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[Noin]

Hello everyone and, most importantly for this topic, hallo Meph!

I find and always found animal husbandry, unlike other aspects of the game too simple and uncomplicated. You have your animals, you place a burrow for them and maybe put some nests for the animals which lay eggs - bam, you have the industry going! The only complicated thing might be to domesticate some wild animals, but in MDF you never need to do that - as soon as you have some goods to trade you can buy very powerful animals from elves or drow, and order them to come in pairs, so in a short time you'll have a lot of them! It's much easier and faster to create an army of war animals than to create an army of dwarves.

Once, I don't know whether it was a bug or not, I saw an amazing thing happening. A megabeast (a griffon) attacked my fort and was slain. Afterwards, I decided to see how does the system with reviving work. I got a message "a megabeast was revived with the help of changeling" or something like this, but there was no changeling anywhere close. I suppose my peasant, who was doing the reaction, got mutated into the griffon instead, since I couldn't find the animal in my animal list to make it's war training. Ok, I just pastured it's outside to guard the entrance into my fort and moved on. Some time after, I take a look at my entrance and see my griffon Starving and Dehydrated! "Dehydrated?? What do I do?" thought I. Is it a bug or maybe revived megabeasts are supposed to die after some time? Well, I decided just to delete it from it's pasture and {F}ollow the animal. It stood for some time, then went straight into my fort and to the place where I had my water source designated. It stood next to the water, and... it drank! Dehydrated changed to Thirsty and then disappeared at all. "What now?" thought I. Then it went to the food stockpile and ate a piece of meat! I was shocked, there were tears of joy in my eyes. "Is it possible? Can animals drink and eat?"

So, my proposition is this.
Make a new option "Harder Animal Husbandry", which includes:

1. All animals need to drink and eat. So, the ones who do not graze will want to eat some raw meat at least. So, for your undeground pasture, you will need to make a small pool with drinking water as well, and put some food for the animals to eat.
2. All bought and ordered animals, except for the harmless ones like sheep, come in cages but wild. I think all the dangerous and powerful animals should be at most well-trained but NOT domesticated. It would make animal husbandry much more realistic (you don't let bears walk around your town freely, eh?) I don't know whether it's actually possible but that would be SUPER cool. If you want to concentrate on animals as your protection, you need to work on them constantly, you need to have animal trainers and designated, closed, places. Even chains will finally have some use.

[WodanYmirthe2nd]

That sounds like a good way to make water and excess amounts of meat that you could get be even more useful, but then you might end up with more dead animals than normal from the start or make point spending on food from the embark screen higher thanks to your meat eating war pets.

[Noin]

That sounds like a good way to make water and excess amounts of meat that you could get be even more useful, but then you might end up with more dead animals than normal from the start or make point spending on food from the embark screen higher thanks to your meat eating war pets.

I am not thinking on how to use excesses of anything - I am thinking on how you can make this part of the game more complex and interesting, not easier.

[Meph]

INTELLIGENT is the tag responsible for this. It also makes them fort members, which hang around in the meeting area, they cant be war/hunting trained, and they do get social skills. Gavj did some science on this, but hasnt released anything with it (yet?)

[Noin]

INTELLIGENT is the tag responsible for this. It also makes them fort members, which hang around in the meeting area, they cant be war/hunting trained, and they do get social skills. Gavj did some science on this, but hasnt released anything with it (yet?)

But they can still be pastured, and my griffon didn't have any social skills... And on pressing P it showed "The animal is waiting to be trained". And all the animals hang around your meeting area, if not pastured.

+

What about making animals bought from other civs non-domesticated so you have to train them yourself first?

[Innocent Dave]

I'm in favor of anything that allows me to feed animals the corpses of their fallen brethren, which has always worked out fine in real life.

[Boltgun]

INTELLIGENT is the tag responsible for this. It also makes them fort members, which hang around in the meeting area, they cant be war/hunting trained, and they do get social skills. Gavj did some science on this, but hasnt released anything with it (yet?)

Giving them only can_learn or can_speak also make them require water without making them fort member, but I was reported issues when you buy those at the embark screen.

[Tirion]

INTELLIGENT is the tag responsible for this. It also makes them fort members, which hang around in the meeting area, they cant be war/hunting trained, and they do get social skills. Gavj did some science on this, but hasnt released anything with it (yet?)

Giving them only can_learn or can_speak also make them require water without making them fort member, but I was reported issues when you buy those at the embark screen.

Not to mention Stray Mastiff Researchers and Woodcutters.

[Boltgun]

Not to mention Stray Mastiff Researchers and Woodcutters.

In any case, such animal always dies, no dwarf take care of them and they do not even try to eat and drink. I just had two cauchemars die of infection because there is no actual animal care jobs.

This is why I am surprised of seeing the griffon actually taking care of itself.

[lightstar]

I'm in favor of anything that allows me to feed animals the corpses of their fallen brethren, which has always worked out fine in real life.

BSE / CJD / Scrapie would be a great disease to add from the complexity point of view. Not sure how interesting it would be for gameplay, though.

[Kiefatar]

There are a few changes I'd recommend too.

1. Make vermin killing animals known somehow. I'm never sure which ones will hunt down the various vermin that can infest my forts.

2. Make vermin killing animals actually EAT the vermin. They hunt, they eat it... makes sense to me. I mean, sure... cats can play with their food and bring it back, dogs too on occasion, but they can also just simply eat it. I'm not sure how that specific reaction works.

3. Auto-generate shearing/milking jobs as appropriate. Never sure when the jobs are ready and using manager profiles just generates excess error messages.

[Meph]

1. is in the creatures description and the manual.
2. can be done, but not sure if other people want that.
3. impossible.

[Boltgun]

3 would be using the stockpiles plugin or something to simply queue a milking job on a regular basis. No animal check but simply adding the job from time to time. I don't know if that's already supported, I really need to learn to use that one.