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[Urist McColeTheo]

Recently I found a thread on the Dwarf Fortress subreddit regarding breeding what is essentially a group of animal people for manual labor/combat, while the Dwarves/Humans/Elves tend to the fort and focus on craftsmanship and art. Of course this made me interested so for the past couple of days I've been playing around in the Raw files trying to see if this is actually possible.

The idea is that you have an ever-growing force of servants with exploitable abilities, say elephant men doing heavy lifting or Serpentmen having poisonous bites.

I've found out how to make them draftable for war (adding the [TRAINABLE] token underneath the creature token in the Raw document) but I had to also add [PET] underneath the creature token so you can tame and breed them. Of course, being pets this means they're unable to use equipment such as weapons or shields.

Is there any way I can work around this to get my animal people to use equipment? Or am I stuck with them using nothing but their abilities for combat against invaders?

[PatrikLundell]

I don't actually know, but I think EXOTIC_PET might do what you want. I'd take a look a Gremlins, since they are "animals" that can be trained, but still petition to become citizens, at which time they can perform any job (at least using DT) and wear armor (if you mod them to be as large as kobolds, or you'll be unable to make armor/clothes small enough for them to wear). I've seen comments on my bug reports regarding Gremlins that animal people modded to have the EXOTIC_PET tag are subject to the same problems as Gremlins.
If you do use that path, it's useful to know that retraining Gremlins that have been accepted as full citizens is a royal pain, as retraining is very low on the Gremlin priority list. I've worked around that by using DFHack's gui/gm-editor to make my Gremlins fully tame (as there's no way to remove the pet thing without breaking the capture->...citizen chain, and make them complete citizens).

[NCommander]

I believe they need the ability to speak, and the CAN_LEARN tag. Gremlins are the only tamable creature in the game with both last I checked.

[PatrikLundell]

A completely different strategy would be to somehow manipulate the world so you get loads of animal people to visit your fortress as performers and sages (or mercs, if you don't care that they can never become citizens).
I have no idea how to guide world generation to achieve that, though.

[Urist McColeTheo]

I believe they need the ability to speak, and the CAN_LEARN tag. Gremlins are the only tamable creature in the game with both last I checked.

So would I be able to add those tags to the animal people in the Raws, or are the gremlins the only creatures that can actually have the tags?

[PatrikLundell]

As far as I understand you can add the EXOTIC_PET tag to animal people. Since they're animal PEOPLE they should already have the CAN_LEARN tag. I believe you'd then end up with wild animal people that can be caught and trained, but I've no idea what it would do to civilized animal people. People who've tried might be able to tell you.
Still, even with modded tags, you need to somehow get hold of the animal people. I've never seen an Elephant Man, for instance.

[Urist McColeTheo]

As far as I understand you can add the EXOTIC_PET tag to animal people. Since they're animal PEOPLE they should already have the CAN_LEARN tag. I believe you'd then end up with wild animal people that can be caught and trained, but I've no idea what it would do to civilized animal people. People who've tried might be able to tell you.
Still, even with modded tags, you need to somehow get hold of the animal people. I've never seen an Elephant Man, for instance.

This is what I've gathered so far:

Animal people can be bred and drafted into the military with the tags I mentioned above, and having the [COMMON_DOMESTIC] tag under their creature token allows you to take those animal people with you on embark (costing only 1 point so you can have a male and female animal people to breed) yet they're unable to use weapons as they're considered pets and therefore war animals by the game?

But animal people already have the [CAN_LEARN] tag which means they can use equipment?

Sorry I'm a little confused, the questions thread from the subreddit told me that I would be unable to equip my animal people if I tagged them as pets, but would I be able to equip them if I added [CAN_LEARN]?

[PatrikLundell]

As far as I understand, CAN_LEARN is required to use weapons. The ordinary PET tag will probably interfere with weapons use, while EXOTIC_PET does allow it (my Gremlins have been able to equip daggers liberated from kobolds, as well as shields, although they then move at a crawl). I don't know how COMMON_DOMESTIC would interact with the two tags above, but wouldn't be surprised if it would negate equipment use.

[Urist McColeTheo]

As far as I can tell [COMMON_DOMESTIC] only makes them accessible from the embark screen, but I'll definitely try [EXOTIC_PET] in place of [PET].

And that's strange, do you think the speed is affected by their strength/size?

[Dunamisdeos]

The real question is what happens if I mod my captured goblins like that.

[PatrikLundell]

I don't know what you mean about the speed question. As far as I understand there is a bug that makes animal people move at a crawl unless they haul something.

[Dunamisdeos]

As far as I can tell [COMMON_DOMESTIC] only makes them accessible from the embark screen, but I'll definitely try [EXOTIC_PET] in place of [PET].

And that's strange, do you think the speed is affected by their strength/size?

I'm not sure how it goes with animal people, but gaits CAN (but not always) be affected by stats.

[darkflagrance]

Consider creating a new civ with can learn/pet exotic that sends mercs and dancers. These can be slaughtered as food once they are admitted to your fort. Once the entertainers join they can be used for manual labor.

The white tigermen in fortress defense are an example of a race with these capabilities.

[Bumber]

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