How effective are animals as combat units?

[hunter2012]

while animals tend to be alright at combat the problem is them dying and causing a tantrum spiral

[TheMeInTeam]

I like dogs since they reproduce fast enough to keep up with raid mortality once you reach a breeding critical mass. They have advanced trainable intelligence and train very fast, they eat almost anything, and they don't go after your growing crops. In numbers they're a great counter for melee situations like bug infestations. Just don't bring a dog to a gunfight.

Boars are very similar in utility.  They have the downside of eating crops, but the upside of being able to graze after being zoned out of crops, and are otherwise very comparable.

[Razzoriel]

Boars are very similar in utility.  They have the downside of eating crops, but the upside of being able to graze after being zoned out of crops, and are otherwise very comparable.

Boars are 30% weaker in HP, 5% slower, but take ten days less to gestate and are half as "expensive" as wolves, so two boars equate one wolf for raid size. So it's quantity over quality. Also, boars are more vulnerable to cold (-20ºC minimum temp vs -50ºC). People tend to elevate boars too much over wolves.

[TheMeInTeam]

Boars are very similar in utility.  They have the downside of eating crops, but the upside of being able to graze after being zoned out of crops, and are otherwise very comparable.

Boars are 30% weaker in HP, 5% slower, but take ten days less to gestate and are half as "expensive" as wolves, so two boars equate one wolf for raid size. So it's quantity over quality. Also, boars are more vulnerable to cold (-20ºC minimum temp vs -50ºC). People tend to elevate boars too much over wolves.

They've each reasonable tradeoffs.  Both are much harder to train than dogs, but boars are still easier than wolves.  5% slower isn't ideal but it's fast enough to run people down.  It comes down to what kind of scenario you have to feed them.

I don't like either as a first-line defense vs raids on extreme.  If you're fortunate enough to get a critical mass of bears (which eat at .35 nutrition trolololol) then they can probably handle the task, but otherwise tamed animals are emergency stand-ins (IE stuff like drop pod raid) or flankers when it comes to combat.  I suppose they can be used to bait super weapons too if you don't have another answer.  A single chicken or something tanking a doomsday rocket probably isn't going to make it, but it's a little easier to replace than a colonist.

[Crazyabe]

Large animals(Bears, Deer, muffalo...) can tear apart tribals and pirates early on,
Tiny animals(Rats, Boomrats, Squirrels) can get past pirates with guns and really tear them apart in large groups viva 10-20 animals biting everything.
Everything in between is only good for defending against other animals.

[stigma]

Animals can absolutely be devastating in battle, but it's a very complex question with a lot of factors involved.

Scale is a big issue. Animals (or any melee in general) does well in lower numbers battles. As the number on each side increases the animals will struggle more and more - it's the basic "zerglings vs marines" thing where range will always benefit from scale. Ultimately I think attack animals will hit a wall in terms of effectiveness as raids become too large to defeat without massive casualties (though to be fair, in late game you may be able to replace animals very quickly too given large numbers).

As for what animal to choose, that again is very complex. here are some things to consider at least:

- upkeep. Are they easy to feed and train (wildness)?
- size. Small animals are very hard to hit. large ones are easy.
- Tankyness. Weak animals will often die when they go down, but something like an elephant or rhino will usually just be incapacitated, and you can patch them up. With the right mod like "a dog said" you can even fix missing missing limbs and other such things, but tanky animals will also tend to be more resistant to these problems also.
- Breeding rate. A pretty big thing since it matter much less if you have large losses if you can replace them fast.
- Off-duty use. It's not very optimal if your animals can't do anything besides fight occasionally - not unless they are the type that can essentially feed themselves (graze) and not be a burden. So it often boils down to "can it be trained to haul in a reasonable amount of time" ?

Choosing a fast-breeding animal can be great if you can feed them, but be wary of bonded animal death debuffs. On the other end of the spectrum, having only large powerful animals is great - but they are usually slow breeders.

I think wild boars tend to hit a lot of the right points: decent damage, quite fast, very fast breeders with multiple offspring litters. Can be trained to haul. Can graze and feed themselves given the space for it. Just don't expect them to survive most of the time.

Good tank animals are rhinos, bears (they have an amazing stun ability), and elephants. These very frequently survive battles even if they get incapacitated - and can get patched up for re-use. It just takes a long long time to get them up to speed. Hard to tame, hard to train, slow breeders. At least rhinos and elephants can graze (though they do eat a whole lot).

It's worth mentioning also that there is a "exploity" way to get animals to attack without the release mechanic - including animals that really aren't very battle-oriented, like chickens. You can just use the zoning tools to make them run into the enemy and they will defend themselves when attacked. Pretty cheezy though... even if it is hilarious.

TLDR: It's not easy to primarily use animals for combat, nor optimal in most cases, but it is doable with the right setup.

-Stigma

[Mday]

Currently on extreme Randy random rain forest, 6 pawns and at least 100+ boars and less than 50 alpacas. Boars and etc is pretty much the only reason I am still alive.
Avoid friendly fire by not using ranged weapon.
Watch out for enemy molotov cocktail and incendiary launcher.
Train both alpacas and boars but keep the alpacas away from combat - it is an annoying task to find out which alpaca has a broken leg.

I suppose later in the game those doomsday rocket launcher can be an issue too. I am gona randomly place some walls all over the map to break raider's line of sight.

[Shardey]

I found Cougars to be extremely good. They are fast and have a ton of hitpoints. They only eat meat though.

[kubolek01]

Either a Swarm or few Giant grade animals, the choice is yours.

[RemingtonRyder]

Animals are good for taking and giving a few hits, but they aren't directly under your control so they can sometimes get stuck in a bad situation and die.

Fortunately, the animals which are squishy tend to also have faster pregnancies so you can replace their numbers as long as you have at least a breeding pair.

Move speed is useful. The more time animals take to get to the front lines, the greater the chance that the fight is over before they even get there.

The main limiting factors are the Animal Handling skill of your tamer and the wildness of the target animal. At skill level 13, for example, you have a 7.5% chance of taming an animal with wildness of 75%. So that might take a while.

[MajorMonotone]

Bears are pretty fun to mess around with, they're big, tanky and hit hard.

Now if you play with EPOE + A Dog Said you open up a whole new can of cybernetically enhanced worms.