How can we improve the design of animals in combat?

[WickedGoddess]

Mostly I just wish there was a way to mark the animals I wanted for combat, who could die and the animals I want to keep for wool or milk or because they are cool.  It would be nice to say these are the war elephants or bears or wargs and they go fight and sometimes die, and that is sad, but not break your mental health sad...

[Bozobub]

Mostly I just wish there was a way to mark the animals I wanted for combat, who could die and the animals I want to keep for wool or milk or because they are cool.  It would be nice to say these are the war elephants or bears or wargs and they go fight and sometimes die, and that is sad, but not break your mental health sad...

Simply do not train animals you want for resources or want to keep for other reasons besides combat.  Problem solved.

[Vlad0mi3r]

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Yes animals are very useful in combat in a variety of situations. Yes all the time. I find them to be really versatile in how they can be used. A release of Boars as others have mentioned can be devastating to an enemy raid. But also having a squirrel tamed and assigned to your brawler types helps as a soak for damage (small size easily missed by weapon fire and can distract attacks away from pawn.) My personal favoured animal is the camel gives Milk and Wool and hands out a smack load of damage in combat and can be used as a pack animal. My camels have saved my caravans on many an occasion. 

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

The slow wander when following a drafted pawn. Everyone forms up at the sandbags and good old "Miffy" the pet husky who is there to keep their master safe has now wandered over the sandbags and is about to cop some friendly fire.

Maybe a sit ability (Trainable) once a pet comes within the range of its master (a pre determined distance say the size of a EMP mortar round explosion) the sit command could be given (a draft style button) and the animal will stay on that tile until the master moves out of range, release order given or sit command cancelled.

3. How are you using animals in combat?

I am using them as the equivalent of melee Pawns and occasionally late game to assist in hunting down fleeing opponents.

[Cpt.Fupa]

I find that animals just get in the way. They normally just end up getting themselves killed since you have no control over them at all. Whenever a raid comes i usually set them to no owner and put them in a safe zone somewhere in my colony. A way to make them be a bit more useful would be if their masters could give them commands, like seek cover, attack, return. This would also help with the games immersion and make it less annoying to have to go into my animals menu every time I get a raid.

[jchavezriva]

I raise Rhinos for combat. I have a colony with plenty of brawlers so when i send them with the rhinos to attack, i usually end up brutally murdering any raiders.

Only problem is, they become blind WAY too fast. It does make some sense, since attacks on their faces are common, but is really annoying to have a blind 9 year old rhino considering they have 40 years of life expectancy.

Still, i wouldnt change them for anything.

Something i would like to ask you regarding this is to implement an option to apply certain substances like luciferium periodically to animals. Since the only way to cure blindness on animals is by applying them luciferium, I gave it to my 9 year old blind rhino, but had to send him to cryosleep since it was impossible to remember about it all the time and i had to reload save too frequently to avoid his death.

[Tynan]

Thanks for the feedback everyone! I'm considering it all systematically.

[Bozobub]

I still prefer bears for combat, due to good HP and their stun attack (assuming that still exists ^^').

[Charlatanry]

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

I use raptors from the Dinosauria mod. I avoid using livestock because I am overly cautious about losing them, even though a lot of them breed very quickly.

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Friendly fire is a major concern later on, so animals rarely play a role in large raids. Having newly trained pigs and llamas wander into combat because they were assigned a master can be pretty annoying--I have to open the animal tab and reset a bunch of animals every time a raid starts.

3. How are you using animals in combat?

Fast animals (e.g. raptors) close distances very quickly and are better than armed melee humans. I also use them to engage archers as quickly as possible, and to chase down kidnappers and fleeing raiders.

[Skaer]

> 1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

Can be useful, but are unreliable and hard to use. I use them when I have to, otherwise not.

> 2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

They are hard and inconvenient to position and quickly engage/disengage, while precision and speed are key factors to successful melee combat. Being able to give them specific orders would help with this, but would still not make them really viable because the micromanagement wouldn't be worth the benefits most of the time.

