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[Ig88]

As the title suggests I think it would be interesting to be able to create and assign war animal-specific armors. Having a bunch of leather/bone armored war dogs would certainly be more effective than just war dogs.

[NW_Kohaku]

Although this makes sense, there's a big problem when it comes to having to actually make the armor...

Armor right now does not really recognize non-humanoid body shapes.  Armor has different sizes for different races, but you have no real way of dealing with "this is elephant-sized chainmail barding" and "this is horse-sized chainmail barding" and "this is dog-sized chainmail barding" in the forge menu.

Not to say this is a bad idea, obviously, just that it takes more coding logistics than you might at first realize to accomplish this task.

[Vattic]

I'll first quote my reply in a similar topic.

Mounts should definitely get armour of some kind. Since ancient times armoured war dogs were used for guarding caravans and even used on the battlefield to attack the enemy.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

16th century, armoured dogs used by Conquistadors.


A modern set of armour in the same vein.

I was always under the impression that a suit of armour was made specifically for one person much like a tailored suit. I can't help but wonder if the way it works now is backwards. You'd start by selecting a soldier and ordering him to get certain types of armour, he'd go to the armour's workshop for measuring, then the armourer would craft what he ordered ready for the dwarf to pick it up. The same could work for animals except that their trainer could haul them to the armourer. Old suits could be adjusted or melted down to make stuff for less dead dwarves or dwarves that have got larger. This wouldn't solve all the problems admittedly.

It will be a great day when we can breed strong horses, give them heavy armour, and charge into battle.

[NW_Kohaku]

Platemail would be tailored specifically for one person, although it could be adjusted, and suits of armor were often heirlooms, and were too expensive to just build a new one for every knight in the family. 

The clothing system, however, covers every form of clothing, and the game pretty much just doesn't care what your shoe size is, or how big you want your mittens...

If there were a system in place where dwarves could go to the cobbler and have shoes made in specifically their size, that would make some sense, but when clothing is made in bulk, and they only have one size shoe, then you just have to make do.

(And I don't think things like shoe sizes really existed back then, either...)

[Neonivek]

Technically they didn't all wear shoes all the time back then either.

Though shoes were less like gloves if I remember correctly. Closer to socks then modern shoes (since shoe shoes were expencive)

Though I am probably wrong.

[DanielLC]

I've read that the armor was made for each individual at first, but eventually they were just mass-produced.

I don't think more than one piece of armor is ever really used on animals. They do it occasional for ceremonial armor, but it's not worth it for an actual fight. Armoring them at all is rarely worth it.

You'd still have the problem of making a different armor for every species. This shouldn't be too bad, since in vanilla, it would only be dogs, and you're not likely to mod in many others.

[NW_Kohaku]

You can train more than just dogs now.  You can train war dragons.  Putting steel armor on a tamed, trained war dragon, and you have a pretty formidable seige deterrant on your hands. 

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Kennel#Trainable_animals

[Funk]

the main thing with armoring nonhumanoids is how do you tell the player what bits of armor are need.

war Elephants with armor were often used as super heavy cavalry,weapon bases (some times useing ballista) and thay often panick Horses unaccustomed to them.

pic of Elephant armor

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 

in history armor was made to fit range of size, only later does armor get closer fit to the body and only then for the rich,.