"follow master while doing field work" - animals also follow while mining

[avancouw]

This has been a thing since at least the royalty launch, maybe before then.

Is there a reason why animals assigned to "follow master during field work (hunting or taming)" also follow the master while they're mining? It's really incredibly unintuitive. I've sometimes had animals fall over from exhaustion or malnourishment during mining tasks. They should go back home instead.

[Honestly Sassy]

So I haven't trained alot of animals like that, usually I just keep livestock, But why not just unassign them from their masters if they are going to be going out to mine, or keep them in a zone?

[avancouw]

So I haven't trained alot of animals like that, usually I just keep livestock, But why not just unassign them from their masters if they are going to be going out to mine, or keep them in a zone?

The animal is assigned to a zone. Why not unassign them if their master isn't hunting, you say? Why not do any extra piece of unnecessary micro? What if you had to say, manually drop your pawn's gun every time they weren't in combat? That'd be terrible.

Edit: making sure none of your animal handlers have mining assigned is one way to do it, but, even that kinda sucks.

Animals shouldn't be following on mining errands, the tooltip says they follow while hunting and training.

[Canute]

Basicly it is a good thing when the animal follow all the time the master is outside, because rimworld is a dangerous world.
It can protect it from some manhunting or hunting predator, and even give the master some time in case a raid appear near him.

But the AI should be improved that the animal get half of the meal the master eat outside, and sleep while the master doing non-hunting work.

[avancouw]

Basicly it is a good thing when the animal follow all the time the master is outside

But they don't follow if I send my pawn to cut trees, or sow crops, or haul, or literally anything else.
Only hunting, taming, and mining. Mining is the odd man, the one of these 3 that doesn't fit.

[Grubfist]

Could be an accident, but crops and treecutting often happen nearby the base, while mining often involves traveling farther (at least once you've mined for a bit). So it might be intentional. The farther someone travels from base, the more at risk they are from predator hunt events.

[Canute]

No i can confirm and reproduce that behavior at last at 1.2.
And when it would be intentional it should happen at far away harvesting/cut/chop plants too.
And then the description should be changed/adjusted at last.