Also, being unarmored means that they more or less inevitably and fairly quickly get permanent injuries. It's not a problem if you mass breed them to be cannon fodder, but otherwise it is.

> 3. How are you using animals in combat?

Early game, they can provide extra dps or tanking because it's easier to keep them out of excessive retaliation. Also, muffalos can help protect caravans untill ambushes start getting really nasty. Other than that, I only use them in desperate situations.

I personally would use my big cats in caravans as lower power score melees if:

1) permanent injury was reasonably fixable
2) they could hunt while traveling in biomes where they normally can hunt

In larger scale combat, I don't see non-throwaway animals becoming usable unless there are shields and armor for them.

[9ofSpades]

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

I generally don't use animals because they are too easily killed and the mood debuf and training time usually doesn't make it favorable. I only use animals heavily in combat if I specifically aim to play a game that way.

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

Not being able to control the animals makes them a gamble. When they work it's great but when they don't I usually end of killing them with friendly fire. They also never stay behind cover so they usually just wander into the enemy fire before I can even release them properly.

3. How are you using animals in combat?

I like to pair animals with my hunters to give a buffer for when animals decide to attack or the whole herd becomes man hunters. I find that usually my hunter can handle themselves but several times having one or two assigned animals has made the difference.

[TheMeInTeam]

I'm investigating whether there's a problem with the current design of animals with regards to using them in combat. Some players do definitely use them, but I'm curious if more could be done to make this useful. So I'm opening the discussion and inviting players to answer the following questions:

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

3. How are you using animals in combat?

You don't have to suggest any solutions at all, of course. I';m very happy to just collect notes on player experiences. However, suggestions are also welcome. But, this is not an open thread for new ideas, related to animals or not. I'm only attempting small refinement-oriented adjustments, balancings, and fixes to animal combat mechanics. Off-topic posts are likely to get deleted.

Thanks all!

1.  Sometimes.  They are nice when things hit the fan (sapper breach, drop pod mech type stuff).  Normally, they're a liability because beating raids on extreme w/o losses/risk requires precision control you can't do with animals.  On the biomes I play they're not so expendable either.
2.  Even on release to attack, they often take a long time to react after being hit.
3.  Their utility is similar to extra pawns in melee.  Mostly this means dragging them through a door for defeat in detail against raiders.  They're pretty cumbersome for this though, especially with door hold open/close micromanagement.

As the game drags on and raid size/quality scales up, they are increasingly less useful outside the stopgap role (melee shares this curve in general, if only for sanity reasons).

My only preference would be to make them more responsive to commands (release vs not, following master more tightly when drafted).  Maybe allow targeted release with a higher training cost...actually this would make them very useful on maps you can feed them.

[Hans Lemurson]

To make them more effect in standard prepared defence combat, maybe sticking a personal shield on them would do the trick since it would allow them to get in melee range more effectively and also protect them from your own stray bullets. It also sounds practically possible to be able to attach a shield belt to them.

EDIT: I also saw someone mention making the shield belts able to be put on animals as being a good idea to counter this and I second that one idea as well.

Also, given that there aren't any ranged animals, having the ability to add "belts" (shield, smoke-pop, etc.) to our animals would be nice.

Concept illustration:
https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/7rzlpo/art_gallery_of_the_outer_rim_exhibit_11/

[Walkaboutout]

1. Are animals useful in combat? Do you use them? If so, why?  If not, why not?

2. Are there annoying/weird points about animals in combat?

3. How are you using animals in combat?

1. Animals, for me, are useful in combat. They tank well enough, depending on the type of animal. They get mauled by enemy fire, but if you aren't bothered by that, they're great, as they force the enemy to focus on them and not your colonists. With that said, I want to use them, but I don't. The reality is I cannot train and breed enough of the species I choose to keep, such to make their losses in combat acceptable, not to mention that I am one of those people bothered by watching them get slaughtered. So they get used in combat only as a last resort, these days, when I know I'm in a fight for the very survival of my colony.

