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[AceSV]

How about making armor for your war animals.  This would probably not be for every fortress, but for those that enjoy animal rearing, it would make war animals a lot more viable. 

While that sounds nice to have, it also sounds like a pain the ass to create all the different types of armor, unless you could do it procedurally, or with sweeping generalizations, and for the player, you might end up with loads and loads of menus to slog through. 

So one idea is that animal armor is very simplified compared to humanoid armor, with just a head-armor, body-armor, and leg/foot-armor.  If an animal has weird body parts like wings or a trunk, these are not protected.  Snakes I guess would lack leg armor. 

For reducing the menu length, it could be limited to only animals which are currently domesticated in your fortress.  Armor could be restricted to animals that can be trained for War or as Exoctic Mounts, or they could have a new Armorable tag. I feel like giant sperm whales should not be Armorable.   

Of course, sieges should make use of armored animals as well. 

A variation might be to give animals Spiked Armor or an extra wearable Spike or Blade or whatever that gives them an additional attack type.  Although if you can give Spiked Armor to animals, you'll probably want some version of that for Dwarves. 

[Pwned dwarf]

so armor that fits a dog fits elephants?

[AceSV]

so armor that fits a dog fits elephants?

You could do it that way, but I was thinking that Dog Armor fits dogs and Elephant Armor fits elephants and Cave Crocodile Armor fits cave crocodiles and Chicken Armor fits chickens and Giant Horseshoe Crab Armor fits giant horseshoe crabs, .... 

[Badger Storm]

Hell yes.  With spiked collars for more damage!

Having an armor for every single creature would probably be overkill.  I think it might be better to have, say, felid armor for lions and tigers, ungulate armor for giraffes and unicorns, that kind of thing.

[AceSV]

You could also categorize animal armors by size.  If you were to borrow D&D's convention this would be Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Gargantuan and Colossal, although I think elephants are Huge, so you'd only ever need the other sizes for ... dragons ...

EDIT:  Looking at the actual numbers though, it looks like the smallest reasonable thing you would probably armor is a Chicken at 3000 cm³ and the largest is either an Elephant at 5million cm³ or a dragon at 25million cm³.  So at a wild stab in the dark, if you started with the largest, 25m, and divide by 5 for each category down, you get 5m, 1m, 200k, 40k, 8k,

Dragon size 25 million
Elephant size 5 million
Huge size 1 million, i.e Water Buffalo to Jabberer
Large size 200k, i.e a Tapir, Lion or Halibut to Giant sloth bear, Giant Anaconda or Elephant Seal
Medium size 40k, i.e a Carp or Wolf to Llama or Gorilla (dwarves are 60k, humans are 70k)
Small size 8k i.e an Albatross or Bobcat to a Pike or Emu
Tiny size 1.6k i.e a Chicken to an Armadillo 

(also, Carp are as big as Wolves and Pike are as big as Emus?  Does Toady have a fish phobia or something?) 

[falcc]

Maybe instead of categorizing armor by sizes the animal sizes reflect how many pieces of a single "animal armor plate" kind of item it takes to "armor an animal." Then even if really bizarre animals get generated in mods they could still be armored with whatever metals, without needing to define every item individually. 

[AceSV]

Maybe instead of categorizing armor by sizes the animal sizes reflect how many pieces of a single "animal armor plate" kind of item it takes to "armor an animal." Then even if really bizarre animals get generated in mods they could still be armored with whatever metals, without needing to define every item individually.

I gotcha, so for example, if one armor plate covers a 5000 cm³ animal, a Wolf (40k) would need 8 plates, a Giraffe (1m) would need 200 plates.  You'd probably still want some size categories, so for example a 5000cm plate, a 50,000cm plate and a 500,000cm plate. 

[Deboche]

I hope this is added when mounts are added.

[TheHossofMoss]

How about this?

The armorer takes the animal to the metalsmith's forge, and the animal remains there.
Then, the armorer gathers the materials (according to which metal you chose) for the animal.
Once they have returned, your animal is fitted with armor.

But then, that makes me wonder if animals will require an armor wearing skill? Will trainers have to help train them in it, so their skill goes up, so they move faster?

[YAHG]

How about this?

The armorer takes the animal to the metalsmith's forge, and the animal remains there.
Then, the armorer gathers the materials (according to which metal you chose) for the animal.
Once they have returned, your animal is fitted with armor.

But then, that makes me wonder if animals will require an armor wearing skill? Will trainers have to help train them in it, so their skill goes up, so they move faster?

This is what I was thinking when I started reading through the thread. You could even have the workshop list the animals your fortress has and then select by type. I think it would be useful to be able to in 30 chicken armors or whatever you want to call them to the que via manager etc.

Maybe there could be armor pieces based on body parts, creatures with those parts would be eligable (animals without chests like snakes would not be able to wear breastplates).

[Deboche]

Snakes only need one piece of armor, a metal mail sock.

But if it's going to be armor for war animals, snakes and chickens probably won't get any. It'd be cool to have armor for animals that actually got armor historically like horses and elephants but if bears could be tamed and trained for war, they'd look badass in full samurai gear.

[AceSV]

Snakes would be amazing at war, what with the poisony bity thing going on.  And horses can't be trained for war, so you'd have to be able to armor mounts and not just war animals.

[YAHG]

Snakes only need one piece of armor, a metal mail sock.

But if it's going to be armor for war animals, snakes and chickens probably won't get any. It'd be cool to have armor for animals that actually got armor historically like horses and elephants but if bears could be tamed and trained for war, they'd look badass in full samurai gear.

Samurai Bears. Giant Chickens or snakes might be cool for armor. Maybe having a lower size limit for animal armor might be best, after all armored bees might be a lil much.

[Deboche]

And horses can't be trained for war, so you'd have to be able to armor mounts and not just war animals.

You're right, maybe we can armor both. But would dwarves really ride horses? Wouldn't they feel more comfortable on top of something smaller?

[AceSV]

In war, I'd probably feel most comfortable on an elephant or rhinoceros.  If a dwarf were going to ride a horse, they'd probably just ride a smaller sturdier breed than we are used to.  "Horse" is a very unspecific term.