong. I come out with all my animals from behind and release them upon my enemies. Rarely does a raider escape, especially if I have a couple of fast animals like cougars to chase them down. Also, I mostly enjoy melee combat. I do use guns to shoot a couple of volleys as the raiders approach but then I send them back to a safe spot where they won't fire or to pick up a melee weapon and prepare for close combat.

[Listen1]

Just adding in,

Assigned animals should be toggleable between Combat and Noncombat. Combat animals accompany their masters when drafted; noncombat animals don't. It's a pain to manually unassign animals before combat and reassign them afterwards just because I don't want Charlie's bonded mutt getting shot.

This is specially needed. Another way of doing the same thing is making the bonded animal not needed to be assigned to the owner. You can swap this feature by making them sleep in the same room as the owner (kinda like lovers work).

Making the assignment and bonding work separately, will be enough to solve the problem.

As pets behave in combat, I have no complains. But I would add a combat command for the pawns to "Cease Fire".

If there are alot of melee units charging near, I would send my combat pets in , once the melee attackers are done with, I would "recall" (turn off release) the pets and resume the shooting.

[Ramsis]

So many wrong answers! We need to all collectively look Tynan in the eyes and say "surgically attach automated turrets to pet Turtles."

[Nitrodev]

Well, whether i use animals or not depends on if i want a stable community. I may occasionally buy a pair of animals off of a trader for breeding purposes (for future food). Speaking about combat, i rarely do it as if a animal bonds with a colonist and the animal dies the colonist has a mood debuff, so... i tend to try and have as little combat animals as possible.

[keylocke]

Here's three changes I think will make combat pets much more viable:

• Assigned animals should be toggleable between Combat and Noncombat. Combat animals accompany their masters when drafted; noncombat animals don't. It's a pain to manually unassign animals before combat and reassign them afterwards just because I don't want Charlie's bonded mutt getting shot.
• Assigned animals currently wander randomly up to 2 squares away from a drafted master. This means they wander around cover out into the open and promptly get shot. Drafted animals should stay adjacent to their master, take cover beside their master, and when all else fails have a Prone state where they lay down on the ground (similar to sleeping) to reduce their chance of being hit.
• When released, attack animals should have a burst of speed to quickly close the gap between them and their target.

This man speaks wise; listen to him.
I should add that noncombat animals should flee from dangers just like colonists do.

-i agree about being able to toggle pets between combat/non-combat. this is the most important.

-i used plenty of wolves,dogs,wargs in combat and they're great (i like the balance between attack damage and speed). they're also good at eating up unwanted corpses.

-combat pets are most useful when assigned to a single "beast master". this prevents them from wandering around and getting caught in the crossfire. i can just use the beast master and his animal army to outflank the enemy or keep out of sight until enemy melee troops get near. then i use the beast master and the combat pets to block and attack the enemy melee. then i just make sure to control my gunners and avoid shooting at enemies engaged in melee with my troops.

so yea..

[Shurp]

So many wrong answers! We need to all collectively look Tynan in the eyes and say "surgically attach automated turrets to pet Turtles."

LOL!!!  But yes, the ability to surgically modify pets and make them combat effective in some fashion would be huge.  Or how about genetically engineered wargs with devilstrand fur?

[pfhorrest]

They are meat shields. Very effective ones too. Raiders will prioritize attacking pets in a variety of circumstances, so much so that having an assortment of hard-to-hit pets such as chinchillas or hares can completely trivialize raids.

For those playing challenge runs where all colonists are incapable of violence, pets are sometimes your only means of offense when turrets or mortars are unavailable. Pets are quite weak in fights against armed & armored raiders... as they well should be... I don't think pets need a buff for combat purposes other than perhaps staying a few tiles behind the controlling pawn until released to attack.

[Mikhail Reign]

Animals need to be much more deadly. A dog and a man can 'go at it' for way to long. Ever seen a dog attack? You'd be surprised at how quickly the person is 'incapacitated'...

[zandadoum]

So many wrong answers! We need to all collectively look Tynan in the eyes and say "surgically attach automated turrets to pet Turtles."

[Vincent]

I don't think the problem is pets themselves, it's the combat system for close combat. All you will accomplish using your pets for combat is shielding against your own bullets.