Pets and Combat, what are your thoughts?

[Bozobub]

Um... That behavior is how many attack animals have been used throughout history, actually (as less-valuable replacements or additions to human forces).  Any given animal simply is not as valuable as any given human.

[Hellbatty]

There is easy way to make pets more combat-friendly, just turn off friendly fire for your pets. My combat elephants always die from my sentry turrets, not from enemies

[buttflexspireling]

  I believe pets can be effective in combat;
they just need Matrix-like precision in being
directed to dodge bullets by coordinators.

[Bozobub]

I like to give each combatant, ranged or not, 2 bears for personal melee protection — assuming they can handle bears, that is — since I use only ranged combat.  I make no claims on effectiveness mind you, it's simply what I like to do .  I have such high moods, in general, that I'd pretty much have to lose every animal to a raid for there to be a serious problem, and that's what the drug stash is for, of course.

I don't sweat inefficiencies, as long as they don't overly hamper operations too much.  I guess I'm not OCD enough to be a "true" RimWorlder?  LOL — But I probably will be once I buy the game (I play on a buddy's PC, since I'm there 3-4 times a week to watch his kids at night) .

[Thyme]

Asking the real question here: Why do raiders not use animals? Does Tynan himself think they're not worth it? uh, oh; Joke aside,
animals are an independent feature, nothing really depends on them and I guess they won't be reworked before beta

Another thought: Huntsmen (like, the real ones in my town) can give their dogs commands with signs, e.g. to move them to specific locations
While such dogs actually are rare, I suggest a feature where you could set a flag on the map from the master (maybe with limited radius), which works like a waypoint, or "run-over-there" command. Released animals would do so and defend that point. Flag can be re-set to allow crowd control, but no real micro.

Other thoughts: Animal surgeries and prosthetics (no hurry, as written above),
improved "pathfinding" for animals (target locations are not updated untill animal reaches it, unlike human pawns, which are updated every few seconds)
As stated above, a cease fire option for colonists (also useful for non-pet related fighting)
An option to wake up animals and get them moving
I think that's it for now =)

Sent from my HTC

[Limdood]

I do occasionally use animals in some of my colonies.  It is only efficient when i play goofy scenarios (increased training chance, colonist with high animal skill and/or fast learning rate).

Predators have worked nicely for me for combat.  Mountain lions and bears and wolves.  I've also had luck with rhinos.  I think boomalopes could work in the right environments.  I can't seem to get elephants to be worth it as combat pets - too easily killed (compared to the tanky bears and rhinos or the fast wolves and cougars) and dogs are too easily bonded with.

Necessities to make animals useful in combat:

1) availability and numbers. 1 combat pet isn't useful.  3 combat pets are hardly useful.  a swarm of combat pets are amazing.  There needs to be enough animals on the map and accessible to even consider building up an animal army.

2) ease of training.  A decently skilled (10, which is supposed to be good) animal trainer still tends in the single digits to both tame and train.  Furthermore, many animals have high enough attack chances that a lion with 2.5% chance to attack and 6% chance to tame isn't worth it.  IF that lion turns on my colonist, who is already in melee range, he's dead...he can't run, he isn't likely to win the fight.  Training chances are low enough that without a double digits animal skill pawn, i rarely bother trying to train ANY animals.  compare that to other skills, where single digit skills are either just fine, or at least not that bad.

3) ease of healing.  Some way to have medicine be stronger on animals would be nice.  Glitterworld medicine heals several wounds all at once, drastically reducing the amount of "attempts" a doctor must make.  Treating healing kits as one level higher (and unkitted healing as herbal) would be a valuable addition to keep pets (which are injured far more often than pawns, ESPECIALLY predators) from hogging up excessive doctor time.  ALSO, peg or simple prosthetic legs for pets.  If NOTHING else, they need leg options to get them moving SOMEWHAT when they lose a leg.  Finally, along the healing lines, hunting predators suffer permanent eye injuries WAY too often.  For wild predators, they tend not to last that long, but a colony member pet is going to stick around longer.  I once had a turtle i accidentally walled into the barn.  A bear got hungry and attacked it.  The turtle died, but not before it lost an eye, a nose, and had its other eye scarred.  Thus i had to put down Veggie the useless bear.

