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[Melting Sky]

For some reason I though this was a bug that got fixed, but on the 43.03 game I was just playing none of the large predators, even the giant ones, would even fight back once attacked let alone initiate an attack on nearby isolated civilian dwarves. It's a bit anti-climatic to say the least to have embarked in a savage wilderness in search of at least some slight challenge from the local giant lions and other monstrous beasts only to find they are not just completely docile and chicken but that they won't even defend themselves once attacked. I'm using a very slightly out of date version of the game. If I update to the newest version is it any better in this regard are is the AI still completely broken for animals?

[King Kitteh]

Doesn't seem like it. Had two cave ogres take a stroll through my fort. Smashed up a lot of furniture and workshops, but didn't initiate any attacks. Although they did fightback and fatally wound one of my military dwarves once I initiated an attack.

[Melting Sky]

Building destroyers definitely still work. It's the large predator tag that seems broken. None of them will initiative combat even with opponents many times smaller than themselves.  They just flee. It's interesting that your Ogres fought back. The two Giant Cougars I ran into fled and didn't once try to strike back even as they were being killed by a completely under qualified civilian dwarf. Those two Giant Cougars were the only large predators my dwarves attacked which is too small of a sample size to test how common the not fighting back thing is, but I sat at my embark just running the exterminate command for ages to conjure new groups of large predators to see how they behaved and I did not get a single one that became aggressive when presented with civilian dwarves and even cats to attack.

Has anyone ever seen a large predator initiate combat against anything in fortress mode version 43.03?

[Fleeting Frames]

Do (giant) alligators count? While they have rarely gotten scared, the usual result of parking a wagon next to them in river is immediate case of fun and possibly losing 1 to 7 dwarves, depending on readiness, time to prepare and threat level. [43.03]

[bmxbumpkin]

Yeah I have definitely had some Giant alligators tear my dwarves to shreds unprovoked, immediately upon embark.

[Melting Sky]

Yeah I have definitely had some Giant alligators tear my dwarves to shreds unprovoked, immediately upon embark.

I am assuming this was in one of the most current versions of the game? Maybe the predators just have to be MUCH, MUCH larger than their prey. Giant Alligators are roughly 60 times the size of an adult dwarf where as the Giant Cougars and Giant Dingos I ran into were only about as big as a grizzly bear. I'll try testing out an embark with Giant Gators next. They are among the biggest predatory animals in DF.

[King Kitteh]

For what it's worth, a blind cave ogre is bigger than a giant alligator.

They are quite different creatures tho...

[Melting Sky]

For what it's worth, a blind cave ogre is bigger than a giant alligator.

They are quite different creatures tho...

Yeah, that is true about the cave ogres which are sapient and building destroyers, and although they didn't initiate an attack they also didn't run away like cowards either where as I had repeated giant cougars fleeing like kittens from a civilian dwarf.

I had assumed given that I had never seen a large predator initiate an attack during my testing that it was some sort of universal bug with the large predator tag just not working at all, but this looks more like it could be some sort of very frequently failed morale check of some sort?

Maybe I'll make a survey asking people to report large predator behavior they have observed to get a better idea of what is going on over a much larger sample size. It drives me nuts just exterminating creatures over and over and over again waiting for predators to spawn. I'm curious how trained war animals are behaving as well.

[Fleeting Frames]

No, no. Not just giant gators. Regular gators will nom on your embark party too, usually, which is what I meant by the brackets. And I've seen rarely a giant gator fail morale check.

I recall that for smarter creatures their behaviour (aggressive or scared) was dependent on them knowing what happened on previous encounters, including worldgen encounters.

[OluapPlayer]

Intelligent Large Predators are definitely broken. Everything with [LARGE_PREDATOR] + [CAN_LEARN] is completely docile and will only fight in self-defense.

I've not noticed animal predators being broken, though.

[Melting Sky]

Intelligent Large Predators are definitely broken. Everything with [LARGE_PREDATOR] + [CAN_LEARN] is completely docile and will only fight in self-defense.

I've not noticed animal predators being broken, though.

Interesting, I went through a few sets of Giant Cougars and Giant Dingos and sent them plenty of cats and dwarfs as bait but never saw a single attack. Perhaps my sample size was just too small. I was actually trying to test a modded creature I made and was using dfhack exterminate to cycle through the local fauna until I got one to spawn "naturally" but in the end the incident with the miner comically chasing down and pick axing the fearful giant cougar to death piqued my curiosity.