2. Perhaps the biggest issue is that I often see them take more friendly fire than enemy fire, especially bigger species, and I'm really not okay with that. I know that's not untrue to life given that they're in the line of fire, but maybe this is a time where reality could take a bit of a back seat to a gameplay mechanic made to reduce that issue. I would use them for low intensity stuff, like following a master while hunting or doing field work, but I see some of the same issues there. My colonists are a bigger danger to them than the odd revenging giant sloth or grizzly bear is to my colonist, ultimately.

3. When I am using them in combat, it's generally to drag dangerous enemies with serious long range hardware into melee, so that my colonists have enough time to shoot the bad guy down, with out getting torn up by whatever nasty weapon I'm trying to get out of the fight.

Additional Comments. I would use things like the giant sloth for sure, but then we get into training issues (I know you didn't ask about that, but it's worth mentioning in my mind). It's nearly impossible to tame one, and even more so a Thrumbo, but when I finally did tame a couple sloths (never gotten a Thrumbo to this day, but I will make it happen!), I realized their usefulness was limited, because it was nearly as hard to train them on the colony tasks I needed them to do, as well as make them combat-order capable (I know, I need to be selective about what I focus training on).

So in the end, I don't get to keep around the more exotic, sci-fi type creatures like the giant sloth, and instead default back to, say, grizzlies or elephants (if they're attainable), because they're also big and tough, but more importantly far more trainable. Alas, that's just not the same as having some exotic creature out of the pages of sci-fi protecting my colonists or my Muffalo herds, etc.

Perhaps having more medical options with animals mauled by enemies, but still alive, would be a good thing. Bionic parts or something, I donno. Just a thought.

[ChJees]

• They are fun to use when i decide to actually use them in my playthroughs. But it is pretty rare because i mostly use guns.
• Lack of positioning. You can't tell the animal whether to stand back or in front of the handler. Also no way to sic' the animals at a target of your choice.
• Overwhelm with numbers using wild boars. I find big animals to be a waste of time.

Animals would be more useful in combat if they got some sense of self preservation too. Should try to retreat if they get hurt past 50% of their "health" unless the handler say otherwise.
Also the the ability to strap a IED onto a animal would be useful . Think the molerats with bombs attached to them in Fallout 4. Maybe let them use shield belts too?

[Harry_Dicks]

I just plainly don't use them because of the mood debuff and the associated mental breaks that can happen if there's a death.

Maybe there would be a possibility to train them as war animals which prevents the mood debuff to happen when they are killed, but maybe that means that these animals can't haul or something like that to balance it.

This right here is the issue for me. I feel like when I send out my war animals, they are all weak melee fighters, so they are going to take lots of damage, including maybe some friendly fire, and I might lose too many. In vanilla, you can only patch up your fluffy buddies so much. I think we've all gotten to that point at least once where we have a colony dog who only has one eye, one ear, no jaw, no tail, has dementia, one good leg with two people legs, and his name is Lucky. We would be devastated to lose Lucky.

I still don't want to lose the whole bonding mechanism. I think it's fantastic. But maybe something could change about it, because isn't the debuff very long for a bonded animal death?

I also think it would be TOTALLY FREAKING AWESOME if there was at least one or two layers of apparel for animals in the vanilla game. At least so it would be easy for modders to add in equipment. Right now, we are so lucky to have the combination of these mods all working together: Giddy-Up (and it's companion mods Battlemounts and Caravan) along with Run-n-Gun (same author I think?) Genetic Rim and now ranged animal attack just came out.

I want to be able to invest now in these animals defense it equipment, especially after I might have to invest do much in capturing, breeding, raising, and training them.

Also, some of us might not have newer high end rigs, so I can't afford to have 100 colony animals. I might only have 10-20. So it would be great if we were allowed the option to build more "tall" than "wide." Quality over quantity.

EDIT: I also hate how we don't have a way to deal with boom creatures except when it rains. Could they please have a natural predator, that might have a venom they inject as they fight, making boomers not explode? Or we could get this as a special attack modifier, maybe.