4) reduced bond chance or options for combat pets.  I get that you want colonists to get attached to pets, and there should be a penalty for losing an "attached" pet.  That being said, SOME tool to reduce the impact would be nice.  An idea would be that any pet without a bond that is trained in "release" cannot develop a bond (or has a DRASTICALLY reduced chance to form one).  A pet that already had a bond would be unaffected.  As it stands now, building a pet army, developing a bond is DANGEROUS and directly discourages the tactic of combat animals...that cougar who took 9 months of training to finally tame and train in release just developed a bond....now its super dangerous to send him to fight, and he could die hunting and i can't even sell or put him down.  Alternatively, a "combat bond" could exist, which would keep all of the PET effects of a bonded colonist dying, but the colonist would be unaffected by the pet's death (to symbolize the loyalty of a pet trained for combat, and the demeanor of a trainer training a pet for combat) - realistic or not, the bond is one of the strongest, direct gameplay hindrances to combat pets.

5) faster or closer following pets.  The lack of direct control over the pets makes sense, but the fact that cougars, wolves, and panthers (and lets be honest, MOST animals) are as fast or only slightly faster than the human pawns is a big problem.  It means slow coverage of the cover-less no-man's land in a firefight.  Furthermore, the fact that animals follow at a moderate distance when a pawn is drafted further hinders the pets running up and getting into melee combat in a timely manner.  In some engagements, I can hit the release button, and the fight is still over before the pets arrive at the enemy - plus pet casualties they sustained while running over.  Faster animals, or animals that run with or ahead of a drafted pawn would help.

[TamTiTam]

Tamed Animals could be usefull fighters if they would be able to follow the Handler more closely (like real animals). But since they are always somewhere behind its (too) difficult to use them for strategic purposes.

a) The target location is only updated if they reach it, so more often then not they are walking in the wrong direction. Tamed animals shoud be more similar to regular pawns.
b) The animals are really slow. Why can't a group of dogs catch up with their handler or enimies. Faster animals would also help with reaching the enimy before getting shot.
c) Everything that PetFollow already integrates should be in the regular game.

There are other interesting ideas above, but I think those are the most basic & appealing.

[stu89pid]

Until i can train my juvenile boomrats to carry an incendiery IED into a group of raiders to self destruct, no I will not be using animals in combat.

[skinicism]

  Certain pets would be more effective in combat
if they could come with a chance of freezing raider
vehicles, spit mud at raiders' eyes or set grass on
fire with their fiery breath. If the pets are unlucky
they would probably have a chance of disrobing
your colonists or disarming them.

[Sirportalez]

Animals make no sense in advanced combat with smgs or rifles irl and in the current state of game. But in rimworld we can have the chance of getting cool armor for them. It would fit the lore and style.
And of course all the other stuff people wrote in here. More options in taming, bonding, controlling...

[Dukkha]

Animals are GREAT for drawing enemy fire while you circle around.
The trick is to not fall in love.

[taha]

Pros:
+ *maybe* less dmg for your colonists (if raiders target your animals)
+ *maybe* more dmg to your enemies (if animal get close enough)

Cons:
- food wasted
- time wasted on training, cleaning, feeding, doctoring
- mood loss on animal death
- resource wasted on building barn / sleeping places for animals / making kibble
- more pawns on map -> more load on computer
- more wealth to colony -> bigger attack waves
- more pawns / deaths -> bigger save file -> more lag endgame

Not really a choice if you ask me...

[Catastrophy]

They are useless in combat and usually I get rid off them all because they start messing up with food supply. They all graze like crazy, even chickens.

[dv]

I leave them back in the base, making more animals and whatever useful products they create. (Milk, wool, whatever.) Or I sell them to traders ASAP.

In combat, they just get in the way.

[ahowe42]

"Pets", broadly redefined as animals, can be useful to distract raiders.  I've been suffering from a chickenpocalyps, when I got raided by a pair of mechanoids.  They sat right down and had a bunch of fun taking out the chickens.  Meanwhile, my colonists & turrets are plinking the shit out of them.  Same thing happened later in the game with pirates.