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[schnobs]

Asking as much on behalf of the wiki as out of personal curiosity: what's the difference between war, hunting and untrained dogs?

It appears that the trained ones are more dangerous and more willing to fight, although I'm not entirely sure even of that.

Hunting dogs roam quite a bit, but I still have to see a hunting dog actually track down some prey or assist a hunter.

Also, while I'm at it: will other animals become [TRAINABLE] if I add the statement to their description?

[BoltsFogs]

Trained war dogs are exactly as they are named, trained war dogs. You can assign them to an area using restraints, or you can assign them to a specific dwarf in the command menu, they're many a fortress' first line of defense, or last line in some cases.

Hunting dogs are exactly as they are named, hunting dogs. They help hunt down the local wildlife and kill it, but will fight monsters in a pinch, though they're less effective at it than war dogs.

Dogs are your normal everyday dogs. They can fight if threatened, you can use them for butchering, you can asign them as pets. ALL three types of dogs are capable of giving birth.

And so the saying goes

CRY HAVOC AND LET SLIP THE DOGS OF WAR!

[ March 07, 2007: Message edited by: BoltsFogs ]

[ March 07, 2007: Message edited by: BoltsFogs ]

[Solara]

I never use hunting dogs but find war dogs incredibly useful. Just a bit of advice though, don't actually buy war dogs in the beginning. Regular ones are cheaper and don't take all that long to train even if your dwarf has no skills in that area.

[Gakidou]

By the way, is there any benefit to having highly skilled animal trainers? Will a legendary trainer produce better wardogs, or just produce them faster?

[ctrlfrk]

As far as we can tell from testing, training war dogs does NOT make them better fighters.

All it does is adjust how they respond to combat.

Normal dogs behave as normal dwarfs.
War dogs behave as soldiers with "harass dangerous animals" set to off.
Hunting dogs behave as soldiers with "harass dangerous animals" set to on.

The only person who can reply with certainty is toady

[schnobs]

quote:Normal dogs behave as normal dwarfs.
War dogs behave as soldiers with "harass dangerous animals" set to off.
Hunting dogs behave as soldiers with "harass dangerous animals" set to on.

And when assigned to a dwarf, their master effectively becomes their squad leader... Nicely put, and seems to sum it up nicely.

However, I came across an old post from Toady, about a bug where there were hunting deer. His post stated that "hunting" type animals are also trained in sneaking or ambushing (not sure which).

That's how I came to ask in the first place: there seems to be more to a trained animal than meets the eye (or can be found out by mere observation, no matter how careful one watches).

quote:The only person who can reply with certainty is toady

Agreed.

I don't have a link to said post at hand; it was mentioned somewhere on the wiki. I'll edit this should I manage to find it again.

[naradaman]

Is the bug that stops all dog breeding when one dog is restrained dead?

[Toady One]

War dogs dish out double damage.

[Tylui]

An absolutely awesome answer(and with alliteration, also!), Toady!

[ March 12, 2007: Message edited by: Tylui ]

[TomTheHand]

Toady, might you be able to throw us a bone (heh) as far as what hunting dogs are?

[Toady One]

A hunting animal will target the creature its owner is targeting if the owner is hunting, and it will be sneaking without a movement penalty if it is reasonably close to its hunting owner.  A hunting animal notices creatures from farther away, although this isn't exactly effective if it decides to target what its owner is targeting.  It all needs a bit of work, but that is true of hunting in general.