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Author Topic: Hauling with animals?  (Read 1472 times)

20,000leeks

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Hauling with animals?
« on: October 18, 2006, 09:15:00 am »

This may have been said before, but would it be possible to have animals that could be used for hauling? (If anyone has played Harvest Moon, they'll know what I mean)

In essence, you could assign a Horse/Mule/Elephant/Incredibly Strong Cave Lizard to Transport under the butchery screen, and it will then be used to transport large quantities of the same goods depending on its relative size - an Elephant could carry a *lot* of stone, while a Mule could carry maybe one or two pieces. Thus, when someone gets assigned to a Haul task, they take the animal with them, load it until it's full, and *then* go to the stockpile.

Unfortunately, given the way stockpiling currently works, I'm not sure this is possible, or even efficient - there's not much point having an animal capable of hauling huge loads if they get led all over the fortress picking up different objects in different areas. Maybe once Burrows get implemented, you could assign a number of animals to transport within the Burrow area, and they'd swap loads at the borders? Sort of like the Settlers transport system?

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mrshirt

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Re: Hauling with animals?
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2006, 10:30:00 am »

This has been posted, primarily because it's an excellent idea.  You might have missed the mine cart idea as well, which would also be interesting.

Too bad there can't be a sticky for this kind of thing, and I don't think the Wiki would be the same.

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w

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Re: Hauling with animals?
« Reply #2 on: October 18, 2006, 12:34:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by 20,000leeks:
<STRONG>Maybe once Burrows get implemented, you could assign a number of animals to transport within the Burrow area, and they'd swap loads at the borders? Sort of like the Settlers transport system?</STRONG>

Burrows? Settlers?

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Fenek

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Re: Hauling with animals?
« Reply #3 on: October 18, 2006, 01:11:00 pm »

Burrows: core36 -> http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_core_21-40.html

And by "Settlers" I'm sure, that he ment "from flag to flag" transport system, which S 1,2 had.

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bbb

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Re: Hauling with animals?
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2006, 01:23:00 am »

butchery?

surely it should be kennel... and a new training job?

question is... how quick do they move? one thing i hate about wagons (merchants) is that they are slow.. i hope whatever it is that will be used to haul stuff would be at least almost as fast as a walking dwarf... (not holding much!)

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20,000leeks

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Re: Hauling with animals?
« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2006, 02:53:00 am »

Eh, by butchery I meant the menu where you can decide whether animals are available to be pets or not... which is also incidentally the place you choose to butcher them. But yeah, maybe assigning through the kennels would be a little more realistic - after all, they'd require some training and definitely some tack to cart things around.

Speed, on the other hand, would depend greatly on the animal's base speed. Which, as far as I know, isn't quite worked out at the moment. But it would make sense to use an elephant (quite slow, but capable of towing *MASSIVE* loads) to cart around lots of furniture, stone, etc., while using... pack dogs or something to carry around harvested food, or maybe a single bin or barrel. I don't know about you, but I envisage plump helmets as being kind of like apple-sized pumpkins. Which I'm pretty sure a dog or team of dogs could carry with ease, and quickly, too. Horses/Mules/Donkeys could haul around intermediate things like ore, bars, coin stacks, weaponry... that sort of business. That's just what I had in mind, though.

And after looking at the mine cart idea, that sounds like a pretty good way to organise it. Instead of making it instantly available once you get around to building a kennel, make it so that you have to build at least one mine cart (which could consist of multiple components?) to get it to work, plus a track for it to run on (you could have varying types of track, but they'd influence either speed or reliability - wooden tracks wouldn't work very well). This way, you could have designated trackways. Maybe it would even be possible to have bulk transport trackways and dwarf transport trackways. If there's a nearby cart with enough room on it and it's heading into a specific Burrow, the dwarf hitches a ride? That would be damn difficult to implement though, and maybe it's not enough of a gain to make it worthwhile. Besides the map area isn't quite big enough to make mass transit systems a realistic development.

EDIT: It could add a *really* cool element to sieges, reclaim mode, adventuring in old fortresses, and pretty much any kind of combat you care to think of. Just imagine a mine cart fitted with a ballista, or filled to the brim with crossbow-wielding kobolds
 :D

[ October 19, 2006: Message edited by: 20,000leeks ]

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Draco18s

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Re: Hauling with animals?
« Reply #6 on: October 19, 2006, 10:50:00 pm »

Plump Helmets would be "giant" mushrooms.
Dwarves -> Caves -> Mushrooms -> Looks like a helmet
That and it uses a Spade as the graphic.

Minecart of crowbow wielding kobolds, oh my!  :eek:

Reminds me of the book Doom Brigade.  the first draconian engineering brigade built a bridge across a chasm (at least part way) and the dwarfs used a speeding mine cart to fly across.

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Strangething

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Re: Hauling with animals?
« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2008, 05:07:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by bbb:
<STRONG>butchery?

surely it should be kennel... and a new training job?
</STRONG>


If not the kennel, then a new building. (A corral?) Instead of train war dog, train pack animal.

An updated animal system has a lot of possibilities. Milking cows, riding horses, war elephants, all kinds of things.

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Dwarf Fanatic

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Re: Hauling with animals?
« Reply #8 on: April 23, 2008, 05:18:00 pm »

I think this is a good idea! Except have 'Baskets' to use for the jobs. A basket is a bin modified to be able to be attached to a pack animal and can hold stuff.

And on Plump Helmets...

I envision them as about the size of a basket ball. (too a dwarf it will be bigger!) To eat uncooked the dwarf cuts the cap from the stalk, and scoops the ooze from the stalk. Then he peels the top off and munches it for fiber. The rest are spawn. To brew is to take the cap off, put a powder (?) that brewers can make quickly on it and press it. Then chop open the cap to extract the inner stuff to turn it into wine. To cook it they chop the shroom in half and place it over the fire. Then they scoop the ooze out to smear on top of the cap... Yummy and delicous! The spwan would be burned to a tasteful crisp... for booze cooking... they add dried inner parts from the barrel. (it has a container) and put it in. The whole thing will ferment and by boiling it at the right time you get Biscuts!

Sorry for being out of context!

[ April 23, 2008: Message edited by: Dwarf Fanatic ]

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h, Nessing is cool and all. And Civilization goes from stone to steam punk, but nothin'' beats a good dose of Fanaticialism to Dwarf Fortress and a load of Dwarfen Rum!

Draco18s

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Re: Hauling with animals?
« Reply #9 on: April 23, 2008, 08:19:00 pm »

Why did we just dig up an 18 month old thread with a post I don't remember making in it?

You didn't even add anything to the thread.

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