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[orius]

I don't allow pets of any kind, as a general rule.  Unfortunately cats love to break that rule, which irritates me, but cat dorf adoption doesn't happen too often, because the cats are kept pastured in food stockpiles to ensure they do their jobs properly.  Pets are forbidden because it prevents butchery, and because the pets pathing all over the fort eats up fps.  So the pets get pastured in my animal pens for breeding purposes mostly.

However, I noticed that vermin caught with animal traps can be tamed and then adopted as pets.  I'm thinking of allowing this, but there are the pathing fps concerns.  Do vermin wander around like regular pets and slow down the game?

[Sphalerite]

Vermin pets are normally carried around everywhere by their owner.  That shouldn't cause a pathing hit, since they aren't going anywhere on their own.  If the owner is knocked unconscious, the pets can escape and wander around on their own (and potentially get eaten by cats), and then the owner will have to get up and catch them once they can.  That might cause a bit of a hit as the owner has to run around looking for them.

[Garath]

do tamed cave spiders that are carried around create webs?

[Quietust]

do tamed cave spiders that are carried around create webs?

Not while being carried around, but they will create webs if you leave them to wander around in a room for a while.

Also, I recall that vermin pets were rather buggy in version 0.31 - they would constantly escape from their owner and be swiftly hunted down by cats. I'm not sure if it's been fixed yet.

[ikarsai]

My spiders in an animal trap. They are tame. They were in cages when I embarked I tried to release them, but the dwarfs did not do it until I built traps and they put them in traps. What to do next? I made them available as pets, but they sitting in the traps in the animal stockpile. Please advise. Thanks Steve

[Sphalerite]

You can't force a dwarf to adopt a pet.  All you can do it mark it as available for adoption, and then wait and see if a dwarf who likes that kind of animal decides to adopt them.

You could release them by building a cage, assigning them to the cage, then linking a lever to the cage and having a dwarf pull the lever.  The animals will be released.  Then your dwarves will grab empty cage traps and run around putting them back in the cage traps.  Dwarves really don't like to leave tame vermin running around loose.

[Urist McDwarfFortress]

Also, I recall that vermin pets were rather buggy in version 0.31 - they would constantly escape from their owner and be swiftly hunted down by cats. I'm not sure if it's been fixed yet.

I also remember this.  Also, if the vermin pet could fly and got lose somewhere big (like outside, for instance) his owner could take a very, very, very long time finding his pet again.  This resulted in one guy being completely useless about 90% of the time, not to mention the constant job-cancellation spam, as he dropped whatever he was doing to go run around looking for his dumb pet over and over, until I finally atom-smashed his stupid bird.

I've never allowed flying vermin as pets since then, and non-flyers tend to just sit around in the room where they're dropped and be picked back up a tick or two later, so I don't know if this is still an issue or not.

[orius]

Also, I recall that vermin pets were rather buggy in version 0.31 - they would constantly escape from their owner and be swiftly hunted down by cats. I'm not sure if it's been fixed yet.

I also remember this.  Also, if the vermin pet could fly and got lose somewhere big (like outside, for instance) his owner could take a very, very, very long time finding his pet again.  This resulted in one guy being completely useless about 90% of the time, not to mention the constant job-cancellation spam, as he dropped whatever he was doing to go run around looking for his dumb pet over and over, until I finally atom-smashed his stupid bird.

I've never allowed flying vermin as pets since then, and non-flyers tend to just sit around in the room where they're dropped and be picked back up a tick or two later, so I don't know if this is still an issue or not.

Hmm, these could be problems.

Like I said, I keep all cats pastured or caged, and ruthlessly butcher the excess.  So escaped vermin doesn't sound like it should be a problem unless they path to the food stockpiles where the cats are imprisoned pastured.  The only downside is if dwarf owners get an unhappy thought from the cat eating their pets.

Flying off and cancelling jobs might get annoying though.  I'll have to test things to see how it works I guess.

Anyway, since my animal trainer isn't going to be training full time, I figure it might be useful for him/her to trap and train vermin in his spare time.

[Khym Chanur]

Once tamed, you can transfer the vermin to a normal cage, then install the cage in the bedroom of a dwarf who likes that type of vermin.  The dwarf will get happy thoughts from seeing it every visit to the bedroom, without having the problems of it being a pet.